HOW THE MIGHTY HAVE FALLEN

I know many of you are bored by tennis, but enough of you are nuts about it as I am. You can remember when the U.S.A. dominated the singles game, going way back to Bill Tilden, Don Budge, Jack Kramer, Pancho Gonsalez, Tony Trabert, Vic Seixas, Jimmy Connors, Arthur Ashe, John McEnroe, Andre Agassi, Pete Sampras, et al. Them days are gone forever or, at least, a helluva long time. In doubles, the current Bryan Brothers may be the best team ever.

In women, we have a similar tradition, going back to Helen Wills Moody, Alice Marble, Pauline Betz, Doris Hart, Maureen Connolly, Althea Gibson, Billie Jean King, Chris Evert, Martina Navratilova (though Czech-born),Lindsay Davenport, The Williams sisters, et al. Same problem as the men---not many ranked players left.

Here are the current rankings of American men in the top 100: #8---Mardy Fish, #14---Andy Roddick, #23---John Isner, #36---Alex Bogomolov, Jr., #43---Donald Young, #60---James Blake,#73---Ryan Harrison, #93---Michael Russell. Note, one guy in the top ten.

For the ladies, #12---Serena Williams, #42---Christine McHale, #54---Bethany Mattek-Sands, #72---Irini Falconi. #77---Vania King, #92---Sloane Stephens. Got that? Nobody in the top ten. Incidentally, Venus Williams has dropped out due to injuries, but her best days are past.

What happened? Well, first, the rest of the world caught up and took up tennis with a passion. Look at the Russians, the Czechs, the Serbians and Croatians, the French, the Italians, the Argentines and Colombians, and especially the Spanish. In women the Chinese are coming on strong, and you can probably expect the men to make a big noise soon. The Aussies, once a powerhouse in tennis, have been in the doldrums, although a few new names are coming on strong. Even the Brits have a #3 in Andy Murray!

Second, the proliferation of competing sports like golf, in particular, track and field, soccer, rugby and the like siphoned off a lot of participants worldwise.

Third, America has individual training camps like Nick Bolleteri in Florida who has trained many of the world's best players, but no coordinated national program to develop talent. The Czechs, Serbs, Russians, Spanish and French put real emphasis on this, and the results are apparent.

It's a pattern we have known before. Witness Basketball, a truly international game now. We still tend to dominate when we seriously train and put a national team together who learn to play like a team and not as individual egos. If we don't, we have seen what has happened. Look at the number of international players in the N.B.A. now.

Golf is a another case in point. A few years ago eight out of the ten top spots in golf were Yanks. As of today. it's half of that with none in the top three.

It seems to be the way of the world, but it saddens me not to have a few Americans on top. Maybe next year, as we say in baseball!