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The Last Volley The untimely death of men's tennis by David Zaretsky [Illustration by Leksi Weldon-Linne] Arthur ashe stadium in Flushing, Queens, surged with the electricity of a capacity crowd. New Yorkers, fed up with the terrific losses of the Mets and bombarded with a barrage of 9/11 reminders, watched two great aging champions, Pete Sampras and Andre Agassi, battle for the 2002 US Open championship. An ailing game received a well-timed shot in the arm last Sunday as another entry was added to the sports lexicon under the heading "storybook ending." |
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But in tennis years, Sampras, 31, and Agassi, 32, are nursing home denizens, subject to every over-the-hill cliché you can find on a Shoebox Greetings card. There is speculation that Sampras may hang up the cross trainers after his triumphant victory over Agassi, preferring to go out on top after almost two years of abject futility, and Agassi may follow suit. And when they are gone, tennis will die. Young people introduced to sports will be led down a list that conveniently leaves out tennis. Doubles games will turn to Canadian doubles games. Tennis has fallen face-first into the main course, a knife in its back, a crowd of dukes and debutantes gasping, a suspicious butler sneaking off into the foyer. The game is dead, but whodunit?
No one can do it This fall, unlike those past, fans of almost every one of the NFL's 31 teams have the right to believe that their team has as good a chance as any to succeed, make the playoffs, possibly even win the Super Bowl. A sport usually dominated by long dynasties created by great management and better coaches, today's NFL lacks a super-team like the 80's 49'ers or the 70's Steelers. However, it is this league-wide parity that keeps the entire country riveted to Sunday and Monday telecasts, pre-game shows, and John Madden Ace Hardware commercials. The absence of an "America's Team" has essentially increased the NFL's nationwide popularity, restoring a competitive balance which in turn keeps the interest of entire cities (except Cincinnati, sorry Cincinnati) banking on a Patriots-esque march to the 'Bowl. But while parity has turned the NFL into a thrilling free-for-all, it has changed men's tennis into a sport without heroes, lacking regional alliences and without a legitimate star. With the atrophy of Sampras's skills, and Agassi's recent penchant for semi-final losses, tennis is left with a dozen or so 18-21 year old hotshots barely keeping afloat in mediocrity's primordial ooze. The day after the US Open, the top ten men's tennis players were as follows: 1 Lleyton Hewitt 2 Andre Agassi 3 Marat Safin 4 Tim Henman 5 Carlos Moya 6 Juan Carlos Ferrero 7 Albert Costa 8 Tommy Haas 9 Andy Roddick 10 Roger Federer I apologize if I misspelled anyone's name. As you can see, with the exception of Agassi, the ATP top ten reads like an international slo-pitch softball team roster. "Look alive Federer! We've got O'Reilly's Pub next week!" Grand slam wins on this list? A respectable ten. Agassi has seven. The other nine have managed a whopping three slams total. Three!! There are four of these things per year! Welcome to a sport of a dozen Phil Mickelsons who can pile up the stats like so many Swedish meatballs at a potluck dinner, but consistently choke on the pressure of the big game as they would on said meatballs. Let's put it this way. Ten years ago, my generation was learning the game, trading OP shorts for K-Swiss sneakers, trying on wristbands, and cringing at the word "catgut," all the while pretending the ball machine was Pete Sampras or Andre Agassi for our three cross-court forehands and a backhand. Today's kids still look across the net and see a mechanical Agassi or Sampras, but were too busy teething to watch them in their prime. Bottom line: this generation is searching desperately for a young superstar. King of the Court can be played for only so long before its time to fill the ball hopper. Maybe this is lost on you. Maybe you have never had a tennis lesson. Maybe you are lying. Enrique made me do it The Williams sisters are awesome. In every tournament they enter, they wind up playing each other in the finals. They have matured brilliantly from the cornrowed firebrands they were originally tagged, and have succeeded in separating themselves from their overbearing father. Each of their post-tournament trophy raises shakes him one rung further down from Earl Woods on the sports-dad hierarchy. They do what nearly all of the men cannot: Win Big and Win Often. Unlike the men's game, women's tennis is hardly a bastion of parity, and never has been. Instead, it has been consistently dominated by two or three superstars who run off love-love victories against hyphen-named nobodies. With same-sex coupling controversy, stabbings, and celebrity marriages, women's tennis is as entertaining as any daytime soap with just as much melodrama and just as many characters. And let's not forget grunting. Lots of grunting. But women's tennis is the underachieving child of the sports world. Despite all the resources it has with which to concoct a wildly successful and influential enterprise, women's tennis is virtually ignored; with the exception of one player. Anna Kournikova. The contemptible strumpet of the WTA - a veritable plague eating away at the very foundation of women's sports - Anna Kournikova's presence and behavior have changed women's tennis from a forum for female role models into a USO show. And yet, she is by far the most popular female athlete in the world based solely on her sex appeal and off the court appearances. She has never won a tournament, loses in the first round more often than not, and seems to take a rather cavalier attitude towards both of these facts. Mr. and Mrs. K - looks like your daughter might be on "the pot." If Anna Kournikova were as passionate about her serve-and-volley as she is about the 1995 Detroit Red Wings, she might be the best tennis player in the world. After running the table in the junior circuit, Kournikova was touted as the second coming of Billie Jean King, only to become mixed up with magazines and pop-stars after it was discovered that no one really cared about her talent for the game. A playgirl and a pin-up, Kournikova draws record crowds of catcallers and whistlers, all desperately wishing for a peek under her tennis whites and coming dangerously close to getting it. With sound bytes like "I have a lot of boyfriends. Every country I visit, I have a different boyfriend. And I kiss them all" and "I'm like an expensive menu. You can look, but you can't afford!" Kournikova has single-handedly nullified any progress made by women's sports to portray its participants as strong, independent figures and suitable role-models for girls trained on Barbie and Tiger Beat. The Williams sisters are forgotten completely, overshadowed by Kournikova, the one-trick pony, the hardcourt sex goddess with the perfect body, a brain of brass, and a game of absolute trash. Just do it Five years ago, when Tiger Woods won the Masters by two touchdowns, I said that he would kill tennis. In between games of Mario Kart, a sixteen year-old me commented on the future of the so-called "country club" sports, predicting golf would overtake tennis, led by its swoosh-adorned toothy savior. Today, tennis lies lifeless while golf thrives in both spectatorship and practice. It's not just for corny dads and blue-hairs anymore. This year, the US Golf Open was held at Bethpage State Park in New York; the first time the tournament had been held at a public golf course, and the first time it had been held within 20 miles of the Apple in 10 years. I had the privilege of attending the third round of the tournament, and was surprised by what I saw. The crowd surrounding Tiger Woods was absolutely unmanageable, fifteen or more rows deep on every hole, the crowds huddled on the natural amphitheatre of the seventeenth hole, orgasming collectively at anything within 20 feet of the cup. In total, 200,000 people saw some piece of Tiger's Open victory this year over the course of four days. That's 50,000 per day. This is a golf tournament, people. A golf tournament. Seven years ago, these things were so empty you could get close enough to pick out the tuna melt scraps in John Daly's mustache. While golf's popularity has increased dramatically since Woods turned professional, tennis has been the victim of a steady decline. Just like emo killed ska, golf killed tennis, stealing an oversized hunk of the game's fickle audience and tucking them neatly in the golf bag of Eldrick Tiger Woods. Ask a kid who he wants to be when he grows up. Tiger Woods is on the list. And really, what kid doesn't want to be Tiger Woods? Win after win. Constant attention from fans, celebrities, and media. The Sunday red shirt and black pants. A Nike "I am Juan Carlos Ferrero" campaign just doesn't cut it. Tiger Woods is the man, and every kid discovering sports wants to be the man. Michael Jordan was the man. It's Tiger now. Rackets are quickly traded in for five irons, school and community golf programs spring up all over the country, and tennis pays the price. In an age of extreme games, juiced balls, and obligatory rap albums, tennis is forced to stand idly by and watch its audience shrink and its number of participants dwindle. Sure, tennis's most devoted fans will always return to the game they love, and high school boys will always love Anna Kournikova as much as white people love Bon Jovi. But, when Agassi and Sampras are gone, the grand fanfare of their exit will leave behind a colorless, faceless mass of nets and lets and fault lines, a game mired in its autumn years, unsparked by the excitement of authentic sports drama and untouched by the grace of a hero. David Zaretsky, B'03 has ice water in his veins. |