For Connors, who at 59 made his Champions Tour debut last Friday in Fort Lauderdale, the problem exists not so much at the top, where high-ranked American men are rarities, but at the bottom.
"Tournament-wise, there are lots of great new events," Connors, who hasn't played competitively in 11 years, said Thursday. "The stadiums are great and so is TV and sponsorships. But at the public park level, it's a different story.
"I go down to the public courts where I live in Santa Barbara and sometimes there's not another person there. I don't see those courts being taken, and I don't see the kids out there. To get them back playing ought to be our goal."
He suggested we might not see many U.S. players hoisting Grand Slam trophies until tennis officials figure out how to encourage, identify, and nurture talented youngsters who can beat all those being mass-produced in Europe and Asia, where the sport is booming like it did here in the 1970s.
"I'd like to think [the slump] isn't something that's going to last," Connors said. "We were so used to having the best for such a long period that the thought was it would continue forever. And it hasn't worked out that way. A lot of other countries have learned from here and taken it to another level and produced champions in their own way.
"I think the people in charge of this sort of thing have to look at how to get the right kids involved, how to treat them, how to bring them along."
Courier, 40, who's been more involved with the game recently than Connors, said the perception that a lack of major victories by U.S. men translates into an American slump was wrongheaded.
