UnderFed Cup

The news out of Monte Carlo is fairly predictable today; The Mighty Fed and Rafael Nadal rolled, losing a grand total of nine games between them. There were three nominal upsets:  always-tough-except- when-he's-not David Ferrer clubbed No. 6 seed Novak Djokovic, and always-tough-except- when- you-expect-him-to-be Tomas Berdych knocked off No.5 seeded Tommy Robredo. And Richard Gasquet, who's just slight better at kindling the hopes of his fans than he is at extinguishing them, ushered out the ATP Tour's very own Eyeore, No. 7 Ivan Ljubicic.

Meanwhile, the Fed Cup weekend is shaping up, largely under the radar - at least in the U.S. I just did a quick check over at Court Coverage, and the only story Kamakshi links to having to do with Fed Cup is a Reuters report on a "misunderstanding" that led to the Chinese federation leaving its two top players at home for the tie with Italy. Bob Larson's underpublicized, excellent site is no help either (correct that: Larson has a comprehensive Fed Cup preview that I overlooked).

I would link to the Reuters story, but I can't access the story via any of the links, or even through the Reuters home page, no way, no how. But hey - the thing begins on Saturday, will anyone notice?

This is as good a time as any to ask that you lurkers in Russia, Italy or France (the hosts for three of the four weekend ties; the fourth quarterfinal is behind contested at Delray Beach, Fla.) to step forward and let us know if Fed Cup is getting a lot of attention in your local media. One of the most baffling things to me is how far off the sporting radar the Fed Cup remains in the U.S. I mean, Venus and Serena Williams are playing at Delray, in the tie vs. Belgium; you would think that alone would be Big News. This puzzling state of affairs is the subject of my freshly-baked ESPN post.

I'm going to travel over some of the same terrain for a moment before going off-road. Here's what I don't get: Nothing has greater prestige than international competition (Olympic Games? World Cup soccer? ) and there is no women's sport that has anything like the international visibility of tennis. Furthermore, Fed Cup is a mirror-image of the Davis Cup (okay, the format is slightly different).
The women who take part are internationally renowned and celebrated - undoubtedly the most visible and well-known class of female athletes in the world. Fed Cup, in short, is gender equality come to fruition.

So why the resounding silence? I don't know, but if I were Martha Burke of the National Council of Women's Organizations, I would forget Augusta National and start marching around in front of the New York Times or ESPN network buildings wearing that symbolic bhurka. Why do U.S. media outlets so resolutely ignore Fed Cup?

Another perspective on this can be mined from a joke a woman told on the elevator after I dropped off Luke at school this morning. I think she was paraphrasing Bill Maher: The weird thing about the Don Imus controversy is that he was the only one watching the NCAA women's basketball tournament. . . Or something like that. . . My point here is that women's college basketball has been promoted with formidable resources and striking vigor, yet it still seems to leave sports fans cold (although I'm open to any evidence to the contrary).

I'm not a big fan of women's basketball, although I wish the players and fans of that game the best of luck. To me, women's hoops in this day-and-age embodies a woeful miscalculation that rises out of the philosophical position that the differences in gender are mainly matters of perception - cultural bad habits, there to be corrected by progressive thinking and social pressure. But watching women's basketball makes me more rather than less conscious of the fact that, person-to-person, men are bigger, faster and stronger.

That doesn't matter in the more critical or serious dimensions of life, but that's just it - sports is not a critical dimension of life. I would gladly pay a woman attorney the same fee I do a man, but if I have $50 bucks to spend on a ticket to basketball, I am going to spend it watching the men of UCLA, not the Lady Vols.

The fact that the women hoop stars wear uniforms very much like those of the men, and have adopted (or share) so many of their mannerisms, only strengthens the impression that there is some kind of weird, copycat kind of thing going on, and the one copying never looks good in that scenario. But I don't feel that way about tennis. Maybe I'm just superficial, and find women in short skirts or dresses more appealing than women in baggy shorts. And I'm aware of the differences in the tennis played by men and women, thank-you very much, but have no trouble judging them, at least in technical terms, through different lenses. Maybe if I watched more women's basketball, I would be more willing and able to do that; I don't know. What I do know is that I'm not even tempted to find out if that's the case.

Which brings us back to Fed Cup. In tennis, women have carved out an independent niche - compared to, say, the WNBA and the NBA, the WTA and ATP are virtual equals. So why aren't people, especially the media movers and shakers, more eager to advance the general cause of women by putting their social consciousness to work promoting Fed Cup?

Oh, you can say that's the ITF's job, or the job of its national affiliates, like the USTA, but let's face it - the media will go either where it knows everyone is heading, or (if you're with me in the camp that thinks the media creates as much news as it covers) where it thinks it has some vague, social obligation to go. Yet it won't go near Fed Cup.

This is one of the reasons I hope that our overseas readers post comments on the relative importance of Fed Cup in their respective nations. I'm often accused of being "pro-American", which I find amusing, because I am pro-American, and proud to be so, although I like to think it's not at the expense of being fair, or of understanding of the valuable, positive elements in all cultures. But I have to admit that the twists and turns in the gender-equality debate in the U.S. baffle me.