Herald.com | 03/20/2005 | Seeking stars

Herald.com | 03/20/2005 | (registration required) -- Seeking stars --
This story is a week old, but it's not really time-sensitive and I want to relay what Mary Carillo has to say about the reasons behind the dearth of world-class American junior girls. I'm not entirely certain I agree with her; it could be that the Russians girls just reached the mysterious "tipping point" that channeled the best athletes in the direction of tennis.

I do think that U.S. children have many more sports options than do most other countries, but for girls, tennis is the one sport where they are not relegated to second-class status in money and TV ratings, so the best female athletes should gravitate towards it. Instead, it is the American junior boys, with baseball, basketball, football and golf as viable career choices, who are now consistently represented in the top echelons of the ITF rankings.

So perhaps tennis high performance isn't something that lends itself to such psychological analysis. Maybe it's just cyclical.