The Never-Ending Sagas Are Back

Yes, it is that time again...

Slow season in tennis is here.

If you can't get interested in football, "futbol," or basketball, boredom is slowly setting in.

The Slams are over. The season is coming to an end. The year-ending WTA Championships and the ATP Masters Cup are all that are left on the professional circuit. Well, there is also the Davis Cup finals. I can't help but wonder, however, how much interest that final will generate outside the countries of Croatia and the Slovak Republic.

There are a few tournaments here and there, mostly indoors. Football has started in the U.S., basketball soon to come...

So, it's that time of the year — things are slow around the tennis world. Really slow!

It's time to fall back on the good, old, never-ending sagas of the tennis world that come up over and over again, yet seem to never get resolved. Every year, there is an addendum to a certain issue at hand, same moral arguments are rehashed, few people change their opinions, but one thing remains constant: the saga never ends.

In fact, I am not even sure that people want these sagas to end. Why would we want to kill them when we can use them during slow times like these?

They certainly beat boredom!

So here I go...

Doubles: To Be or Not to Be!

The ATP made some radical changes on its doubles rules, in an effort to encourage top players into playing doubles (read more about it in a previous article entitled "ATP's New Doubles: A Necessary Evil"). Most of the players did not like it and 45 of them, mostly doubles specialists, decided to take ATP to the courtroom.

Now another chapter is added to the soap opera. The Masters Series organizers in Madrid decided to suspend the doubles competition in their upcoming tournament. They feel that as members of the ATP, they want no part in organizing a competition that benefits directly the parties who are suing the ATP. They will simply donate half of the prize money for doubles, which amounts to $170,000 euros, to the ATP retirement plan. It seems like a noble choice, or one that resulted in the tournament organizers profiting $170,000 euros, depending on your perspective.

Who is right? Who is wrong? I cared enough to write an article on it back in August, but I believe I am in the minority. Rather than right or wrong, perhaps the right question to ask is, "who cares?"

Tennis Season: Too Long?

With all the withdrawals from various tournaments by most top players, the decade long question is back — is the tennis season too long?

Let me go on record clearly on this subject. The tennis season is just fine in its current form.

I find it interesting that as technology and fitness training methods go forward by leaps and bounds, so does the amount of whining by players. Did John McEnroe, Martina Navratilova, Chris Evert, Bjorn Borg, Rod Laver, and Ivan Lendl have shortened seasons? Did they whine this much about it despite not having the same type of access to training techniques as the players do today?

I certainly don't remember Evert, Navratilova, or Hana Mandlikova playing with the comfort of knowing that if the temperature reaches a certain degree, they had the luxury of suspending the match or covering the court. Nor do I remember them whining about it.

Oh, and guess what? Most of today's players do anyway.

They go ahead and play more tennis. Yep, you read it correctly. You would think that since they whine so much about time off, the two months that they have at the end of the year, they would spend some of it off the court, resting. Think again!

Most of them go on to play exhibition matches here and there, looking to grab more dollars where they can find them. You will even see these players heavily-wrapped with bandages on their legs or ankle tapes, playing exhibition matches in the offseason. Where there is money, injuries are forgotten. But somehow, the players' performance on whining about those injuries and blaming it on the season length, remains consistent and persistent.

Equal Prize Money

Finally, the French Open jumped on the boat. in 2006, the men's and the women's champions will receive equal prize money. Wimbledon is now the only Slam left to join the boat.

Yes, sir, we know that men play longer than women.
Yes, madame, we realize that women practice just as hard as the men.
Yes, sir, we know men attract bigger crowds on average historically.
Yes, madame, we know quality is what counts and not quantity.

Someone, please bring me some coffee and more saga input, I need to stay awake!

It's that time of the year again...