King: Americans need 'foundation of work'

By most measures, Vania King is an accomplished tennis player. She's won on the Sony Ericcson WTA Tour, has represented the United States in Fed Cup play and, according to current rankings, is the seventh-best American player on tour.

And yet, one of the questions the 20-year-old King gets most often in her travels around the globe is: What's wrong with American tennis?

"We get these questions a lot," King said this week at the Family Circle Cup on Daniel Island. "And I know we (American players) all get a bit frustrated with it, and the USTA gets a lot of questions about it."

The reasons for the questions are obvious: After sisters Serena and Venus Williams, ranked No. 1 and 5 in the world, there are only two more Americans in the top 100, No. 38 Bethanie Mattek-Sands and No. 86 Jill Craybas. Though she is the seventh-ranked American, King sits at just No. 121 in the world.

King said she's heard the argument that American players don't try hard enough, but she's not buying it.

"I've been thinking about this a lot," she said. "When you get to the top level, this is our job and this is our life. It's not just fun and games anymore, so I think it's incorrect to say Americans don't try as hard as other people do."

King points to countries — Spain, for example — where young players are drilled in a certain style of play and coached in a more systematic fashion than American youngsters are.

"I think we don't have the same system of work, the same foundation of work," she said. "The proper way to train and practice, coaches who are all on the same page and stuff like that.

"But I don't want to put blame on anyone, because there are a lot of different reasons. Twenty or 30 years ago, America was one of the few countries participating in tennis as a global sport. Now, there are so many more players from so many more countries, and I think that has a lot to do with it, too."

Jose Higueras, the director of coaching for USTA Elite Player Development, is charged with reversing the trend for young American players, men and women.

"I don't think our kids are dumber than anybody else," Higueras recently told Inside Tennis magazine. "They're as good as anybody in the world. If we get the right people, it should just be a matter of time. It surprises me that there are a lot of U.S. juniors who get to top 10 in the ITF and then get to the pros and fall off.

"If you look at the American kids in general, I don't think we have a style ... When you look at players from South America, from Europe, they play pretty much the same. The game has changed where the athletes are better, they play more from the back court, meaning that you have to be a better mover, understanding the game better, and that may be why we're pulling back a little. We don't have a definitive style or way of teaching."

Attendance

Tuesday's attendance was 12,008, including 5,834 fans for the day session and 6,174 for the night session, which featured No. 1 seed Elena Dementieva. Tuesday's daytime crowd was the second smallest since the event moved from Hilton Head to Daniel Island in 2001. A crowd of 5,532 attended the Tuesday day session in 2001.

Attendance is 76 fans behind last year's pace. The Family Circle Cup drew 90,437 last year

Tickets

Ticket packages and session tickets are available at (800) 677-2293 or online at Ticketmaster.com.