Tennis Deserves More (and less) Love
Happy July 4th- the day we celebrate our independence from that brutal regime across the Atlantic that had the audacity to tax us and take away our guns! Undeterred by these developments, England proudly holds it’s biggest and most prestigious sporting event at this time every year: The Wimbledon Tennis Championships. So let’s talk one of my favorite sports.
Tennis often gets a bad rap. To some who equate sport with violence it is viewed as a “sissy” sport; there’s no contact with the opponent, no blood typically drawn during a match, and no concussive activity – unless you run into your doubles partner or a tennis post a la James Blake. To others, it is criticized as an “upper crust” sport, associated with folks decked out in pretentious whites having a match at “the club.” The singing quartet spoof in the movie Trading Places did the game’s image no favors.
Then there is the silly jargon and baffling scoring system which likely undermines the sport. For example, instead of starting a game at zero, an actual math proposition utilized in virtually every other sport, tennis substitutes “love.” There is nothing to love about having no points in the game or no games in a set. Moreover, it adds to tennis’ undeserved reputation as soft. Nothing quite turns my stomach than hearing a group of novices announce, “love-love” to start a game.
And there is the rest of the scoring system. Why does it go from love to 15 to 30 to 40? It’s not even an equal progression. Why not simply 1,2,3,4? When the game score is tied after six points, tennis calls that “deuce.” It sounds like a vaginal cleansing product. Deuce is not suggestive to the average person of a tie, nor is it especially macho.
But putting aside these quirks, tennis is one of the best sports on the planet. From an athletic standpoint, it is an elite sport. A highly successful tennis player must not only possess outstanding hand-eye coordination, but also strength, speed, footwork and agility.
People often rightfully marvel at a batter’s ability in baseball to hit a 95 mph fastball and to distinguish it from a 85 mph breaking pitch that moves several inches from its point of origin, all in less than a second. Indeed, many proclaim hitting a major league pitcher to be the single hardest thing to do in sports. But in tennis there are some serves struck at over 150 mph and there are spins that dramatically change the speed and the trajectory by several feet. Furthermore, while the pitcher has to throw the ball within a small zone close to the batter, greatly enhancing the batter’s chances to make contact, a tennis player commonly delivers the ball 10-30 feet away from his/her opponent.
A tennis player must also excel at hitting the ball from both sides of his/her body- forehand and backhand; whereas in baseball the batter simply picks his best side (unless he is a switch hitter). Moreover, a batter merely needs to hit the ball somewhere where a defender is unable to catch it – and he has 2.5 acres to play with. If the batter barely touches the ball in foul play he is given an unlimited number of further chances. In tennis, a player needs to make contact with a ball landing within the court on the very first try or he/she loses the point. Further, the tennis player has to place the struck ball in a much narrower space – over a 3 – 3 1/2 foot net but not beyond the 78 foot distance between baselines and also between the 27 foot sidelines in singles.
Aside from the athleticism of the sport, tennis is a game that requires great stamina, especially in singles. Most pro sport events last two or three hours; a five set closely contested match at the French Open can last twice as long. Baseball players stand around most of the time yet still come in for a “breather” every half inning. Football players generally only play on either offense or defense, and the cumulative amount of play from whistle to whistle in the entire game remarkably is only about 11 minutes. Basketball is very taxing physically, but players get a 20-minute halftime break and sit out for portions of the game. Hockey’s one minute all-out shifts can be brutal but there are two intermissions and most players only skate about 1/3 of the game. Soccer is often promoted as the most physically demanding sport since most players never leave the “pitch” (except when they fall down and fake like they have just lost their liver on the field, only to “miraculously” return to the game after receiving a brief ride on a stretcher, water, and expressions of sympathy). But in soccer there is also a 15-minute halftime break and long stretches in the game where players are clearly coasting.
In tennis, by contrast, the player plays offense and defense, is afforded no halftime or any meaningful break, aside from 90-seconds between odd games and 120-seconds between sets. In addition, the singles player has no one else to count on to retrieve and hit every ball; it can require sprinting back and forth for more than 20 shots to finish a single point (the longest professional rally purportedly lasted 643 shots). Indeed, tennis players have been known to run sprints totaling several miles in the course of a five set match.
And tennis is the ultimate thinking man’s game. Once the game begins a tennis player is on his/her own to craft winning strategies: to accentuate strengths, identify and exploit an opponent’s weaknesses, and alter a game plan to adjust to what an opponent is doing. There is no coaching allowed during the match like in team sports. Even in golf, the player has a professional caddy to provide input on distances, wind direction, and green speed. Decisions in tennis are reserved to the player alone and are made on the fly, often while tired or frustrated.
Tennis is also arguably the best sport at advocating sportsmanship. I know all about the antics of McEnroe and Kyrgios, the unnecessary Sharapova-like grunts which seem designed to disrupt the opponent, and the use of trainer timeouts by some to try to gain a strategic advantage rather than treat actual injuries. And there are examples of boorish behavior by rec players and in USTA leagues when uber-competitive types become enraged. But tennis is for the most part a gentleman’s game- rarely does a player taunt or shout at his opponent.
Moreover, tennis is the only sport (outside the professional level) that is regulated and refereed entirely by the players themselves. Can you imagine a high school or college basketball game where the players decide whether a collision was a charge or a blocking foul? Or a football game where the receiver decides whether he was held by the cornerback covering him? How about a hockey player advising his opponent that he must go off for two minutes for that slash across his ankles? Or a catcher calling the balls and strikes?
And after every tennis match, regardless how hard-fought or disappointed a player may be in his performance or his opponent, the combatants typically shake hands. It occurs in hockey at the end of a playoff round. It occurs sporadically in football, and routinely after college basketball games. But only in tennis is that ultimate act of sportsmanship performed after every match and at every level.
Further, the participants are the most diversified of any sport. Men and women, young children and septuagenarians, all races and creeds, and most nations on earth play the game. While it has often been viewed historically as a country club sport, other than buying a racket and balls there isn’t a huge cost barrier to it like in golf or hockey or football. You need to have access to tennis courts, which can be a problem in Minneapolis in the winter without means to afford indoor courts, but there are an estimated 250,000 courts in the US and more than 750,000 worldwide. So while they may not be as prevalent as basketball courts or soccer fields, tennis courts are not limited to the elite.
Finally, you only need to find one other person to have a game and, in many cases, you can play this game your entire life.
There is good reason that tennis has been ranked as the world’s 4th most popular sport (behind soccer, cricket and basketball), eclipsing baseball, hockey and American football. So when some folks seek to diss tennis be sure to give it its proper cred, if not love.
Photo Copyright: Ostill, 123rf.com
