The French Open. Wimbledon. The U.S. Open. These tournaments and countless other smaller venues break the monotony of regular season baseball (early regular season baseball at that) and the NBA playoffs. Just think, two months from now, the NBA playoffs will be over. The tennis alternative may not initially seem like a viable one, but my purpose in this series of columns is to cover tennis from a balanced international perspective and provide an alternative to the shoddy coverage usually provided by the major sports networks.
Here is what I, a regular tennis watcher, know from the coverage of the major networks. On the men's side, a cabal of young, hungry, and supremely talented American men have been toying with us and the entire tour. They have just been waiting (and salivating) for the right opportunity to seize control of the game. These players include Andy Roddick, James Blake, Mardy Fish, Jan-Michael Gambill, and Robbie Ginepri. Other players are inserted into this group as the need arises because the marketing strategy changes as often as their win totals do. Some weeks it is the "Terrific Triad" (I made that up) if Roddick, Blake, and Fish perform well. Other weeks it is the "Fab Four" - if Ginepri has a good tournament and necessitates an expansion of the Triad to accommodate his American virtue. Reciprocally, when most of these players do not live up to such unreasonably high expectations, the fallback marketing strategy is to milk the Roddick cow for all it is worth. As for me, I like the guy’s game. Aside from having one of the most dominant serves in recent memory, his inside out forehand is a spectacle in and of itself. My overall point is that tennis is not a one-trick pony and marketing the sport as if it is, is unsustainable.
As a side note, it is not as if the coverage suffers from an American bias just because they highlight American performances more than those of non-Americans. Sometimes it is blatantly biased. In the first round of the Australian, when Roddick beat Chilean Fernando Gonzalez (a top-twenty player, quarterfinalist at two Grand Slams, and my favorite player – a lot more on this in future columns), I could have sworn that Gonzalez had done something horrible to the mothers of ESPN commentators Mary Carillo and Patrick McEnroe (and I guess John’s mum as well – but he wasn’t calling the match).
Side note within a side note – listening to an extremely elderly Cliff Drysdale so easily co-opt pop rap lingo when referring to Patrick McEnroe as “PMac” is always the highlight of my summer. Neither man could be whiter. Neither man could be more undeserving of the truncation. Not that Ms. Lopez is either.
All this denouncement of a very successful professional came amidst a torrent of Roddick praise. The match was very close and Gonzalez lost two controversial points at crucial times in the second and third set.
On the women’s side, the marketing strategy is roughly the same notwithstanding some minor nuances. Serena is clearly the dominant player on tour. In ten matches with any pro in the WTA, she would win nine. Maybe eight against Venus. When Serena and Venus were first starting to make an impact, the American hype marketing strategy was in effect. The cabal was comprised of the Williams sisters plus Capriati and Davenport. Then the Williams sisters separated themselves from the pack, Hingis retired, Seles got old, and Kournikova’s career didn’t blossom (on the court at least). Next, Serena started destroying her sister and hasn’t played all that much in the past year.
While watching commentators attempt shallow praise for WTA competitors in a tournament that doesn’t include an oft-injured Venus or a presumably uninterested Serena is interesting, I still get a familiar yet displeasing sensation. It was the same feeling I had right before and during the 2000 NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament. Just before the tournament Cincinnati’s Kenyon Martin got hurt and Auburn Chris Porter was ruled ineligible. Two of the best teams in the country weren’t in the dance. This fact tainted both Michigan State’s eventual title and UNC’s and Wisconsin’s Final Four berths. Not that these teams were undeserving, but the whole thing might have been different if some of the best had been there. It is just a sour taste. Just like when we are presented with the inevitable Clijsters vs. Henin-Hardenne final in a Williams-less tournament. Both are amazing players but…
Why did this happen? Blame Sampras. Well, kind of. A book could be written on this question and I’m sure one has. All I’ll say is that we were blessed by the dominance of Sampras, Agassi, Courier, and Chang. It produced interest in the sport. All had exciting and vastly different styles. It was an amazing era of tennis. And it was an era of amazing American tennis.
However, tennis fans and tennis commentators should broaden their horizons and realize that it is not in our best interests as fans or in the long term interest of the sport to over-hype all American tennis players in some feeble attempt to recreate the 90s. We should also realize that the era just prior to this period was just as amazing. In the post-Connors and McEnroe (JMac) of the late 80s, when the likes of Edberg, Becker, Lendl, and Wilander dominated, tennis was just as exciting.
What we’re seeing now with the over-hype of some fairly average American tennis players is both a bad marketing strategy bent on forcing viewers to believe that another golden age of American tennis is upon us and a deep seeded psychological desire to see our own win. It is nice to see your own win. However, if new fans are introduced to the sport through an exclusively patriotic lens, they will not be exposed to some of the best non-American talent and could lose interest.
Furthermore, the sport could easily lose fans who are becoming increasingly frustrated (myself included) by the coverage of a cabal member in an uninteresting match when a compelling match between two highly ranked, but non-American, players could be covered instead.
Tennis coverage is starting to suffer from what is an often frustrating trend in other sports: regional coverage. If I live in Durham, N.C., I don’t want to watch Duke destroy whatever 16th seeded lamb has been brought to the slaughter. I want to watch the 5/12’s or the 8/9’s of the world do battle. The difference in tennis, an international sport, is that all of America (a whole country last time I look at Rand McNally’s) is the preferred region.
My goal in this column is to address these trends and shed light on some deserving players. Americans will not get short shrift. Their successes will hopefully be part of a balanced report on the men’s and women’s tours. Even if I do occasionally undersell an American performance, fans can easily get their American fix as the market is already oversaturated.
Subsequent columns, before the Grand Slams start, will be devoted to international players to keep an eye on, the Roddick mystique, and a potential budding romance between PMac and Millo (Mary Carillo). Just kidding. I am really not going to devote a whole column to that second one. Just a few paragraphs.
Mike Lee is a graduate student in communications at the University of Georgia who lives and breathes college hoops, college football, and pro tour tennis.
