I remember watching a lot of Tennis back in the late-80s thru the mid-90s.  I watched the careers of McEnroe and Connors wind down, and the careers of Pete Sampras, Andre Agassi, Jim Courier and Michael Chang begin.  If you were patriotic and a tennis fan, you could really get into watching tennis in this country.  There was a good chance that you would see an American in a Grand Slam Final all the time.

The US owned the sport in the early 80s, then had a small lull, and then the 90s came around an we smacked everyone around again.  We even talked about and treated the Davis Cup like as if it was another Grand Slam event.  We were able to constantly put out a team that could compete. We did not always win the event, but we did take home 3 Davis Cup Championships, and another 2 runner-ups.  The last championship in the 90s came in 1995, when Pete Sampras and Todd Martin led the US to victory in the finals over the Russians.

The US would then have a drought until 2007, but even the run by the Bryan brothers, Andy Roddick and James Blake wasn’t enough to get the attention of US citizens.

Roddick has been the one and only face of US Tennis in this last decade since Andre Agassi and Pete Sampras retired.  A lot was expected of Roddick when he turned pro as an 18-year-old.  He has won a Grand Slam title, and been to the finals in 4 others.  His opponent? Roger Federer.  But his lack of success (which winning titles is the only measure of success in tennis) has not grabbed our attention.  Besides Roddick, there has not been another American tennis player that has even toyed with the idea of being a great player.  James Blake has been to the one quarterfinals round in all the Grand Slam events that he has played in.  There have been several tournaments that have zero American men playing past the first weekend because the lack of depth.

Since there is barely an interest in the American tennis, there is barely any interest in the Davis Cup.  It is understandable why Roddick is pulling out of the quarterfinal match-up with Croatia this week.  He cites a hip injury, but he just played an exhausting two weeks of tennis, which included a marathon finals loss to you-know-who.  He will be replaced by the underwhelming Mardy Fish.   The Davis Cup for whatever reason has lost its luster, and only one could speculate as to why that is. Probably because players rather focus more on winning singles tournaments to bring home a bigger paycheck.  One hopes that the US can move on to the next round and Roddick will be able to give it ago for the semi-finals.   More importantly, hopefully someone will pop-up on the US tennis radar to spark more interest in the international competition.

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