John McEnroe’s Brother Sounds Alarm As American Tennis Sees Sharp Decline

50 ans du tennis BNP Paribas a Roland-Garros en presence de Patrick McEnroe Tennis:50 ans du tennis a Roland-Garros - 28/05/2023 JonathanRebboah/Panoramic PUBLICATIONxNOTxINxFRAxITAxBEL PESRK24022012 ©IMAGO/PanoramiC College tennis is on the fritz. And Patrick McEnroe , standing courtside at the University of South Carolina in the first round of the NCAA Tournament, felt like it was high time to say what had to be said. He knows this world from the inside.

He was a player at Stanford, a doubles winner at the French Open, a tennis voice that has been revered by many in America because of the path he took on the back of a college pathway that has molded him as a person and a player. And it is precisely because of this that what he is currently seeing is not only troubling him so much. “College tennis is at a crossroads,” he said.

“I came through this system, played at Stanford, gave me world-class competition, world-class education, and a runway into the pros. That happened to be the promise for a lot of American kids, but that promise is getting harder to see. ” In numbers, the promise appears as follows.

The proportion of American D1 freshmen on rosters was approximately 70%, 20 years ago. The number today is 40%. The most international major sport in college athletics is now Division I tennis, with approximately 64% of the men’s and 61% of the women’s players in the sport being international.