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Dominating players and teams are good for sports: Look at the Yankees and soon the Miami Heat. College tennis hasn’t been same since Stanford stopped her domination
22 Comments · Posted by Dan Markowitz in Articles, Dan M
The John Wooden of College Tennnis: Dick Gould
The players Dick Gould coached as the Stanford men’s tennis coach from 1966 to 2004 read like a Who’s Who of great college players: Roscoe Tanner, Alex (Sandy) Mayer, John McEnroe, Gene Mayer, Tim Mayotte, and the Bryan Brothers. Ten of Gould’s players won NCAA singles championships along with seven doubles teams. When Bradley Klahn won the 2010 NCAA championships, he became the first Stanford player since 2000 and Alex Kim to capture the men’s title.
All Gould did in his 39 years at Stanford was win 17 team titles, seven more than John Wooden did at UCLA in 27 years, and set a standard for tennis excellence that dwarfed his major competitors at USC, UCLA and the University of Georgia. In 1982, ten former Stanford players ranked in the Top 100. Today there are not even five Americans ranked in the Top 100. Eight Stanford men that year reached at least the third round at Wimbledon. In 1983, four Cardinal players reached the Wimbledon quarterfinals. Even in 1991, after Andre Agassi, Pete Sampras, Jim Courier and Michael Chang had already set a trend of turning pro right out of high school, nine Stanford men still ranked in the Top 100.
Gould, 73 now, and still active at Stanford as the John L. Hinds Director of Tennis, still thinks that college tennis is the best way for most elite junior players to prepare their games for a successful pro career.
“The agents are going to tell you otherwise because they can’t afford to miss on the top young guys coming out,†says Gould. “But as a college player, you have your practice set up for you each day. You can play for three or four months during the summer as amateurs in pro tournaments so you can get your pro ranking. You have your strength trainers, and very knowledgeable coaches. Plus, you have great facilities. Even if you’re an absolute phenom, you can sit out a year after graduating from high school and play the pro tour and see how you do. If it doesn’t work out you can come back and play college tennis.â€
And Gould says the statistics back him up. Not only for the Bryan Brothers who played at Stanford for two years and have held the No. 1 doubles ranking for some portion of every one of the last ten years. And John Isner, who is 25-years-old and currently ranked No. 19 after spending four years as a Georgia Bulldog. The rank-and-file men’s touring pro, Gould argues, would also benefit from playing college tennis.
“A man does not reach his physical maturity until he’s 29,†says Gould, “and the average life on the pro tour is seven years. If you start playing the pro tour at 16, most guys will be quitting before they reach their peak physical maturity. If you wait until you’re 21 or 22, in a year to a year-and-a-half, you’ll catch up with all the guys who turned pro before you. If you look at Isner and the guys who turned pro when he was a high school senior and college freshman, his peers, he’s done better than any of them.â€
Even Sam Querrey, the No. 21-ranked player at age 22, Gould feels missed out by skipping college.
“I can’t second-guess him and say he made the wrong decision,†says Gould. “But I do know he would have loved college and within a year to a year-and-a-half he would’ve gotten to the level he is now after playing college tennis. “I’m adamant about kids going to college, if in fact, they’re motivated academically. Unless a kid is a proven phenom, to have some agent try to talk him out of college, is a crime. How many of these kids never panned out? If they went to college, they might have had a little more transition time to be able to develop their games better without the pressure of playing one tournament after another.â€
While the list of NCAA singles champions used to include the best names of American tennis: Barry MacKay, Dennis Ralston, Stan Smith, Arthur Ashe, Jimmy Connors and McEnroe; the current list is almost exclusively made up of foreign players who don’t make much of an impact once they make the transition onto the pro tour. Only one NCAA singles champion since 2000, the German Benjamin Becker, formerly of Baylor College, is currently ranked in the Top 100. The 2009 champion, Devin Britton of Ole Miss, the first American player to win the title since 2000, is currently ranked outside the Top 1,000.
“The level of college tennis may not be as strong as it used to be,†says Gould. “You pretty much don’t have McEnroe’s and (Elliot) Teltscher’s anymore, but because of foreign players, the base of college tennis is much better than it was. Over the last 25 years, of the top 100-ranked college players, almost two-thirds of the men and 55-60 per cent of the women are foreign. And that has made American players who can make a college team better because the talent pool is that much deeper.â€
Gould had some foreign players who walked on to his squads, but he never brought a foreign player into Stanford on scholarship. His successor, former Cardinal 1974 NCAA champion, John Whitlinger, only had one foreign scholarship player on last year’s team. When Gould retired, the serve and volley game which he mentored so successfully, became mostly an after-thought. Every one of Gould’s ten NCAA singles champions except Bob Bryan serve and volleyed, and with the exception of Alex (Sandy) Mayer, they learned this attacking style of play at Stanford.
“I think without a doubt there is a place for serve and volleying to this day,†says Gould, who said McEnroe really developed his serve and volley game in Palo Alto. “But the successes these players have had have encouraged them to stay back, and hit as hard as they can.
“It’s made coaches make the serve and volley game very secondary. I think that the advantage of playing college tennis is that you have to play doubles and learn how to volley and how to play the transition game. Even my last few years of coaching, as the game was changing, every practice we still spent time serve and volleying and coming in off the ground and the return of serve. It might be for a half-hour or 45 minutes, but we did it every single day. If I were still coaching, I’d still be pushing it.â€
In another time, Andy Roddick, as the top American junior player, might have made his way onto the Stanford campus. And Gould thinks he would’ve benefitted from being taught a solid serve and volley game.
“I look at Andy Roddick,†says Gould, “and I think he’s done a great job. But my personal opinion is that if he had been taught at a young age—and I don’t know who his coach was or if he wasn’t taught to come up—but I see his big serve and his big forehand and I think if only he had a little more comfort finishing points at the net, he would be a notch better than he is.â€
Stanford will be the hosts to the NCAA men’s and women’s tennis championships in 2011, only the second time it has hosted the event since it became a dual tournament. In its heyday, during the tennis boom of the 1970’s, Cardinal matches were brought inside into the basketball arena and regularly drew 7,000 fans on a Saturday night. Sports Illustrated wrote articles on Stanford’s dominance. Today Stanford is lucky if 500 fans show up for one of its dual matches.
But Gould is still present at the Stanford Taube Family Tennis Center. He helped build the impressive facility as well as create a $6.5 million endowment for tennis scholarships at Stanford and as he says with his warm smile, “I’ve still got plenty to do.â€
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Author comment by Scoop Malinowski · July 13, 2010 at 2:58 am
Very interesting, excellent piece of journalism there Big Red. Mr. Gould sounds like as good a source of a wealth of insights and information as there is in the sport today. If you ever do a book about the 25 most interesting characters in tennis, Dick Gould might be worthy of a chapter.
Dan Markowitz · July 13, 2010 at 12:41 pm
Gould is a great coach. I had the pleasure of meeting him when I moved to Palo Alto, CA, the home of Stanford, back in 1984 and taught tennis for him at Stanford. With his big broad body and gleaming smile, but also his total command of what happened on those tennis courts, as well as his Mercedes convertible which was always parked right outside his office, he personified to me the California rugged man (kind of like Chuck Connors of “The Rifleman.)
When I was there, Dan Goldie, Jim Grabb and Derrick Rostagno were leading the team, but Gould brought in the best American junior players each year. You had to be ranked in the Top 5 American juniors to even stand a chance of playing singles at Stanford. And his players played serve and volley and dominated college tennis. They won 17 titles in 28 years. That’s domination!
Recently, Univ. of Georgia and USC have won back-to-back team titles, but I wonder if the disappearance of the college star players making it on the pro tour is partially due to Stanford’s, or any team’s, inability to dominate at the NCAA level. The sport starts to lose its popularity.
Author comment by Scoop Malinowski · July 13, 2010 at 1:01 pm
Contrary to what Gould and you believe, it seems the better players are opting to go pro rather than to college. Benedict Dorscht, Jeff Morison, Mattias Boeker were all NCAA champs who did not make an impact at ATP level. Very few have. We’ll see if that cycle changes soon. Maybe Devin Britton could be the spark.
Sid Bachrach · July 13, 2010 at 1:21 pm
The nice thing about the Stanford tennis program is that while the players attend Stanford, they have to take the same courses and same courseload that everyone else takes. I am always annoyed when the television announcers for college football and basketball, all of whom are shills for the NCAA, flash on the screen the supposedly 4.0 average that some football player at the U supposedly has in his major of sports recreation or sports development. Everyone knows it’s a farce including the announcers and everyone knows that if the football player does not make in pro football, he is usually a lost soul with no job skills. But the announcers go through this absurd dance anyway.
At Stanford, the tennis players don’t have the luxury of taking classes in sports recreation or community skills or that old favorite of NCAA eligibiliity specialists, “communications”. At Stanford, you take the same classes that everyone else takes or you are off the team. And when the players leave Stanford, if they don’t make it on the tennis tour, they have other skills to fall back on.
Here is a tennis trivia questions for the experts: When John McEnroe played his one year for Stanford tennis, who did he play in the NCAA finals? BTW, John’s behavior in the finals match was quite deplorable and he did not have an easy time of it in the finals.
It would also have been silly for Agassi or Sampras to attend college. Their skills were prodigious by age 17 (same with Becker) and college would have been like putting Albert Einstein in freshman math at age 18.
Dan Markowitz · July 13, 2010 at 5:44 pm
Without looking it up, Sid, I think the answer is John Sadri of North Carolina. Sadri was never much as a pro, not a top player, but I remember whenever he played JMac, the announcers would mention their NCAA finals match.
Gould’s point is that unless a junior is an absolute can’t miss pheenom, he should go to college unless he’s not academically-inclined. Querrey was not a can’t miss junior and even one who was, Donald Young, would probably like that scholarship back now.
vinko · July 14, 2010 at 1:19 am
If the NCAA would let the players earn a few dollars they might stay in school. The player gets penalized for accepting a cheeseburger while the coach and athletic administrator make multi-million dollar salaries and endorsement deals. The players look at this and say why should I play for free while they are making this pile of cash. If the NCAA would just share the loot with the players you could get some to attend or stay in school.
Author comment by Dan Markowitz · July 14, 2010 at 12:21 pm
This isn’t the case in tennis, and the NCAA has lightened rules in which players who make money on the tour are allowed to keep their eligibility and keep some of the money they make as long as it meets their expenses.
But I was a college tennis coach, Div II, for a little while and I know for a fact that for most players, just getting a scholarship that pays for the large college tuition these days is a big savings.
Also, college tennis doesn’t draw large enough fans to pay the players.
Author comment by Dan Markowitz · July 14, 2010 at 2:08 pm
But why there are no decent college tennis players is a good question. Bradley Klahn, who easily won the NCAA singles title this year, lost yesterday in the Aptos Challenger to Alex Bogomolov, love and 2. Ouch!
KC · July 15, 2010 at 12:10 am
Interesting, fun read. Gould’s the best. But not sure about the headline. I’m not sure if college tennis having a dominant team really equates to a professional league having a dynasty in terms of driving popularity. For example Stanford winning 4 titles in a row probably wasn’t putting more people in the stands at schools in other areas of the country. Also, I’d argue that rivalries drive a sport’s popularity more than a dynasty (Celtics-Lakers, Borg-McEnroe, 49ers-Cowboys, Yankees-Red Sox, etc). And not sure if a Stanford winning a ton of titles in a row today and putting out top 100 pros encourages elite juniors to really go anywhere but Stanford (which was kind of the case many years ago). And that doesn’t help college tennis as a whole that much. Helps Stanford, but how much does that help say SMU?
PS – Sadri was NC State and I think reached 1 or 2 Australian Open finals, albeit in the days when its field was weaker.
vinko · July 15, 2010 at 1:02 am
The tradition is that college football and basketball are hugely popular but everything is else is essentially a niche sport for college. Pro tennis and golf have big audiences but college tennis and golf teams can not draw many fans. I don’t think anything is going to change that tradition.
Dan Markowitz · July 15, 2010 at 2:51 am
Well, have to disagree there, Vinko. In its heyday, Stanford was regularly drawing 7-8,000 fans for a Saturday night match with either USC or UCLA. Having lived in Palo Alto, there was tremendous interest in Cardinal tennis. The McEnroe legend, making the semis of Wimbledon before he even arrived on the Farm, and then winning the NCAA’s as a freshman, created a golden halo around that Stanford program. They got almost all the best players and made college tennis an option for a top junior when it isn’t so now. Look at someone like a Scofield Jenkins going pro at 18.
KC · July 15, 2010 at 11:27 am
That’s my point. This helped Stanford, helped them pack fans in, but not so sure it helped college tennis as a whole. Especially when you write “they were getting all the best players.” Who else aside from Georgia was getting fans like that in 70s and 80s? Plus Stanford rarely played non-conference/out of state away matches w/ McEnroe, et al (most everyone had to come play them). So again, it wasn’t like say Texas A&M fans had a chance to see these great players.
Of course, having a player make the SF of Wimbledon, then go to college like McEnroe did would be great for college tennis, but that was a loooong time ago. Would never happen again. What are the odds a 17/18 year old American – pro or amateur – making a grand slam semi these days anyway? Nowadays we’re excited if they get through qualifying.
Author comment by Dan Markowitz · July 15, 2010 at 12:05 pm
Yes, KC, the argument that Stanford helped itself and maybe PAC 10 teams with its stellar performance through the 70′s, 80′s, and 90′s is mostly true, but you had Peter Fleming at a Texas school, Gerulaitis at Columbia, Ashe and Connors at UCLA, Smith at USC, I think, all of the top guys went to college back then and the college game was thriving.
By giving so many scholarships to foreign players, and by the agents convincing the 17 year old American player that they should go pro because the college game has nothing to offer them, the American influence in the college game has eroded.
It’s funny, but watching McEnroe play last night at 51 against Roddick, who probably outweighs Mac by 30 pounds, I was reminded that you don’t have to be all that physically-developed to be a great tennis player. Federer is another prime example of this fact. Mac can still move his piercing serve around the box, he’s still up in a flash to the net with balletic feet, and he still has those knifing volleys that Spadea described beautifully as if “they run away from you like they’re on a treadmill.”
But a great 17 year old needs the mind and more importantly, the burning competitive fire, that Mac only seemed to lose when he married Tatum O’Neal and started his drug days period, kind of like Nadal, then the genius can show even as a teen.
KC · July 15, 2010 at 4:16 pm
Dan, I hear you, but I don’t think the foreign influence is to blame for top American players bypassing college. By all accounts the foreign players are here because they are strong players. If you took away a lot of the foreign players, the overall talent level would go down – how appealing would it be for an elite American to then go to college? Even less appealing. Plus, the American players that are not getting scholarship offers because of foreign players are not players that would have gone on to pro careers.
Also, it’s not just a “college tennis is producing less stars” debate. American tennis is producing less, period. I think there has been exactly 1 non-college (Querrey, who actually almost went to USC) and 1 college product (Isner) that have reached the top 25 in singles from American players who have turned pro in the last 10 years. That’s a guess, but I’m probably not off by much. So if the question is why aren’t future American tennis stars going through college, the simple answer may be that there aren’t very many….
KC · July 15, 2010 at 4:20 pm
Change that to “last 9 years” as far as players who turned pro and went on to top 25 : )
Author comment by Dan Markowitz · July 15, 2010 at 4:22 pm
Good points, KC, but you could also make the argument of: “Look how much Blake probably benefited by going to college for two years.” Even Jeff Morrison went to college and was a top-100 player for a short while.
Probably only Roddick should’ve gone right to the pros. Dent, Fish, Ginepri, they all maybe could’ve benefited by a year or two in college, if they went to right program and coach. Querrey, too.
But American tennis has been in a downturn the last 10 years, DYoung was in top 100 for a short while, and we’ll now see what Harrison and Kudla and Doumejian can do and what PMac and Johnny Mac can do with their respective academies in the next generation.
KC · July 15, 2010 at 6:01 pm
I hear you, no argument here. Totally agree that at least 1-2 years of college is ideal for 99.9 percent of the guys out there. It’s a great training ground that some of these guys are foolish not to test out. If you’re say No. 5 in UCLA’s lineup that’s a good reality check right away that you’re not close to ready for the next level. Great site, btw….
Author comment by Dan Markowitz · July 15, 2010 at 6:34 pm
Thank you. And absolutely, that’s the point, if you’re No. 5 at UCLA, how are you going to cut it in the pros? I went down to Ray Benton’s Maryland Academy last year when going to D.C. for the ATP event in July, and Kudla, Mitchell Frank and another junior around 17 who I forget his name now, were all going to turn pro and not take tennis scholarships. Now Kudla after being out on tour for around a year is ranked No. 738 before Newport.
Realistically, couldn’t this guy benefit from playing college tennis? And the other two guys aren’t even at Kudla’s level. These guys aren’t making money, and whatever sponsorship they get is probably mostly incentive-based on how well they do.
Now, you do have the opposite side of events. When Spadea turned pro in 1992 at 18, Stan Smith said to him, look, you lost in the finals at Kalamazoo, you won’t get much sponsorship help, go to college and take that route. But all Spadea wanted to do was turn pro, and he did, and immediately won the Caribbean Satellite, and within one year was in the top 300, the next year he was in top-100. All the bigger names, Brian Dunn and David Witt, for example, never reached top 100 and were done within five years on the pro tour.
vinko · July 16, 2010 at 4:28 am
Why don’t the colleges pay the players if they want them to come? The athletic directors and coaches make multimillion dollar salaries in college sports. If they sacrificed just a little bit there would be some money for the players to live on. Under NCAA rules a player can not even take a cheeseburger. When you see the A.D. driving around in a fifty thousand dollar car and you have to take the bus there is not much incentive to stay in school.
Author comment by Dan Markowitz · July 16, 2010 at 11:35 am
Maybe for the top recruits in tennis that would help, but most tennis players, especially in the US, come from families of wealth. And NCAA tennis coaches don’t make Rick Pitino money. When I worked as a Div II coach, for both the men and women’s team, I made a whopping $15,000 and had to drive the van to away matches and pay all expenses until I was reimbursed.
Dobey · July 17, 2010 at 7:09 am
I have a good question for college tennis mavens. Jimmy Connors played one year for UCLA. We all know that. But the question, or first question, is who played number 1 singles for UCLA that year? It was not Jimmy. And the next question is who did Jimmy defeat to win the NCAA singles title? Some may find these two questions to be trick questions but they are actually fair and square.
It is an open book test also, to make things easy.
Dan Markowitz · July 17, 2010 at 1:16 pm
Wow, Jimmy didn’t play #1, amazing. I think Spencer Segura played No. 6 on that team. I’ll say Connors beat Dick Stockton, but it’s a total guess.