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by Pete Bodo
It turns out that my thoughts on Venus and Serena Williams' performance at Madison Square Garden in the BNP Paribas Showdown for the Billie Jean King Cup last night were a little more complicated than I had anticipated, so it took me a little longer to rassle them down onto paper than I had expected. But those speculations ought to be live, over at the ESPN tennis home page, sometime soon. Here are some further thoughts:
To to tell you the truth, I'm still feeling torn about last night's festivities, and probably in a way that I won't be able to reason my way out of any time soon. The event seemed to be trying to do many different things at once, and that's sometimes a recipe for not doing anything well.
Was it a significant, historic moment, as evidenced by the presence of former US President Bill Clinton (although that's not exactly a causal relationship) and that ceremony honoring Billie Jean King?
Or was it a fairly grotesque exercise in waste and excess, representing a certain tone-deaf attitude on the part of the promoters and sponsors in these stressful times, using "social awareness" as cover?
Here's how it worked. Jelena Jankovic and Ana Ivanovic were the "seminfinal" opponents for, respectively, Venus and Serena Williams. These semifinals were one-set affairs, with no ad-scoring to boot. Jankovic and Ivanovic, who both lost, walked away with $250,000 each for what amounted to a half-hour of work - and work that was undertaken largely with something like a clock-puncher's resignation.
Who could blame them, though? They were made an offer was impossible to refuse (250k guaranteed, for stopping in New York to do half-hour's work as I make my way to California?). Besides, is anyone nuts enough to think that Jelena and Ana felt morally obliged to prevent an all-Williams final in Madison Square Garden, on a night honoring Billie Jean King?
And while it was certainly a welcome, helpful gesture when the suits (during the trophy presentation ceremony) trotted out the great big replica check representing a $50,000 gift to a charitable foundation associated with the event (the Dream Vaccine Foundation), that donation - while it sure beat a poke in the eye with a sharp stick - seemed oddly meager, when compared to the prize-money showered on the four ladies who performed on the court (Serena earned $400,000 for her win, Venus got $300.000).
I don't know, maybe I'm just channeling the financial anxieties that beset us all in this crazy time, but wasn't it John McEnroe (one of the commentary team last night) who - in a much more solvent time - said that the $1.5 million dollar winner's prize offered at the Grand Slam Cup (a week-long, November tournament, bringing together the best performers at the Grand Slam events of the year) was "obscene?"
Like I said, there was an awful lot going on at once, and some of it was jarring and conducive to creating cognitive dissonance (dang, I'd promised myself never to use that term, but I'm caving). Bill Clinton made a speech about Billie Jean's towering contribution (his exact quote was: She has probably done more than any other woman in the world to empower women and educate men. . .
Quite an endorsement, that. But I had to wonder what Jelena and Ana were thinking as (or if) they listened to Clinton address the crowd and wax poetic about social justice, and how they privately viewed this Clinton, who isn't exactly a beloved figure in Serbia. Did that matter to them at all? Did the girls want to meet Clinton? Marvel at the silver-haired, smooth-talker's gift for American-style self-celebration, self-indulgence, and self-congratulation? Were they aware of Bill's history with women, and think, Maybe Billie should have worked a little harder on educating that one. . . Did they smile and think that American are perpetual optimists? Preposterous hypocrites? Deluded uber-materialists? Wishful thinkers?
I'm fond of Billie Jean and respect all that she's accomplished. But there's a template to these celebrations now and a familiarity to the rhetoric and encomiums, and a number of people today have asked or said something to the effect: Surely there must have been some other women in the world who advanced the causes of freedom, dignity and justice, maybe even before Billie Jean came around?
I think Billie Jean really needs to be careful about "the brand"; she's untouchable now, but nobody remains that way forever. Eventually, she may be coming up against the same problem as Clinton - the perception (in Clinton's case, it's already got traction with many people) that she/he is an icon for sale, happy to go to the highest bidder.
These issues had to be percolating in the minds of anyone who cares about such things, although the audience at the exo seemed to consist of the already converted, with a healthy segment of the indifferent - those who were there first and foremost to see Venus and Serena, and to a lesser extent the Serb stars. In a way, packaging this show as something far more significant than a tennis exhibition may have been a strategic error, at least in terms of how it impacted the tone and tenor of things. While there was some good shotmaking on display, especially from Serena and Venus, their approach was all-business in a ho-hum, Wednesday afternoon second-rounder kind of way. There was no electric moment, nothing to make you sit back with a big grin on your face. They did not pull me into the match; instead I could almost feel them keeping me out. Funny, how that works.
I suppose it was serious; the intent was serious, yet it was impossible to mistake this for the proverbial "serious" tennis moment. For gosh sakes, the warm-up actsemis were one-set, with no-ad scoring! That doesn't scream Roland Garros final - it screams Ronald McDonald, sneaking out behind Serena to snatch the racket away from her in a comic moment while all the little kids in the stands laugh. But it seems tha even Venus and Serena wanted this to be something more than an exhibition featuring the stock, crowd-pleasing elements, and that's probably where all those other, weighty elements came into it - as part of a quest for instant credibility and legitimacy earned somewhere other than on the field of play. But tennis is an enterprise in which all that usually matters is what transpires on the field of play.
