Boris Becker boomed serves past his elders to win Wimbledon at 17. Michael Chang outran and outwitted them to win the French Open at the same age.

Martina Hingis won three Grand Slam titles before she even turned 17.

Teenage prodigies have been as much a part of the tennis landscape as entourages and grunts. This is hardly a modern phenomenon: Charlotte Dod won the women’s title at Wimbledon at age 15 in 1887, and Sidney Wood won the men’s title at 19 in 1931.

All of which makes the current dearth of teenage stars more striking. At a time when youngsters adopt professional habits and attitudes increasingly early, at a time when agents, sponsors and federations are particularly focused on finding and funding the next big thing, the extreme youth movement has hit a roadblock.

“Tell me one teenager you know who’s coming up right now; I don’t know any,” Roger Federer said in an interview earlier this summer.

There are some well-regarded prospects, including the 18-year-old Filip Krajinovic of Serbia, the 17-year-old Bernard Tomic of Australia, the 19-year-old Grigor Dimitrov of Bulgaria and the 18-year-old Ryan Harrison of the United States, who reached the quarterfinals at the grass-court tournament in Newport, Rhode Island, last month.

But none has been a consistent factor on the men’s tour, where not one teenager is in the top 100. For now, the top teenager in the A.T.P. Tour world rankings is Federico del Bonis, an Argentine who is 127th and has yet to make his Grand Slam singles debut. And del Bonis will not be a teenager much longer; he turns 20 in October.

The situation in the women’s game is less extreme. Only a year ago, there were three teenagers in the U.S. Open quarterfinals: Melanie Oudin of the United States, Yanina Wickmayer of Belgium and Caroline Wozniacki, the eventual runner-up, from Denmark. But Wozniacki, the top seed this year, and Wickmayer have turned 20, and no teenager was in the top 20 last week.

The highest ranked is the 19-year-old Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova at No. 22, and there are only two other teenagers in the top 80: Oudin, 18, and Polona Hercog of Slovenia, 19.

Tour age restrictions that limit the number of tournaments for girls ages 14 to 17, phased in during the 2000s to avert burnout and injury, could be playing a role. But at least for now, no new paradigm is in view for a sport that generated teenage champions like Chris Evert, Tracy Austin, Steffi Graf, Monica Seles, Hingis, the Williams sisters and Maria Sharapova, who is still just 23.

There clearly has been a major shift in the men’s game in a short time, too.

In the 2000s, Lleyton Hewitt, Andy Roddick, Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray broke into the top 10 as teenagers, while others, like Federer, Richard Gasquet and Juan Martín del Potro, broke into the top 20 as teenagers.

“Everybody was like a teenager when they broke through,” Federer said. “Today, they don’t, so I don’t know if it’s because the top 10 is preventing them from doing that or if it’s just gotten so much more physical, and that’s why it is hard.”

The consensus among players, coaches and agents is that the physical element is indeed the primary factor, although there should be room for the exceptional talent to make an impact.

“It’s very difficult to play at the highest levels and sustain it these days,” said Paul Annacone, the former American player who once coached Pete Sampras and has begun working with Federer. “I think it takes bigger, stronger athletes, which is what is out there. But it takes time for them to develop.

“You have your aberrations,” he said, “but not many.”

Ken Meyerson, an American agent who has long represented Roddick, said he thought players were now physically peaking at 26 or 27. “It seems to take a lot for the 18s, 19s to make it,” he said. “Sam Querrey took almost 100 tour matches to really find his groove.”

Myerson used the example of one of his clients, Thiemo de Bakker, a Dutch player who won the Wimbledon juniors in 2006 when he was 18. “Things become a little too easy; he doesn’t practice or train hard enough and never really puts it together,” Myerson said.

But, Myerson pointed out, the 21-year-old de Bakker won 15 matches in a row last summer and four titles on the Challenger Tour.

Ever-increasing depth is a factor, Federer said.

“It’s a tough thing now, because down to No. 100, it becomes so hard to dominate these guys day in and day out,” he said. “It’s already hard enough for us, so imagine for a youngster coming up.”

The increasing challenges also appear to be shortening the other end of the tennis career timeline.

“We were all talking about it in the locker room at Wimbledon,” said Ivan Ljubicic, a veteran from Croatia. “There is no player younger than 20 in the top 120, and there are also really few older than 30.”

Ljubicic, 31, has been one of the exceptions, winning the biggest individual title of his career this season at the Masters event in Indian Wells, California.

But Ljubicic, the oldest member of the top 20, said he was given a big lift by skipping the Davis Cup the week before, allowing him to be fresher than most of the opposition.

“But look what happened after Indian Wells,” said Ljubicic, ranked 17th. “I was injured in Miami, played Monte Carlo, injured myself in Rome and didn’t play until the French Open. Maybe I asked too much of my body. I have to work hard to win matches but be careful not to work too hard, otherwise I break down. To find the perfect balance is not easy, and every day the perfect balance changes.”

And even for the youngsters, the physical toll is clear. The huge-hitting del Potro, who was sensational in winning last year’s U.S. Open at 20, has not played a tournament since January because of wrist surgery and will not defend his title in New York. Kei Nishikori, an acrobatic Japanese player, reached the fourth round of the 2008 Open as a teenager before a major right elbow injury spoiled his 2009 season.

“I really believe that in our sport, it’s going to be a 10-year career or shorter, definitely, if we don’t change something, and I don’t see what can be changed,” Ljubicic said. “I think all these records we see now — like Roger in the semifinals of Slams and winning all these tournaments — are going to be so difficult to approach. There won’t be enough time for great players to match these records.”

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