Number Four, Kimiko Date Krumm who is on the comeback trail.  Recently, Kei Nishikori, the first Japanese man in years to make waves on the ATP World Tour, has given hope for the future of Japanese men’s tennis.  In Eastern Europe, the Maleeva sisters, i.e. Manuela, Katerina and Maggie, were all top ten players in the 80s and 90s playing for Bulgaria.   2008 Wimbledon Junior Boys’ Champion, Grigor Dimitrov, still seventeen, is the first promising male player to emerge from Bulgaria.  Poland has produced the Radwanska sisters, i.e. Agnieszka, a teenage top ten player and her fast-rising sister, Urszula.  Now Lukasz Kubot of Poland, a lucky loser at the ATP event in Belgrade, Serbia, last week played through to the finals losing to Novak Djokovic.  It was the first time in twenty-five years that a Polish man had reached an ATP final (Wojtek Fibak was the last one in 1983 and he was the last Pole to win an ATP title in 1982).  At the same time, other Eastern European countries such as the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Croatia and now Serbia have produced several female and male tennis stars.  One might expect success in a major professional sport such as tennis to be equal across genders as is the case in Russia right now which has produced several male and female Grand Slam Champions, e.g. Maria Sharapova, Anastasia Myskina, Svetlana Kuznetsova, Marat Safin, Yevgeny Kafelnikov, etc.  However, there is always competition from other sports and some countries, such as Bulgaria and Poland, owe their success to strong familial ties.  Nonetheless, as tennis continues to spread around the globe, one hopes that countries such as China, Japan, Bulgaria and Poland and others will produce more male tennis stars.

Posted by TC at 08:33 PM |