Over the past year, much has been made of the upcoming crop of young teenage talent in American men’s tennis. With American juniors winning prestigious titles like Wimbledon, Orange Bowl, Roehampton, and Eddie Herr Jr comes much attention, scrutiny, and buzz from both the tennis media and hardcore social media fans on Twitter and Facebook. Noah Rubin, Francis Tiafoe, Tommy Paul, Taylor Fritz, Jared Donaldson, Stefan Kozlov, Reilly Opelka, Michael Mmoh, and William Bloomberg have all won or made deep runs into important junior events and some like Fritz, Tiafoe, and Paul are already earning wins on the ATP and Challenger tours. With this success has come profiles on major sports networks and publications. ESPN, The New York Times, Tennis Magazine, etc have all ran articles or profiles about one or several of these young men. Lost in the massive (and deserved) hype of these teenage phenoms is the story and attention of the generation that came before. Prior to Tiafoe, Fritz, and Kozlov there was Sandgren, Frantangelo, Harrison, Jenkins, etc. Besides Jack Sock, the other American twenty-somethings on tour have struggled trying to make a name and place for themselves in the main draws of tour events.
This summer, after a marvelous and hard fought run to the 4th round of Wimbledon, Denis Kudla, a member of the twenty-something generation, reclaimed a spot in the limelight of American tennis fandom. During his run at Wimbledon, Kudla showed a hunger and will to fight that had seemed to slip from his game in 2014. After cracking the top 100 in 2013 for a career high ranking of #90, Kudla’s ranking had slipped into the 140s recently. After a well documented departure from USTA and joining the camp of Billy Heiser, Kudla’s successful grass court season now has him back into the top 100 and primed to earn an all time rankings high this summer. Kudla’s successful midsummer swing through the UK brought a much needed boost in attention and positivity to one of his generation of men on the ATP Tour.
Kudla’s matches and results provide a framework for other players to emulate in trying to reach new levels of success. After splitting with the USTA, Kudla’s new camp invested heavily in fitness and on court practice. As typical with the ATP tour, the differences in top 50 players and top 150 players isn’t so much in the power of their forehands and backhands, but more so in their ability to sustain that power and a high level of play over the course of not only a 3-set match, but multiple matches throughout a week. This obviously takes both physical and mental training, which is why the attention to both by Kudla’s camp lead to such positive changes and results early this summer.
Kudla’s success should provide a buoy for other twenty-something American men on tour while giving them hope for a breakout performance of their own heading into the US Open. Players like Bjorn Frantangelo, Tennys Sandgren, and Jamere Jenkins have similar games and weapons to Kudla. (Some of these men have even better weapons as they are taller and a bigger physical presence on court.) They should ask themselves “why can’t it be me?” as they train and play their Challenger and qualifying events.
There have been glimpses of signs pointing to future success for this generation. Ryan Harrison is the most likely candidate to have this sort of run at an important tournament. Harrison, a once much lauded junior and young professional himself, had a great start to the season in 2015: winning a challenger event in Australia, advancing to the round of 16 at Memphis, and following that up with a semifinal run at Acapulco where he lost in three tough sets to David Ferrer. During this stretch Harrison played the type of aggressive, powerful tennis that garnered him so much early career fame and attention as a teenager. However, that early season form hasn’t been replicated yet by Harrison who suffered tough early round losses in the clay and grass court seasons. Heading home to play on his best surface, it wouldn’t be out of the question to see a deep run from the talented 23 year old at the US Open or another important hard court tournament.
Heading into the US Open, American tennis fans are clamoring for a deep run by an American man at their home Slam. Over the course of the last three years, the title of “last American man playing” at the Slams has gone to anyone from John Isner, to Tim Smyzcek, to Denis Kudla. It is very probable that at the 2015 US Open a new name could be added to that list, but will it be one of the hyped and junior-tourney-tested American teens, or one of their twenty-something journeyman compatriots that claims that title? Either way the debate provides much needed attention and hope for American men’s tennis.
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