Great Black Hope?

Is Donald Young the next great American hope? OK, at this point, it may be ridiculous to say. The American tennis establishment loves it best when there are Americans that are vying for number 1, especially among the men. Connors was up there challenging Borg, and when Connors wasn't nearly the same player he used to be, McEnroe took the mantle of American tennis. Then, there were some years where McEnroe was starting to fade, and people wondered what would become of American tennis.

That lead quickly to a surge of top players, one after another. Tops among them was Pete Sampras, but there was Andre Agassi, Michael Chang, and Jim Courier, not to mention second tier players like Todd Martin and Malivai Washington.

But since Pete and now Andre have retired, American tennis seems mildly desperate. Federer and Nadal look like they are going to rule the top. Roddick, under new coaching from Connors, is adopting some of strategy that lead Connors to the top, in particular, strong forays to the net off hard hitting groundstrokes.

And there's James Blake as well. The tennis establishment would have loved if Blake was tennis's answer to Tiger Woods. He's one of those guys that's gracious but could be a (and is) a model.

It's questionable whether either can make it all the way to the top. If there's something to be said about tennis, it's that you have to be at the top, or very near it, to stay there any significant amount of time. There are few players who stay, for example, around ten, their whole lives, good, but never quite great. You need someone that's almost inconsistently brilliant, like Ivanisevic or Safin.

Donald Young made the semis of the U.S. Open juniors, the only American that made it further than the second round. Being good at the juniors doesn't always translate to pro success, and if anything, having lots of good players at the same time from the same country help, because they push each other. This was true of Sweden, the US, and Spain. Federer's a bit of an anomaly in that respect. You could hardly name another Swiss player.

It's easy to say that Donald Young will be that next great player, because predictions are just that. Predictions. Make a bad one, and no one much remembers. Make a good one, and everything thinks you're great.

I was just watching an old US Open tape with a friend. They were doing a segment on Venus Williams. I mean, like age 10 Venus Williams. She had been hyped since she was young, so it says something that she lived (partly) up to the hype. It's sad that both she and Serena have faded some. There was always some concern how devoted to tennis they were. It may say something that they have more to their lives than tennis, but somehow we don't expect that of sports stars. Would we like it if Tiger walked away from golf saying there's more to life than golf? Don't we want to seem him break Nicklaus's record?

What was amusing was the segment asking whether there's too much pressure on Venus or not, when clearly the segment was about her, and was contributing to that topic (just like "Are we paying too much attention to JonBenet?" Interesting how that news story faded so quickly, eh?)

I don't know how Donald Young will do, but his showing at the US Open is at least partly hopeful. Maybe he'll always be a middling player. Maybe he'll turn out to be great. These were the kinds of question facing Venus, and she managed to live up to that pressure. So did Tiger. Young has not had that kind of spotlight, which suggests most people think he's decent, but not worthy of hype.

And, in this day and age, maybe that's a good thing.