The Human Yawn

First, a little housekeeping: I'm not sure where Steggy found the armadillo (should we make it the official TW mascot, or would I be accused of choosing the animal that's the most like me?), and I don't think i'm gonna ask.

For those of you interested in the Tennis in the Green Zone story that has been the subject of a few of my posts, the current (October) issue of Tennis has the whole nine; it's by Haider Abbud, as told to me. For a sense of the subject matter, you can read my web intro and check out some of the photo outtakes. This is an amazing, moving story and I urge you to read the whole thing, athough I'm not sure it will be free (I'm pleading with my editor) even when it becomes available (on the web or the hard copy of the magazine), any day now.

You may have noticed that the new blogsite (this one) does not have a "Search" function through which you can track down past posts and/or comments. This feature will be added soon, and it will be powered by one of the Big Boys (Yahoo, Google, etc.) so it will enable you to do a lot more than just read TW rants.

Now for the business at hand:

It seems that this guy, Bill Center a Times of London "Special Correspondent" (in journalism, this means a guy you wouldn't dream of hiring, but who might be useful when you need to throw a little red meat to one reader constituency or another), has got some members of the Tribe ready to call a War Council. I decided to read and fisk the piece, after which I'll have some thoughts to add.

Let's start, though, with the basic question. What's so "special" about this special correspondent? My feeling is that some bright media boys in Cool Brittania developed some high-con notion about maybe finding a guy who's duller than a three-part BBC documentary on the lace-manufacturing industry in Belgium, and incapable of disguising his B (for Bore) factor behind the curtain of what usually passes for style.  Someone who furthers the stereotype of the thick, hapless, Yank. Close your eyes: can't you see Bill Center wandering down a Parisian side-street in Bermuda shorts and white tube socks, looking up and exclaiming, "I'll be darned, that looks just like one of our pigeons up there! Well I'll be!"

Note to The Times, you guys have Simon friggin' Barnes, you should be secure in the quality of your native writers!

I'll give Bill Center this, though, in a weird way he achieves the ultimate ambition of writers who think about this kind of thing: the perfect wedding of content and style. Content, zero. Style, zilch. Marriage consumated. This guy is the Human Yawn.

So let's look at his story:

As 25-year-old Roger Federer was stroking his way to third-straight  US Open title to extend his Grand Slam count to nine, including four consecutive Wimbledon championships, tennis fans began wondering why he isn’t mentioned in the same breath as Tiger Woods. [[Actually, I don’t remember many tennis fans wondering that, and even if that were the case, it’s pretty obvious that you couldn’t mention Tiger in the same breath because that breath was already taken by Roger.]]

Tennis, after all, is far more physically demanding than golf - even though the current generation of players rush the net about as often as the seasons change. [[rim shot, please!]]

Shouldn’t Federer be rated among the world’s greatest athletes? Shouldn’t he be ranked right up there with Woods? Ahead even.

You’re kidding me, right? Federer is not Woods. [[Glad you noticed, big guy!]] He isn’t even Maria Sharapova. [[There’s another brilliant insight! He must have noticed that only one of them was wearing a little black cocktail dress!]]  There’s a lot more to this than the ability to hit a ball. Once, men’s tennis was great drama. Borg. Becker. Connors. McEnroe. Sampras [[Oh yeah, he really lit the joint up with his antics!]]. Agassi. [[Also note: Sports journalism once was compellling. DeFord. Young. Jenkins. Wertheim.]]

And championship matches drew great television numbers. [[Very few tennis matches ever drew ‘great’ numbers, in any era]]  The players were personalities [[except for those who were acorn squash]] , the matches events [[and the events happenings!]] . Each shot carried excitement [[but if it dropped it, there were janitors to clean up the mess]]... all the way down to a rocket Roscoe Tanner serve [[hey! Wasn’t it “rocket” Rod Laver? And if you think Tanner’s serve “carried” excitement, you should have seen the  buzz when he bounced a check, and that exiciting event, his indictment!]].

Plus, there was entertainment beyond the game [[you could see it if you closed your left eye and peeked through the keyhole]] . Admit it, you enjoyed those John McEnroe tantrums [[Ah, Bill. in the therapy business, they call this “projection.”]] . You turned up the volume to make sure you didn’t miss a barb directed at the umpire or some poor volunteer linesman. [[And when it was over, you switched channels to the Cat Torture Network!]]

Today, who cares? [[U.S. Open shatters attendance records,  546 international networks broadcast the Grand Slams, the world cries with Andre Agassi. I guess you’re right, Bill. Nobody cares.]] Federer is a fine Swiss movement [[Bill - how many times has the copy desk warned you - no toilet humor!]] . Nine Grand Slams is the sixth-highest in tennis history [[yes, but how does it rank in curling history?]] . Still young, Federer’s only five shy of Sampras’ record of 14.[[You might have been better off pursuing a career in mathematics, Bill]].

No question, Federer, who routed Andy Roddick 6-2, 4-6, 7-5, 6-1 in the US Open final, is the ranking player in the world today, and for the foreseeable future [[yes, but tell me honestly, Bill. Does that really matter?]] . But he’s boring us stiff [[pot, meet kettle]] . And he’s not the only high-ranking player out there who can make that dubious claim [[Actually, I don’t recall Roger ever claiming that he’s boring anyone stiff. On the other hand, wasn’t he quoted as saying, “If Bill Center said it, it must be true!”]] . Roddick. Rafael Nadal. Line ‘em up. [[Yeah. Line them up. Then watch Federer rip their tummies open and eat their internal organs, even though he’s doing it with a smile and stealing glances at Mirka, thinking, Wonder what this ultra-squeezable hotty sees in me?]]

Tennis, please give us another Connors or McEnroe [[Why, so you can write some boring rant about how sportsmanship has vanished from the game, and you can walk around the press room steaming  from the ears because one or the other of them called you a butthead to your face?]] . Someone, anyone with a little charisma and panache. Someone please rush the net. [[Someone please tell Big Bill about continuity and logic in his prose.]]

Want to know what is wrong with men’s tennis? [[I know what ‘s wrong with men’s tennis: they allow guys like you to write about it  without pressing charges.]] Watch Tiger Woods. On any given Sunday, there is a smile on Tiger’s face as he charges to his next win.[[Oh yeah, that Tiger, he’s some crackling personalty! Those hard-charging golfers are something else, eh? Wasn't it your icon, John McEnroe, who spoke these immortal words about golf: I thought you have to run for it to be a sport. . .]]  The camera loves him [[consider the option: white fat guy named Bill C - whoops, John Daly!]] . So does the microphone [[Man, who knew that these mere inanimate objects had such secret, emotional lives?]]. Tiger is loveable [[Bill: Tiger is happily married]]. We walk the course with Tiger [[I get the feeling that the only place you ever walked was to the free buffet in the press tent. Not that there’s anything wrong with that!]]  We’re there with his every shot [[Oh yeah, our lives hang in the very balance!]] . In victory, he is humble  [[Stop the presses, this actually seems accurate!]] . In defeat, he is gracious. [[In a draw, though, the guy is living hell!]]

Federer can’t even be gracious in victory [[Nah, all those guys in the locker room are just kidding when they talk about what a great guy he is. They just love pulling your leg!]] . When he wins, he embarks on strange journeys of self-admiration [[Bill: take you hands off the keyboard. Back away toward the door, slowly. . .]] . When Muhammad Ali proclaimed “I am the greatest” we listened  [[Ah. . . how could  you not? He was the biggest loudmouth in sports history .]]. When Federer heads in that direction, we reach for the remote [[Back to the Cat Torture Network, I presume]].

Not that many of us were actually watching the last act of the US Open [[This has been made abundantly clear by this inane column]]. The main storyline of this championship was the farewell appearance of Andre Agassi [[I smell oxymoron!]] . And his farewell match drew a large television audience [[You certainly are right on top of current sports events, thanks for paying attention!]]

But the top draw, particularly for those target males aged 18-34, was the chance to see Sharapova, who defeated Justine Henin-Hardenne 6-4, 6-4 in the women’s final. [[I don’t know where you get this opinion masquerading as a fact, but it kind of creeps me out that you would even go there, much as I believe it’s okay for old reporters to get in touch with their Inner Adolescent]].

Federer? Not that we really cared, but he was up against the first Sunday of the National Football League season [[So what? And doesn’t this mean that tennis isn’t afraid to go head-to-head with the biggest bully on the block?]] . Even NASCAR raced on the Saturday night rather than go up against the NFL. [[Wow, those NASCAR folks sure have big Wilanders!]]

Is Federer a great player? Absolutely. Is he one of the all-time greats of tennis? Definitely. Is he Tiger Woods? Not even close. [[You got that right, Bill. Roger’s the one in the white headband holding a tennis racquet. Tiger’s the one dressed like  he’s going to the office - which I guess he is - holding a golf club. Look at the pictures. Now try it again. After a little practice, you should no trouble at all telling them apart.]]

Okay, shall we move on now?

This entire, tired, "bring back Connors and McEnroe" is annoying for a few reasons,  even though I'm all for getting new incarnations of those characters (mainly because of my general affection for mayhem and upset apple carts). The real problem is that many commentators, including some prominent, legitimate ones, somehow think that this would somehow constitute salvation for a game that is moribund only in their own imaginations. That is, their thirst for signature Connors or McEnroe-esque personalities tell us a lot more about them than about the game of tennis.

So here's the lab scenario. Midway through a fairly tight second set in the 2006 Andy Roddick-Roger Federer final, the umpire makes a critical overrule on behalf of Roddick. Federer wants the call changed and doesn't think he should have to waste a challenge on it, going on the theory that it's the ump's screw-up. The ump refuses. Federer takes a swipe at the umpire's high-chair and breaks a racquet. The crowd starts booing. Federer then takes his busted racquet and decapitates an entire row of the gernaiums in the court-side flower boxes.

Somebody from the stands throws a cup of beer. Federer runs to the stands and grabs the guy by the shirt front, screaming obscenties. The guy's six-year old daughter starts crying, while his wife is thinking, "This Federer guy, he's soooo hot when he's mad!"

Federer slugs the guy. Up in the press box, Bill Center (wait, Bill Center doesn't go to the press box, he's watching on TV) gleefully rubs his hands. That night, Federer's freak-out is shown over and over on television, the network news as well a sports channels. The next day, Bill Center writes a column about what a great sport tennis is and, as a guest on ESPN News, I'm asked if Federer's outburst is proof that tennis is once again popular - that once again people really care about tennis. I drone on about how important "personalities" are to tennis.

The weird thing about this scenario is that it is exactly what would happen if Federer did such a thing.

There's another element here, which i think of as the Rubbernecking effect. People can't resist looking at car wrecks, so any time one occurs on a tennis court you can be pretty sure that legions of people who couldn't care less about tennis suddenly develop a keen if fleeting interest. What, exactly, does this do for the game? About the same thing that Tonya Harding did for figure skating. That's not entirely a flip analogy. I have a funny feeling that all those people who once around the water cooler talking about Nancy Kerrigan and figure skating did not really experience road to Damascus conversions to the glorious sport of figure skating because of it. Harding went away, and so did they.

It's hard to quantify this, because I do think that Connors and McEnroe did create many new tennis fans, and for reasons that have a great to do with their extraordinary competitive abilities as well as their compelling styles of play. But I don't believe those are the fans who are complaining about tennis being "boring" today. I think they're still around, and it's okay for them and us to miss Jimbo and Mac (although it's not as if he's gone into some spider hole).

McEnroe and Connors brought a lot of passion and personality to tennis. So does Marcos Baghdatis, Marat Safin, Serena Williams, Andy Roddick, Nikolay Davydenko (okay, I'm kidding there). What is it that the old school boys brought, in addition? Sensation. And that's a mixed blessing.

If you want to argue that the thing missing from Big Time tennis today is sensation, I'll have to agree with you. But do we miss it that much, and is it worth missing? That's an open question. Twenty years ago, the same guys who now want someone/anyone to channel the spirits of Connors and McEnroe were fulminating about how guys like Connors and Mac are ruining and desecrating the game. The fantasy driving this entire "tennis is boring" narrative is an intrinsic, omni-present antagonism toward tennis, which is the same kind of hostility many people feel toward any enterprise that has the patina of exclusivity, or whose practitioners are perceived as "beautiful people."

That is, it's the same antagonism that many feel toward golf, although every once in a while a figure - Tiger Woods, Jimmy Connors - comes along to challenge the stereotype and win over some converts. Then things settle back and become the same-old, same-old.

Tennis doesn't need greater "personalities", it needs smarter or more discriminating sports fans and viewers.