Here's one more Miami report from TENNIS Magazine photo editor and staunch traditionalist David Rosenberg. Sorry I can't tell you about Sharapova vs. Venus, or Radwanska vs. Hingis, but the Tennis Channel's coverage is from the ATP Masters Series feed—not such a great service at a dual gender event.
Steve,
I'll say it: I like tennis exactly the way it is. I admit that I'm in favor of instant replay (though I agree players shouldn't have limited challenges) and I'm on the fence about coaching. But I never liked it when players chose music during their introductions, when tournaments began seeding 32 players, shortening sets, using the super-tiebreak third set and round-robin formats—oh, and they never should have moved the WTA season ending championships out of Madison Square Garden.
One change that could be made for the better, but hasn't: making tennis an outdoor/indoor sport. In the year 2007, players and fans shouldn't have an entire day cancelled due to weather. People have been building roofs for years now and it's time tennis follows, as Wimbledon will soon do. During all the rain delays in Key Biscayne this week, I've walked around the grounds and it seemed I actually saw more alternative forms of tennis than actual tennis.
Something called beach tennis, for example, has shown up on the grounds of the Sony Ericsson Open. It looked to me a cross between beach volleyball and badminton only played with tennis racquets and what appeared to be a harder version of a nerf ball. I'm certain it's a great workout, and you can also play it in the rain. Call me old fashioned but I like my beach volleyball on the beach, my badminton in my backyard, and when I bring a paddle to the beach, it's for kadima. I heard that argument again when watching beach tennis: It will bring more fans to the game. Which fans? Who are these people who can only understand tennis if it's played on a beach with a volleyball net and a child's ball? If this is the only way they are going to want to watch tennis, how are they going to sit through the real thing?
Finally, there's a new thing called night tennis, which was shown off this week in Miami. The idea is to combine an evening at the disco with tennis. Again, it could be fun with all the music, computer animation of players projected on the walls, deep, scary electronic voices announcing the countdown until the matches begin, playing in total darkness with glowsticks wrapped around your forehead, etc. Oh, and you can drink and smoke while watching. Once more I read from a marketing executive at Sony Ericcsson that "there is a need to get tennis to be at its rightful place, as the hippest, coolest sport that it used to be."
OK, everyone's intentions are good: they want to bring new, younger people to the sport. But again, who are these people? Most people here were interested in night tennis for a while, but it seemed they also remembered they were in a club, with an open bar and the ability to smoke and dance and hang out, and that's what a good number of them did. The fans who were into the night tennis? How will the real thing translate to them? Is the point of these events to introduce people to tennis or to convert the traditional fans to a sport that is nothing like the one we love?
I like going out and that's one of the nice things about covering an event in a city like Miami. You can watch
tennis all day (when the weather cooperates) and if you get up early enough you can take a walk on the beach and play a little kadima. At night, if the matches end early enough, you can get to a club or bar, have a few drinks and dance until 4 A.M. But there's no reason to combine these things; it only detracts from the unique experience of the tournament itself. Forgive me if I pull up my virtual rocking chair and sit on my virtual front porch and talk about the good old days, but I like my tennis the way it is, without sand and without glow sticks and without all of these new people who can't understand why it's such a great sport.
David