There’s an awful lot of great tennis being played these days, all over the world, and thanks to networks like ESPN and the Tennis Channel a lot of it makes its way onto the box. To that end, I’m periodically going to give up some of this real estate to extra sets of eyes and ears, to bring you the very best tennis analysis available on the Web, or elsewhere.
These won’t be just any old eyes and ears either—they’ll be the faculties of a select but loosely knit group I’m calling “The Cabal.” They are the hard-core gamers—the unrepentant tennis nuts who would gladly cry out “I am not worthy” and fling themselves at the feet of, oh, a Wayne Bryan, Olga Morozova, Robert Lansdorp . . .
Some are old-school, some are tennis punks, some are simply battered and beat up public-court warriors, now content to put up their feet and impersonate the kind of know-it-all who once made them want to puke. Some of them work here at TENNIS, others travel under cover of night.
The one thing all Cabalists will have in common: a knowledge of the game so deep and scary that it ought to come with the warning label: Caution. Prolonged exposure can lead to Chillness or Def.
And here’s the beauty of it all: You, too, can be one of the Cabalists. Consider this a personal invitation to join the most exclusive but least exclusionary club in tennis. You want to join the TennisWorld Cabal? Watch the Davis Cup matches this weekend—any of them—and shoot me an e-mail of 250 words or less with any observation or bit of analysis you think sticks it like an Andy Roddick serve.
I’ll post the best ones—if yours goes up, that automatically makes you a Cabalist.