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"\n\n In late June at Wimbledon, Andy Roddick stubbed out yet another early exit to yet another (relatively) no-name opponent. It was an inelegant defeat that embodied the current era of American tennis. The last of our boys to win a Slam? Roddick at the 2003 U.S. Open, when he was 21 and still dating Mandy Moore. The days of American dominance seem grainy with distance; as Pete Sampras put it recently, \"There's this whole audience who's only seen us on YouTube\u2014that's how I know I'm getting old.\" The us, of course, is Sampras, Andre Agassi, and (grainier still) John McEnroe, who now ick it around on the Champions Series, a more-competitive-than-they'll-admit exhibition of graying legends. As the U.S. Open arrives with more futility on the menu, we asked three bygone champions: What the hell has gone wrong?\n\n\u00B7\u00B7\u00B7\n\n Andre Agassi\n\nFacebookPinterest\n\n GQ: The nineties and early aughts were all about you and Pete and Courier. What went wrong?\n\n Andre Agassi: I think it was a few things. First of all, it's just the basic 'you-can't-have-it-all-all-the-time' rule that applies. Many countries have gone through some years of real successful top-of-their-game champions, and then we see it kind of shift. Sweden obviously went through it, Spain, and so forth and so on. We're coming off of some generations that left us relatively spoiled. I think, also, you notice a lot of sports becoming much more global and competitive. When it comes to surfaces, I think those growing up on the slower clay\u2014not only do their games translate better across other surfaces, but I think you learn the layers of the game more uniquely. You learn how to, and when to, start a point over, and the structure of a point, and the shot selection is more refined growing up on clay. It used to be that people who played well on the hard courts, as Americans do, could translate better to other surfaces. Now it's completely the opposite: if you don't grow up on the dirt, you're at a disadvantage. Guys who are out there grinding out those long points have a degree of strength in the game that is just a bigger asset.\n\n GQ: So what's the first step?\n\n Andre Agassi: Well, we need to get the racquet in more kids' hands, particularly with ten-and-under tennis. I think it'd be a huge step forward for American tennis; they've been doing that in Europe for a long period of time. Tennis is one of the only sports in America where the sport doesn't grow with the size of the person\u2014it just forces you to swallow the whole pill. I think it's discouraging to a lot of kids and a lot of parents who just either can't afford to get private lessons, or certainly can't get out there themselves to teach their kids, because they have to know how to play to do that. So I think there are a number of components. But I do think we'll make the adjustment, and I do think we'll have our time in the sun again.\n\n GQ: But how much is even within our control? And how much is about pure, freakish, individual talent?\n\n Andre Agassi: I think in any industry, to be the best in the world you have to be born with something, and you have to have it nurtured in a real exponential way. Tennis is a very objective sport in the sense that the scoreboard doesn't lie. If you're ranked number one in the world it's because you've earned it, and I think the only way to really get there is to have that ability and to have it nurtured in a very competitive environment at an early age. It's hard to say nobody can overcome that with a natural ability\u2014I suppose you could never say never, but my experience would tell me that the most successful players in the world are gonna come from an environment that is more competitive at an early age.\n\n GQ: How closely do you follow the current game?\n\n Andre Agassi: I enjoy watching it more now than ever, 'cause I don't have to worry about what somebody's bringing to the table. I can just sit back and appreciate it. But I think the longer you're disconnected from the game\u2014the longer you're not out there really following the guys, seeing their ball firsthand\u2014I think it's natural to lose the level of sophistication in the way you can speak about it. Maybe half the guys out there right now, I still did compete against them\u2014so with some I can only tell you what their game appears to be. When I see a [Juan Martin] Del Potro, who's 6'6\", swinging like he's just throwing a routine jab, and watch that ball just go powering by the fastest people in the world, it's like, My God it looks as though he could do that all day. I cant imagine what its like to face somebody 6'6\" who actually moves decently. You know, it's a different game today. But I do enjoy watching it and trying to understand it.\n\n GQ: And you're still playing plenty?\n\n Andre Agassi: Well I try to stay fit. I don't always choose to stay fit by playing tennis, because that comes with its own wear-and-tear. And depending on who I'm competing against in the Champions Series, it really depends on the stress that I'll put myself through to get ready, cause some people are just more generous than others... And if you have an interest in making a forty-year-old look forty it's pretty easy to do, so I try to play well enough just to create that nostalgia. And hitting the ball has never been my issue, so I can literally not pick up a racquet for two months and hit the ball, really, really nicely. I mean movement's always an issue. It's my back\u2014it doesn't recover\u2014so I sort of save up for one go.\n\n\u00B7\u00B7\u00B7\n\n John McEnroe\n\nFacebookPinterest\n\n GQ: What's changed the most since your glory days?\n\n John McEnroe: Equipment's the biggest change. And the guys have been getting bigger, stronger, more athletic\u2014so the game has become more of a track meet instead of a tennis match, in a sense. So I think that guys who are better athletes are winning more than they used to against guys who are better players. The key now is to sort of mix the two as much as possible so that you're able to show up the talents of guys who can really play, and then also continue to make the game athletic.\n\n GQ: So is it just a matter of convincing young American athletes to jump into tennis?\n\n John McEnroe: That's definitely one of the big factors. The other one is that in other countries the sport has become more of a focal point than it was, particularly since it became an Olympic sport. And other countries have seen what tennis can bring to the table: more recognition to the country, making people more aware of a small place. I think that certainly because of the fact that many countries have put more money into their development of the sport, that's complicated things for us.\n\n GQ: Is the solution, then, to try to keep up with the way they're developing players in those countries?\n\n John McEnroe: We haven't done a very good job with this all-or-nothing approach to training young people. I think it can be detrimental to a lot of kids, where they sorta live and breath it too young. In many cases, American kids are burned out early. I benefitted from living quote-unquote a pretty normal life and playing other sports and not focusing on tennis entirely at such a young age. These are the type of things I think we need to be doing more of in the States.\n\n GQ: What drove you to open your own academy?\n\n John McEnroe: Well, Americans were spoiled for a long time, and something I along with a lot of others\u2014including my brother at the USTA, who's in charge of player development\u2014want to figure out is how to get us back to an elite place. We need to bring that bug back into the sport. That's why I started this academy in New York. Because a lot of good things have happened to me in tennis, and New York is\u2014I'm biased but it's the greatest city in the world. The US Open is here, but there hasn't been a player that's come out of New York in 25 years.\n\n GQ: Do you think there's a chance the next generation of great American players will be coming out of normal high school and college programs?\n\n John McEnroe: I think that we're a long way from that. I'd like to see that become an option more often because I think that could be beneficial to a lot of people, including myself. I don't think I would have made it big had it not been for the way I was brought up and the way I approached things. In all sports it's changed so that parents and kids are forced to sort of put all their eggs in one basket. I think in China, for example, they suffer from that. There's just no definite way to do it. Jim Courier, for example, was someone who seemed to enjoy being at the Bollettieri Academy more than most people. I don't want to say unequivocally it's bad for everyone, but I certainly think that it's become way too much the case that people think that's the only way you succeed and I don't believe that to be the case at all.\n\n GQ: For the casual fan who tunes in for the majors: Who are some of the younger American players who have showed up in the last year or so and are making a name for themselves?\n\n John McEnroe: If you're talking about bigger names that are going to be breaking into the top of the game, I just don't see those guys right now. I've been paying more attention now because of the academy, and I'm looking for kids that would be nice to work with. I played recently with Ryan Harrison. He's absolutely one of our top young players\u2014he's only 19. He's a great prospect. However, if you're talking about a guy who's going to have a really solid career versus a guy who's going to be number one in the world, those are two different animals. I know that he wants to do everything it takes and he's certainly a top-20, top-10 talent, but I'm not around him enough yet to know if it's more than that.\n\n GQ: Anyone else tearing up the junior tournaments?\n\n John McEnroe: Another young American\u2014 Bjorn Fratangelo\u2014just won the French Open junior title for the first time since I won it in '77. But I didn't get a chance to see him, I was busy. But you know, let's not totally write off the current crop of Americans. Roddick has had a Hall of Fame career; he's been in five Grand Slam finals, despite certainly coming in at the wrong time with Federer and Nadal. John Isner was a top-20 player for a while. Mardy Fish peaked late, which is a good thing because I think that sends a message that you can maximize your ability later. He's number eight in the world right now. You have solid players and potentially guys that can break in. We've got a nice group right now. But in spite of all the young, promising talent, if I'm gonna be honest, there's no one coming out in the next year or two where we'll say, \"Oh, my God, here he is.\"\n\n\u00B7\u00B7\u00B7\n\n Pete Sampras\n\nFacebookPinterest\n\n GQ: Can you sum up the problem in a sentence or two?\n\n Pete Sampras: It's a really tough question, and I can't really answer it. It goes in cycles, just like it did with Sweden in the '80s, or me and Andre and Jim [Courier] in the '90s, or even Spain at present. It's just testament to how international the game is now that we're not dominating anymore."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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