Terrific. It sucks that American men’s tennis is in such shambles; however, I love rooting for RF. Class guy all the way.
Sam Querry played a great tournament, getting to the semis (lost to Cilic in 4). Jack Sock is ranked 17 but not sure he has it in him to go much higher, although he started the year strongly. Isner always goes fairly deep into tournaments and is fun to watch.
Sure it’s been a while since Andy Roddick was no. 1 (2003!), but that was brief and, really, the space at the top 10, much less top 50 or to 100 is narrow. According to this site, http://www.atpcountry.com/#/app/graph?type=Number%20of%20players, the Top 100 rankings by country for no. of players as of June 12 is (These numbers have changed since Wimbledon, of course):
France: 11 (6 in top 50)
USA: 10 (6 in top 50)
Spain: 8 (7 in top 50)
Argentina: 6 (3 in top 50)
Germany: 6 (2 in top 50)
Russia: 5 (1 in top 50)
Only one country has more than 1 player in the top 10: Switerzland, of course, w/ Federer and Wawrinka.
See also this from this Sporting News, “Why doesn’t the U.S. generate more top-ranked men’s tennis players?”
“If you look at the last 15 years in mens tennis, there have been nine players ranked #1 in the world: one person each from Serbia, Switzerland, Australia, Russia, and Brazil; and two each from Spain and the United States. And only five of the nine held the ranking for over a year in total. So there is no country that has dominated the top of the game in a significant way. It is pretty reasonable to conclude that in todays global tennis world, no country can consistently produce top 4 talent much better than the others. The reason that the United States perceives this as a sudden slump is that we are still thinking back to the days when tennis was not as global, and there wasnt nearly as much money at stake.”
http://www.sportingnews.com/tennis/news/why-doesnt-the-us-generate-more-top-ranked-mens-tennis-players/gkd5lbqw1fzf1aprl2ws464wd