A lot of comparisons have been made between Andre Agassi\u2019s run in this year\u2019s US Open at age 35 and Jimmy Connors run to the semifinals in 1991 at age 39. It\u2019s not just the age thing. Jimmy Connors had always been respected as a tennis player but he was hardly a beloved sports figure. Crass and outright unsportsmanlike behavior could not be ignored.<\/p>\n
I always knew that Connors had wiped out a ball mark on a clay court before the umpire could come down out of his chair and look at the mark. But I didn\u2019t know that Connors\u2019 ball had made the mark. This meant that he had to run all the way over to his opponent\u2019s side of the net to erase it. The linesperson had called the ball in but Connors probably knew that he had hit it wide and he wanted to make sure the call was not overturned.<\/p>\n
Connors was at the end of a long career in 1991. He\u2019d survived a history of legal tussles with the tennis establishment and a host of injuries to fight and scrap his way through tough matches to get to the semis. New York loves a fighter and an entertainer and this was the final crowning of the tough American champion from the rough town of East St. Louis, Illinois.<\/p>\n
Agassi\u2019s struggles have been personal but no less dramatic. He survived an image problem and a confidence problem to become one of only five players to win all four grand slams. He transformed himself from a punk to a wise elder and the 2005 Open was a love-fest in celebration of Andre.<\/p>\n
There is, however, a major difference between Connors\u2019 era and the current version of the men\u2019s professional tennis tour. Most of the players seem to like each other. Connors and John McEnroe respected each other but they certainly didn\u2019t like each other and they didn\u2019t pass time chitchatting in the locker room. You didn\u2019t hear anything like the mutual admiration club between James Blake and Agassi after their late night, five set thriller in the this year’s semis. \u201cI know if I were in the stands, I\u2019d be cheering for him to. Because he\u2019s a great champion in every sense of the word,\u201d said Blake of Agassi.<\/p>\n
McEnroe interviewed Roger Federer in a Manhattan sidewalk caf\u00e9 during the Open. Federer tweaked McEnroe about the sour relations between players during McEnroe\u2019s time on the tour. McEnroe asked Federer how he managed to remain so calm under the pressure of maintaining the number one ranking and winning grand slams. Federer replied: \u201cI was too anxious to win. And I said, every guy who had a game which I couldn\u2019t beat, I thought, \u2018This guy is an idiot.\u2019 And then when I became number one, I was beating the guys, I started to understand. Well, it\u2019s not about how they play or whatever. It\u2019s how they are in person. And in the locker room I really feel like we get along very well.\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s an interesting statement. It\u2019s a repudiation of much that McEnroe stood for. Federer is not concerned about his opponents, except tactically. He not only respects them but he\u2019s figured out that it\u2019s not about them.<\/p>\n
Of course, Federer doesn\u2019t have to play against Ilie Nastase. McEnroe and Nastase once played a match at the Open in which Nastase behaved so badly that the chair umpire defaulted him. The tournament director, keeping in mind that the stars are more important than the umpire, defaulted the chair umpire and allowed the match to continue so that McEnroe could win it honestly.<\/p>\n
Federer doesn\u2019t throw a tantrum with the hope of unsettling his opponent if the match is not going his way. Neither does Blake, Agassi or any current player except maybe Lleyton Hewitt or Guillermo Coria.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not a popular sport, at least not in the U.S. Does this mean that we need tennis players who act like professional wrestlers before people will tune in or turn up at tournaments?\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
This is an unusually harmonious time in professional tennis. The doubles players are unhappy because the ATP is trying to phase them out but there isn’t a rogue group of players trying to start up their own league and very few players get defaulted. I\u2019d like to say that this is a good thing except that tennis continues to be mired in a long slump. It\u2019s not a popular sport, at least not in the U.S. Does this mean that we need tennis players who act like professional wrestlers before people will tune in or turn up at tournaments?<\/p>\n
Golf has the most similar fan base to tennis meaning that it fights for the same advertisers. But look at the golf tour. Its popularity is at an all time high. Put Tiger Woods on television on a Sunday afternoon within striking distance of the leader and you\u2019re guaranteed a good rating. Yet there\u2019s nothing controversial about Tiger Woods\u2019 behavior. He has a temper but he\u2019s hardly crass. He probably doesn\u2019t say much to Phil Mickelson and Vijay Singh in the locker room but he also doesn\u2019t run over and kick their balls off the fairway. He\u2019s not even a good interview. Ever since a journalist printed his off color comments in a GQ<\/a> article early in his career, Woods has kept his personality under wraps.<\/p>\n