Is There a Canadian Roger Federer Out There?
All sport fans crave a winner. If they are New York Yankee baseball fans they expect a world series spot nearly every year. Canadian tennis fans are more patient, much more patient, but I think their patience is coming to a justifiable end. I have been playing and watching tennis for over 50 years and the best Canada has achieved in men’s international singles competition is Andrew Sznajder at 47th in the world. To be perfectly fair, in the last 20 years Carling Bassett and Helen Kelesi made it into the top 20 in women’s tennis and we have had Grand Slam doubles champions led by Daniel Nestor, Grant Connell and Sebastien Lareau, but at the present time there is no Canadian woman or man in the top 100. And that is not the worst of it. In the Rogers Cup that was played here last summer a sizeable number of Canadian women were given a wild card entry into the Rogers Open Canadian Tournament if they qualified by beating two other wild card entries. None made the grade!
According to people who make their living in the administration of the sport, there are many reasons why Canadians do not achieve success. Some reasons advanced do not hold up under close scrutiny such as young Canadian tennis players just don’t seem to have the will, Canada is too large to have meaningful competition between our best players, the weather is poor for tennis, and too few people play. In each of these cases there are countries and people whose results place the reasons put forward for non-success in doubt.
Two players, originally Canadian, who have now risen to the top of the tennis world are Mary Pierce, France and Greg Rusedski, Great Britain. So much for the lack of will among young Canadians. Canada is large and the weather unsettled but Russia faces the same problems and has managed to achieve great results. Presently, among the top 20 women in the world probably half are from Russia. The weather in Switzerland and Belgium is similar to Canada’s and they both have far fewer people than we have, yet they produced Roger Federer, Kim Clijsters and Justin Henin-Hardenne. According to Tennis Canada, the national governing body of tennis, one and a half million Canadians play tennis once a month, and surely this is a big enough base to produce winners.
Other reasons advanced for the dearth of winners makes more sense; a scarcity of National Tennis Centres, hockey attracts the best athletes, no winners to act as role model heroes for aspiring youngsters and private enterprise is not supportive. The powers that control the sport in Canada, i.e. Tennis Canada and the provincial tennis associations, most specifically, the Quebec, Ontario and British Columbia organizations, are working very hard to address these problems. There are now, two National Training Centres (NTC) in operation, one in Toronto at York University and the other at the Uniprix stadium in Montreal. Another centre will be built in the near future in Vancouver. These three centres will provide a controlled focus for talented regional people to compete and to receive professional instruction. Tennis Canada is in negotiation with a highly-rated tennis academy in Florida, so that our Canadian kids can play there against very stiff competition on a permanent basis. Hockey does attract our best kids and that will never change, but Tennis Canada is trying to develop a program for these hockey players so that tennis becomes their second choice, with the hope that their interests may eventually switch to tennis.
There is a well thought out game plan to get people who love tennis and are very prominent in the business community to help promote the sport. A recent success has been the involvement of Mike and Nicole Tevlin with a donation of $500,000. to Tennis Canada. Key components of the donation include the creation of the Tevlin Player Fund and the Tevlin Challenger Tournament. The Tevlin Player Fund will commit $30,000. each year to help developing Ontario-based players such as Frank Dancevic, Sharon Fichman, Peter Polansky and Gabriela Dobrowski. The Internation Tennis Federation (ITF) Tevlin Challenger Tournament will give top young female players like Gabriela Dobrowski and Sharon Fichman the opportunity to earn ITF tour points while competing at home. The tournament will be hosted at the Rexall Centre in Toronto each November.
In the spring of 1999 at Tennis Canada’s semi-annual meeting in Toronto, many people gathered to brainstorm the future direction of tennis in Canada. This meeting led to the formation of a Strategic Planning Task Force that included representation from across Canada. The results of their work is just beginning to show promise. Tennis Development Centres (TDC) are being used to interact with schools, parks and community clubs to produce a High Performance Player Development System. Money is being allotted to assist young players to travel throughout the world and get experience in high-level competition. Many programs existed but their implementation was a big factor. To correct this anomaly, Michael S. Downey was hired as President and CEO of Tennis Canada. His experience in sport promotion with the Toronto Raptors and the Toronto Maple Leafs as well as Molsons, can only help bring about the changes needed. One of his first acts was to announce an international search for a senior leader to fill the newly-developed post of vice president of High Performance Athlete Development. An additional component of this strategy involves the promotion of Hatem McDadi, formerly director of Player Development, to the position of vice president of Tennis Development. Mr. McDadi will be in charge of providing the players on a local level so that the to-be-named vice president of High Performance Athlete Development will have the raw material to achieve the goals of Grand Slam, Olympic and Para-Olympic singles and doubles champions.
Keith Porter, president of the Ontario Tennis Association and Jim Boyce, a former Davis Cup player, are on side with plans of their own to further the national effort. In Ontario there is a “Pathways” plan to advance tennis through local tennis clubs throughout the province and “Floor Tennis”, a program fostered in the public schools so that a hybrid of tennis can be played on any floor surface. Flora Karsai, a former American college player, is in charge of the implementation of the two Ontario programs, along with many of the OTA staff. Jim Boyce is the originator of these two innovative programs.
The word is out and received. Canadian tennis fans want “winners” soon, if not now.
