MAY 17, 2014 – VANTAGE POINT BY EUGENE L. SCOTT

Written by: Staff on 17th May 2014

MAY 17, 2014 - VANTAGE POINT BY EUGENE L. SCOTT |

The following was published in the April 9, 1992, edition of Tennis Week Magazine as a “Vantage Point” column and written by former Tennis Week founder and publisher Eugene L. Scott:

Silence of the Lambs would never fly as a title for a tennis movie. Silence is rare in our sport and lambs have not been sighted for some time. Issues instead bellow out for attention. Certainly the game’s leaders are more shark than sheep but seldom do they act together. When they do, it is an occasion of near-epiphany, such as the recent seminar on the Speed of the Game organized by the ATP Tour.

Every phase of tennis was represented. Agents were there, so were manufacturers, players, USTA officials, chair umpires, ATP Tour executives, the WTA, and, of course, the media under its thick skins of print, radio and television. The paramount question asked was whether the new racquets (oversize, graphite and/or widebody) are so powerful that they change the nature of the game to the detriment of the touring pro, weekend player or fan.

Suggestions such as the server being allowed only one serve, moving two feet behind the baseline to serve or having to wait for the ball to bounce at least once before volleying have been around for over 30 years. In fact all three have been tried before in tournaments. The purpose was always the same – to reduce the importance of the serve and to lengthen rallies. Pancho Gonzalez, the greatest server of his (some say any) era still won these laboratory events. Not to mention that galleries got fed up with the tinkering.

From 1960-1992, there have just been two major complaints about the nature of the game. The first – that baseline tennis on clay is monotonous – has disappeared. The reason? Ironically the alleged instrument of sabotage – the high-tech racquet – is the reason clay court tennis is now exciting from both sexes. Single-handedly the space-age bat has forever eliminated the evil “pusher” from tennis’s lexicon.

Remember the French Open finalist Harold Solomon’s threat to clay court opponents in the mid-70s? “Bring your lunch, if you’re playing me,” Harold would tease. It was no joke. His foe and fans would watch a morning match turn into afternoon tea – serving sand instead of sandwiches. Baseliners would underspin or topspin groundstrokes interminably. With the new power racquets, however, players can hit winners from the baseline, and points are now constructed with interesting offense and counterpunch combinations.

The second complaint is harder to shake. The serve’s undue influence. Statistics support the concern. In the 1970’s, the ball was in play on average just over seven minutes each hour on grass. By the 1990’s, the time dropped to under four per hour. In other words, time enough for a serve, a return, a volley and maybe a miss. That’s all. The points in the 1991 Michael Stich-Boris Becker Wimbledon final lasted an average of only 2.7 seconds. What an inglorious recounting of the world’s most famous tennis championship.

Closer inspection makes matters worse. Recall Stefan Edberg’s ever-so-mild lament that he lost last summer’s semifinal to Stich on Wimbledon’s slick pitch without losing serve. His dismay was only valid for the men’s side of the draw. The consensus is that the women’s game and its component serve, volley and groundstrokes are balanced nicely. Grass is an equal opportunity surface for lady baseliners and volleyers. For instance, net-rusher Navratilova won Wimbledon in 1990 and groundstroker Graf won last year. No need to fiddle here.

The Johnny-One-Note nature of men’s serving and volleying on grass, however, has done tennis a disservice in general and browned the All England Club’s ivy considerably in the process. The problem is distorted by Wimbledon’s stature. Only two other men’s tournaments (out of 77) are played on grass. To change the characteristics of rallies around the world just to suit Wimbledon’s quirky surface would be an over-reaction bordering on deformation.

Fortunately statistics provided by the ATP Tour confirm that Speed of the Game is not as smarting an issue on clay and hard courts as it is on grass. For example, play time on hard courts during U.S. Open finals over the past 20 years is virtually unchanged (at just over 8 minutes per hour). As expected, rallies on clay are the longest (slightly more than 13 minutes of actual play an hour) over 20 years of French Open finals examined.

Arthur Ashe and David Wheaton were articulate spokesmen for not penalizing the server for developing unreturnable serves. They pointed out spectators’ passion for power in different sports. Otherwise, for instance, why are John Daly’s 300-yard drives the golf tour’s most compelling topic? Besides, aren’t the slam dunk, slap shot and home run truly revered skills in team sports? Moreover, fans don’t go to Indianapolis to see station wagons pun down the brickway. The Kentucky Derby is over in minutes. You get the point. So did ATP seminar attendees. If there is such a thing as accord in tennis, it seems to be that there is no need for immediate change – except at Wimbledon – but that the power and speed situation should be monitored regularly. If modifications are to come, they should be directed at court surface or ball pressure rather than to mutations of equipment or court dimension.

Relatively simple alterations are plausible at Wimbledon, though fine-tuning an agreement among its committee might be trickier than tuning a table fork. Two improvisations to slow down play at the All England Club – growing the grass a fraction of an inch longer and taking some pressure out of the ball – are rumored to have already been tried during the Bjorn Borg era. If it’s true, the extemporizing was successful and enabled clay courter Borg to win Wimbledon a record five times running.

Agreement is universal that women’s tennis on all surfaces has never been healthier. Clay still favors those power hitters among both sexes who prefer backcourt rather than the net as the base for their attack, but “fast” racquets have helped balance the equities between defensive and aggressive baseliners.

No one answered the most cogent question of all. “Who is going to decide if changes need to be made and what those changes should be?” To date, the unspoken answer has been the tournament director, who has the sole power to choose his own surface, and, once selection has been made, to determine its speed. For example, in the three years of Har-Tru at the U.S. Open from 1975-1977, Director Bill Talbert judged that a harder clay court fashioned more exciting matches and decreed that the grounds crew should roll and brush often. And hold the water. Just over a month ago, Charlie Pasarell, director of the men’s women’s events at Indian Wells, slowed his hard courts down to idling by adding an extra dose of sand to the paint finish. The WTA complained that the resulting mix was too slow to show off the women’s game properly. Although the ATP didn’t protest publically, power players Sampras, Agassi and Courier all lost early leaving instead the steady improvisers Chang and Chesnokov to reach the final.

Permit me a concluding comment about the Speed of the Game and whether the new technology has changed the character of tennis. Power racquets are extraordinary tools to help average players enjoy the game. More importantly they help prevent youngsters and beginners of all ages from getting discouraged easily. The lighter, bigger more powerful frames make tennis simpler to learn. This redemption seems more important than the dangers of fast-lane equipment at the pro level. How can we forget that 15 years ago spaghetti racquets took a royal razzing and were subsequently banned? In my judgment the oversize graphite widebody has changed the essence of tennis far more than spaghetti strings. And no one has lifted a finger to protest. Nor a face mask.

A few notes on the USA•Czech Davis Cup match in Fort Myers, Fla. Tickets were sold solely in strips at $150 each for three days. Some entrepreneurs bought strips and spun daily tickets off for $50 each, a fairer arrangement, but the official price for the Sunday singles was still $150, the full cost of the three-day series. Capacity was 5,278 and 5,091 tickets were sold Sunday but the few hundred empty seats is not the issue. The threshold query is whether the $150 tariff is the message we want to deliver to tennis fans. Isn’t our game committed to an audience larger than 5,000 (at a crumpets and caviar price tag)?

Even more basic economics fell short at the exquisite Sanibel Sonesta Resort. Sampras, Agassi, Korda, Novacek and McEnroe are a field that ATP Tour Championship Series events would envy. In fact the ATP Tour has a regulation that forbids such events from being staged in stadiums whose capacity is less than 7,500.

As usual, ESPN’s air times were abominable adding bizarre meaning to the expression “tape delay” (midnight-2 a.m. or two days later, or both).

Just so no one will feel left out, I also have a quarrel with the ATP for not including Davis Cup in its rankings. I know the reason for the omission. Some countries can’t field a good team (or any team at all), which favors nations with outstanding player pools. The random rebuttals that follow are more facile than fancy:

1) Top players don’t face each other enough to allow the luxury of not counting dramatic Davis Cup results.

2) Not including Davis Cup in the rankings demeans the competition.

3) Disenfranchised players could volunteer for a weaker nation’s team. This might make Monaco a Davis Cup power overnight.

4) It wasn’t so long ago (before the ATP computer) that Davis Cup did count significantly in calculating world rankings.

Finally, on a note to set us free from taking ourselves or our game too seriously is Agassi’s quote after routing Novacek 7-6, 6-0, 6-0 in the deciding fifth match. “There’s two things I live by. Number one, you can never drive too far for Taco Bell. And the other is, you can never beat somebody too bad, especially in Davis Cup.”

Topics: Eugene Scott, Tennis, Tennis News, Vantage Point

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May 17, 2014 at 3:32 pm

MAY 17, 2014 – VANTAGE POINT BY EUGENE L. SCOTT – http://t.co/PU96G6Qyuz

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