What Tennis is Missing

The tennis world always opens with a bang. Unlike all the other major sports, tennis begins its year with a major tournament. Welcome to the 2010 Australian Open. The ESPN coverage of the tournament has been spectacular, especially with the DirecTV links to most of the courts each day. I'm sort of bored, though. As I said, interesting, but predictable.

Overall, the tennis industry is in a slump, with all the major manufacturers looking for ways to increase sales. The total predictability of this tournament, with the exception of Justine Henin's run, doesn't really help either. It makes it even more clear to me why the three major names in the tennis tours all left this past fall to other endeavors. The globalization of the game and industry, and the stagnant sales and competition, do not bode well for this year. I won't speculate on the final numbers for Melbourne, but in watching a lot of the matches on the tube, I noticed a significant amount of empty seats on a lot of courts with otherwise good matches.

I know a lot of my colleagues would probably point out here that overall for many of the seasons in the past two or three decades you could almost always predict who would be in the final. That is true. However, it was very hard to predict who would win, and also for the most part you could assume incredible matches. Sure, Jimmy Connors, John McEnroe, and Bjorn Borg dominated the late-'70s and early-'80s, but you never were sure which of the two would be in the final, and the final couple of matches were almost always nail-biters. Always, without exception, exciting.

The women's side was not quite so, but you knew that there would be a cat-fight for whether it would be Billie Jean King, Chris Evert, Martina Navratilova, or Evonne Goolagong, and then later Martina Navratilova, Steffi Graff, and Monica Seles. Maybe what made them all so exciting was the great difference in styles of play. Serve-and-volley versus ground-stroker versus power player. Today, pretty much you have one style of play, backcourt ground-strokers who all hit every shot with a ton of power. Very little or almost no touch or finess.

Whether it's the women's or men's game, it's the same. And without variety, there is no spice. Without spice, there is no sizzle. Without sizzle, there is no excitement. Without excitement, who cares? Now I truly understand what Arlen Kantarian and Larry Scott saw and understood. The globalization of the player pool hasn't added anything but complexity, either. While there are new players every year, none have come through lately that truly impact the game. Jelena Jankovic and Ana Ivanovic brought Serbia to the brink, only to quickly fade and become like all the rest. Beauty aside, neither of them has a game that can dominate. Dinaro Safina, Maria Kirilenko, Victoria Azarenka, Caroline Wozniacki, yada, yada, it's the same.

Don't get me wrong, tennis from the player's standpoint has the most parity ever. Maybe the most talent ever. This year's Australian Open will be good. But in my mind, not great. I'll be losing sleep all week waiting for that one match that will force me to go without sleep because not only are the matches in a way different time zone, but because I'm so pumped up I don't know what to do with myself.

As I end this, I also want all the tennis fans out there to keep Haiti in your thoughts and prayers. The players in Australia put together a very good impromptu exhibition fundraiser. Haiti will need a lot of help over the next couple of years. With any luck, we can help rebuild the country, and maybe even start one Haitian athlete on the road to professional tennis stardom.