Tennis Needs Transfusion Of New Stars
More bad luck for tennis.
On the day Pete Sampras made brilliance look boring while winning his fourth Wimbledon title, Tiger Woods won another golf tournament.
It was the lament during the Wimbledon fortnight: Tennis is in trouble, big trouble, and needs to find its own Tiger Woods.
That Sampras and women’s champion Martina Hingis are both exhibiting their own special genius is not enough. Television ratings are down. Ticket sales are down. Luck is bad. Two full days of rain stopped Wimbledon’s momentum in its tracks during the first week.
When Sampras and Hingis are healthy, there is no one talented enough to challenge them. Each won the Australian Open, but - and here’s that luck thing - Hingis was recovering from a knee injury and Sampras picked up a stomach virus at the French Open, and each ailment contributed to the two stars’ losing and leaving without a championship.
If both had been healthy in Paris, tennis would have had a real buzz going into next month’s U.S. Open: two players aiming for sweeps of the season’s four Grand Slam tournaments.
Instead, all tennis has to offer - at least us Americans - is a couple new stadiums.
We are, by the way, considered provincial in other parts of the world because we don’t get excited unless there is an American competing for the No. 1 spot. And more than that, we seem to want two Americans. Sampras admits he needs a rival and it would help immensely if that rival were Andre Agassi, who is either (a) on the longest honeymoon in history with wife Brooke Shields or (b) in unannounced retirement because he realizes the inevitable, that he can’t beat Sampras.
That’s the reality. Here’s the problem - we’re not getting bright, new prospects. We’re getting bright, new stadiums.
There was a nice, spanking-new Court One at Wimbledon, and it was half-empty last week when Greg Rusedski and Cedric Pioline squared off in a men’s quarterfinal match. Rusedski is a British citizen. This is the nation’s most important sporting event, and half the ticket holders didn’t arrive on time.
The U.S. Open will have a new stadium court next month. It was named after Arthur Ashe, a fitting gesture.
New stadiums instead of new players.
If tennis is dying, building new stadiums won’t save the game.
Sports needs to be about more than luxury boxes or new concession stands or even individual brilliance. People want competition with their winner.
Instead of raising money for new facilities, maybe the tennis gurus should sit down and figure out what it is about Agassi that sells tickets, draws people to the television set, causes a buzz. And then figure out how to get more of that from its players. And to find players.
Like it or not, tennis will not thrive without a handful of American stars, male and female. Tennis’ own Tiger Woods might be somewhere, but it probably isn’t at the country club or the private tennis club where most American players come from. The USTA would do well to start planting some more seed money in the cities and on the playgrounds where there might be some athletes who want to be the next Sampras or Agassi but who can’t afford it.
The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Diane Pucin Philadelphia Inquirer