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2008-03-11 09:43:00
244nd ranked Kei Nishikori a champion in Delray Beach after losing in the qualies of Dallas Challenger two weeks earlier. 209nd ranked Sergey Stakhovsky a champion in Zagreb after losing in the qualies of Belgrade Challenger two weeks earlier. 195th ranked Kevin Anderson a runner-up in Las Vegas after losing in the same round in a Futures event in Texas two weeks earlier. Roger Federer losing in two straight tournaments. You might wonder what is going on in the world of tennis. So far, 2008 has definitely been a year of the surprises. Next time you watch a match in one of the lower levels of professional tennis, remember that one of these guys could be beating household names ten days later.
I was in Vegas during the past week and got a close look of Kevin Anderson’s magnificent run to the final. South African tennis hasn’t exactly been on top of the world during the past few years, and strangely enough, I had a chat with a South African friend about it just the week before Vegas. He is a coach back in Johannesburg and mentioned that one problem is that the courts in the area are extremely fast. At the club where my friend is coaching, all the courts are of artificial grass, playing very fast with a low bounce. Astonishingly, he also mentioned that just a decade ago there was only one clay court in all of South Africa. They have built a few more over the past years, but there is still a great scarcity of slow courts where players can develop consistent ground strokes and become solid tennis players.
The large proportion of fast courts is naturally one of the reasons why South Africa has experienced a lot of success in doubles. Since Wayne Ferreira’s last year as a top 100 player in 2003, South Africa has only had a top 100 finisher in one of the four last years. After his surprise win in Tokyo in the fall of 2005, Wesley Moodie ended the year on a respectable 63rd place. However, Moodie and his compatriot Rik de Voest are decent Challenger level players who struggle greatly in a tournament with the top names.
With Anderson, South African tennis fans are now hoping for a player who can consistently stay in the elite group and possibly get close to the success of the mighty Wayne Ferreira, who notably ended his career after having played a record of 56 Grand Slam tournaments in succession. But we should probably not have too high expectations on a 21-year old guy who lost in the semifinals of the NCAA Championships less than ten months ago and couldn’t find a way to win the title in Brownsville, Texas, just two weeks ago.
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