Nainkin uncovers a new tennis star

JACK MILNER

I remember a second round match at Wimbledon in 1998 when David played British No 1 Tim Henman on centre court in a second-round match. Henman took the opening set 6-3 and David, now having settled down, was enjoying the limelight and started to play better in the second. He took the second 7-5 and when David went up a break in the third set Henman looked really rattled.

But David was enjoying himself to such an extent that he did not realised he had Henman against the wall and let his intensity drop. A relieved Henman came through the match in four sets but David had the opportunity to cause yet another upset as he had done at the 1996 US Open when he beat Wayne Ferreira in the opening round.

David later went on to coach Ferreira and eventually joined the US Tennis Association (USTA) to help develop their youngsters. He also coached Americans Sam Querry, Mardy Fish and Sloane Stephens but at the start of the year he rejoined USTA Player Development fulltime as national coach for men’s tennis.

As most who follow tennis will know, the glory days of American men’s tennis have been over for quite a while and since Pete Sampras and Andre Agassi retired, Americans have struggled to get players into the top 20.

However, David, 45, finally believes they have found the future star – Taylor Fritz. Fritz won the US Open juniors earlier this year, turned pro, and became just the second 17-year-old to ever win back-to-back Challenger events in consecutive weeks.

He went on a 17-match-winning streak at those events and moved up a whopping 462 spots in the world rankings in just two weeks to become the second-highest ranked 17-year-old in the world.

Fritz has joined an illustrious group of eight players who won multiple Challengers before turning 18, among them Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic, Juan Martin Del Potro and Tomas Berdych.

Fritz is the second-ranked 17-year-old in the world and the one ahead of him – fellow American Francis Tiafoe – has benefitted from rankings points accrued from playing six ATP events. Those two, in addition to Tommy Paul, Reilly Opelka, Stefan Kozlov, Noah Rubin and Jared Donaldon, comprise a group of young Americans who may be the best crop since the days of Andy Roddick.

“The competition is healthy,” said David, who’s been working with Fritz. “There hasn’t been these types of players in 10 years.”

David has praised Fritz’s ability to dominate the big points. “He’s like few others I have ever seen. He can beat opponents off both the forehand and backhand wings. That coupled with a big serve of over 200kmph makes him tough to beat

“What I would like to see is improvement in his physical strength and net game.”

Fritz says he’s not getting caught up in pulling off feats Nadal and Djokovic achieved more than a decade ago. “It does mean I’m on the right path but they didn’t just get to the top from winning two Challengers. They got there because they worked hard and did the right things.”

But the recent past is littered with “the next big thing” in American tennis. Donald Young, now 26, is having a fine career, but is hardly the No 1 player John McEnroe predicted he’d be when the youngster won Junior Wimbledon.

That might not be a problem with the current crop of youngsters about whom David is so optimistic.  Their attitude is different.

“It’s going to take staying very humble and not buying into all the hype that surrounds all the American juniors right now,” Fritz said of the attention around his contemporary countrymen.

“There’s still plenty of work to be done on and off the court.”