opment programs which strive to provide “a pathway to excellence” create few new opportunities since skill and ability are the most significant factors for program selection. With very few exceptions, you need to have resources invested in you to be selected in the first place so that the very best players are cannibalized from other programs. The shifting of resources is not the creation of opportunities. Players returning from tournaments with stories of getting penalties for whispering “Oh my God” at a national event certainly don’t further the cultural sensibility that tennis is an “inner city” sport attractive to athletes who might otherwise play basketball or football. Brad Gilbert thinks it’s “just a cycle, we can’t stay on top forever,” even though “cycles” repeat and this decline and slump in American professional tennis has never before happened in the history of the sport. Who knows, maybe in another 100 years we will bounce back. I cannot wait, but for now, I think the fault is not in our tennis stars, but in us.
When it comes to success in American tennis, we are the tail wagging the dog. Let’s shift the paradigm and stop complaining about the lack of American tennis dominance because that conversation is part or the problem and a self-fulfilling prophecy that undermines the sport in popular culture. Do we really want to reinforce the notion that tennis is an elitist sport? Why are we failing to dominate the world tennis stage? Perhaps because today, it takes a complete commitment of time and resources at a very young age to succeed, and most Americans feel the educational and emotional price is not worth the remote possibility of the ultimate reward. Tennis fame and fortune is an expensive goal. Every player I know who attended an academy (and I know many) tells me that they would never subject their children to that kind of environment. How many second generation top professionals from the past generation’s elite professionals do we actually see today? Think about it, the former pros who didn’t quite make it sometimes push
their children to be pros, but the top former players, the ones who know exactly what it takes, the hardship talent and luck, rarely do. Tennis excellence is one of the best pathways to the excellence of a better life. Let other countries risk the futures of their children to entertain us by encouraging tennis achievement as the ultimate destination, while we invest in tennis as a pathway to achievement. If we can succeed at using tennis to grow, we can grow tennis. Steve Kaplan is the owner of Bethpage Park Tennis Center, as well as the director of Lacoste Academy for New York City Parks Foundation. Over the last 34 years, Steve has been the longtime coach of more than 600 nationally-ranked junior players, 16 state high school champions, two NCAA Division 1 Singles Champions, and numerous touring professionals and prominent coaches. Steve’s students have been awarded in excess of $8 million in college scholarship money. He may be reached by e-mail at stevenjkaplan@aol.com.
LITennisMag.com • September/October 2014 • Long Island Tennis Magazine
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