A new generation of American talent announces arrival

Madison Keys came to Paris for the first time last week with a few simple goals. Like all visitors, she and her friends wanted to hit at least one tourist destination, maybe the Eiffel Tower or the Louvre. And because Keys is no normal teenager on a gap-year trip, she wanted to get through the French Open without falling and getting the famous red clay on the muted colors of her clothes.

"It's, 'Oh my gosh, I'm at the French Open,'" Keys said. "I used to watch it on TV and now I'm here. It's a surreal moment. You want to be here when you're younger; then when you're actually there, it's, 'Am I dreaming? Because this is a cool dream.'"

The dream got a little better Monday when Keys, competing in her first French Open, beat Misaki Doi of Japan, 6-3, 6-2, in the first round. Keys, a bubbly 18-year-old with the powerful ground strokes of a midcareer professional, is one of eight American women who are in the second round, with three more to play Tuesday. American women went 6-1 Monday, which is particularly surprising because clay has long been considered a U.S. weakness.

There were 15 American women in the French Open main draw when play began Sunday, more than from any other country and the most in a Grand Slam draw outside of the U.S. Open since the 2005 Wimbledon, which had 17.

But there is a significant difference from that field. Only four players in the 2005 group were 23 or younger, and seven were 25 or older, portending an absence of top American prospects for nearly a decade. The 2013 group skews much younger: just four are 25 or older, including the Williams sisters, and nine are 23 or younger. Although only top-ranked Serena Williams is in the top 10, 12 American women are in the top 100.

The group that alighted on Paris, many of whom constitute Keys' planned sightseeing group, underscores how disparate the pipeline to tennis success has become. On Sunday, Shelby Rogers, 20, who decided to forgo college to turn pro and had struggled in recent months until she earned a wild card to the French Open, won her first-round match. So did Mallory Burdette, 22, who is ranked 80th but at this time last year was playing in the NCAA tennis tournament for Stanford.

"If you had told me that a year ago, I would say you were absolutely crazy," Burdette said.

It is still a long way from the most successful days of U.S. tennis. In 1983, 56 American women were at the French Open. No country may ever regain that level of dominance. More countries are producing at least a few quality players, and the U.S. emphasis on team sports for women has spread the country's best athletes among many disciplines. Chris Evert recalled that when she was a teenager, the choices for girls who wanted to play sports were tennis, golf or an Olympic sport like ice skating or swimming.

In May 2011, for the first time in the nearly 40 years since computerized rankings were used, the United States had no man or woman in the top 10 in singles in the world. The U.S. tennis firmament, particularly the U.S. Tennis Association, was criticized for failing to cultivate the future of the game.

"There was a generation that was missed," said Evert, a seven-time French Open champion who is working here as an ESPN analyst. "And I think that there was definitely a gap. There was always that slew I saw of 12- to 16-year-olds. We skipped the 16- to 21-year-olds when Serena and Venus were coming up, after they made their mark. But now that 12-to-16-year-old slew of women has emerged."

Reaching that critical mass of ranked players was central to Patrick McEnroe's plan when he took over as the USTA's general manager for player development five years ago. On his first trip to the USTA training center in Boca Raton, Fla., after taking the job, McEnroe looked around and saw only two girls training there. He said he asked a coach where everybody was, and was told that most of the girls were scattered around the country, training independently.

Before he took the job, McEnroe said, he believed that talent would rise to the top, no matter who prepared them. But he looked at successful programs around the world and changed his mind. Now, he said, he believes that an organized effort, in which promising players are brought together more often to train and practice, produces more contenders. Many of the younger women who are playing in Paris work at least some of the time with the USTA.

The system has done everything from help to improve Burdette's fitness to create a strong peer group that roots for and challenges its members. Before the French Open, several American women said they were inspired by the success of 54th-ranked Jamie Hampton, who reached the semifinals in a clay-court tournament in Brussels last week.

"We've seen in the history of tennis, when you get a good group of players, they tend to steamroll a little bit," McEnroe said in a telephone interview. "We're starting to see the beginning of that. Our main goal has always been let's increase the numbers, and the great one will come. I don't look at Switzerland, where they have one unbelievable player. I look at Russia on the women's side, where they have tons of players in the top 100 and a few top players."

© 2013, The New York Times News Service