And while some, like Fernández, are already Grand Slams champions, the fact that this group reached the highest spaces of the French Open at the same time was sudden, although, at least for those of us who know the formation of tennis players in Argentina, not inconceivable.
All these players, aged between 18 and 28, were trained in clubs that, in the midst of economic crises and pandemics, have been the hotbed for a century of the best athletes in the country, and many of the best in the region .
Schwartzman started playing tennis at the Hacoaj Nautical Club in Ciudad de Tigre, thirty kilometers from Buenos Aires. Podoroska at Club Atlético Fisherton, from her native Rosario. Bautista Torres, in Vicente López’s Círculo Trovador club, just outside of Buenos Aires. And Gustavo Fernández, at the Estudiantes de Olavarría club, 350 kilometers from the capital.
“I have to accept that our clubs are an almost unique phenomenon in the world,” says Martín Jaite, former world number 10 and one of the many former players who assumed leadership of the Argentine Tennis Association (AAT) in 2018, led by Agustín Calleri. I speak of more than 10,000 clubs, wealthy or modest, some more competitive, others more social, but with sport always present. Most of them were founded a century ago by the children of European immigrants who thus recreated their own territories, naming them after national dates, neighborhoods or cities in Argentina. Or that they might remember the origin of their ancestors, in an always confusing but also creative search for identity, and the sport that reflects it.
Schwartzman’s maternal great-grandfather, a man living in Poland, arrived in Argentina after escaping from a Nazi train during the Holocaust. The paternal roots came from Russia. El Náutico Hacoaj, where Diego started playing tennis at the age of four, is a club founded by leftist Jews in 1935 in El Tigre, where German, Italian, English, Spanish, Swiss and Scandinavian immigrants also created their rowing clubs. Due to anti-Semitism, it took Nautico five requests and more than ten years to formally join the Rowing Association. The club incorporated, over the years, dozens of sports, fields and thousands of members. The Schwartzmans, a family with four children, suffered the economic crisis of the 1990s (one of many in Argentina). So that Diego could continue to pay for trips, the family began selling thousands of rubber bracelets at children’s tournaments.
There were more setbacks: “El Peque”, as he is known, knew from the age of 13 that he would not grow more than 1.70m (1.68m tall). His mother rejected treatments such as those that helped soccer player Lionel Messi gain inches. Schwartzman was not among the best of his generation and, therefore, did not receive official aid. To finance travel, he had to resort to leonine contracts with private sponsors. Both obstacles strengthened his status as a fighter and, at 28 years of age, his blows show unprecedented power. Nadal stopped him in the semifinals, but Schwartzman made his old dream come true: he is the twelfth male tennis player from Argentina to be the top ten in the world ranking.
The Fisherton club, where Podoroska was formed, was created in 1915 to play football, in the homonymous neighborhood of Rosario, where hierarchical employees of the British railroad stayed. In addition to Claudio Plit, a four-time world champion in open water, he was the starting club of Luciana Aymar, the best field hockey player of all time. Tenacious, an adolescent Podoroska, immobilized by a knee injury, was hitting back with her racket even sitting on a chair. Months ago, prevented by the pandemic, she practiced throwing blows in the courtyard of her house against a mattress. For the tennis players of Latin America everything is more difficult. They have almost no regional tournaments that allow you to score points. Only four of them appear in the first two hundred places of the WTA ranking.
Nadia, of Ukrainian grandparents and pharmacist parents, also required external support to travel to Europe. His triumph at the Lima 2019 Pan American Games (which gave him a ticket to the Tokyo 2021 Olympic Games) brought official aid and made it possible to move to Spain. Unlike Schwartzman, who had just beaten Nadal in Rome, Podoroska arrived in position 131 in Paris and had to overcome the qualifying round to enter the main draw. The semifinal, which lifted her to 48th place and earned her just over $ 500,000 (more money than in her entire career), was a shock of proportions. “A bump”, Martín Vassallo Arguello, another of the extenistas who today lead the AAT, tells me.
Clubs explain much of the phenomenon. But it is not the only thing. Since the irruption of Guillermo Vilas in the 1970s, Argentine tennis, even with brief lows, offers an astonishing continuity of top ten, international titles and even a Davis Cup trophy. José Luis Clerc, Gabriela Sabatini, David Nalbandián, Gastón Gaudio and Guillermo Coria among the main ones, in addition to Juan Martín del Potro, today injured by injuries. All with the disadvantage of geographical and economic distance, the fatigue imposed by long trips, but also favored by a rich sports culture, a benevolent climate and generations of good teachers, more anonymous and who do not emigrate. And, also, by the contagion produced by campaigns such as those of Schwartzman and Podoroska. They are the new idols, the ones that inspire, the ones that are built at home.
