But somebody has to be—or tennis is doomed. Only John McEnroe,
the incorrigible superbrat, commands enough, er, respect to save the game.
By Tom LeCompte for Proof magazine
Let's get one thing straight: John McEnroe is not nice.
If you think that at 43, the "superbrat" of tennis might have
grown up—then you probably haven't seen him on the senior circuit,
where he often reprises his childish antics and even finds new ways to
inspire disbelief and dismay. Whether ridiculing officials, threatening
fans or insulting his fellow players, McEnroe regularly shows himself
to be boorish and mean-spirited, an unruly competitor who answers to no
authority other than, perhaps, his own twisted soul.
Which is why it is only with deep misgivings that I contend that maybe,
just maybe, he's also the one guy who can save tennis.
Can I be SERIOUS? Actually, desperate might be closer. Tennis needs help,
and nowhere is that help more needed than at the top of the sport's ruling
organizations. In fact, tennis is probably in the worst shape of any major
sport today.
Most conspicuously, tennis lacks a commissioner—something baseball
has had since the infamous Black Sox gambling scandal of 1919 shamed the
nation's pastime into creating an independent office to set policy, enforce
rules, mediate disputes and protect the "best interests of the game"
from short-term money grabbers. In today's era of hypercommercialized
sport, the need for a commissioner has only become more urgent. Tiger
Woods may grumble about bending his schedule to the wishes of PGA Tour
commissioner Tim Finchem, but that's just the point; commercial sponsors
shouldn't be the only ones telling golf's most marketable commodity when
and where to tee up.
Tennis can assert no such control over its own interests. Instead of having
a central authority, the sport is run by a UN-like gathering of organizations,
from the International Tennis Federation (ITF), which oversees the four
Grand Slam events and international team competitions like Davis Cup;
to the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) and the Women's Tennis
Association (WTA), the two player groups that control the rest of the
tour events; to ITF-recognized national bodies like the United States
Tennis Association (USTA), which operates the U.S. Open, and France's
Fédération Française de Tennis (FFT), which runs
Roland Garros; all the way down to—well, trust me, there's hardly
a principality or duchy without one.
And let's not overlook tennis's de facto rule makers: the television networks,
namely ESPN, CBS and NBC; sports agencies such as IMG and AMG; and, of
course, the equipment makers and corporate sponsors, who can be forgiven
for thinking they're paying for everything. This alphabet soup of often
conflicting interests reliably produces one thing: inaction. Since the
game turned professional in 1968, tennis has failed to convert the millions
of recreational players into a reliable fan base. For one reason or another,
even compelling rivalries such as Borg–McEnroe and Sampras–Agassi
were allowed to sputter after just a few promising matches. Unfortunately,
this pattern of missed opportunities is beginning to have implications
for the sport's long-term survival.
Consider the ITF's Davis Cup—a globe-spanning competition that ought
to command interest on a par with golf's Ryder Cup and maybe even soccer's
World Cup, the one tennis event where boisterous crowds are expected and
even officially encouraged. Yet in the U.S., Davis Cup attracts only tepid
support be-cause the top players are under no obligation to participate
and often choose to skip the events, with their remote venues and risk
of injury. If they can't get interested, why should we?
Tennis's "no controlling authority" mentality means the sport
can't make a decision even when one is demanded. Take the case of Larisa
Neiland, a Latvian player who retired at age 32 last winter. At the 1999
Australian Open, Neiland arrived jet-lagged and listless. She thought
a caffeine pill might pick her up. Aware that she could be disqualified
for having too much caffeine in her system, she asked her agent to consult
the ITF's published guidelines, then carefully took an amount she figured
was allowable. But ITF's testers declared Neiland over the limit; she
was expelled from the tournament and stripped of approximately $15,000
in winnings. It turned out the ITF's guidelines contained a typographical
error—which accounted for Neiland's miscalculation.
Neiland subsequently spent $50,000 in legal fees appealing to an ITF-appointed
panel. Although the panel acknowledged the error, it refused to take any
remedial action and let the penalty stand. Neiland turned to the WTA.
But if she expected to find in the players' union a ready ally, she was
mistaken; the WTA claimed it lacked the authority to interfere with an
ITF ruling. Neiland's legal team appealed to the Court of Arbitration
for Sport in Switzerland, a high court of Olympic-sanctioned sports, which
also refused to hear the case. After two years of litigation she was left
with a disheartening choice: Abandon her fight for justice or turn to
the civil courts, a messy, expensive, time-consuming process that would
only embarrass the game and further embitter Neiland. When Neiland left
the tour last winter, her legal dispute was still unresolved.
Amid such structural dysfunction, it's no surprise that the real power
in tennis resides with those who have the most money: a few top players,
a couple of big organizations, a handful of agents, the sponsors and the
TV networks—all of whom benefit from maintaining the status quo.
Consider the issue of pay equity, not just between women and men, but
within the top ranks of touring pros. Whereas the minimum salary for the
NBA's 348 players is $332,817, only 69 men in the world made as much playing
tennis in 2000.
The world's 300th-best singles player in 2000, an American named Brandon
Hawk, took home just $14,565, or less than a third of the estimated $50,000
a year it costs a player in travel, accommodations, coaching and other
expenses just to compete. Unfortunately for the Brandon Hawks of tennis,
the wealthy powers that stand to gain when a new star breaks through—namely
TV and the sponsors—are also keen to preserve their investments in
the existing steep hierarchy, topped by the marquee names. And why should
the big names want to level the sport's pay scale? It would only mean
less for them.
By contrast, note what happens when TV complains that the matches are
too long or the points too boring: With TV money in jeopardy, tennis seems
willing to try any "fix". Last year the Australian Open simply
eliminated the third set in best-of-three-sets mixed-doubles matches in
an effort to fit matches within predictable time slots; a 12-point tie-break
game was used to settle one-set-all matches instead. The change reduces
closely contested matches to just a handful of points, increasing the
likelihood that mere chance or a bad line call will prove more decisive
than skillful play.
This same willingness to reshape tennis into a more TV-friendly sport
can be seen in proposals to adopt no-ad scoring or to scrap the best-of-five-sets
format altogether. Imagine if baseball decided, in the interest of making
game times more predictable and easier to fit within TV schedules, to
play six innings instead of nine—or to call batters out after two
strikes instead of three. The danger is that tennis's proposed fixes not
only would fail to attract new fans but would also alienate traditional
fans in the process, which really would send tennis into sports oblivion.
Weak, decentralized authority has also produced a "season" that
lasts 12 months. This endless season saps fan interest and takes its toll
on players, too. Among the stars recently sidelined by injuries, in some
cases for months at a time, are Sampras, Rafter, Agassi, Rios, Philippoussis
and Moya. But although shortening the season could bolster the game's
health in many ways, this suggestion never gets a fair hearing: The elite
players have no interest in eliminating minor tournaments that offer them
big fees just for showing up. A commissioner, given the authority, could
navigate the competing interests in the game, rally support and by sheer
force of will push through such necessary changes.
That's why tennis needs the superbrat. Sure, McEnroe is egotistical, self-serving,
belligerent and prone to saying the first stupid thing that pops into
his head; but he understands the game, its history, the players and the
whole battlefield of off-court interest groups. Moreover, he has the stature
among the public, the players and the media to make an immediate impact.
He is also independent, a man who has already made his millions and proves
only too often that he is beholden to nobody. And whatever you think of
his on-court behavior, his passion for the integrity of the game and its
traditions is real. It shows in his devotion to Davis Cup play, his lamentations
over how the power game favored by racquet makers has robbed tennis of
finesse and artistry and his annoyance at the design of the U.S. Open's
new showcase venue, Arthur Ashe Stadium, which leaves players surrounded
by empty luxury box seats while devoted fans need binoculars to follow
the action from the upper tiers. He's both a fearless critic and the quintessential
fan. Simply put, he loves the game.
Still can't stand Mac? OK, I suppose others might do: Billie Jean King,
Rod Laver, Martina Navratilova, Bud Collins. Come to think of it, what's
Senator Clinton's husband doing these days? Make no mistake: Tennis's
hour of need is upon us. If the television networks continue to wield
control of the game, it won't be long before André Agassi shows
up at Wimbledon wearing the futuristic armor he dons in one of his TV
ads, the one that has him swatting metallic spheres into some sort of
video-game goal from the seat of a motorcycle. Whatever they call it,
it won't be tennis.
McENROE'S RECENT debut as host of The Chair, a TV quiz show that has nothing
to do with tennis, doesn't strengthen the case for tapping him as tennis's
first commissioner. More damaging still was his perfor-mance as captain
of the U.S. Davis Cup team in 1999–2000. (His younger brother Patrick
has succeeded him.) McEnroe unexpectedly resigned after serving just 14
months, following a losing season in which he openly criticized his own
players (both Sampras and Agassi skipped key matches owing to injuries).
He also failed to gain support within the ITF hierarchy for a plan he
had advocated before assuming the U.S. captaincy to shift Davis Cup to
a biannual format that would focus fan attention and reduce players' scheduling
conflicts.
