{"id":953,"date":"2012-10-24T11:15:06","date_gmt":"2012-10-24T15:15:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/heavytopspin.com\/?p=953"},"modified":"2012-10-24T11:15:06","modified_gmt":"2012-10-24T15:15:06","slug":"what-grega-zemlja-can-tell-us-about-american-tennis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/2012\/10\/24\/what-grega-zemlja-can-tell-us-about-american-tennis\/","title":{"rendered":"What Grega Zemlja Can Tell Us About American Tennis"},"content":{"rendered":"

Italian translation at settesei.it<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Last week, virtually unknown Slovenian qualifier Grega Zemlja<\/a> reached the final in Vienna. \u00a0Like many players–Eastern Europeans in particular–in the back half of the top 100, he has finally established a toehold on tour after putting together a good sequence of challenger results.<\/p>\n

The final run in Vienna–only his 16th tour-level event–will help keep him in the top 100 for most of the next year, earning him direct entries into all of the Grand Slams and many smaller ATP events.<\/p>\n

Zemlja turned 26 one month ago, so he is hardly a “prospect.” \u00a0But I call your attention to him because he has achieved his new berth in the top 50 almost entirely by merit. \u00a0When the AELTC awarded him a wild card into the Wimbledon main draw this summer, it was the first tour-level wild card of his career. \u00a0In fact, he has only received a single wild card into a\u00a0challenger<\/em> main draw.<\/p>\n

While the Slovenian has been a fixture in the top 200 since the end of 2008, he hasn’t gotten any favors.<\/p>\n

The distribution of wild cards<\/strong><\/p>\n

As it turns out, he’s not alone. \u00a021 players in the top 100 (including Tomas Berdych<\/a> and Janko Tipsarevic<\/a>) didn’t receive a single tour-level wild card before their 25th birthday. \u00a0Another 16 (Novak Djokovic<\/a> and David Ferrer<\/a> among them) got only one, and yet another 23 received only two.<\/p>\n

When I started researching this post, I expected to find that Zemlja was uniquely disadvantaged. \u00a0But no: Wild cards are the privilege of players who happen to be born in the right places. \u00a0Free entries tend to go to home favorites, with a few more awarded to star youngsters like Grigor Dimitrov<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Thus, the geographical distribution of wild cards has everything to do with where tournaments are located. \u00a0And tournament locations have an awful lot to do with where the tennis world was centered 20, 50, or even 100 years ago.<\/p>\n

The U.S. of Assistance<\/strong><\/p>\n

Much has been said of Donald Young<\/a>‘s 27 tour-level wild cards. \u00a0(Some of it by Patrick McEnroe, recipient of 37<\/a>.) \u00a0But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. \u00a0Did you know that the\u00a0seven<\/em>\u00a0active players who received the most wild cards before age 25 play for the USA? \u00a0Young is followed by Mardy Fish<\/a>, Ryan Harrison<\/a>, Sam Querrey<\/a>, Jesse Levine<\/a>, John Isner<\/a>, and James Blake<\/a>. \u00a0(Blake has been handed by far the most career wild cards, but the majority have come in his more recent comeback attempts.)<\/p>\n

The current top 200 players received 748 wild cards before the age of 25. \u00a0139, or 18.6% of those, have gone to these seven, or 3.5% of players.<\/p>\n

Put simply, the distribution of tennis tournaments doesn’t match the distribution of tennis talent. \u00a0The US is the only country with more than one Masters 1000 event–it has three. \u00a0Plus a slam. \u00a0And two 500s. \u00a0And another seven 250s, at least in 2012.<\/p>\n

All those tournaments have at least three wild cards to give out. \u00a0This year, seven of them handed main draw spots to Jack Sock<\/a>, who at age 20 has already amassed 10 career tour-level wild cards, more WCs than 90% of the top 200 have received.<\/p>\n

A structural problem<\/strong><\/p>\n

This is an easy subject to get worked up about, especially if you prefer to support players like Zemlja. \u00a0Yet it’s difficult to blame anyone in particular.<\/p>\n

Tournaments fiercely guard the few wild card spots they are given, so it would be difficult for the ATP to meddle. \u00a0The events want to attract fans, and an up-and-comer with an easy-to-pronounce name is a great way to sell tickets. \u00a0And you certainly can’t blame a player for accepting main draw berths.<\/p>\n

Here’s a modest proposal: Convert a few more “wild card” spots to merit-based spots. \u00a0The USTA is doing more of this, setting up playoffs for reciprocal wild card placements at the Australian and French Opens, among other strategies. \u00a0But that doesn’t help with geographical distribution, since only Americans can compete!<\/p>\n

Better yet is a version of how Zemlja got into Wimbledon. \u00a0He won the Nottingham challenger<\/a> two weeks previous, and the AELTC wasn’t going to give away all the free spots to Brits. \u00a0The Slovenian was a deserving up-and-comer, even though he doesn’t play under the right flag.<\/p>\n

Perhaps every Slam and Masters event should reserve a spot for the winner of a corresponding challenger. \u00a0Or every tournament with a 48-or-bigger draw should be required to hand at least one wild card to a non-national.<\/p>\n

If a player is good enough, he’ll break in eventually. \u00a0But wouldn’t the sport be better off if some players didn’t have to wait longer than others, based simply on how many tournaments are played in the country they represent?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Italian translation at settesei.it Last week, virtually unknown Slovenian qualifier Grega Zemlja reached the final in Vienna. \u00a0Like many players–Eastern Europeans in particular–in the back half of the top 100, he has finally established a toehold on tour after putting together a good sequence of challenger results. The final run in Vienna–only his 16th tour-level … Continue reading What Grega Zemlja Can Tell Us About American Tennis<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,121],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-953","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-american-tennis","category-wild-cards"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/953","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=953"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/953\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=953"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=953"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=953"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}