NOT MELBOURNE—As one journalist put it, covering this year’s Australian Open was like covering the 24-hour race at Le Mans, except that the race lasted for two weeks. The upside was that there was always something going on somewhere; the downside was that any story ideas that didn’t deal with the news of the moment were likely to get shelved—it was very tough to squeeze anything extra in. Below is one post, about the relative merits of Australian and American television commentators, that I thought of doing virtually from the start of the tournament until the end, but never found the right time.
“Oh, what a shot!”
That sounds like a perfectly reasonable reaction from a British journalist to a winning half-volley by Andy Murray. So why is it met with smirks and double takes from his surrounding colleagues?
“You’re 10 minutes late on that one, B--------,” jokes one of those colleagues. “I'd already Tweeted about that shot by the time you saw it.”
“Ten minutes” was an exaggeration, but the writer’s shout had come well after the rest of us witnessed Murray’s minor masterpiece. That's because the journalist had been watching it, on the monitor above his desk, on Channel 7, an Australian network that was obliged to show the action with a seven-second delay. The rest of us had been tuned in to the “World Feed” on our monitors, which was showing the matches live. It reminded me of a smart phone commercial: “Dude, that shot was so seven seconds ago.”
A media credential for this year’s Oz Open allowed you to sit inside Rod Laver Arena and watch live matches. It also, if you chose, allowed you to sit at a desk a few feet from Laver Arena and watch the matches going on inside on four separate channels. With the click of a mouse, you could move from ESPN, where Pat McEnroe, Brad Gilbert, Darren Cahill, Chris Fowler, et al held court; to local Channel 7, manned by Jim Courier, Todd Woodbridge, Sam Smith, Rennae Stubbs, and occasionally Lleyton Hewitt; to Fox Sports, where those wild Irish boys John McEnroe and Pat Cash were teamed up; to the World Feed, where Fred Stolle was the most recognizable voice in a low-key but intelligent crew. Finally, if you were sick of all the chatter and just wanted to see the match itself in silence, there was a channel for that as well.
This is an impressive roster of pundits, and it doesn’t even include the Tennis Channel, all of the non-English-speaking broadcasts, the Aussie Open’s radio feed, and the hundreds of thousands of words written about the matches every day in print and online. Each of Petra Kvitova's returns of serve in Melbourne probably inspired more analysis and commentary than Hamlet has in the course of 400 years.
Overkill? You might say that. But this torrent of talk on our monitors came with an upside: It was easy to compare the commentary style of one country, or network, to another. If you were quick enough, you could get three different opinions on a single Feliciano Lopez botched volley—isn’t that everyone’s dream?
Australia and the United States are the two most successful nations in the sport's history, and each can showcase of a wealth of tennis knowledge in its broadcasts. From what I saw during an hour or two spent switching channels at my desk, their approaches in the booth highlight their different approaches to the sport, and sports, in general.
The first thing you noticed when you switched from the World Feed to ESPN was how much louder everything sounded in America. From sneaker squeaks to the ball hitting the strings to the tone of the commentators, this was tennis at its most revved up. ESPN’s announcers were both more enthusiastic and more promotional than their Aussie counterparts. The lead commentator on any broadcast, whether it was Pat McEnroe or Fowler, tried harder to build the drama and tell the “story,” the network’s catch-all word for anything that happens at a tournament.
Their language and delivery were bolder as well. After one winning Lopez volley against Nadal in their early-round match, Pat McEnroe punctuated the moment by yelling “Got it!” as soon as the ball touched down. After Lopez came forward and knocked off another passing shot by Nadal, Gilbert said, with the sport fan’s edge of aggression, “He made him pay!” Here is how the same moment was analyzed by one of the sober Aussie commentators on the World Feed: “If he can continue with those tactics, it will be interesting to see what Nadal does.”
ESPN’s style is derived from team sports, which makes sense when you think of the audience the network wants to reach. It’s an approach that was summed up hilariously by a British reporter who mimicked the U.S. commentators’ lingo: “Be careful,” he said to a colleague who was making fun of him, “or I’ll take you to the woodshed and give you a beatdown.” Both reporters burst out laughing. "Woodshed" and "beatdown" did sound ludicrous in an English accent. I silently vowed to myself not to use either of them anymore (it hasn't been easy).
ESPN’s love of drama-building produces another phenomenon that we don't see much of among the Aussies: the bold prediction. This is a Gilbert specialty, and you have to admire his persistence with them. Incorrect guesses are ignored and quickly forgotten. In the match between Jo-Wilfried Tsonga and Kei Nishikori, Gilbert showed his first-hand knowledge of the Japanese player’s mindset when he speculated, accurately, that he would take an extended bathroom break at the end of the next set. But BG wasn’t quite as accurate with his next prophecy. After Tsonga held serve confidently in the third set, Gilbert said that now “Jo Willie” (to the world outside ESPN, Tsonga is just “Jo”) “is going to roll.” Nishikori won the next game, that set, and the match.
Going over the top is what Gilbert is paid to do. He’s tennis’s toned-down version of an ESPN staple: the cartoon commentator—think Dick Vitale and Lee Corso. But that doesn’t mean he can’t analyze a match. In Rafa vs. Lopez, BG was the only commentator on any of the networks to notice how well Rafa was anticipating Lopez’s service placement, a product of having spent so much time across the net from him in past matches and practice sessions.
That’s the kind of observation that the Aussie commentators specialize in. Where ESPN brings a team-sports style to tennis, the Aussies, whether on Channel 7 or the World Feed, show off their instinctive understanding of the sport. It’s no accident that the best analyst on ESPN is an Australian, Darren Cahill, though even he has learned to punctuate the action by raising his voice dramatically when needed.
You don’t get a lot of that Down Under. Stolle, Hewitt, Todd Woodbridge, John Fitzgerald, and Roger Rasheed were all generally understated, and generally very good, over the last two weeks. They brought a sense of detail and realism that never pushed the drama too hard—you always had the sense that they were players or coaches once, and that tennis was interesting and complex in its own right. When Lopez anticipated a Nadal pass, Rasheed commented that Lopez knows that “Rafa likes to pass into space”—he rarely goes behind or directly at his opponent with a passing shot, and he loves the crosscourt. Watching Bernard Tomic losing his first-round match to Fernando Verdasco, Woodbridge noted that because Tomic is a fast player, he has trouble slowing down when things aren’t going well. It was as if Tomic heard him. As the match progressed, he began to take more time before critical points—partly, it must be admitted, because he was tired—and he began to win them.
What’s odd is that the lead analyst on Channel 7 is Jim Courier, an American. Courier takes his share of criticism Down Under. He can seem over-earnest among the sly, easygoing Aussies, and his interview style was described in one local paper as akin to a Vegas lounge lizard's. But I like Courier; he’s level-headed, not too egotistical for a former No. 1, and is still connected to what players are saying about other players in the proverbial “locker room.”
The Australians, always mindful of their country’s tennis legacy, can show an over-reverence for the game’s legends. At this point, it seems that Rod Laver walked on water when he played, while Roger Federer is inevitably referred to as “the Great Man himself.” But I’ll miss their commentary for the rest of the year. They respect tennis enough, and assume that their Aussie audence respects it enough, to talk about it in its own subtle terms.