Now you have put it in hundreds of father's heads that they can create a tennis champion for the next generation. It would have been nice if you had listed the thousands of sociopathic parent that abused their child to be a champion, only to flame out at 15, and then require 30 years of therapy just to not feel like a failure every day and get a good nights sleep.

You are right (although I am skeptical that the crazy fathers are even open to counterarguments, but other people that could make a difference might be).

I also wonder whether the whole premise is true ... Germany, Italy, and even more so, Brazil produce a lot of great soccer players, because everyone plays soccer. If everyone plays, you will automatically get some outstanding players, outstanding in talent, cleverness and willpower.

A more interesting angle would have been to compare countries: A. Spain must do something right, and GB something wrong. B. The US have a lot of public free courts (although they may not help that much since tennis, as opposed to soccer, depends heavily on instruction), Germany has mainly private clubs relatively hard to get into. Based on what I said above, I would expect Germany not to do well, and yet they have 9 men in the top 100, the same number as the US (in proportion to population numbers, it should be less than a third; BTW, Spain and France, both smaller countries, have 13 each). I really would like to read a well informed, comprehensive piece about the topic.

For every example, there's a counter-example - Jimmy Evert was the nicest guy in the world, nobody can say an unkind word about John McEnroe, Sr., etc. It seems to me we just need better players, not obsessive parents. It's an unlucky stretch. It'll change.

John McEnroe Jr. said "unkind word[s]" about John Sr. in his Tennis Hall of Fame acceptance speech. Johnny Jr.--a national if not worldwide treasure, claimed that his combative court manner was learned at the dinner table directly from John Sr. He said he'd been raised to think people should behave that way.

Contrast that with the lesson Bjorn Borg learned when his parents pulled him off the Junior's circuit for a year because he threw a tantrum. I do not think anger management had anything to do with either man's success.

Nor did "crazy parents" contribute to either man's success: nor for Sampras, Conners, Courier or the Williams sisters.

There is the issue of the Nick Bollettieri Tennis Academy in Bradenton, Florida where some student had absolutely Dickensian experiences: where childhoods are sometimes traded for early exploitation of talent.

I happened to live in Tampa, Florida a couple decades ago. I was playing on the University of South Florida varsity courts when the university's team showed up. They did not need all the courts and so when the coach told us we had to leave to let a young girl play, I challenged him as to why we--as fully grown taxpaying interlopers, should leave for a child. He told me it was because she was the number 11 woman player in the world. We did what was appropriate and quit playing and started watching.

The child turned out to be Mary Pierce. Her father wasn't with her that day--perhaps held off the by univerity's coach, but we got to see him in action not long afterwards. He came to other USF courts with Mary and her little brother one night and conducted a "coaching session" that included yelling, cursing, threatening, hitting balls at the younger brother and various other abusive behavior directed at his children.

As we were an adult foursome--with two large males present, We discussed whether or not we should save the children much grief by walking the court being used by the Pierce family and kicking the living shit out of that evil child-abusing madman. Being lawful persons we, in the end, did not, but always felt bad that we did not.

I'm sure Mary Pierce agrees with me that all the success she's had is of secondary importance to the peace she seems to have found coming out of the turbulence of that abusive parenting. No child should be treated that way for any reason. Not for a second.

I don't know if this adds to your observations, but I'll toss in two other things. In the early 1980s I thought America would end up being a top soccer nation because we'd buy the good coaches. It hasn't worked either because we couldn't buy the coaches in the first place or because when they came they found the supporting culture lacking.

Second, in high school some of the better high school players in the suburban city where I lived went down to an inner city basketball court that was locally famous for producing good players. They were welcomed and treated with normal court comradeship, then spanked like infants in the games.

They all came home chastened, humbled, mightily impressed--even awed.

To a boy, they attribute the marked difference in the quality of their suburban play to the high quality of the urban play to how much the game meant to the various players. The suburban boys had cars, handy baseball, football and soccer fields; nearby tennis courts. Lack of resources imposed by a discriminatory society had forced single-mindedness on the inner-city basketball players and had rewarded it with brilliance.

At least that was the theory.

As with every human venture culture can encourage or discourage. quality.

As a crappy tennis player who took the game up late in life and as a former phys ed major at one of the best schools for that curriculum my observation is that American players are not learning the modern way to strike the ball as the Euros do. Most of the coaches in America are teaching at best 1980's tennis strokes and it shows. Andy Roddick has a modern forehand..perhaps the best of the Americans but has a pathetic 2handed backhand and a crappier slice BH. Women can get away with crummy arcane strokes..the men can't. Until the USTA & the pros who are taking parents money actually observe or learn what the euros are doing we will continue to lose. Look at a website called virtualtennisacademy.com (I think) this guy has it right and he seems to be shunned in the US tennis community.