|
Davis Cup captain John Fitzgerald has grave concerns for Australian tennis and says more clay courts are urgently needed.
Fitzgerald fears Australia, a tennis power for more than a century, has lagged behind the rest of the world in player development for too long, an assertion reflected in the latest rankings.World No. 20 Lleyton Hewitt, Samantha Stover (No. 29) and Nicole Pratt (No. 76) are the only Australians in the top 100. The situation has never been more desperate.
Although he lists geography, increased competition from rival sports, especially the football codes, and an expanding group of countries taking to tennis as factors behind Australia’s plight, Fitzgerald cites a dearth of clay courts as one of the biggest issues.Tennis Australia player development director Craig Tiley estimates some 800 clay courts have been lost in NSW alone over the past two decades and Fitzgerald says it’s no coincidence the country’s most populous state has provided only three Davis Cup players in that period.“Todd Woodbridge was 15 years old. Jamie Morgan has played one (Cup) match and Todd Reid has played one dead rubber,” said Fitzgerald.Woodbridge has long condemned synthetic grass as a blight on player development and Fitzgerald agrees the surface is hurting tennis in Australia at the top level.
While Australia has a proud tradition of grass court tennis – real grass, that is – times have changed and Fitzgerald says the 28-times Davis Cup-winning nation must drag itself out of the 20th century.“Tennis is now a slow, high-bouncing sport. When I learnt, it was a fast, low-bouncing court. That’s why the grips are so different now,” he said.“If you play on a synthetic grass court where the ball shoots through in Sydney and then you try to go and play in junior tournaments in Europe, what chance have you got?”
The new TA administration is working to address the court surface issue.Accepting that synthetic grass courts have had a ‘significant impact’ on Australia’s slide in the tennis rankings, Tiley has commissioned extensive studies to try to find a European-style clay court conducive to local conditions. But there are obstacles. Wind, climate, water constraints and the fact that clay courts require full-time maintenance are making it difficult.
Nevertheless, Tiley believes TA is close to deciding on a surface and achieving its goal of having at least six clay courts at every national training centre, including Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth.Fitzgerald says clay courts are vital because ‘they teach a kid their craft’.“It teaches them how to make shot selection, it teaches them why they hit a defensive shot, why they then hit an attacking shot and go from the defensive position in the court.“Why they put their feet here – because it cuts off the angle… it also puts miles in their legs.
“They can play for hours one day and come back the next and feel fresh. Maybe not at 35 but at 18 you can, 14 you can.“So it’s a good surface to learn your craft on. But in NSW we don’t have that any more. So that hurts us.
“The countries that generally have the best men’s players are usually countries that develop their kids on this type of surface from an early age.”Tiley says most importantly it is a surface that encourages the ball to go over the net several more times.
The adage is if you get the ball over the net one more time per point in a match you improve your standard by 33 per cent.
“The reason being is, at your average level of tennis, the average length of rallies is two to three balls – think of the number of times someone serves an ace, or a double-fault or a return goes into the net. That brings the average down really fast.“Therefore if you get the ball over the net one more time you then improve by 33 per cent.“So what you have to do is have a court surface that is conducive to that improvement, and synthetic grass does not provide that improvement.”Fitzgerald says it would break his heart if it ever got to a point where Australia had no-one in the world’s top 100, but he is realistic enough to know it could happen if something isn’t done.
“Without Lleyton we’d be there now (in men’s ranks),” he said.
“Say off the top of your head you want three people in the top 20 or eight people in the top 100 to work with. Well, if you’ve got three people in the top 20 there’s only 17 others from the rest of the world that can be in the top 20.
“We’re a small country in the Pacific so it’s tough to get these numbers.“Yet over here we expect our national team with a small group of players, one guy in the top 100, to be in the semi-finals of the Davis Cup every year. It’s tough,” said Fitzgerald. | 
