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2008-07-16 19:09:00
The sport of tennis has gone through an incredible globalization during the past 75 years. The first male Grand Slam champion from a country not hosting a Grand Slam tournament was the German Baron Gottfried von Cramm, who succeeded at the French Open in 1934. At the other Slams, it was not until 1954 at Wimbledon (Jaroslav Drobny, Czechoslovakia), 1959 at the Australian Open (Alex Olmedo, Peru) and in 1963 at the US Open (Rafael Osuna, Mexico). All the way until the mid 1970’s, the traditional tennis countries held a firm grip on the dominance of the sport. In 1975, 19 out of 30 players in the Top 30 were from one of the four nations that host a Grand Slam event. (Notably, the best French player was not ranked higher than 39th at the time). Ten years later, the number had fallen to 15. In 1995, only seven remained and in 2005, nine players from those four nations were in the top 30. Today, we can find a total of 26 nations represented in the Top 100 with former giants USA with nine players, Australia with a mere two and Great Britain with an embarrassing one player. The French are doing very well, though, with as many as 15 players in the Top 100.
A few days ago, Jean-Julien Rojer became the first player ever from the Netherlands Antilles to reach an ATP final. Rojer is from Curacao, one of the two islands forming the Antilles, which is located in the Caribbean Sea with a population of 138 000. My first interest for Rojer came when I curiously noticed the AHO in the draw sheets of Futures events back in 2002. Rojer became the King of the Carribean Futures as he triumphed an incredible seven times within five months between September 2002 and January 2003. He reached an additional two finals during that stretch, one of which was never played. Rojer enjoyed another fantastic streak between September-October 2004, winning five Futures in Venezuela and Cuba, four of which were won in consecutive weeks. Since quitting UCLA after three seasons with the Bruins, Rojer has won a total of 14 Futures and been one of the most dominant players on that level. However, he has found it very difficult to win matches on a higher level. The recent success has come in doubles and the 26-year old seems to have given up on singles, where he has only competed sporadically during the past year. In doubles, however, the Miami resident is on the verge of breaking into the Top 100, after winning the Challenger in Cordoba and reaching the final in Bastad ATP with Sweden’s Johan Brunstrom.
I don’t know how Rojer learned to play tennis on the Netherlands Antilles. Maybe his story is similar to that of a young Tanzanian boy who Stan Smith and Arthur Ashe noticed while travelling in Africa in the 1970’s. The American stars suddenly noticed a teenage player with beautiful strokes in Dar Es Salaam. They couldn’t understand how he had learned to play tennis that well, with a beautiful technique and a great understanding of the game without anyone there who could have taught him. When they asked, the boy told them that his father had bought Bill Tilden’s book “Match Play and Spin of the Ball”, the book which John Newcombe also used to originally learn the game. The young Tanzanian boy’s father had bought the book in India and worked with his son in front of the mirror for months before letting him go out on the court and hit a ball, which had to be done exactly as described in the book. The result was a boy with a game which was a complete image of the greatest player in the world half a century earlier.
Tennis can be learned in many different ways and has become one of the most global sports we have.
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