To attend one of Bollettier's academy programs, players will pay between $50,000-69,000 depending on age and whether they board.

"Pat is working his ass off getting more people playing the game, but what happens is when they get to be 13, 14 and have a lot of potential -- that's where the cost factor comes in and they have to come up with millions of dollars," Bollettieri said.

"We've got more people playing now, more youngsters, but in order to get the champions ... the people are blinded by what they see every day."

Courier, who won four grand slam titles in the early 1990s and topped the world rankings at the age of 22, is also loathe to blame anyone for the lack of American men's success.

"America has no ownership of the top ranking. It's a free-for-all," the U.S. Davis Cup captain told Open Court.

"Tennis is a very individual sport and I think it'd be very naive for a country to take the credit for individual players. Does America take credit for Tiger Woods? I'd say Earl Woods deserves the credit -- he's the one who really drove that.

"So in the tennis landscape, you look at the Williams sisters. Their father was a big driver, my family was a big driver, so I don't think we can put any blame on anyone."