The BAMTP Belt: Part Three
The Peak: Sampras vs. Agassi
Wimbledon 1993–1999: Pete Sampras
1999–2003: Andre Agassi
Sampras, Agassi, Courier, and Chang combined to win 27 of the 56[1] grand slam singles events held between Chang’s ’89 French Open title and Agassi’s ’03 Aussie Open title. American men won two or more singles slams in six separate seasons during the 1990’s, a feat unmatched by any other generation of American men. Through the 1992 season, all four men showed that they could dominate the field at any given tournament. However, neither Jim Courier nor Michael Chang managed to eclipse the accomplishments of their earliest seasons. After 1997, neither player advanced past the fourth round at a major. Surprisingly, their respective declines did little to diminish the standing of American tennis. By Wimbledon ’93, Pete Sampras and Andre Agassi had separated themselves from their competitors. The two combined to win 20 of the next 39 men’s singles slams. Polar opposites in both game style and personality, the rivalry between Sampras and Agassi filled a void left open since the days of McEnroe vs. Connors. The two were undisputedly the best players in men’s tennis, and their rivalry treated American fans to a level of tennis that has not been achieved by any American man since.
On April 12, 1993, Pete Sampras, despite having not yet won a second major, became the top ranked player in the world. After skipping the Australian Open in ’91 and ’92, Sampras’ semifinal appearance in ’93 catapulted him to the top of the rankings. Afterwards, he received criticism from both fans and media alike. To them, players like Courier, Becker, and Edberg deserved the top ranking, as they had won slams quite recently. Sampras’ performance at the ’93 French Open legitimized the words of his critics. The top seeded Sampras fell in the quarterfinal round[2], while contemporary Jim Courier proceeded to the final. The criticism mounted as Wimbledon began. Here, however, Sampras’ narrative began its turn. Sampras dispatched Agassi, Becker, and Courier to capture his second grand slam title. He quickly followed that up with a dominant US Open, dropping only two sets[3] en route to his third ever slam victory. He made it three slams in a row with his ’94 Australian Open title, and after falling in the French Open quarters, made it four out of five by defending his Wimbledon title. In 1994, Sampras led the tour with eleven titles, and finished the year number one in the rankings. The only blemish on his record was a fourth round upset at that year’s US Open. Surprisingly, that was not the storyline coming out of the US Open. Instead, everyone was talking about how one player became the first unseeded men’s singles champion in the tournament’s history. That player, of course, was Andre Agassi.
The full account of Agassi’s story is best given in his autobiography Open. Agassi describes at length the degree to which he suffered from both physical and mental ailments throughout his career. The early parts of his career were plagued with injuries and drug use. Agassi also claims to have hated playing the sport on multiple occasions. Nevertheless, his talent was undeniable. He first cracked the top 100 in October of 1986, and unlike his contemporaries, was able to skip Kalamazoo in 1987, as he already had direct entry into the US Open. Perhaps the most impressive aspect of Agassi’s career was his longevity. He first reached the top ten in June of ’88, and is the only player in tennis history to have a top ten ranking in three separate decades[4]. He is also the only player in tennis history to have won the career “Super Slam”, winning all of the majors, Olympic gold, and the ATP Tour World Championships at least one time during his career.
Agassi was actually the last of the Golden Generation[5] to win a slam, and in 1997, he became the first of the four to fall out of the top 100. His 1997 season was plagued with injuries, a flunked drug test, and incredibly poor match results. After reaching as high as number one in the world in 1995, it seemed like Agassi had finally burnt out for good. Perhaps that is why, upon reflection, his career is the most fascinating of the four players. Agassi made four straight slam finals between the 1999 and 2000 seasons, and won five more slams between 1999 and 2003. He finished his career with eight slam titles in all, and was ranked number one in the world as late as August of 2003. In 2006, Agassi sailed off into the sunset, becoming the last of the Golden Generation[6] to retire from the tour. The flamboyant personality Agassi displayed on the court has helped him achieve quite the successful post-tennis career. His charity, the Andre Agassi Charitable Foundation in Southern Nevada, has raised over $60 million for at-risk children. In 2001, the Foundation opened the Andre Agassi College Preparatory Academy in Las Vegas, a K-12 public charter school for at-risk children. After dating Barbra Streisand and Brooke Shields during his career, Agassi settled down and married women’s tennis star Steffi Graff in 2001. The two are still happily married, and have two children.
Starting with a five-set Sampras victory in the ’93 Wimbledon quarterfinals, results from the Agassi/Sampras rivalry defined the storylines on the ATP Tour. Sampras and Agassi won seven of the eight majors from Wimbledon ’93 to the Australian Open ’95. The men flip-flopped between the number one and two spots in the rankings on multiple occasions, and played in sixteen finals during their careers[7]. The difference between the two is that when Agassi fell off from 1996–1999, Sampras solidified his claim as one of, if not the greatest, male tennis player of all time. Sampras won seven of eight Wimbledons from 1993–2000, and ended the millennium with the most grand slam titles in the Open Era[8]. While Agassi needed a late-career resurgence to vault him up the all-time rankings, Sampras’ place was already secure. By the time Sampras defeated Agassi in the 2002 US Open final, the duo’s narrative was already written. Despite all of Agassi’s charisma and talent, both on and off of the court, Sampras was the king of the men’s tennis world.
Winter is Coming: The Era of Fed
2003–2010: Andy Roddick
2010–2014: Jack Sock
This needs to be said: if Roger Federer were American, this article would be over. Federer’s dominance of 21st century tennis has directed the attention of all tennis fans, regardless of their country of birth. However, for the purposes of this article, I will pretend that American fans were immune to Federer’s spell. Even in the Era of Fed, the BAMTP belt must live on.
From 1995–2005, only one American boy won a junior Grand Slam singles title. Though this fact didn’t register to American tennis fans in the 90s, it would soon prove quite detrimental to America’s tennis prospects. Young, foreign-born players quickly made their presence known at the turn of the century. Competitors like Lleyton Hewitt, Juan Carlos Ferrero, and Roger Federer had made it clear that it was now their time to shine. All three players had won slam titles by the end of 2003, and each held a top six seed at that year’s US Open. There, Ferrero beat both Hewitt and Agassi to reach his third ever slam final. In the final, he was set to face off against a twenty-one year old American known mostly for wearing his hat backwards. That American, and the next holder of the BAMTP belt, was named Andrew Stephen Roddick.
In 2000, Andy Roddick became the first American boy since the ’94 Junior Wimbledon to win a junior singles slam. That year, he won both the Australian Open and US Open junior boy’s titles. Before year’s end, Roddick had officially turned pro, and less than four months later, he cracked the Top 100 for the first time. He defeated both Michael Chang and Pete Sampras during the 2001 season, and won his first three ATP titles that year. Roddick broke into the Top Ten near the end of 2002, and during the 2003 season, reached the semifinals of both the Australian Open and Wimbledon. Though Roddick lost on both occasions, his results gave American fans hope that life after Sampras/Agassi would not be too different. His performance at the 2003 US Open only served to raise those expectations, and unfortunately for American fans, led to years of let downs and speculating over what could have been.
It has been over 5000 days since Andy Roddick won his lone slam. Since that blessed day, I have graduated college, found a job, and lost my virginity. My life has gone on. And yet, I have been continuously deprived of an American male slam champion. I, like most other American fans, dreamed of a world where Roddick overcame his Federer problem and won multiple slams. I imagined a place where Mardy Fish, James Blake, and Robby Ginepri pushed Roddick the way Sampras’s peers did him. Unfortunately, this was not the case. Sampras and his three greatest American male peers[9] won 27 slams. Roddick and crew[10] only made 26 quarterfinals. Sampras’s group won 181 ATP singles titles. Roddick’s group won 51. The precipitous decline in the depth of American talent certainly lengthened Roddick’s possession of the belt. Nevertheless, Roddick’s seven-year tenure with the belt, though not as impressive as his predecessors’, tied McEnroe for the longest uninterrupted stretch. It is not surprising to me, then, that the current crop of young Americans cites Roddick as their favorite player. For my generation, he was the American man to beat. Thus, we liked him the most. Roddick held onto the belt until the 2010 US Open. That year, Jack Sock won both Kalamazoo and the US Open boys singles title, and snatched the belt for himself.
Paul Goldstein, Phillip King, Donald Young, Jack Sock. That’s the list of boys[11] who have won back-to-back Kalamazoo 18’s titles. Of the four, only one has won a professional grand slam. Can you guess whom? In case you can’t, I’ll tell you. It’s BAMTP recipient #9, Jack Sock! Sock’s natural ability has always been apparent to fans. Along with a top twenty singles ranking, Sock’s two grand slam titles have come in doubles. Particularly enticing to American fans is Sock’s enthusiasm for representing the country. Sock recently sported a USA paintjob on his racquet, and captured two medals for the country at the 2016 Olympics. These titles are what differentiate Sock from peers like John Isner, Steve Johnson, Sam Querrey, and Donald Young, and grant him the title of BAMTP recipient. However, Sock’s resume, though impressive, leaves much to be desired. American fans enjoy doubles success, but are desperate to see a men’s singles title. As such, all focus has been diverted to finding the next great American champion. Thankfully, the current crop of US #NextGen players seems to be up to the task.
The #NextGen
2014–2017: US #NextGen Players (Jared Donaldson, Ernesto Escobedo, Taylor Fritz, Stefan Kozlov, Michael Mmoh, Reilly Opelka, Tommy Paul, Noah Rubin, Frances Tiafoe)
I was born October 6th, 1995, which is relevant only because the players I am about to discuss were all born after that date. Only one in the group is currently allowed to buy alcohol, yet they have collectively accomplished as much as any generation of American male prospects ever. It is too early to guess which player, if any, will end the Slam-less streak, but the group of Jared Donaldson, Ernesto Escobedo, Taylor Fritz, Stefan Kozlov, Michael Mmoh, Reilly Opelka, Tommy Paul, Noah Rubin, and Frances Tiafoe have provided hope to an American tennis fan base in desperate need of it.
The group first came to the attention of the American tennis intelligentsia at the end of 2013. At that year’s Orange Bowl, fifteen year-old Frances Tiafoe defeated fellow fifteen year-old Stefan Kozlov to become the youngest champion in the tournament’s history. Kozlov reached the Australian Open boys singles final to start 2014, but lost to Alex Zverev in straight sets. At Wimbledon that summer, three American boys reached the semifinals. Eighteen year-old Noah Rubin dispatched sixteen year-old Taylor Fritz in the semis, and beat Kozlov in the final to win the tournament. All eyes quickly turned to Kalamazoo, where each of the top prospects would have the chance to slug it out for a US Open wild card. The tournament’s field was stacked. In addition to Kozlov, Fritz, Tiafoe, and Rubin, Ernesto Escobedo, Jared Donaldson, and Collin Altamirano[12], all highly touted juniors who skipped the slams to build their pro rankings, decided to enter the tournament. Those seven, along with sixteen year-old Michael Mmoh, were awarded the top eight seeds. They each made the quarterfinals, in the process legitimizing the hype surrounding their talent. Rubin, oldest of the group, defeated Tiafoe, Mmoh, and Altamirano on route to winning the tournament. He attended Wake Forest for one year before turning pro in 2015. Rubin has since cracked the top 200 of the rankings but, perhaps ironically, is currently the lowest ranked of any of the American #NextGen players.
As good as things were in 2014, they only got better in 2015. That year, the American trio of Taylor Fritz, Tommy Paul, and Reilly Opelka dominated the junior tour. Fritz began the year with a quarterfinal appearance in Australia. In Paris, Tommy Paul defeated Mmoh in the semis and Fritz in the final to become the third American French Open boy’s champion ever. At Wimbledon, an unseeded Reilly Opelka defeated Fritz in the semis and went on to capture the title. Fritz eventually got his title, defeating Tommy Paul in the US Open final to make it three slams in a row for the American boys. The trio all entered Kalamazoo as the favorites, joined of course by their contemporaries Mmoh, Kozlov, and Tiafoe. I actually went and watched Kalamazoo in both 2014 and 2015; eager to see for myself if this group of prospects was worthy of the praise they had been receiving[13]. For the second year in a row, this group of players lived up to their hype. All six favorites reached the quarterfinals, with Tiafoe and Kozlov advancing to the final. What happened next is best recapped by Colette Lewis, but in summary, Tiafoe defeated Kozlov in an epic five-set thriller. By year’s end, Tiafoe, Kozlov, Paul, Escobedo, Rubin, Fritz, and Donaldson, all under 20, had cracked the Top 400 in the professional rankings. It was only a matter of time until someone broke into the Top 100, the question was, who would do it first? In 2016, we got out answer.
Taylor Fritz ended 2015 on a hot streak. After his US Open victory, he became the 9th player to win multiple Challenger Tour titles at age 17 in history[14]. To begin 2016, Fritz won a challenger in Australia, jumping into the top 150 for the first time. He received a wild card into February’s ATP 250 in Memphis. There, Fritz became the youngest American to reach an ATP final since Michael Chang. He lost the final to Kei Nishikori, but a few weeks later, he became the first of the #NextGen group to crack the Top 100. Tiafoe, Kozlov, Escobedo, Opelka, and Mmoh also won Challenger titles during the season, and by year’s end, all nine in the group had cracked the Top 300. Though none has won an ATP title yet, many in the group are now consistently qualifying for ATP events. It is only August, but it is clear that the group has taken another step forward in 2017. Each member is now ranked inside of the Top 200, with Donaldson, Tiafoe, and Escobedo in the Top 100. Tiafoe, Donaldson, Escobedo, Paul, and Fritz are all in the main draw of the US Open, and each of the others will be in qualifying.
The future is bright for this group, and while we do not yet know which player will have the best career, one thing is certain: whoever does emerge as the best will take hold of the BAMTP, and will try to restore American tennis to its former glory. Hopefully, that player will capture the attention and support of American tennis fans along the way, like his predecessors Sampras, McEnroe, and Ashe did before him.
Author: Alex Gruskin, host of the Great Shot Podcast
Editor: Max Fliegner, producer of the Great Shot Podcast
Editor: Max Rothman (sort of), co-host of the Great Shot Podcast
Editor: Lorenz Gahn (PAB), external consultant @ Great Shot Podcast LLC.
[1] 48% of events
[2] In his defense, the loss was to eventual champion Sergi Bruguera
[3] One of them to Michael Chang
[4] He was top 10 in 1980s, 90s, 2000s. http://www.atpworldtour.com/en/players/andre-agassi/a092/rankings-history
[5] Sampras, Agassi, Courier, Chang
[6] Career Head-to-Head records: Sampras-Agassi: 20–14, Sampras-Courier: 16–4, Sampras-Chang: 12–8, Agassi-Courier: 5–7, Agassi-Chang:15–7, Chang-Courier: 12–12
[7] Sampras went 9–7 in finals overall, 4–1 in slam finals against Agassi
[8] In Men’s singles!!!!!!!!
[9] Agassi, Chang, Courier
[10] Fish, Blake, Ginepri
[11] now men
[12] the 2013 Kalamazoo champion
[13] I know, I’m a nerd. Considering you’re reading footnote #49 of a 7000-word essay, you’re a nerd too. It’s kind of fun, isn’t it?!?!
[14] Some others: Bernard Tomic, Tomas Berdych, Richard Gasquet, Juan Martin del Potro, Rafa Nadal, and Novak Djokovic
