Jiří Lehečka, Jakub Menšík and Tomáš Macháč | Photo: Reuters
The Czechs have five guys in the ATP rankings, how do you explain such a boom?
Tomáš Berdych (TB): There will be more reasons. A good new generation of smart guys has come together, they are close in age and they pull each other. Tennis is set up in such a way that you are always catching up with someone, and when it is a Davis Cup or training partner, the motivation to overcome the other person is all the stronger. I myself remember how as a young man I trained with Jirka Novák or Radek Štěpánek and how it helped me tremendously.
I think it went away a bit and now it’s coming back. You can have the best coaches, but if you don’t have quality sparring, you have no way to learn it. In addition, after the juniors, the boys came to the post-covid period, when a lot of tournaments were played here, they won a lot of points and grew together.
Dušan Lojda (DL): I agree. At the same time, I notice that now the boys have more options than it was before us. Young people get more free cards for challengers. This was not the case to such an extent before. And players like Petr Brunclík or even Max Mrva, who are certainly also among those who would like to expand the ranks of Czech boys in the top 100, can take advantage of this and are moving forward.
