The Bad News: The Isner Era No More

Written by: Tennischiro on 26th April 2012

The Bad News: The Isner Era No More

John Isner of the USA in action against Spain's Feliciano Lopez during their third round match at the Australian Open tennis tournament in Melbourne, 20 January 2012. EPA/MARTIN PHILBEY AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND OUT |

OK. You had enough time to dwell on the good news about John Isner’s great performance the last couple of months.

(see https://archive.10sballs.com/2012/04/17/the-good-news-the-dawn-of-the-isner-era/)

But the outlook for the rest of the American men in the top 100 or anywhere on the horizon is not so encouraging. In fact, it’s disastrous.

Here are the rankings for players in the current top 100 as on April 23:

9.    Mardy Fish – 2725
11.    John Isner – 2620 (Yes, Mardy moved back in front, but we’ll talk about that below.)
28.    Andy Roddick – 1245
50.    Donald Young –     902
58.    Ryan Harrison – 780
73.    James Blake – 677
80.    Sam Querrey – 639
…
131.    Ryan Sweeting – 422
…
328.    Jack Sock – 131
…
368.    Steve Johnson – 110

Let’s go down the line.

Mardy Fish had a great 4 1/2 months last year from the French right through Tokyo in the first week of October. I have written here on a number of occasions of how much I liked seeing his style continue to be effective in today’s power hungry men’s game

(https://archive.10sballs.com/2011/08/26/is-mardy-fish-the-new-pancho-gonzales/)

In those 4 1/2 months, Mardy was tremendous. Go to the ATP site and you’ll see he picked up tons of points at Roland Garros, Wimbledon, Atlanta and Los Angeles before going finals and semis in Montreal and Cincy.

(http://www.atpworldtour.com/Tennis/Players/Top-Players/Mardy-Fish.aspx?t=rb)

He followed up with quarters at the US Open and then a semi-final performance in Tokyo that set him up in great shape going into the indoor events in Shanghai, Paris and London with advantageous seeding in the top 8 for these events for the first time in his career. But he won just one match in those three events. Granted, he came out of Tokyo and the Asian swing with injuries, but this was where he had a real chance to give himself a little cushion. He did win a key Davis Cup match in Switzerland against Wawrinka on the clay, but he went out in the second round of the Australian and the second round of Indian Wells to Faila and Ebden, respectively. Even when he did well reaching the quarters at Miami, he went out meekly to Juan Monaco 1&3.

I really hoped Mardy could establish himself firmly among the top 8 and challenge for a spot in the top 5, but he had to improve and I don’t see any sign that the first serve percentage or effectiveness of the forehand has improved. Perhaps Mark Knowles can add something new, but I doubt it. Fish will face tremendous pressure the next few months to defend the points he earned in this period last year. Perhaps he is getting really healthy right now and he will prove me wrong. I really do hope so. But I don’t think he can duplicate the phenomenal summer he had last year. By the end of the summer, I hope he is still in the top 20. That would still make him the #2 player in the US. But that will mean even tougher draws than last fall and winter.

John Isner also had a good summer. John won Newport and Winston-Salem, final’d at Atlanta and semi’d at Washington.

(http://www.atpworldtour.com/Tennis/Players/Top-Players/John-Isner.aspx?t=rb)

But he has done so well since then that the Atlanta points don’t even count for him. He picked up just 55 points at Roland Garros and Wimbledon total and just 110 total for Madrid, Rome, Montreal and Cincy. He certainly has a lot of points to defend in the next few months, but he has a ton of opportunities now with better draws in the bigger events where he didn’t do that much damage. And the way he has been playing recently, it doesn’t look like a stretch to expect him to continue at his current level and even continue to improve. With what Isner has shown us in the last few months, I expect him to be a solid member of the top 10 for at least 3 more years. But I don’t see any Americans to keep him company in even the top 20 once Fish falls below that level. Hopefully, Fish and Roddick can still help him out this year, but I think it is going to be up to Isner and the Bryans to bring us any further success in the Davis Cup. That is a tall order against the Spanish team next September in Spain.

Andy Roddick gave all the American fans a thrill with his upset of Roger Federer in Miami. But since beating Radek Stepanek in the second round of Basel in November of last year, he hasn’t beaten anyone else in the top 50. As his ranking has dropped, he will have to play more and more players in the top 20; he hasn’t faced those kinds of draws since before he won the US Open in 2003. He has very few points to defend at Rome, Madrid or Roland Garros and only won two matches at Wimbledon last year, so he is in a good position to move back up into the top 20 or even top 15, but the results of the last six months or even a year and the increased difficulty he is having holding his serve (according to ATP match facts), don’t give me much confidence that he can do that.

Let’s hope Andy can get a foothold in the European clay court season or have a great Wimbledon, but if he doesn’t, it could be a long, hot summer for the long-time American standard bearer. I wonder if he will want to stick around if his ranking drops out of the top 50. He’s earned just 630 points in the 7 months since the US Open. For the entire last 52 weeks, he has just 1245 points and 450 of those points came from Wimbledon and the US Open. In fact, except for the US Open, he earned just 300 points in the rest of the year. You can see his point totals for the last 52 weeks here.

(http://www.atpworldtour.com/Tennis/Players/Top-Players/Andy-Roddick.aspx?t=rb)

Young, Harrison and Querry. I wrote about these three players at the bottom of my review of my trip to Indian Wells.

(https://archive.10sballs.com/2012/03/26/10schiros-return-to-indian-wells/)

I haven’t gotten much reason to change my skeptical stance since then. I think it is important to note that Donald Young was the only American in Monte Carlo this last week or Bucharest or Barcelona this coming week. And that includes the qualifying. Yes, the Bryans did win the doubles title in Monte Carlo. That’s great. But so far through the first two weeks of competition in the critical European clay court circuit, American men can count a grand total of 1 game won for the USA. Young lost 6-0, 6-1 in Monte Carlo to Paul Henri Mathieu. These are major events and we don’t even have anyone entering the qualies. It reminds me of the problem I have with my juniors who don’t play enough practice sets. You have to play matches to learn to play this game. You have to play the clay court season on the red clay to learn to deal with it. I can understand some players passing it up part of the time. But we didn’t have a single player entered in the qualies in Monte Carlo, Bucharest or Barcelona.

Oh, I think Young and Harrison will continue to be a factor at just about the ranking they are holding right now. Harrison will continue to get better, but I see fundamental weaknesses in his technique (he can’t hit through a forehand) that will keep him from succeeding against the best players. Of course, I haven’t heard that sentiment much from anyone else. I hope I am wrong. Young needs a coach who can get him to change his mental approach on the court. His mom and dad are not going to pull that off. He has skills that could get him close to the top 20, but he needs a vulcan mind meld with someone with single minded toughness and focus. Sam Querry is now working with Brad Gilbert and perhaps Brad can help Sam get back to what he was before he suffered his injuries. But it is by no means an easy fix based on what I saw at Indian Wells.

That leaves us with just James Blake in the top 100 at 32 years old and getting 40% of his points from challengers. He’s just about done. Then I’ve listed a couple of players below the top 100. My big disappointment was Ryan Sweeting. Such a magnificent physical talent who was done a disservice by coaches early in his career that didn’t insist he correct certain fundamental flaws in his technique, especially his service motion. My notes about Ryan first appeared last July.

(https://archive.10sballs.com/2011/08/03/the-rest-of-the-story-farmers-classic-harrison-fish-sweeting/)

I kind of thought he was going to fall right off the heights to which he had so suddenly risen, getting straight into the majors and even some ATP1000s, unless he made some serious changes. And it has come to pass. A couple of weeks ago he lost his 250 points from winning Houston last year. You can find that match on youtube (although the commentary is in some Slavic language, I think). It was a great effort for Sweeting. He lost in two tie-breakers. It was great that he could stay with a top ten player (Isner) through the entire set. But then in the tie-breaker he gave away two key points with double faults. In the second set he backed up and couldn’t get his forehand to the net. When I looked at some of the interview footage on the ATP TennisTV site, I was struck by the bags under his eyes that developed over the course of the week. I have to believe he still believed he could do the impossible two years in a row and win Houston again. He’s convinced he is a much better player than he was a year ago. But as the week went on, the pressure had to mount and grow to unbearable levels. It’s hard for us who have never been there to imagine what a tremendous difference it is to be ranked 65 in the world instead of somewhere outside the top 130. Sweeting had almost 9 months when he could get into tournaments without having to qualify. It’s almost impossible at that stage and that age to correct the deficiencies in his mechanics. It can be done, but it is very difficult. And it takes someone with real wisdom about the game and enough prestige and credibility to convince a player like Sweeting to divert himself from playing as much as possible to make those corrections. Ryan is talented and I expect he will get his Sysyphian rock up the hill again and earn another ranking in the top 100, but I continue to think that it will roll right back down on him if he doesn’t address those deficiencies. In any case, he is not the answer to who will be the next American player in the top 20.

I’ve listed Jack Sock because he is a young player the USTA has expressed great hopes for, but after almost a year playing men’s tennis full-time since graduating from high school last June, he is yet to crack the top 300. Certainly, the jury is still out on Jack, but he is a good 3 years away from making a real impact on the top 50 players in the world, much less the top 20. He and Melanie Oudin won the US Open Mixed last September, but there is a big difference between that success and competing effectively on the men’s tour.

There are two other young players who are working their way through the challengers, futures and quails of larger events. Denis Kudla is #168 and 19 years old. Daniel Kosakowski is #315 and just 20 years old. But they are both at least a couple of years away from breaking into the top 50.

The one player I have a little hope for is Steve Johnson who is yet to turn professional. He has about 6 weeks left to go in his college career and he is undefeated there in the last 2 years. He has weapons that give him a chance to compete with the big boys. He still has to improve but I expect him to get into the top 100 in the rankings within 6 months of turning pro this summer. How far he goes beyond that will depend on how much he develops, but he has a pro level serve with a huge second serve as well as wonderful all court skills including a great slice backhand and a legitimate transition game and net game. And dealing with the pressure of his 58 match win streak in college tennis has to have given him confidence as well as significantly toughened him up for what lies ahead of him. But once again, Steve is a good two years away from challenging for a spot in the top 50.

You put it all together and what American men do I see in the top 50 in 2013. John Isner will be there and probably Mardy Fish. On current form, I think Roddick, Harrison and maybe Young will be hanging right around 50, but not much higher. By 2014, Fish and Roddick could be gone with no one ready to take their places, although I do have hopes for Johnson. If we aren’t even sending our developing players to play qualifying on the red clay in Europe, we will not have players who are able to compete effectively in the future; not only on red clay, but also on the seemingly slower and slower hard courts. And that lack of American men among the elite professional players on the world tour is not good for the development of American tennis players. With fields of international tennis competition looking more and more like an all star team of international soccer players (very few Americans), grass roots interest in the sport will suffer.

10sChiro

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Topics: Donald Young, jack sock, James Blake, John Isner, Mardy Fish, Ryan Harrison, Ryan Sweeting, Sam Querrey, Steve Johnson