CRAIG CIGNARELLI SHARES HIS “DEAR SANTA” WISH WITH US – ALL I WANT FOR CHRISTMAS

Written by: Staff on 22nd December 2015

CRAIG CIGNARELLI SHARES HIS "DEAR SANTA" WISH WITH US - ALL I WANT FOR CHRISTMAS |

December, 2015. Most of the players are resting. A select few organize their Christmas stockings around the Grand Slam trophies sitting atop their fireplace mantles. For a few more weeks, the tennis world is dark, quiet, a grey sky awaiting the New Year’s tempest.

And yet, from some parts of the globe, tiny thunder rumbles shake the air as athletes thump treadmills, thrust medicine balls, and crack forehands with unrelenting resolve. The training takes place in closed gyms and on private courts. These clouds of combatants are forming into something ominous.

Here, in America, one senses a different kind of storm. It’s been over a decade since an American male has held a major trophy on the final Sunday. The country has seen a few spits of weather here and there, a sprinkle of rain and a drizzle just off the cusp of humidity. Think Southern California storm and you get the idea. There just ain’t been much out there lately.

Interestingly, the pundits have taken to the airwaves to complain about the drought. We’ve heard blame placed upon the national federation, on the athletes’ lack of hunger, on the failure to entice the best athletes to our sport. We’ve heard America’s youth are spoiled, unwilling to work, and too addicted to technology’s immediate gratification to understand words like desire and ambition and fortitude. For over a decade, we’ve heard these things without pushback from the players. But something is different this year. The clouds seem darker, thicker, stronger, as though they’ve developed a will.

Stevie Johnson, Jack Sock, Jared Donaldson, Taylor Fritz, Stefan Kozlov, Reilly Opelka, Noah Rubin, Dennis Kudla, Frances Tiafoe, Tommy Paul, Michael Mmoh, Mackenzie McDonald. These are the names (I probably missed a few) to watch over the next few years. Recently, they’ve been training on practice courts, with a rabid intensity, to come out of tennis’ version of the Peleton. At least a few of them want to be the standard-bearer for American tennis, and the fight has begun upon cement rectangles around the nation.

Still, one gets the sense that more is at stake here. America has always had a bit of a pride issue. Whether it’s our ethnocentrism, or the values with which we declare our moral superiority, or the simple fact that this country of immigrants has thrown hard work upon its back and climbed to the apex of international prominence, we get pretty pissed off when someone suggests they are better than us. Ask the 1980 Russian hockey team.

It seems like some of these players have a deeper understanding of things than their ages might suggest. They are training with a different kind of grit. They seem more resilient and determined than the last group of American competitors. That is not meant to be a criticism so much as an observation – perhaps the last shift passed down some lessons about what it takes to reach the mountaintop. The point is, this lack of Sunday metal (and mettle, and for that matter, medal) is pushing more than our boys’ bodies. The drive is coming from within, in places where limbic systems command sovereignty and hearts lay open and exposed.

Whether 2016 brings a major trophy to America’s shores remains to be seen. What we do see though, is a well-trained cadre of motivated men on the march. Perhaps this impending storm of soldiers will rain down upon the tennis world, and in the process, reign over it all once again. Anyway, that’s my Christmas wish.