Dear Santa – Let Roger Federer get one more!

Written by: Staff on 20th December 2012

Dear Santa - Let Roger Federer get one more! |

Dear Santa:

As a coach of American juniors and professionals, here are the things I want for Christmas:

The USTA to take the multi-million dollar Player Development staff salaries and do the following: Pay Robert Lansdorp, Paul Annacone, Rick Macci, and Vesa Ponkka $250,000 a piece for 34 weeks of work. They will travel to each section and spend two weeks working with the sections players while all of that sections coaches are invited to watch and ask questions. Each coach will do 2 weeks per section meaning local coaches will have two months learning from proven coaches. John Kennedy said “ A rising tide lifts all boats” and I can’t think of a tennis playing fleet that needs more water than U.S. tennis. This nation is currently experiencing an Arab desert of success. The idea of taking 10-20 players and having them work with six-figured coaches at some national training center has proven to be an un-winning lottery ticket. Wouldn’t the chances go up if 1000 coaches got great information and each coach worked with 20-30 players over the next few years. And wouldn’t the state of the game improve if the current “proprietary information” held by these coaches was passed on as an act of support for U.S. tennis?

Since the above only accounts for a million dollars, let’s take some of those remaining funds and create some contracts for players aged 18-23 and support them and their private coaches as they travel in the quest for rankings points. Put some quantitative benchmarks out there for them and have the contracts renewable annually. This might foster a team spirit, in the vein of the Spanish and South Americans, who understand that emotional and physical support is critical to sporting success.

Let’s revoke this 10-and-under mandate and put together some information that correctly details how fast kids can progress through the Quickstart program. There should be skills tests for a kid to move from one level to the next, and a skills test to get off the small courts and onto the big one with the yellow ball. That might happen at age 7 or age 13, but regardless of age, let’s let the kid and coach decide how fast they want to get there. If the USTA wants kids to use the Quickstart program, then let them use it properly – as a compassionate hand that pushes them forward, and not an iron fist that holds them back.

You know those new tournament regulations that obliterated the hopes of hundreds of kids from making it to nationals and appearing before college coaches and having great experiences with kids from other states and setting up a lifetime of memories where they got to travel outside their section for competition and met new people and learned things like independence and how to deal with the adverse conditions of travel and how to do laundry and play on new courts and suffer beneath crazy humidity and get the joy of returning home with the confidence that comes from being a national level athlete and be able to tell their friends about it and share photos of arms around fellow competitors and dinners with new people and talk about the learning experiences that come from meeting kids form other parts of the nation and having their photo in a program and wearing a player badge and getting a t-shirt with the coolest and most respected slogan in junior tennis and …. yea, so can we fix that, and let more kids, not less, have access to that?

Can we do something about the big tournaments disappearing from the United States? Half the Sony Ericsson is now leaving. The Los Angeles tournament was just sold to Bogota Columbia. It seems like the old days when America exported excellence, has now become the new days when America exports its failures for other nations to fix. How are we supposed to inspire our kids without having venues to showcase the world’s best players?

Will someone please create a website for US junior tennis players that shows rankings and tournaments and player profiles and is updated regularly and readable in a way that doesn’t make me feel like a minotaur is after me with every click?

There’s a lot more on my list, but I’m not greedy. Let’s leave some things out there for the other nations too – U.S. college scholarships and European club tennis and international tennis academies and the world’s top ten.

Oh, and if you could just remove me from the USTA naughty list, I’d appreciate that too. I’d be a big fan if they could just tweak a few things.

Thanks,

–CC

P.S. I’d like to see Roger get one more…ya’ know…just because old champions never die, they just fade away, with lots of Wimbeldon trophies.

Topics: Paul Annacone, Rick Macci, Robert Lansdorp, Roger Federer, Sony Ericsson, Usta, Vesa Ponkka