Red, White and Blue

By JTStally, September 15, 2006

Remember when you used to watch tennis? Back when Pete Sampras and Andre Agassi went head to head in the finals? Or when Serena and Venus duked it out grand slam after grand slam to see who was the better Williams sister? Remember?

I think I speak for most Americans when I say I don't care about tennis. I don't play tennis. I don't watch tennis. I just don't care about tennis.

Of course, you're questions is: why would I write about something I don't care about?

Because, I used to care about tennis. I do remember when Sampras and Agassi faced off. Sampras beat Agassi in three US Open finals and the 1999 Wimbledon final. I remember watching Wimbledon every morning during summer vacation before I went to the beach. I remember Sampras' dominance as he won seven of eight Wimbledon's from 1993-2000.

Roger Federer won Wimbledon 2006. I didn't watch him win, and I didn't watch any of his other matches either.

I used to play tennis too. I'd play with my parents; my dad and I would play almost every single day during the summer, back when I was in middle school. I'd play with my friends. I even played a year of junior varsity as a freshman in high school.

Where has all my passion gone?

Well, where has all the red, white, and blue gone?

The men's game is dominated by one man, Roger Federer from Switzerland, which might explain why most people's feelings for him are neutral. The only man that can rival him is Rafael Nadal, who has beat him in four of five finals this year, although three of those wins were on clay courts. Federer has won four straight Wimbledon's and three straight US Open's and is hard to dislike because he's so good. However, he does not inspire tennis in the United States, because he does not have any crowd appeal to Americans, as Pete Sampras and Andre Agassi had.

The women's game is struggling in the opposite way due to the lack of a clear star. Maria Sharapova is very popular but more for her looks than her dominance. The current number one seed is Amelie Mauresmo. If you can't picture her in your head, you're certainly not alone.

When it comes to Americans in the game, we have Andy Roddick! Yay! He's great, if you like losers. In the US Open, he lost his third grand slam championship to Federer and dropped his lifetime record against Federer to 1-11. At this point, Americans need to accept that Roddick will never turn into the international phenomenon that Americans had hoped would when he won his only grand slam, the US Open, in 2003.

Roddick does not pose the championship attitude needed to win the big matches and will always be overmatched by Federer and Nadal. To kill the buzz more, Roddick isn't a charismatic player. He ripped into the media during the US Open, seemingly frustrated at the media he implied he couldn't tell reporters if he was back or not and they should ask the experts in the booth upstairs who made all the judgements.

The second best male player from the United States is James Blake. Blake, the world's eighth seed, is a capable and competitive player, but certainly won't be successful enough to draw Americans back into the game. He has lost all three of his matches against Federer this year.

On the other side of net, American women don't even provide a player, like Roddick, to lose the big match. The highest ranked American woman is Lindsay Davenport at eleven and she is the only American currently ranked in the top forty.

The last time I sat down to watch a full tennis match Venus Williams beat Sharapova in the 2005 Wimbledon semifinal. Like most nineteen year old males, I was pulling for Maria. Since then, however, Venus has begun to fade and has dropped to 43rd in the world rankings. Her sister, Serena (94th), mailed in the tennis racquet long before Venus, and although she still plays, she seemingly lacks the drive to ever return to her glory days when she battled her sister to be the world's best player. The Williams sisters met in six grand slam finals from 2001-2003. However, since then, they've only accounted for two grand slam victories: the 2005 Australian Open (Serena), and the 2005 Wimbledon (Venus).

I don't care about tennis because I don't have anything to care about. I don't feel connected to the tennis tour. Take the Tour de France, for example. Everyone loved when Lance Armstrong won seven in a row, and everyone wanted Floyd Landis to win this year (before the steroid scandal), solely because he was an American. But what will happen next year, will any American really care about the Tour de France when a Spaniard, German, or Italian win? No! They won't even remember his name.

Should we be alarmed?

I don't think so, then, as I've said before, I don't care about tennis. The hard truth is there's nothing we can do. If tennis lacks American skill, it lacks American skill. We can't just inject steroids into our tennis players like we did in track, baseball, and cycling, and just hope they win. We need to accept that success in sports is cyclical and we can't always have a superstar. The United States will become the pride of tennis again, just not now. And when that happens, we will care. And we will remember the glory days of Pete Sampras, Andre Agassi, and the Williams sisters.

http://sports.wizbangblog.com/2006/09/red_white_and_definitely_blue.php

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