If you haven't read this yet, here's from CNNSI Jon Wertheim's column:
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What's up with the media criticizing men's tennis? It seems like every day there was a new story bashing the guys. Then I would turn on my television and the men's matches would be great!
—S. Fairchild, Dallas
A number of writers ought to be saying mea culpas and sending their apologies to the ATP Tour about now. The Williams story is an unbelievable modern-day fairy tale that, as far as I'm concerned, still hasn't gotten its due. But let's face it: Ultimately, the men's matches carried the Open. Neither the men's game nor the ATP are immune from faultfinding. The merits of the Champions Race, the debacle that was the ISL deal, the failure of unquestionably talented players like Marat Safin and Roger Federer to step up -- those issues are fair game for criticism.
But it's unfortunate when writers and columnists who are clearly watching the sport for the first time all year swoop into New York for a day and write a lazy piece about how lame the men's game has become. A particularly untenable column that ran in a newspaper of record opined: "Most of the top men on the tour are faceless. Costa, Cañas, Ferrero and Moya sounds like a law firm in Spain, but they are four of the top six money-winners this year. Ever heard of them? Stop fibbing. Unless you watch tennis regularly, and most sports fans do not, you couldn't identify them if they cranked one of their 125-mile-an-hour serves over your head." Huh? The implication that the players are faceless because they have foreign names is offensive. And anyone who thinks Juan Carlos Ferrero or Albert Costa is serving 125 mph is clearly out of his depth talking authoritatively about the sport.
A dead giveaway, incidentally, for one of these hit-and-run jobs is some mention of the length of the points. "The men's game," a fellow scrivener told us last week, "is just serve, ace, serve, ace." Really? Where was he when Andy Roddick finished off Alex Corretja with a 43-stroke match point? When, time and again, men's matches exceeded three hours? When Hewitt, a counterpuncher who doesn't weigh 150 pounds, was becoming No. 1? When, for that matter, Sampras and Agassi ran each other around in a final that went nearly three hours?
---------------------------------------------------------------
What's up with the media criticizing men's tennis? It seems like every day there was a new story bashing the guys. Then I would turn on my television and the men's matches would be great!
—S. Fairchild, Dallas
A number of writers ought to be saying mea culpas and sending their apologies to the ATP Tour about now. The Williams story is an unbelievable modern-day fairy tale that, as far as I'm concerned, still hasn't gotten its due. But let's face it: Ultimately, the men's matches carried the Open. Neither the men's game nor the ATP are immune from faultfinding. The merits of the Champions Race, the debacle that was the ISL deal, the failure of unquestionably talented players like Marat Safin and Roger Federer to step up -- those issues are fair game for criticism.
But it's unfortunate when writers and columnists who are clearly watching the sport for the first time all year swoop into New York for a day and write a lazy piece about how lame the men's game has become. A particularly untenable column that ran in a newspaper of record opined: "Most of the top men on the tour are faceless. Costa, Cañas, Ferrero and Moya sounds like a law firm in Spain, but they are four of the top six money-winners this year. Ever heard of them? Stop fibbing. Unless you watch tennis regularly, and most sports fans do not, you couldn't identify them if they cranked one of their 125-mile-an-hour serves over your head." Huh? The implication that the players are faceless because they have foreign names is offensive. And anyone who thinks Juan Carlos Ferrero or Albert Costa is serving 125 mph is clearly out of his depth talking authoritatively about the sport.
A dead giveaway, incidentally, for one of these hit-and-run jobs is some mention of the length of the points. "The men's game," a fellow scrivener told us last week, "is just serve, ace, serve, ace." Really? Where was he when Andy Roddick finished off Alex Corretja with a 43-stroke match point? When, time and again, men's matches exceeded three hours? When Hewitt, a counterpuncher who doesn't weigh 150 pounds, was becoming No. 1? When, for that matter, Sampras and Agassi ran each other around in a final that went nearly three hours?