Keystone
No Swiss in the 2nd round of the US Open, no woman or man currently in the top 100 of the annual rankings. Nevertheless, Swiss tennis is not in as bad a position as one might think.
The year 2024 will not go down as a good one in Swiss tennis history, regardless of what the Swiss Davis Cup team conjures up on the court against Peru on Friday and Saturday. The recent US Open was a low point; for only the second time in the last 30 years, no Swiss man or woman made it into the second round of a Grand Slam tournament. And for the first time since 1986, no Swiss player reached the second week of any of the four major events in a year.
However, the Davis Cup captain Severin Lüthi, who has also been critical in the past, does not see this too dramatically. Somewhat surprisingly, Roger Federer’s long-time coach says: “Even if it sounds a bit stupid right now: I think the situation of Swiss tennis is probably better today than it was a few years ago.”
Eleven Swiss men in the top 450
The figures back up Lüthi’s thesis. In 2017, Roger Federer and Stan Wawrinka in the top ten masked the lack of a competitive base. In the fall, there were no other Swiss players in the top 450 of the world rankings following Marco Chiudinelli’s retirement. Lüthi warned of this malaise even then. Although the top is currently missing, there are no fewer than eleven Swiss men between 124th (Alexander Ritschard) and 420th (Jakub Paul). Four of them are 22 years old or younger. Nine of the women are also in these positions in the world rankings.
For Lüthi, the current situation is a snapshot that could look much better in a year’s time. He recalls that in 2023, seven Swiss men and women were still in the main draw of the French Open and even eight in Wimbledon thanks to successful qualifiers. This year, Leandro Riedi also failed in the final qualifying round after winning his own match point, while Jérôme Kym served for the match at the US Open.
The absence of Bencic
There are good explanations – not excuses, as Lüthi emphasizes – for the current slump. Olympic champion and former world number 4 Belinda Bencic is out due to maternity leave, but intends to return next year at the latest. Céline Naef, who made her Grand Slam debut at Wimbledon fourteen months ago, has stagnated recently, but is still only 19 years old. “I can see that from the outside, but you couldn’t expect her to march straight into the top 20 and reach Grand Slam semi-finals,” says Lüthi. “Only the absolute exceptions like Coco Gauff manage that.”
Among the men, the many injuries are striking. After his breakthrough with the round of 16 at the US Open this year, Dominic Stricker missed the entire first half of the season with persistent back problems. “Otherwise he would definitely be in the top 100.” Leandro Riedi won two tournaments at Challenger level up to June, reached three more finals and was on a direct route into the top 100, but had to end his season last week due to chronic knee pain.
Jérôme Kym is currently showing just how quickly things can go in the other direction. The man from Aargau made his Davis Cup debut in 2019 shortly before his 16th birthday as the youngest Swiss player to date, but has been repeatedly set back by injuries since then. He missed the second half of last year due to knee surgery. Now, however, he has climbed more than 350 places in the space of five months and, at number 151 in the ATP rankings, is better ranked than ever before.
Promising juniors
In addition, promising young talents are joining the ranks, at least among the men: Henry Bernet from Basel and Flynn Thomas from Zurich. “You should always look at what you can improve,” emphasizes Severin Lüthi. “But you also have to think long-term and not throw everything overboard prematurely.” In most cases, you can only see after five or ten years whether what you are doing with young talent is right.
So the potential is there and the chances are intact that 2024 will go down in the Swiss tennis annals as a downward departure, not as the beginning of the end.
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