Tennis: NZers living on past glories

Mark Nielsen. Picture / Martin Sykes

Close your eyes and picture Chris Lewis walking onto Wimbledon's centre court for the final against the legendary John McEnroe in 1983.

Or Onny Parun duelling with Australian hero John Newcombe in the Australian Open final 10 years earlier. Or Parun and Brian Fairlie squaring off against Newcombe, Ken Rosewall and Tony Roche, or India's Amritraj brothers in the 1970s.

Unless you're a tennis buff you won't remember that in 1982 New Zealand were one win away from making the Davis Cup final. Lewis and Russell Simpson lost to France's Yannick Noah and Henri Leconte, 3-2.

Remember the classic Davis Cup clashes in the sun on the grass of what used to be known as Stanley Street in the 1970s. Glory days.

Today New Zealand kick off a cup tie against Kuwait at North Harbour. They are playing for a place in the Asia Oceania zone group two final in September.

It's not quite the basement but not far off it. How has it come to this? Will New Zealand ever return to those heights again?

Several factors outside New Zealand's control make it difficult to see the silver fern figuring prominently on the tennis landscape in the near future. But Tennis New Zealand's view is far from pessimistic. Chief executive Don Turner takes a pragmatic, realistic view of the situation.

However Glenn Wilson, captain of the cup team from 1999-03 and a former player in the mid 1990s, paints a grim picture.

New Zealand's leading man, Mark Nielsen, is ranked No 414 in the world. His career high singles ranking was 172 five years ago and time is against him returning to the top 200.

Three New Zealanders, Adam Thompson, Dan King-Turner and Rubin Statham, are in the 700s. GD Jones, the No 2 player in today's tie, is No 950.

"One or two have done well this year, they're poking their heads through at tournaments, when last year none did anything at all," Wilson, now a regional coach employed by Canterbury Tennis, said.

Wilson's biggest beef is the lack of coaching support and a structure for players.

"It is very difficult for these players to compete on an even playing field if they're travelling and trying to compete against players who have coaches with them.

"Unless we can provide some sort of coaching support overseas, not only for these players but the 16-18 year olds who are playing junior events, then we're barking up the wrong tree," he added.

"We should be looking at putting Davis Cup and Fed Cup captains on a salary. Other sports have their salaried coaches on 52-week programmes, with their finger on the pulse."

Turner argues that, although there are no fulltime salaried coaches at Tennis New Zealand, that position will change next year.

There was a structure of regional coaches with a national coach at the top of the pyramid, which was dismantled in 2000.

Instead TNZ decided it was better to let regional associations work their own programmes in their own way, and there was no follow through into a nationally overseen system for players to be guided and nurtured.

Now there are plans to have four centres of excellence, at least two of which will be in place and operating within 12 months. Details will be thrashed out at next week's annual meeting in Wellington.

Wilson boils down New Zealand's problems as threefold: the spread of tennis worldwide; the battle with other sports to attract young athletes in a country with a small population; and money.

The number of countries now playing tennis, and treating it seriously, has grown out of sight in the last 30 years. For evidence, just check the nationalities of players in the world's top 100. Those players are drawn from 28 countries.

Wilson also pointed out that at the recent Asia Oceania under-14 and under-16 events in Melbourne, the results were not encouraging. The under-14 boys were 11th of 16 countries, the under-16s ninth of 16. Wilson wonders if "that's a sign of the next 10 years".

"We have a limited population and don't have the talent identification system in place to pick up athletes that we compete with other sports for.

"We're fighting to get athletes to come and play tennis."

Lessons with coaches in the main centres cost $50-60 an hour, Wilson said. Throw in fitness, nutrition, travel to tournaments and parents could be looking at several hundred dollars a week.

If someone waved a magic wand over TNZ it would drop a fat bag of money to ensure coaching and identification processes were able to be set up and carried through in the right manner.

Wilson doesn't automatically write off the chances of the current crop of players, including Jones, Statham, King-Turner, Thompson and William Ward, doing well. However he believes the next two years will be crucial.

If they have not improved their rankings significantly, if they haven't moved beyond the low level Futures tournament circuit, in that time the signs will be grim.

They need to harden their attitude. Without that, Wilson wonders how does a New Zealander, with a cushy living in Godzone, compete with a contemporary from Russia or South America or the new eastern European countries working to get a better life out of a desperate existence.

"Society is too easy, too nice here. No one's desperate enough to get out because how great is our life?" Wilson said.

"If you're asking me can we produce two top 100 players in the next 10 years, I'd say no.

"There's a slim chance of us having one in the top 100 and will we ever get back to the days of the Fairlies, Paruns and Lewis'? I don't see it happening in my term."

Turner is understandably less negative, but accepts there are more societal obstacles now. He also feels the rise of claycourt players able to tune their games to the demands of the now-dominant hardcourt surface, along with the demise of grass, and the encouragement being an Olympic sport has given many countries, haven't helped the situation.

He believes the talent of players within New Zealand is as good as ever, but the standards worldwide have also risen.

"The top 10 New Zealand players today are every bit as good as in the 1960s. GD Jones is way better than the equivalent ranked New Zealand player of the 1960s," he says.

Turner points to Evernden and Steven, two players who reached the cusp of the world's top 30 - one a flamboyant if erratic shotmaker from Gisborne, the other a disciplined, orthodox, industrious Aucklander - as examples of the disparate tennis talent New Zealand can produce.

"There is such latent talent in New Zealand that the most important thing is to provide the structure that gives them an opportunity to come through.

"We don't need to be pessimistic. We can feel there will be another Evernden, another Steven, and we'll all be happy when that does happen."