Mornin', folks. We had a meeting a little earlier to review Tennis's Internet operations, and the news was all good on the growth front. So I want to thank you all for poking around at Tennis.com; you're the reason that the magazine supports me as, primarily, an Internet columnist. And just close your eyes for a moment and try to listen to all those trees growing - the ones that will never be turned into pulp and pages advertising ED medications if you shift your reading habits to the Internet.
I went for a run this blustery, rainy morning and bumped into my pal Tyrone. He and I run together sometimes, in one of those curious, limited relationships you often have in urban life. I've known Ty for years. He's a Muslim from Trinidad, and a contractor by trade. He's one of the most sincere, hard-working and honest people I've ever had the pleasure to meet. He's got a wife and two kids whom he loves dearly (one of them is seriously handicapped and must attend a special ed. school), and a cheery, perpetually optimistic outlook. He's also a general sports fan who knew nothing about tennis until after we talked about the sport a bunch during our workouts, and now follows the game on television.
The first question - rather, exclamation - out of Ty's mouth this morning was, "Hey, what happened to James Blake, he didn't make it in that tournament!"
Well, I told him, Blake lost to a pretty decent little player by name of Roger Federer. Ty's eyes grew wide and he said, "That Federer, he's like Tiger Woods, man. I like the way he plays, you can tell he really studied the game. But that guy - Roderick, Robrick, the American guy, I didn't see him anywhere. What happened to him?"
We talked a little about Andy Roddick. I tried to explain that Roddick was a player with a great deal of power and a big heart, but one who doesn't possess all the tools and skills of some of his rivals. Ty seemed skeptical of my explanation; after all, he has seen Roddick rain down thunder on rivals. So why couldn't the guy win that tournament?
Then Ty asked me if winning the doubles has the same value as taking the singles. He enjoys watching doubles, and didn't quite understand why it was not better covered. "Yeah, I heard that Venus and Serena (Williams) lost, but then they never told me who won it."
I tried to explain why doubles gets second billing and very little media coverage. It occurred to me during this conversation that I was seeing tennis through the eyes of that mythical average Joe who likes sports, without becoming obsessional about them, and who enjoys watching the game of tennis, yet finds that a typical viewing session raises a lot more questions than it answers. Whenever I talk with Ty, I walk away with a newfound appreciation for the degree the degree to which tennis is a game of nuance; a game for aficionados who are sufficiently committed and enterprising to wade into a maze of texts and subtexts.
I realized as we parted that getting into the game demands a high ante. For instance, what other major sport has two divisions (singles and doubles) that are presented with a nod toward equivalence (doubles is, after all, a part of all tournaments) but such dramatic lack of equivalence in how they are presented and covered? I also wondered why Tyrone is especially interested in U.S. (he had not a word to say about Tsonga, but he wanted to know what happened to Roddick)? Is it that the television execs shaping interest and opinion (with their scheduling choices), or is Ty's interest driven by his American identity?
