Like waves on the Pacific Ocean, they just keep coming off the courts of San Diego.

For more than 50 years, pro tennis players have been growing in the county, and it seems they come in clusters.

From the days of Brian Teacher and Kelly Jones in the 1980s, through the 1990s and 2000s with players like Coco Vandeweghe, San Diego has always produced some top talent.

Right now there again seems to be a cluster of great players coming from our area. Brandon Nakashima has been an established Top 50 pro for several years. The Svajda brothers, Zach and Trevor, are having excellent success, with Zach playing in the U.S. Open main draw three times in the last five years, and Trevor reaching the finals of the Boys 18s Nationals this summer and making U.S. Open qualifying.

And Katherine Hui, a top female junior, looks to have a very bright future as she heads to play for Stanford this year; Hui reached the finals of the USTA Girls 18s Nationals at Barnes Tennis Center here in August and competed in the U.S. Open qualifying draw.

And don’t forget the WTA’s Cymbiotika San Diego Open has now been around for two years, and boasts top players like Ons Jabeur, Coco Gauff, and Madison Keys.

So what’s the reason for all this success coming from San Diego every few years? Tennis experts in the area point to several factors helping this current boom.

“The coaches are very good, and the climate is very good,” said Angel Lopez, a coach for four decades in the area and who runs the Angel Lopez Tennis Academy. “You can play year-round, outdoors, and get better every day.”

Indeed, the warm weather in San Diego is helpful, but the access to top coaches is a major factor as well.

With coaches like Larry Stefanki (who once advised John McEnroe and Tim Henman, among many others), Guy Fritz (father of current Top 10 player Taylor Fritz), Christian Groh, and others, local San Diego talent have the ability to be shaped by outstanding tennis mentors.

“You have talented kids and you have talented coaches who know how to harness that talent,” said Ryan Redondo, the director of the Barnes Tennis Center and tournament director of the Cymbiotika San Diego Open. “We have so many of them here who give kids the fundamentals and training they need to go along with that talent.”

In addition to coaches and great weather, the cornucopia of competition helps develop great players. Hui said she has definitely gotten better thanks to “having so many really good players to play against so close to home.”

“You get these kids pushing each other, and they make each other better,” said USTA national coach David Nainkin, who coaches out of the USTA’s training complex in Carson. “Taylor Fritz had a group of talented players pushing him, and Nakashima looked up to Fritz, and the Svajda boys can look at what Nakashima is doing and feel good, too. The environment of competition is good for them.”

In addition to playing each other, there’s the glut of playing opportunities in the San Diego area that helps. Redondo said that just within an hour’s drive, there are Level 7 beginner tournaments, all the way up to UTR (low-level professional) events, and of course high-level junior play at places like Barnes, which hosts the USTA Girls Nationals every year.

That’s why a player like Trevor Svajda can get so good despite never getting on an airplane to play a tennis match until August, when he went to Kalamazoo, Mich.

“Kids get so many opportunities, and the more you give players opportunities, the more they’re going to seize them,” Redondo said.

It all adds up to San Diego being a feeder area to the pros for many years, with no let-up in sight.

“It gives me a sense of pride that our town has produced so many great players, now and in the past,” Lopez said. “But it also makes me feel old, because some of these great players have kids now who are pros!”