Article translated by Tommaso Villa
The Swedes followed Borg with his “grandchildren” Wilander & Co. Same with Germany, inspired by the Wunderkind, Boris Becker, and by Fraulein Forehand, Steffi Graf. The importance of leading by example.
Tennis is obviously an individual sport. Every player runs and strikes for himself or herself. However, it cannot be a coincidence that, in certain eras, players from the same countries have done well at the same time – a concept that applies the other way around as well. As to why this happens, here’s a few theories:
- It could be the leading example of a fellow countryman or countrywoman, someone who perhaps didn’t stand out as a junior player, allowing to understand that a champion is great, of course, but not superhuman – “if he or she did it, why can’t I?”
- Maybe it’s the fact that tennis players are not as alone as they used to be. They have coaches, physios, psychologists, tactical analysts, physicians, whole teams. And what do teams do? If they are friendly with members of other collectives, they collaborate, exchange information, foster the growth of each member. If they are not, they study each other, learn, and grow. What happens when a player’s team has success? Other teams emulate and study their methods. Very often, one’s achievement becomes everybody’s achievement. Within the tennis circles, it is then much likelier that people from the same country will enable each other – why would you antagonise people with which you can naturally cooperate, since they were shaped from the same mould?
- The media play an important role, perhaps, voicing and spreading the popularity of the game, positively influencing the entire movement, and encouraging the players to greater feats.
- Said national enthusiasm might prompt more kids to pick up a racquet and further stimulate the growth of the game in a given country, creating a positive cycle.
Tennis history validates all the above statements. I’m not referring to the epochs when the game was limited to a few select nations: before WWII, it was the Brits and Wimbledon, the French with the Musketeers, the Americans with Bill Tilden, Ellsworth Vines and Don Budge. Afterwards, and all the way to the end of the Sixties, tennis was dominated by the Aussies, followed (though not closely) by the United States. Between 1950 and 1967, Australia won the Davis Cup 15 times out of 18 (the competition was as important as a Major back then), dominating thanks to the presence of champions like Sedgman, McGregor, Rose, Rosewall, Hoad, Laver, Newcombe, Roche, and Emerson – the USA won thrice out of 11 finals.
Of course, both countries had a much bigger reservoir of young players due to a greater following, a following that was alimented by a winning cycle, so much that five consecutive American Davis Cup wins (between 1968 and 1972) took place in the same years when Agassi, Courier, Sampras, and Chang were born, three of them the children of immigrant parents who had discovered the game because of the national wins that made headlines and filled sports shows – this was also the time when the Slams were becoming more and more popular, especially the US Open and Wimbledon.
In the early Sixties, Italy reached two Davis Cup finals, in 1960-61, and, perhaps by chance, perhaps not (I believe not), four kids (they were born in 1949, 1950, 1951, and 1953) learned about the game after hearing about what Pietrangeli, Sirola, Merlo, and Gardini had done – they would later become Italy’s version of the Musketeers (Panatta, Barazzutti, Bertolucci, and Zugarelli), one of them the son of a tennis club’s custodian, another one the offspring of a Tuscan tennis instructor, two more the progeny of struggling families.
THE POST-BORG SWEDISH CASE
What happened in the early 1970’s? Borg Mania, the arrival of a racquet-swinging Beatle, that’s what happened. His popularity was immense – a bona fide superstar. He won a Davis Cup almost by himself, along with 11 Majors that included a triple Roland Garros-Wimbledon brace, back when grass was actually grass and players did not even have the time to assimilate the switch between the dirt and the lawns. The outcome of his domination? The media frenzy in Sweden spurred a bonanza of young children who elected to start playing, flooding tennis clubs in a small country that didn’t even have outdoor courts except in Bastad – all those kids braving the cold before dawn, they dreamt of becoming the new Bjorn Borg.
Coincidentally (but it’s not a coincidence) those years saw the emergence of Wilander, Nystrom, Sundstrom, Jarryd, and Edberg. A grassroots dynasty with seven consecutive Davis Cup Finals between 1983 and 1989 – and three titles. The glory days lasted until Edberg’s retirement in 1996, when his team lost the final in Malmoe against the French led by Arnaud Boetsch (now a Rolex man), who saved three match points against Niklas Kulti in the decisive tie. Unfortunately, Larsson, Kulti, Gunnarson, and Gustafson didn’t have the talent or the charisma of their predecessors. Therefore, the sacred fire of tennis in Sweden was extinguished, and it hasn’t come back to this day – at the moment, the best Scandinavian player is a Norwegian, Casper Ruud.
GERMAN PHENOMS
Midway through the 1980’s, a new champion emerged in Europe – Boris Becker, born in 1967. Actually, the young Teutonic studs were two, because a few years later Steffi Graf (born in 1969) broke onto the scene as well, and in a far more emphatically dominating way. At the beginning of the ensuing decade, when Boris had already become the most popular German along with his peer, nicknamed Fraulein Forehand, the German Chancellor Kohl said: “If Becker decided to run, he’d easily win the elections” – that was around the time when, in 1991, he lost the Wimbledon final against a fellow countryman, Michael Stich.
Coincidentally (but it’s not a coincidence) Germany notched its first two Davis Cup titles in those years (out of three finals played between 1985 and 1989), and the wins snowballed into a generation of very good players, such as former world N.2 Tommy Haas, N.4 Nicolas Kiefer, and N.6 Rainer Schuettler. However, a guy like Haas, who didn’t reach the top spot and wasn’t reared in Germany but rather in Florida by Nick Bollettieri, wasn’t enough, and the flame was extinguished in Germany as well, with the galore of tournaments (Munich, Stuttgart, Frankfurt, Essen, Hannover) trickling down to almost nothing, the population losing interest due to the lack of new great champions.
NADAL, SPAIN, AND THE FRENCH TENNIS MOVEMENT
As soon as the German fandom started dwindling, Ion Tiriac moved his Masters 1000 event from Hamburg to Madrid, where the Caja Magica was built and Rafa Nadal dominated, spearheading a national movement that was already great – the years of Santana, Orantes, and Gimeno were the same when Bruguera, Albert and Carlos Costa, Moya, and Ferrero were born or grew up in, another coincidence/not coincidence – the latter even became the first man to lead Spain to a Davis Cup triumph.
I don’t want to become repetitive, even though there are dozens of examples, such as in France, where the generation of Noah, Forget and Leconte was succeeded by Grosjean and Clement, who were in turn up-staged by the contemporary, ageing quartet of Tsonga, Monfils, Gasquet, and Simon, or in Argentina, where the duel between Vilas and Clerc caused the emergence of Jaite, Coria, Gaudio, Del Potro, or in Croatia, where Ivanisevic spawned Cilic and Coric, and so on.
THE ITALIAN CASE, FROM SCHIAVONE TO CECCHINATO
The history of Italian tennis is further confirmation of the generational theory: after years of drought, Francesca Schiavone won the French Open at 30 years old, reaching the final again the next year, perhaps an even greater achievement. Before her, Silvia Farina had reached the 11th spot in the rankings, but she had never broken through at a Slam, thus not spurring a winning wave. Coincidentally (but it’s not a coincidence!) Schiavone was immediately succeeded by another Italian in the Parisian final, Sara Errani, a player very few believed in – certainly not the national federation, judging by the press releases of the time and by the fact that she had opted to move to Spain to train with Pablo Lozano, but still, right on her heels, Flavia Pennetta won at Indian Wells and then at the 2015 US Open, defeating Roberta Vinci, another Italian who hadn’t done much early on in her career.
How can this multiplicity of great players be explained if not by acknowledging the veracity of the theories I laid down at the beginning of this op-ed? Why the Italian women managed to ratch up these wins while their male counterpart couldn’t? The answer is simple: because no man was able to convey a positive message to the younger generation for over 40 years, no Italian male player was able to go deep into a Major nor to win some big event.
In 2018, Marco Cecchinato reached the semi-finals at the French Open, 40 years after Barazzutti. Suddenly, every Italian player who had played and perhaps even beaten Cecchinato (sometimes just in training sessions) realised that his achievement could be emulated. Moreover, the national tennis federation (the FIT) also came to a sudden realisation, finally understanding that financing private teams is a good thing, because it creates financial benefits for the entire movement.
What happened next? Fognini won in Monte-Carlo in 2019, after years of high-level play but with no satisfaction, finally breaking into the Top 10, while Matteo Berrettini reached the fourth round at Wimbledon and then the semi-finals at the US Open, qualifying for the season-ending ATP Finals. The pandemic slowed down the growth of the movement, but at the moment both the two highest-ranked players born after 2001 are Italians, Jannik Sinner and Lorenzo Musetti.
This doesn’t mean that Italian tennis will dominate the next decade. Spain had as many players in the third round of the men’s French Open as Italy, five apiece, their N.1 player is also the favourite to win the men’s tournament, and they are already assured of a spot in the fourth round thanks to the Carreno-Bautista derby. Moreover, the Italian women’s movement seems to have meanwhile withered (hopefully not for 40 years). But negative and positive cycles are not a coincidence. So, tennis is an individual sport, but maybe not that much. Don’t you agree?
