Tennis needs a forward thinker
Posted: Tuesday, March 03, 2009 3:52 PM
I heard this during NBC’s coverage Saturday of the Accenture Match Play Championship. Someone e-mailed a question to analyst Johnny Miller, asking why there aren’t more match-play events.
Miller, with his trademark candor, answered that since Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson, Vijay Singh and Sergio Garcia all lost Thursday, the event lost its luster. NBC heavily promoted Woods, but Sunday’s final was between Geoff Ogilvy and Paul Casey, two players who certainly don’t elevate interest or drive ratings.
I laughed, and thought about Arlen Kantarian.
The former head of professional tennis for the United States Tennis Association was a forward thinker. He brought change to a sport that was often glacial in its progress.
And Kantarian often talked about the difficulty of selling tennis to television. The problem to Kantarian: There is no guarantee of the best players playing on the weekend. Meanwhile, Woods almost always makes the cut. So he plays on television on the weekend -- even if he’s not on the leader board.
Kantarian’s point is valid, although not warmly received by the sport’s purists. Several remedies were discussed: Byes into the quarterfinals for top seeds, byes into the draw for the previous week’s finalists, and a round-robin, early-round format, which was tried and quickly ended.
I always marvel at the talk show comparisons between champions in golf and tennis. There is no common basis on which to compare them. Woods can shoot 77 in the first round of the Masters and still win. Federer has 30 unforced errors in the first round of the French Open, and he may well lose that match.
But golf wins the perception battle. Like Federer, Woods carefully parcels the events he plays outside the majors. But Woods always plays on weekend television. Tennis has enjoyed Federer’s astounding streak that has produced eye-popping results. He’s played in 14 of the last 15 Grand Slam finals. However, Federer has had to earn that weekend television time. Five wins in single-elimination matches in each Grand Slam for Federer to get the air time that is a virtually certainty for Woods at the majors.
This is not to slight Woods, but rather to praise Federer. And to highlight why I laughed at Miller’s answer. He gets it. And golf gets it. Now that Kantarian has moved on from the USTA, I hope tennis finds more thinkers who get it.
