Mike Celizic

Somewhere in America, there’s a boy with a tennis racket who will grow up to become the best player in the world. Would he please stand up and identify himself?

The sport needs that kid — desperately. It’s been too long since the United States had a great male player, too long since people who never have been able to make sense of that love and deuce thing had a reason to tune into the finals of the major tournaments and watch a young hero wrap honor and glory in the stars and stripes of home.

If this were just a minor gap in the procession of American tennis heroes, it wouldn’t be worthy of mention. But it’s seven years since Pete Sampras played his last major, retiring with what was then the record for major titles, and three years since Andre Agassi called it a career. There’s still no one in sight.

This became embarrassingly evident at the U.S. Open, where not one of 18 American men in the draw reached the quarterfinals. In the 128 years since the tournament began, that’s happened exactly as many times as medical science has found a cure for the common cold: zero

If you can believe what the Prince racket people say on the Internet, tennis is booming in this country, with more people — and more kids — playing than ever before. So where are the champions? Where is the successor to a long and glorious honor roll of champions stretching back more than 80 years?

Since the Roaring Twenties, we've had Bill Tilden, Tony Trabet, Pancho Gonzalez, Jimmy Connors, John McEnroe, Agassi and Sampras.

Then it ended, as if lightning struck the game’s power supply. It sputtered fitfully to life for a brief moment when Andy Roddick won the U.S. Open in 2003, but then the sport’s American screen went black for good.

James Blake was going to be the next star. He isn’t. There have been a few others — very few — but none that have captured our hearts and minds the way the Williams sisters did and the way Melanie Oudin is doing now.

At this year’s U.S. Open, America’s greatest male hopes left so fast, you wondered if they had double-parked. Roddick had played in the Wimbledon final and gave us a match for the ages against Roger Federer. Roddick left in the third round. John Isner, the man who beat him, was gone one round later. After Roddick, the fifth-ranked player in the world, the United States doesn’t even have another male ranked in the top 20.

It’s six years since an American male has won a grand slam title. That’s mind-boggling.

Lulls and gaps are natural in sports. Even the Yankees have gone as long as 18 years between championships. Other countries have done a great job of producing champions of their own.

But increased competition is not enough to explain it. The same thing is happening in golf, but America has continued to churn out one all-time great after another.

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Golf is a good analogy. Like tennis, it’s primarily a country-club sport. So there is no shortage of preppy kids out there slugging away. And there should still be kids around who are old enough to remember and have been inspired by Sampras.