Net gains: Meet some of Belgium's tennis talent

Something is going on in Belgium that defies sporting orthodoxy. A country of barely 11 million people is punching way above its weight in football, hockey (finalists in last year’s Hockey World League) and tennis (Davis Cup finalists last November).

It’s the last discipline that’s perhaps most baffling: Belgium has no cultural, economic or socially significant reasons to produce tennis stars, and as an individual sport, tennis doesn’t depend on any single coach or school. But the country is now a tennis superpower.

The Davis Cup run – losing in Ghent to Great Britain, led by world number two Andy Murray – is especially remarkable given that the country’s male tennis players have rarely troubled the world’s elites. Yet it wasn’t Novak Djokovic’s Serbia, Roger Federer’s Switzerland or Rafael Nadal’s Spain in the final, but a Belgian side led by David Goffin.

Much was made at that time about how the British victory was their first Davis Cup title since 1936, but Belgium’s turnaround was far more dramatic: it was only their second appearance in the tournament’s 115-year history, after losing as finalists in 1904.

Before Belgium starts celebrating, it is worth remembering that – however promising – none of this generation has yet won a major title. At the individual level, Belgium has just one player ranked the top 100 in Goffin, at 16. From Liège, Goffin, 25, is the only player with ATP titles to his name, both of which are minor ones: in 2014, he won the Austrian Open Kitzbühel and the Moselle Open in Metz. In the semi-final of the Miami Open this year, Goffin put up a plucky fight against No 1 Novak Djokovic before losing 7-6, 6-4.

Steve Darcis, also from Liège, is best known for defeating Rafael Nadal in the first round of Wimbledon in 2013 – the lowest-ranked player ever to beat the Spaniard in a Grand Slam tournament – only to pull out before his next match with a shoulder injury. But his highest world ranking was 44, and that was back in 2008. Now 31, he’s ranked 106.

Ruben Bemelmans, 28, is at number 107. His best career result came at the US Open last year where he made the third round, claiming a notable scalp in Gilles Muller before benefiting from Jack Sock’s heat-exhaustion retirement. The final Davis Cup member, Kimmer Coppejans, is just 22, and at 123 in the rankings has qualified for the main draw of a Grand Slam just once.

This isn’t the first time Belgium has packed a punch on the international tennis stage. At the turn of the millennium, all the talk was about female stars, including Grand Slam champions Kim Clijsters and Justine Henin, both of whom secured the number one spots in the WTA.

The ‘Belgian sisters’, as Jennifer Capriati dubbed them, were born just a year apart and enjoyed intertwining careers, even if they had contrasting stories: Flanders’ bubbly, outgoing Clijsters with her incredible athleticism, and the diminutive, French-speaking Henin who was lithe and aggressive. They won 11 major titles between them, as well as a Fed Cup, plus an Olympic gold for Henin. As late as 2010, Clijsters won the US Open, despite having retired from the sport three years previously to have her first child.

Even if their respective coaching teams have left the scene, their exploits have inspired a new generation of players, and that continues with the women. Kirsten Flipkens, 30, surprised even compatriots in 2013 when she reached the Wimbledon semi-finals and a WTA ranking of 13. Two years before, the Geel-born player suffered a near-death episode in Thailand when only prompt medical attention prevented a fatal bout of deep vein thrombosis.

Yanina Wickmayer reached the US Open semi-finals in 2009, when she was just 19, and a year later hit a WTA ranking of 12. Despite the promise, she has since struggled with form and illness, and has not repeated those early highs.

The one woman who fans expect most from is Alison Van Uytvanck, who surged into last year’s French Open quarter-finals. Van Uytvanck, 21, from Grimbergen, had won only one Grand Slam match before her arrival in Paris, and had she won, would have been the lowest-ranked woman to reach the semi-finals of the clay court major.

Filip Dewulf, a former Roland Garros semi-finalist who is one of the most successful Belgian male tennis players of all time, says the country is helped, rather than hindered, by being so small. With everything on such a limited scale, it’s harder for anyone of any talent to get lost in the system, he says. From these modest circumstances, surprises can emerge. And as the world is noting, Belgium is more than ready to step up.

This article first appeared in The Bulletin Newcomer, spring 2016