No American Male in the Top 10: Say It Isn't So, USTA!

When Andy Roddick lost his second round match at the recently completed Legg Mason tournament in Washington, D.C., I witnessed something I had not imagined possible. It was the first time an American male has not been listed among the world's top 10 players.

This is a sobering and significant event. American tennis has been slipping for quite some time, and this latest setback is embarrassing, to say the least.

The USTA, the governing body of tennis in America by an act of Congress, with all of its wealth and resources, should be thoroughly ashamed.

They keep skirting the obvious potential talent pool of players in the urban inner-city. I served on the USTA's Plan For Growth Steering Committee in the late 1990s and posed the question of inner-city youth as a target group for growing the sport, and it was as if I never asked the question.

Since its inception in the early 1980s, the Player Development Program has been an inept merry-go-round, serving as an employment vehicle for favorite sons of the organization. I had the opportunity of working as a volunteer administrator in the early development of the program.

Regional Player Development training centers were set up all across the country, and the top junior players in those areas were invited to participate in advanced training. The exposure allowed for the identification and singling out of players with outstanding potential for further development. It made sense and worked. What happened to it?

Proven gurus like Rick Macci and Nick Bollettieri have rarely been asked or contracted to give their expertise to the program. Maybe now they will wake up and smell the coffee. Thank goodness for Venus and Serena Williams who were initially rejected out of hand by the USTA, because they didn't play Junior Tennis during their development.

By the way, they both trained under Nick Bolletieri and Rick Macci at some point during their early development, solidifying my earlier point. The USTA is the 2,000 pound elephant in the room who has always espoused that their way is the only way to develop world class tennis players.

I think John McEnroe, with his new 20 court tennis facility on Randall's Island, New York for developing future top players, is going to show the establishment a few things. Maybe some of it will rub off on his corporately correct brother Patrick, who is now in charge of Player Development for the USTA.