Archive: vantage-point
If your bent is not for chatty columns, flip the page; this one's going to have the concentration span of a poorly groomed Cocker Spaniel. These days that's the nature of the news in our sport with no orderly progressions to follow from stage to stage.
Reaction to U.S. Tennis Association decisions over the years has ranged from yawning to fawning. Not surprising. The Association is, after all, an organization of stout volunteers whose mission is ministration not innovation.
Perhaps it's just as well this country took a sabbatical at the French Open this year. With American men not surviving the second round, Venus and Serena losing in the quarters and Jennifer Capriati embarrassed in her semifinal, the stars and stripes hung at half-staff in a city where ambivalence to our flag would be considered progress.
If Broadway's hottest musical is “Sunday In The Park With George,” the hottest act in tennis is the French Open. One does not have to reach far to find parallels. The setting is the same (Paris) and the musical's motif is the famous Impressionist painting whose color is dabbed on canvas by thousands of pigment points which could easily be metaphors for the quarter-million fans that inhabit Stade Roland Garros over its fortnight.
Does anyone still wonder why professional tennis can't have a commissioner? One only has to examine the game's structure (sic) to understand how quixotic such a job title would be for our sport. Four men and one woman are currently paid over $1 million a year to administer totally different segments of tennis.
When we were teenagers, perspective was always defined in terms of railroad tracks retreating into the distance. Now that we are adults, there are no tracks. None related to any discussion of perspective.
Those of you who seek clarification of the editorial drift of Tennis Week enunciated a few issues ago, would do well to note that this column covered the Australian Open without once mentioning Mats Wilander or Martina Navratilova.
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.
The U.S. Tennis Association is a fat target. With a 1994 budget of over $91 million and an estimated surplus of almost $23 million, the Association has become an octopus of pro-active projects across America. With so much going on in so many directions, the Association is bound to offend someone sometime.
