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U.S. OPEN TENNIS MEET
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Too much McEnroe, too
many rude spectators
of TheColumnists.com
Some lingering thoughts from the tumultuous U.S. Open tennis fortnight:
I got sick of the television announcers yapping about how great New York is. I’m from New York, and I don’t think New York sports fans are the greatest. I don’t think the U.S. Open is the No. 1 tennis tournament of all. I certainly don’t think much of Arthur Ashe Stadium as a fan-friendly arena.
And the babbling about New York by CBS and ESPN announcers was as phony as some of the foreign players praising New York fans because they learned it was a shrewd way to endear themselves to the crowd..
The No. 1 tennis tournament of the world is Wimbledon. Pip pip, tradition, strawberries and cream and all that. Veddy-veddy British going back to 1877, four years before American championships. Most players regard that as the pinnacle of the sport.
The TV voices extol the enthusiasm of the spectators, but too often the night crowds are rowdy, even nasty. By the end of the Roger Federer-Juan Martin del Potro final, fans were shouting even as the players were in the middle of their serves. The umpire didn’t even bother to try to quiet them.
The stench of the Ilie Nastase-John McEnroe match of 1979 still pervades the arena. Nastase and McEnroe, two louts, were at each other’s throats in a night match. Then, when Nastase didn’t like a call, he refused to play. This forced the umpire, Frank Hammond, to disqualify him. The weak-kneed higher officials didn’t back Hammond up, however. They replaced him and let Nastase resume to the cheers of the mob. Hammond was never the same as a significant tennis official after that.
He was done in by what George Vecsey of The New York Times called “the werewolves” in the stands. Those crowds lapped up the hystrionics of McEnroe and Jimmy Connors during night matches.
In the midst of TV hyperbole about the glory of Ashe stadium, I found myself wishing the announcers would spend time watching the matches from the nosebleed, highest reaches of the arena. The fans up there look down on pint-sized competitors, while the corporate row ring of seats down below monopolize the best viewing.
Knowledgeable tennis fans know that the best way to take in the U.S. Open is to stroll the grounds the first week, watching the side-court matches, then seeing the late rounds on television.
TV is a mixed blessing because it means enduring the motor-mouth assaults of compulsive talker John McEnroe. He occasionally makes a valid point, but mostly he talks and talks, particularly galling when he gabs at tense points during a match.
Too often when McEnroe opens his mouth he and the others don’t explain what is happening, but ramble on about what the players ought to be doing. We are exposed to coaching clinics, not keen analysis.
And how uplifting is it that McEnroe is a TV tennis star on the basis of reprehensible behavior for so much of his playing career? To TV producers controversy translates into high ratings. They chuckle at the antics of the man who defined ugly in tennis. And now he’s a commercial pitchman playing off his tag line “You can’t be serious” with which he debased an official.
To give McEnroe his due, he provided one of the highlights of the Open when he accepted Novak Djokovic’s challenge to hit with him. He climbed out of the ESPN booth and provided the talented Djokovic with the chance to entertain the audience by imitating McEnroe’s tennis actions and tantrums.
If only McEnroe would shut up most of the time.
The joke of the tournament was the tepid fine levied on Serena Williams for her outrageous Nastase/Connors/McEnroe-like act of cursing out and menacing a linesperson. The millionairess was tapped with a $10,500 fine (500 of it for “racket abuse”--and what a lovely term that is).
I can accept the tennis/TV poobahs not wanting to suspend the box-office-draw Williams from a major tournament. But a more fitting fine would have been $560,000-the amount she made for reaching the singles semi-final and winning the doubles with her sister, Venus.
It took some time for Serena to apologize for her actions. When Patrick McEnroe tried to give her a chance to make such an apology in as post-match on-court interview after her doubles victory, the idol-infatuated crowd booed Patrick. She had a better go at an apology in a press conference a few moments later, free from the wolves.
It seems that passion and emotions can excuse anything now. Williams laid her outburst to being a passionate, emotional person. A few days later Congressman Joe Wilson said his emotions got the better of him when he cried “You lie” to the President of the United States. It is an excuse that no doubt would have appealed to John Wilkes Booth.
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The website si.com won sleaze
honors by printing during phenom Melanie Oudin’s run at
the women’s championship a story about her father suing
her mother for divorce, citing a relationship between the kid’s
coach and the mother. Tennis anyone?
©2009 by Stan Isaacs. The Stan Isaacs caricature is ©2001 by Jim Hummel. This column first posted Sept. 21, 2009.
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