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Friday, March 24, 2006

Berlocq outplays Young: South Florida Sun-Sentinel



Berlocq outplays Young: South Florida Sun-Sentinel

With no seeds playing yesterday and rain in the afternoon, Donald Young's 6-0, 6-0 loss in the first round was Story Option One for most of the tennis reporters on hand. Charlie Bricker's above story and his blog entry give him two places to speak his mind. Bonnie DeSimone of espn.com has quotes from his parents and agent in her article. Richard Vach of tennis-x posts a commentary laying all the blame on IMG. Lisa Dillman of the LA Times takes it a little more personally. "Were we all wrong about Donald Young?" she asks in her piece (free registration required). Matt Cronin of tennisreporters.net makes it unanimous with this brief dismissal:

Donald Young: Loses 6-0, 6-0 to Argentina's Carlos Berlocq in Miami, which mean he's now 0-19 in sets on the ATP Tour. To paraphrase Patrick McEnroe: Whoever is deciding to allow this badly struggling junior to continue to accept wild cards when he's obviously in way over his head is an idiot. Young's confidence is so shot now that he may never be a Top-10 player. Until he wins a Future, he should not be allowed to play Challengers, and until he wins a Challenger, no more ATP events.

Consensus like this among tennis pundits (and other players) verges on the unprecedented. But I don't expect any of them to have much influence, as the Youngs prefer to think of themselves as teachers, not students. It's interesting that he's decided to play the Easter Bowl, which will be his first junior tournament since the Yucatan Cup last December. He needs to find that winning feeling again--the practice he's had in losing lately is too much of a bad thing.

In all this hubbub over the Young loss, a big win for another much-criticized IMG wild card recipient, sixteen-year-old Anna Tatishvili has been overshadowed. The Evert-protege won a epic struggle with the WTA's 41st ranked player and Newcomer of the Year for 2005 Sania Mirza of India 7-6 (6), 1-6, 7-6 (8).

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I find this Donald Young situation incomprehensible. I know he is with IMG and his parents are trotting around with him (home schooled I believe which further keeps him in the family's bubble) but how can anyone countenance what this is doing to him. I never thought as a junior that he would be that good.I was crazy about Marcos, liked Gasquet and Monfils but Young while very quick had an erratic serve and would get down on himself too easily. And it was painful to watch in the main draw at the Open. The Italian qualiflyer was having trouble returning his soft shots because he was used to a different tempo but once he got going it was curtains and by the end of the first set there was agreement in the crowd that that this was not an auspicious debut. And I think the Challenger Series might further lower his confidence. No cushy setting there and a lot of tough cookies scrambling for the big time. All because IMG was persuaded he had the goods. Enough already.

Anonymous said...

Is Young's size the only thing keeping him from being more competitive. That didn't seem to be a problem at the junior level, right?

Anonymous said...

Donald Young Senior's comments that we should judge the kid only when he's 17, 18 and 19 is particularly absurd since the kid will turn 17 in July which is coming very soon.

Also, his age isn't the primary problem, it's his alarming lack of weapons even for his age. IMG should have considered this deficit before it made its investment. It's like all those "pushers" who were number 1 in 12's and even beyond, but couldn't go on from there. The streets are littered with those players throughout tennis history.

In contrast, guys like Querrey, Djokovich, Monfils are not much older than Young but they always had some weapons (beyond foot speed which seems to be Young's only "weapon" if you want to call it that) even when they were his age and that's why they've already shown they can beat top 100 pros. In fact, Culic is only one year older than Young nad he just beat Andreev at a tour level tournament.

Anonymous said...

just my opinion, but I feel Mcenroe's early endorsement of Young's "potential" made a huge impact on IMG and others. If you took Young back in time to the late 70's early eighties, I believe his considerable skills..as Mac said, "great hands" along with his foot speed, would have bode very well for him, but, I agree with the previous comment that in TODAYS game, you need more weapons, and his game does not put any fear in anybody except against the juniors, and even that "aura" is diminishing. It does make me sad, because I would like nothing better than to see a player with his style have success, unfortunatly, the basic, "big serve, and big grounstroke" is something that on average, unless you are Fabrice Santoro..you need in todays game.