Same faces and same champs! Is tennis dying?

Lerpong Amsa-ngiam

lerla@hotmail.com March 31, 2013 1:00 am

The first quarter of the year has come to an end and it's evident that men's and women's tennis has become pretty boring due to lack of talented newcomers.

Familiar faces still dominate and win tournaments, especially the big ones. That include Novak Djokovic and Victoria Azarenka retaining their titles in Melbourne and Rafael Nadal joining Maria Sharapova as the new champions of the year's first Masters at Indian Wells a fortnight ago.

There were a bunch of top 10 players taking turns in winning events: Janko Tipsarevic in Chennai, Richard Gasquet in Doha and Montpellier, David Ferrer in Auckland and Buenos Aires, Juan Martin del Porto in Rotterdam, Djokvovic in Dubai, Nadal winning in Acapulco and Sao Paulo.

Young guns like Australian Bernard Tomic and Montenegrin-born Canadian Milos Raonic and dark-horses Ernests Gulbis of Latvia and Horacio Zeballos of Argentina each captured a title of their own this season. But the thing is all those events they won were at the ATP 250 level, meaning only few top players had taken part in it.

Tomic, Raonic and Grigor Dimitrov, the latter with one final and semi-final this year, are touted as the future of the ATP Tour but thus far they have not lived up to the expectations. The Australian bad boy, after making a solid start to the year by winning all matches in the Hopman Cup, came up short in almost every tournament from then on. The latest was a hopeless performance against Murray in the second round of the ATP 1000 Miami, losing to the world No 4, 6-3 6-1 in just 56 minutes without giving much of a fight.

Raonic, the highest ranked among the young blood, may have won in San Jose three times [also this year] and one in Chennai but they were all just 250 events. When it came to taking on the Fab Four - Djokovic, Roger Federer, Nadal and Murray - Raonic failed to pose any threat. His lightening serve is his main weapon but inconsistent baseline play is his weak spot. For Dimitrov, who might climb up the rankings, it is all mental. That explains why he blew away leads over Djokovic and Murray in their recent matches.

Things look similar on the women's side as there has never been any clear promising new players. African-American Sloane Stephens briefly shone in the Australian Open semi-finals but managed to win only one match in Doha from then on. There is also a new name, Karolina Pliskova of the Czech Republic wining her maiden trophy in Kuala Lumpur, but she was more like a one week wonder as her other results were just mediocre.

Still there is 22-year-old Mona Barthel from Neumunster, Germany, who, to everyone's surprise, emerged champion at Paris Indoor. She also had impressive runs like reaching round of 16 in Indian Wells, final in Hobart and a semi-final in Auckland. Still she needs to produce some good results in a Grand Slam event to signal her potential.

Azarenka, Serena Williams, Sharapova and perhaps Agnieszka Radwanska on any given day, take full control of the circuit just like the men's top five and remain unchallenged. It's good for the fans that all these marquee names are still around. But isn't it sad for the future of tennis?

There are no teenage prodigies to put top players to the test like when Pete Sampras came out to catch up with Boris Becker, Federer with Sampras or Steffi Graf with Martina Navratilova, Monica Seles with Graff or Martina Hingis with the Williams. Those halcyon days have gone by and it doesn't seem likely to happen again anytime soon.

Maybe tennis - though I hope not - is really dying!

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