At the U.S. Open and Beyond, a Radio Announcer’s Internet Odyssey

Written by: Staff on 25th August 2012

At the U.S. Open and Beyond, a Radio Announcer’s Internet Odyssey |

LA Times Original Story: Click Here By: JOHN MARTIN

http://www.radiotennis.com/

Tennis fans will not see Ken Thomas at the 2012 United States Open. A tanned, gray-haired man wearing a headset and microphone and sitting on a scaffold platform above Court 13, Thomas has been a sideshow of his own during qualifying rounds at the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center.

“They’re both playing the big points well,” he said into his microphone Tuesday, “and they’re not doing anything silly.”

His play-by-play description of the match, between Shelby Rogers of the United States and Monique Adamczak of Australia, was being streamed on the Internet by his company, RadioTennis.com, to perhaps 1,500 tennis fans around the globe.

On Friday, after covering 18 matches in four days, Thomas said, he would, as scheduled, pack up his cables, audio board and two computers, and leave the grounds. His one-week yearly contract with the U.S.T.A. would be at an end for a fifth consecutive year.

Thomas’s presence during the qualifying rounds is a testament to his enduring love affair with tennis and a revival of a relationship between tennis and radio that first flourished more than 90 years ago.

Imagining a tennis match by listening to the sound of balls being struck, spectators applauding, and an announcer’s description was a nearly lost experience before the advent of the Internet. Now, a growing number of radio-style Webcasts have begun appearing around the four major international championships, the Australian, French and United States Opens and Wimbledon.

Next week, a small army of announcers and analysts will describe the action at Flushing Meadows to radio audiences in dozens of countries.

Thomas, 54, of Redondo Beach, Calif., will take the week off, he said, then return to the road. In one recent 14-month period ending in May, he traveled more than 58,560 miles by car and airplane to describe nearly 200 matches at a series of large and small tennis tournaments.

Thomas was a fledgling professional tennis player in the 1980s. After a brief fling on the tour, he started working in marketing for a major auto manufacturer. About 10 years ago, he said, he began experimenting with Web casting and streaming commercials.

In 2003, he said, he created RadioTennis.com, “just so it would give me some beer money, something when I retired.”

Sponsored by several companies and tennis organizations, Thomas said he earns a modest living. One source of revenue, he said, are tournament directors, including the U.S.T.A. officials, who use his webcast to publicize their events.

“We have 60,000 people in our database,” he said. That figure comes from a list of subscribers to whom Thomas sends a daily e-mail during tournaments. It is headlined: “On Now.”

“When I send that out, probably about, on the average about, 15,000 to 18,000 people open to read it,” he said, adding, “I would say, every time I turn the switch on, I know a minimum of 1,500 people, a minimum,” are listening.

“I try to paint a visual picture of the match and its surroundings for the listener,” he said. “I want the listener to feel as if they’re sitting next to me having a beer and sharing a good time.”

Thomas’s Webcasts are starkly different from those of his 1930s predecessors.

According to a review of recordings at the Library of Congress, NBC Radio often played Beethoven symphonies. Thomas plays blues (mostly B.B. King) to bridge the time between matches. Early announcers sometimes used stilted English. Summarizing a 1937 match at Forest Hills, a sportswriter, John R. Tunis, called it a “humdinger” and said the loser “pecked, gnawed, nibbled, and sapped” his opponent’s strength.

“They’re chokin’ like rats right now,” Thomas said last year while analyzing a match at Indian Wells, Calif., between Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic. “Not a classic match, too many unforced errors,” he reported in clipped half-sentences. “Federer 33, Djokovic 27.”

On Tuesday Thomas told his listeners, “They go back to the baseline, and start grinding,” his favorite word for long rallies, meant to compliment the skills of Rogers and Adamczak.

Suddenly, a technical glitch began devouring and spitting out Thomas’s words, repeating his phrases in split-second loops: “The Aussie serving, the Aussie serving, to the American, to the American,” his voice said, “Adamczak, Adamczak on her own, on her own.”

When a listener reached him on his cellphone, Thomas coolly talked the caller into rebooting his computer and restoring the webcast to a single stream. Thomas’s end of the conversation went out on the air for a few moments, then he turned back to his play-by-play description.

“They’re grinding,” he repeated, as Adamczak, ranked 188th in the world, fell steadily behind in the second set to Rogers, ranked 290th. Soon he reported that Rogers “has her second match point here.” Thomas paused, waiting for what would be the final serve. “Return, down the line, there it is, game, set and match. Shelby Rogers, 7-6, 6-2, nice match.”

If Thomas were asked to identify the essence of his philosophy, he might point to his commentary one day last year in Niceville, Fla., where he was describing a $10,000 men’s professional challenger at Bluewater Bay.

As they changed ends in the third set, Thomas began describing the work ethic of one of the players, Bassam Beidas of Lebanon, ranked 544th in the world.

In a recording on RadioTennis.com, Thomas can be heard describing Beidas as a professional: “When they call his name to go on the court, he flicks the switch.”

Beidas, Thomas said, “plays hard.” Then he added: “If he wins, he wins; if he loses, he loses. Goes on to the next city, reads more books, practices and plays. That’s what this guy does. He’s a pro.”

Ken Thomas is a pro.

Topics: Ken Thomas, Sports, Tennis News, Tennis Radio, US Open 2012, US Open tennis