It's time to move out of the shadows

TENNIS FEATURE: Johnny Wattersonon the huge task facing Irish tennis to get players into the world's top 100

IT HAS been over 20 years now. For a country that has made such an historical contribution to tennis, two decades without an Irish player inside the top 100 ATP or WTA rankings seems a scant legacy for Ireland’s 1896 Olympic Champion Cecil Parke and twice Wimbledon winner Joshua Pim.

Matt Doyle, who played 44 Davis Cup matches for Ireland, was the last Irish player to reach the round of 16 in a Grand Slam event (1982 US Open) and regularly beat top 50 opponents. Irish players have been coming close to qualification for the majors since then, but the echo from those empty years grows louder to a public that expects their best players to compete in the top events. The lack of progress at the elite end is variously seen as a blemish on the Irish tennis landscape or a stark reflection of how the game has changed in two decades.

This year Conor Niland’s excursion to the Wimbledon Qualification event is the latest effort in trying to rehabilitate the tennis image abroad. Niland has been relentlessly crossing the globe in search of ranking points and has had success.

However, while Irish golf surges and expands its influence through the recent successes of Rory McIlroy, Pádraig Harrington and the Maguire twins, Leona and Lisa, tennis, whether fairly or not, continues to suffer in comparison. Where golf has managed to populate the PGA events and Majors, tennis languishes in the third division of the Davis Cup and Federation Cup around the world. Kelly Liggan is the only ranked Irish player in the WTA’s top 1,000 players.

Niland, Ireland’s highest ranked senior player at 269 chose the American college route to further his career, like many other Irish talents. Since finishing up in Berkeley University in 2006 he has been on the professional circuit. At 27-years-old, he is the alpha dog among the 31 or so players who are deemed good enough to be part of Ireland’s tennis academy at DCU. While he strives to improve his ranking and break into a Grand Slam event, he has seen the challenges along the way.

It hasn’t beaten him down.

“Since the 1980s and 1990s there are more players willing to travel and spend the money,” he says.

“But there is very little between guys ranked 80 and 180,” says Niland. “From an Irish point of view I think it’s a numbers game. If we had 10 to 15 guys ranked between 250 and 300 in the world, then it would be easier to improve and get into slams. But we are never going to have many in the top 100. Maybe one or two at that level is achievable in the next 10 years.

“Belief is a big part of it. When I was growing up, I thought that the players inside the top 100 were unbelievable but I’ve found out that they are beatable, they are vulnerable. You have to get close to them, practice with them and realise they are just players too.”

The aspiration in Irish tennis is to produce players who can play in the bigger events, the Australian Open, Roland Garros, Wimbledon and the US Open.

Those Majors have starting fields of 128 players, so a ranking in the top 100 would ensure at least one courtesy car trip to the four tennis cathedrals each year. After that anything is possible.

In 2000 Vladimir Voltchkov made a run to the Wimbledon semi-final ranked 237, while a year later Goran Ivanisevic arrived in London as a wild card choice, ranked outside the top 100 and with little hope, beat Pat Rafter 6-3, 3-6, 6-3, 2-6, 9-7 in a charged final.

While Niland heads the field now, director of tennis Gary Cahill sees further possibilities opening up as junior players progress. It is one of the fundamentals of tennis that a good junior doesn’t always make a good senior, but a high ranking at underage level is a reasonable barometer. Currently, Sam Barry is a top 100 player in the junior rankings and John Morrisey is just outside at 107. Both are a year inside the 18-year-old limit and can expect to be in the top 50 by January.

Schoolgirl Amy Bowtell from Greystones in Wicklow is ranked at 394 in the world juniors and she’s 16 years old.

“Definitely our goal is to produce top 100 players,” says Cahill. “I wouldn’t be doing this if I didn’t think it was possible. The challenge first up was for us to produce international juniors. The next challenge is to bring them to the top 100 in ATP or WTA rankings. It’s a realistic place to start.

“I believe that a top 100 player can change everything in Ireland. They can change belief, they can change dynamics in the game. Conor and Louk (Sorensen) can be top 100 players and if not them, then the juniors behind them. I don’t think it’s impossible at all. This year Sam (Barry) and Johnny (Morrisey) will try to qualify for Wimbledon (junior).

“Morrisey did qualify for the Australian Open (junior). Mladenovic (Kristina), who won the girls title at the French Open this year, Amy beat her in France four years ago in under 12s. There is not such a gap but yes, there are differences.

“Most of them (non-Irish players) are on home study or have left school and have huge financial backing from the big federations, which allows them travel on the road with a full time coach, a private coach on the road for 30 weeks a year. They have so much money, some more than they can spend. But in France and Britain – where the federations earn tens of millions of euro each year from the French Open and Wimbledon – the money hasn’t done it. There is more to it than that.”

Doyle, a one-time president of the professional tennis players’ union, ATP, and coach to seven-time Grand Slam winner and former world number one Mats Wilander, sees other influences in the making of a champion.

He looks to the US, where he grew up, and sees little coming behind Andy Roddick and the Williams sisters, Venus and Serena. Even the biggest tennis nation in the world is struggling to keep pace with the seemingly endless assembly line coming out of Eastern Europe and Russia, where the lack of anything to fall back on, including an education, can also make failure more acutely painful. The kid from Baku does not have a country club to retreat back to after failing to make the standard.

“Sweden had one player in the men’s and women’s singles in France this year,” says Doyle. “You tell me how that’s possible after Borg, Wilander and Edberg? Before you could be a good player if you were a great ball striker. It’s not about that any more. You have to be big enough, strong enough, fast enough. Jeez, in women’s tennis look at all these Russian and eastern European players. Their father was an Olympic medallist and their mother a ballerina. Training someone how to play tennis is the easy part. It’s easy to teach a forehand and a backhand, but can you get there on time? Is the ball whizzing past you? Are you going to hit it hard enough?

“Serena (Williams) plays 10 tournaments each season and she still wins two Grand Slams a year. She can still overpower a lot of her opponents.

“But in America after the Williams, there’s nothing. After Roddick, there’s nothing . . . James Blake.

“Until Ireland gets a Brian O’Driscoll or a Paul O’Connell or a top GAA player at the age of six who wants to play tennis we are going to struggle and that is the way it is going to be if you cannot get the best athletes to play, if you don’t have quality athletes coming through.

“Ninety per cent of athletes in this country go into the GAA or football and if you’re in Munster or Dublin then it might be rugby. The gene pool here is tiny. Even a player as good as John McEnroe would struggle now. He’d have to get much bigger and much stronger to succeed,” he explains.

“I think Tennis Ireland is doing a good job turning out players who are even trying to be professionals, going out there and playing tournaments and getting their rankings up. But the top 100 will be tough to crack. I think the coaching is good and they travel and if someone makes a break through that will help.

“Should they go to college? I think if you are a teenager and beating guys on (for example, the golf) tour like McIlroy has done then you don’t go to college. The thing is that everyone thinks they can make it. If you are a freak number one junior in the world then the market will come to you.

“The market will tell you to turn pro. Otherwise yes, go to college. It will hurt your tennis but it will be good for other things in your life.”

Tennis Ireland has a series of performance indicators in place. At 10 years of age, they do look for good athletes as well as kids who are motivated for the game. Their first goal is to push them into the top 100 in Europe, which means they can play in the most important tournaments close to home in that age group.

At under-15 level they try to move players into the top 1,000 in the world junior rankings. At under-16 the target is 500 and in that respect Bowtell is far ahead of schedule. At under-17 the aim is a ranking of 200 or below and at under-18 inside the top 100. But there are hiccups. The Leaving Cert exam is one and every June it asks what parents are prepared to sacrifice for their kids to have a decent shot at a tennis career.

“Amy has hit under 17 targets and she’s still 16 years old. She’s close to beating women ranked at 300 in the world,” says Cahill.

“Ciarán Fitzgerald is making under-17 targets too. He’s ranked in the 400 range and by the end of the year I expect him to be below 200. It’s a long process and the right pieces have to be put in place. A junior at 6ft 4in will serve fast and win everything but it doesn’t mean he’ll win at senior level because they all serve fast,” he says.

“If you are not doing the hours, you are not going to make it. But I actually think we’ll have a top 100 player in five to seven years.”

For now, Wimbledon dominates the landscape and in that respect it is notable that Britain’s most prized player, Andy Murray, did not come through their system but emerged from a backwater called Dunblane, having been tutored largely by his mother Judy.

Irish tennis may not have a player involved in London and maybe, like in Murray’s case, someone will pop up. But Cahill, Niland and a clutch of junior players are trying to move in the right direction. They are not just idly looking on waiting for another Joshua Pim to arrive.