Tennis Nations
American Epoch
When we look at the history of modern tennis through the lens of national affiliation the USA stands out first. From 1973 and 2004, the No. 1 spot in the weekly ATP rankings was held by an American 72% of the time. The pie chart below shows the number of times the top place in the ranking was held by US players compared tThe anomalies: Sweden and Argentinao individual players from other countries. The red slice is dominant with 72% of the total. Even if we combine the three Swedish players, Borg, Edberg, and Wilander into a combined "SWEDEN" slice, it would still only add up to only 14% compared to America's 72%. The USA and Sweden combine for 86% of the number 1 rankings held by men's players between 1973 and 2004. The rest of the players outside of the USA and Sweden account for the remaining 14%.
The depth of American tennis during this period is striking. There were never less than 40 Americans among top 200 men's players between 1973 and 1990. At one point in 1983 there were 13 American men among the top 20. In May 1986 there were 63 US pltayers in the top 200. Nearly 1 in 3 of the top players on the circuit that year were products of the USTA (the organisation that promotoes and runs junior tennis in the United States). And this does not count the large number of young European players who were trained at American tennis academies or who started they career playing inter-collegiate (university) tennis in the United States. If ATP rankings are taken as the measure of tennis success, then no nation before or since has matched the dominance of American tennis in the first 30 years of the open era from 1973-2004.
Ater 2004 however, the number of Americans at the top level dipped significantly. The United States has failed to produce any great champions since Pete Sampras and Andy Roddick. Sampras won nearly every edition of Wimbledon between 1993 and 2000 and was ranked number one during almost that entire period. Fellow Americans Jim Courier and Andre Agassi filled in the gaps at the top when Sampras dipped. The next American to sit atop the ATP rankings was Andy Roddick but he was the last. That was 2004. Men's tennis has been a story of domination by the "Big 3" ever since. Federer took the top ranking from Roddick and refused to let go for four entire years until 2008 when Nadal and Djokovic came in to the picture. For the past 18 years Federer, Nadal, and Djokovic have combined to hold the number one spot 95% of the time. Andy Murray accounts for the remaining 5% (8 months in 2016-17). Today there are "only" 22 Americans in the top 200 ATP players today. That is still a higher share of the top 200 than any other single country (tied with Argentina), but it is safe to say that Golden Age of American tennis is behind us.
Many are wondering what happened to the mighty Americans. Why does a country that produced Connors, McEnroe, Agassi and Sampras have no one ranked in the top 20 at the end of 2021 and no one in a Grand Slam final since 2009? Is that tennis has become less telegenic in this age of new raquets, quicker points, and bigger serves? Or perhaps American tennis players fail to inspire new generations. There have been few colorful characters since McEnroe, Connors, and Agassi. Could the culprit competition from other sports such as golf and soccer which are always increasing in popularity. It must be said that Sampras and Roddick never generated the same excitement as Tiger Woods and Lionel Messi. Nor does tennis offer the same level of prize money and endorsements. The top players on the circuit earn more money today than in the past but in other sports earnings have reached astronomical levels. Tiger Woods was recently offered one billion dollars to play on a new world golf tour and he doesn't even top the Forbes list for athletes. It is Lionel Messi who takes the cake.
Is prize-money an important motivating factor for young tennis players? Or for their parents? The father of Venus and Serena Williams once described himself as being in the "champion-raising business".(Time) The phrase has a money-hungry ring to it but tennis is an expensive sport after all. Parents of elite athletes cannot be blamed for weighing the financial burdens against the potential for future returns. Which leads us to another possible explanation for the slump in US men's tennis. Maybe the USTA is simply not doing enough to encourage, to train, and to support young American tennis players. Or at least not as much as the tennis federations in European countries such as Spain's RFET or France's FFT.
Whatever the reason, it is clear that we are living in the European age of tennis. Whether we look at major championships, the top of the rankings, or Davis Cup victories, the story is the same. Spain, France, Germany, Serbia, Croatia, Britain and Russia have not just narrowed the gap on American tennis, they have overtaken it. While there are still a large number of Americans in the top 200, the loss of American tennis power is obvious if we focus on the top 20 players.
While the US occupied one third of the top 20 places in the ATP rankings from 1973-2004, only 6% of these top 20 spots were taken up by an American tennis player since 2010. A large decrease, especially with regards to Spain, France, and Switzerland.
Spain is the standout among the current crop of European tennis powers. Rafael Nadal has been the king of red clay since he overtook his idol, fellow countryman Carlos Moya. Nadal was 14 when he first defeated Moya. Now tennis fans are wondering when 19 year-old Carlos Alcaraz will displace Nadal and take over the mantle of world's number one. Alcaraz is currently ranked 6th to Nadal's 3rd. There are 11 Spanish players ranked in the top 100 and Spain has won the Davis cup 6 times this millenium.
European tennis comes of age
Europe has always had a strong tennis tradition of tennis ever since the game's rules were codified in England in the 1870s. It with eager fans, good media coverage and high profile tournaments including the French Open and Wimbledon. Wimbledon and Roland Garros were the backyard of France's Four Musqueteers in the 1920s: Jean Borotra, Jacques Brugnon, Henri Cochet and René Lacoste. They won 6 consecutive Davis Cups for France and combined for 6 consecutive Wimbledon titles between 1924 and 1929 and 9 consecutive French Opens from 1924 to 1932. After that, European tennis dipped. No Davis Cup victories were won by a European nation between 1937 and 1975 and only two Europeans players won Wimbledon in the 35 years between 1930 to 1965.
European countries only began to establish themselves as powers in modern tennis in the 1980s. First with Sweden and then with a general rise in competitiveness of Southern and Eastern European countries. The graphs below show the United States dimming as European countries began their rise in the rankings in the mid-1980s. The charts below show the evolution of our key metric, the number of players from in the top 200 of the men's ranking. It shows the ascendency of Spain, France, Italy, and Germany starting in the mid 1980s.
Zooming in on the European countries we can see Spain gradually going from 3 players in the top 200 in 1980 to 28 players twenty years later. By 2011 Spain, France, Italy, and Germany accounted for 68 players out the top 200 in the ATP ranking. Still today more than a third of the top players on the circuit come from one of the European tennis powerhouses. Among the top players Federer, Nadal, and Djokovich stand out. The "Big Three" Europeans have won 63 of the last 76 Grand Slam tournaments but looking at Top 200 performance by country we are assessing the overall depth of each national program. The general trend is upwards for continental European countries after the 80's and downwards for the Americans and the Swedes starting in the 90s.
Interestingly, apart from Sweden, European tennis nations seem to move in tandem. The steep rise in Spanish tennis throughout the 80s and 90s is matched by many of its European neighbors. It is interesting to speculate the reasons for this: collaboration between the national tennis federations, international training centers, multilingual coaches, cultural affinity between European players, cross-border systems such as the clay-court circuit. It is not the purpose of this article to determine exactly how countries influence each other. The numbers are clear, however. Among European tennis nations a rising tennis tide has lifted all boats.
Ebbing tides are also visible on the graphs and again European countries seem to move in tandem. A slight dip in nearly every country's fortunes in the past decade can be seen on both graphs. Almost every colored line except Italy and Serbia is trending down after 2010. This speaks volumes about the balance of power in tennis today. More countries are represented in the top 20 of the ATP rankings and the big tennis powers are having to share the spots at the top of the pyramid. This is reflected in the pie chart of top 20 ATP places by country. The US slice of the pie is now smaller and the number of countries represented in the top 20 has increased (the "others combined" in orange is larger today than in the past). Overall , there are more countries they have more equal shares of the pie.
In order to look more closely at the tendency of countries to rise and fall together we need to measure correlation coefficients. A correlation "matrix" reveals the tendency of countries to rising and falling along with others. Below we have 16 countries listed on both the horizontal and vertical axes. A high correlation between two particular countries shows up as a large yellow circle. Smaller circles (orange and red) indicate low or negative correlation. A diagonal row of white circles is a mathematical feature of such a matrix and simply means 100% correlation. The area of interest is the large concentration in the center. Since non-European countries were intentionally placed at the edges, the large yellow zone shows that there is a strong statistical link between southern and middle European tennis nations: Spain, France, Italy, Switzerland, Croatia, Serbia, Germany, and Slovakia.
The chart reveals at least three interesting facts. Firstly, Sweden is completely uncorrelated with the rest of Europe. Secondly, there doesn't seem to be an Atlantic "entente" in tennis. Great Britain and the United States are not heavily correlated and their have ups and downs do not historically match with those of the European block. In contrast, Argentinian men's tennis correlates strongly with the performance of Europeans. While Sweden correlates negatively or not all with these countries.
The anomalies: Sweden and Argentina
Argentina, with its famous red clay, has been overlooked in this analysis so far, but it is a top tennis country. It currently has 22 players ranked in the top 200. It has few great champions and only one player ranked below 20 but over the years Argentinian players have combined for 6 Grand Slam titles and Argentina has been in the finals of the Davis Cup 4 times in the past 15 years. Furthermore the timing of these successes fits a familiar historical pattern. Argentinian tennis appears to be in sync with the top European countries for reasons that are worth delving into.
Argentina is a country with strong ties to Europe. It is said more than half of its population has full or partial Italian ancestry. Many of its sporting traditions carry a European streak: from rugby to polo to soccer. Soccer fans would know that top Argentinian clubs often have English names (River Platte, Boca Juniors, Newells Old Boys...). Argentina's major tennis event, The Argentina Open, is played on red clay at the historic Buenos Aires Lawn Tennis Club. It is considered one of the preparatory tournaments for the European clay circuit with culminates at the French Open in June. The clays of Roland Garros stadium in Paris are a mythical place for Argentinian players. Two Argentinian champions have been crowned in Paris including the beloved Guillermo Vilas in 1977. More recently Gastón Gaudio beat countryman Guillermo Coria in the final in 2004. It is no surprise then that Argentinian tennis correlates well with the tennis performance of European countries historically. Argentina shares a common language with spain, strong historical ties to Southern Europe and its players compete on the same circuit.
Sweden is an anomaly for the opposite reason as Argentina. Despite it's strong tennis tradition and clay court champions, Swedish tennis began declining in the 90s when the rest of Europe began its tennis climb. Perhaps the the long Swedish winters are to blame, but then again, Sweden has been highly successful at golf, another warm weather sport. In the past couple of decades Swedish athletes have filled the ranks of professional golf (Jesper Parvenik, Annika Sorenstam), ice hockey (Niklas Lidstrom) and also soccer (Zlatan Ibrahimović). Edberg and Wilander's generation were pulled to the tennis courts by what some have called the Bjorn Borg effect. For the current generation, the pull of the big-money sports is much stronger, it seems.
Tennis: the world game
Tennis has always been a global sport with an international audience. Unlike golf, soccer, basketball, baseball, and American football, tennis players from all nations compete on a single international circuit made up of tournaments that are as diverse as the Olympics. There are 94 countries represented in the ATP rankings of 2069 top men's professionals incluing Uzbekistan, San Marino, and Burundi. Historically countries with the most established tradition, the largest infrastructure and greatest number of tennis courts have dominated the game. Today there is much more equity at the top. The United States no longer dominates as it did for 30 years. Instead we have a coterie of countries, mostly European, but also South American and some as small as Switzerland, Serbia, and Croatia. Furthermore, the countries at the top are likely to switch places. Tennis is a cyclical game. Just ask the swedes. Perhaps with climate change, their youngsters will stop running off to the NHL and come back to take Borg's mantle.
Wimbledon has just ended with Novak Djokovic bringing home his 7th victory at the All England Lawn Tennis Club. This has become a summer ritual. Either Djokovic or Nadal or Federrer win wimbledon after one of them (usually Nadal) taking Roland Garros. The "Big 3", with their 63 combined Grand Slam tournament victories, are the best modern trio ever to compete at the same time. Any one of them could probably make a claim to be the GOAT, the "greatest of all time".
It is a wonderful gift to tennis fans that these three men are all playing. But given the spread of tennis in Europe, and the tendency of talent to inspire other success both at home and internationally, it is such a surprise?