Creating AmericanChampions

United States junior tennis is in huge trouble. I don’t see a new group of juniors coming up to take the place
of players like Pete Sampras and Andre Agassi. You can’t bank on one kid. You’ve have to have about 12 kids
that show unbelievable promise and you might get lucky enough to have one that is great. I don’t see that.

Jack Kramer wrote an article 15 years ago. He said junior players all have these weird,
extreme grips. We’re never going to have anymore champions. I wrote back and came up with 20 kids that
potentially showed something, that had good grips: players like Agassi, Sampras, Chang, Capriati. Kramer
was wrong about the early 90’s – there were a lot of really promising kids coming up. But he was right
about the year 2000.

The very top players in the world, players like Sampras or Lindsay Davenport have grips
that allow them to hit through the ball. But radical, under the handle western grips are dominating junior
tennis. And if coaches continue to teach these grips, the United States will be in trouble for the next
ten years or more.

The disadvantage of the underneath grip is…