Tennis, Baseball, Love, and Never Saying 'Never Again'

The U.S. Open starts tomorrow and for the first time in more than a decade, I'm excited about it. I've checked the draw and I know who my favorites are playing, much like I used to do with Steffi and Gabriella back in the late '80s and early '90s. Thanks to a well-placed and largely self-promotional Facebook post, I also know that my favorite-favorite opens the tournament at 10:00am CDT on the Arthur Ashe stadium court. Yes, social media and the Internet are going to make this U.S. Open impossibly easy to follow. And if ESPN follows through with their promise of complete coverage, I'll watch as many matches live as I can around work, school, and my re-burgeoning tennis career.

It's funny what you don't miss until you miss it. Years passed and I never gave tennis a thought. Players played and matches were won and lost. Rankings held, rankings fell. Grand Slams came and went. If I saw a score on ESPN I may have paid attention, but then again I probably ignored it all together. After all, three of the four Slams are played during baseball season and baseball became my focus in those years I spent away from tennis.

Baseball was just easier and more accessible. Even with the players changing teams more often than I change the oil in my car, stars were stars and teams were teams. Plus it's what's on American TV in the spring, summer, and early fall months. Though slow, there's a certain rhythm and psychology to a baseball game and a baseball season that have always held appeal for me.

The great thing about baseball is that any team can win on any day. Take a team thirty games out of first place and they can still put together an afternoon of pitching and hitting good enough to challenge a pennant contender. Tennis, on the other hand, usually has one or two dominant players (ie. Federer in the years I was absent) that win 99% of the time. Upsets do happen but tennis is much more a game of odds than baseball ever will be. If the Yankees and Dodgers won every time they played, I'd have quit following baseball a long time ago.

Likewise if Derek Jeter and Albert Pujols were the only players I got to see play, I wouldn't be the fan I am. Admittedly, a baseball game involves 18 players and a tennis match just two, but tennis draws routinely include 64 players, sometimes more. Unfortunately, unless we are a fanatic, we never get to see all these other players play. If we see a tennis match on TV at all, it's usually a final between two of the top players. And if for some reason there was an upset in the Semis or Quarters, we get to see some guy we've never heard of get his ass kicked by the guy who's name we do know. In other words, until a tennis player 'arrives' at the top of the game, very often we don't know they are coming.

Baseball is different. We get to see on a day to day basis the meteoric rise of newcomers, such as Mike Trout and Stephen Strasburg, and the last vestiges of greatness from a veteran making his way to retirement, like Chipper Jones of the Braves. On any given day we can see a highlight reel worthy performance by a star we've watched for years or witness someone we've barely heard of hit through the cycle or pitch a perfect game. In baseball, it's all for the taking. I can't say the same for tennis.

Let me just say that I don't blame tennis for it's inaccessibility and shortcomings. Baseball is America's pastime, not tennis. I imagine more people in America play tennis than baseball, but I'd also be willing to argue that most of those tennis players watch more baseball than they do tennis. And if you ask the majority of sports fans what they would prefer to watch on a Saturday afternoon, they'd say baseball. Granted I don't have any data in front of me, but it seems a safe bet.

Tennis might be the second most popular sport in the world (Soccer is, of course, first), but here in the U.S., it ranks seventh (based on website usage sited in an article from June 2012 on www.therichest.org/sports/most-popular-sports-in-america/), one spot above 'Motor Sports' and just two spots ahead of 'Professional Wrestling'. Oy. Tennis has some work to do in this country.

'If you build it, they will come'. I'm happy to see that ESPN is going to cover the U.S. Open much like they did Wimbledon and BRAVO did the Olympic tournament. Such inclusive coverage will undoubtedly draw in viewers who may not ordinarily watch tennis. From there, we need a few things to change - (1) expanded televised coverage of non-Slam tournaments, (2) American singles players that are not injury prone (Brian Baker), temperamental (Ryan Harrison), uni-dimensional (John Isner), or underachieving choke artists (Andy Roddick), and (3) Fewer grunters (ala Victoria Azarenka and Maria Sharapova) in the women's game so that people will actually tune in and not feel like they have to watch with the TV muted (even if the American women aren't grunting, no one's watching because their opponents are).

God bless, Serena Williams, but she can't be the only face of American tennis worth watching if tennis is to re-grow in popularity here. I can whittle it all down to one word - Doubles. While the U.S. may lack for top ranked singles players, we have a pretty solid array of doubles players. Bob and Mike Bryan are considered one of the best teams in history and Lisa Raymond and Liezel Huber are consistently on top of the women's rankings, just to name a few. Then if we figure in that American recreational players play more doubles than singles, we've got a no-brainer. Plus it's just more exciting and the matches tend to be quicker.

Tennis may never rival baseball's popularity in the U.S. but it has succeeded in winning me back. For me, tennis will always be a sentimental favorite and a throwback to some of the happiest days of my youth. I'm just glad I tuned into Wimbledon when I did. Many thanks to Samantha Stosur and Serena Williams for inspiring my return. Their powerful, athletic games (and minimal grunting) now have me counting the minutes until the Open begins tomorrow. Whatever matches I can't watch, I'll follow on my nifty U.S. Open iPhone app. Sshh... Don't tell my boss or my professors.

There's a difference between 'love' and being 'in love'. This is as true in relationships as it is with sport. I've loved baseball as long as I can remember, but I've never fallen in love with it like I did tennis. Once upon a time, tennis held all sway for me. I was in love. Then for whatever reason we broke up. Well, now we are back together and I'm in love again. I usually say 'never again' but with tennis, it's a different story.