Australian Women

957 Views 24 Replies 16 Participants Last post by vutt, Dec 11, 2003

alfajeffster

Discussion Starter · Oct 9, 2003

Australia is one of the greatest tennis nations in the history of the sport. The men AND women dominated the tennis world from 1950-1975. Pat Cash broke through in the 80s to win Wimbledon and reach a few Aussie Open finals, and Pat Rafter and Mark Philippousis (among a few other good men) have done very well in the 90s and early part of this decade. So where are all the great Australian Women prospects? The last really great Aussie female was Evonne Goolagong!

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alfajeffster

Discussion Starter · #14 · Oct 10, 2003

louloubelle said:
Hope your thread hasn't been ruined Alf!!!

Sorry can't do your question justice as it would take toooooo long, many of us in the Aussie forums could write a thesis on it.

Numerous factors exist:
* Lack of competition in Oz for our juniors and travelling overseas for competition costs money.
* Emphasis on squad coaching, not individualised. Marg Court keeps mentioning this in her interviews and feels that she wouldn't have been as good as she was in the current system.
* Too much money invested in juniors that are no. 1 in their country but don't have the talent, work ethic or strength to make it good on the tour. Therefore many of our juniors have been spoilt. Therefore after so much non-success, the money is likely to be channelled elsewhere.
* It's debateable whether sufficient talent has ever come through the ranks. The Courts and Goolies might only occur once in a while.
* The likes of Bradtke etc... made tennis a career but it wasn't life or death for them. For many European players, tennis is the be all and end all, the family is channelling everything through their tennis. Therefore they are more desperate and committed to making it good.

We could go on for ever!! The Moliks, Stosurs and some others maybe good tour players (now or eventually), but to reach the heights of what we had in the 60-80's isn't likely.

Thank you louloubelle! I agree with Madge on the squad training- in some respects it was that squad mentality at Bollettieri that produced the Sampras/Agassi/Courier/Chang group of achievers, along with a string of American (many imported) women who did well.

How is it, then, that Pat Rafter and Mark Philippousis came through to the top echelon? Not knowing the Australian Tennis Federation the way I do the USTA, I'm really at a loss. Beyond Margaret Court and Evonne Goolagong, the Aussie women like Lesley Turner, Kerry Melville, Judy Dalton, Karen Krantze, Diane Fromholtz, Helen Gourlay, Wendy Turnbull- there are really no Aussie women on that second echelon level either. It's like the sport of tennis for women in Australia has largely disappeared.

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alfajeffster

Discussion Starter · #15 · Oct 10, 2003

TS said:
Well I was going to rely to this thread, but then I read this post...and kind of lost interest Thanks for re-inforcing why I don't visit this section of the board much these days...

Hey- exercise your mental toughness and pretend the schlock portions of threads here doesn't exist. I'm here! Louloubelle is here! We need to hear from more people who care!

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alfajeffster

Discussion Starter · #17 · Dec 10, 2003

All Eyes on Australia!

bump!

your thoughts?

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