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FROM AUSTRALIA  BRAD GILBERT ...his mouth flaps for ESPN |
It was hard to keep up with
tennis action Down Under
of TheColumnists.com
The Australian Open tennis championships the past two weeks were tough on us. I mean “us” as viewers. Because of the 16 to 19-hour time difference between Australia and the United States, it was difficult to know when to watch and know for sure if the matches we were seeing on ESPN2 were live or on tape.
Of course, if you could stay up to 3:30
a.m. on the east coast, you could watch it live. You could do
that perhaps if you were an insomniac, a tennis fanatic. You
could, of course, tape the matches and watch whenever--but there
are always pitfalls when we clummoxes try to tape.
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Watching and listening to the comments and prattle of the 10 (or was it a dozen) ESPN announcers made me long for some technical genius to come up with a gimmick that would be a boon to all viewers of sports. This would be a gizmo attached to a TV set that would allow the viewer to hear the crowd noise, but not the announcers. The mute button isn’t quite good enough: It will silence the announcers, but I like to hear the hubbub of the crowd.
Brad Gilbert, an ex-player-analyst, bothers me the most. I admit I am prejudiced against any experting by the man that some of the others refer to as “B.G.” Hearing BG pontificate takes me back to the time I was watching matches on the side courts at Wimbledon. I stopped to see Gilbert playing on one side court, with his father among those in the crowd watching the action.
Gilbert was losing and floundering. After every point he would moan and groan. At the officials, at himself. He would look over to his father after almost every point. I’m sure that I wasn’t the only person thinking what a big baby he was. After awhile it seemed his father was embarrassed because he turned away when his boy looked over and he even began to edge away from the court.
Gilbert solidified my feelings for him a few years later. When athletes in many sports were boycotting South Africa because of its apartheid policies, Gilbert, a Jew, played in one of their tournaments.
As an analyst Gilbert constantly promoted a grudge angle between players. He seized on many rational and honest comments by players as “bulletin board stuff” that would inspire the opponent. To listen to BG you would have thought Roger Federer and Andy Murray, two nice-enough guys, would have liked to trade their tennis rackets for knives.
An example of his creative use of the language was this comment: “He’s incredibly having trouble on his first serve.”
Just about everybody but Dick Enberg and
Mary Carillo talked too much, especially Pam Shriver when she
was cutting in during the action. And of course the use of the
word “good” fell out of the language as it always does
these days when “great” carries the day as the reigning
superlative.
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Shriver provided an entertaining moment when she interviewed British sports writer Neal Harmon of The London Times before the Federer-Murray final. There was no sense of objectivity in Harmon as he reported that some 30 members of the British media were here for the match (some coming just for the final). Britain thirsted for Murray, a Scot. Harmon said he was so nervous, his hand fluttered in hopes of a victory by Murray. But Federer won, 6-3, 6-4, 7-6 (with a dramatic 13-11 tiebreak).
The fuss over Murray stemmed from a Brit
not having won one of the four major tournaments (Australia,
French, Wimbledon, U.S.) in 73 years, since Fred Perry in 1936.
The real big deal would be for Murray to win Wimbledon, emblematic
of British tennis. It was last won by an English male, by Perry
in 1936. Murray’s advance to the final in Australia sets
up realistic hopes for him at Wimbledon in June.
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Serena Williams solidified her standing as the queenpin of women’s tennis. She achieved a career highlight in this tournament with her comeback in a quarter-final match with the Russian, Victoria Azarenka. When she lost the first set, 4-6 and was behind, 0-4 in the second set, even she didn’t seem capable of winning. But she roared back and won the second set and then the third handily.
Any time there is a big comeback in any sport, my mind goes back to what I regard as the outstanding comeback of all time. In 1927 Bill Tilden dominated tennis. He was the king. Consider this now. In the Wimbledon semi-final he led the Frenchman, Henri Cochet. 6-3, 6-4 and was ahead 5-1 in the third set.
What would be the odds that Cochet would beat the great man? One-hundred to one? A million to one?
At 15-all in that third set, Cochet went
on to win 17 straight points, survived a service break at 3-2
and streaked to win the match, 3-6, 4-6, 7-5, 6-4, 6-3. No kidding.
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And a late thought that occurs to me anew about announcers talking too much. When Bud Collins, the tennis journalist-TV rogue was criticized for talking too much, he agreed. He said, “We all talk too much. If I were you, I would turn down the sound and put on a Mozart record.”
©2010 by Stan Isaacs. The Stan Isaacs caricature is ©2001 by Jim Hummel. The image is courtesy of Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia. This column first posted Feb. 1, 2010.
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