Naomi Osaka was Right About Athlete Press Conferences

Professional athletes today face an evolving landscape of external demands, to say nothing of the pressure they put on themselves. It doesn’t matter if you’re a goat (scapegoat) or the GOAT, failure in sports is guaranteed. Only one team gets to lift the trophy at the end of the season. If we’re honest, only one of three players has a shot to lift the trophy at an ATP tournament. The harsh realities of the sports business can take their toll on an athlete’s psyche.

In the NBA, the Brooklyn Nets recently traded one disgruntled star point guard (James Harden) for another (Ben Simmons). Simmons attracted a wide range of condemnation during his time in Philadelphia, including sitting out the current season on account of mental health. The sports media in Philly can be as petty and abusive as any in the country. When Simmons did not play well in the 76ers playoff exit last year, the media took their critiques to a new level of hostility.

The Simmons saga has me revisiting a point of discussion across tennis and other sports recently; balancing the role of the media and the mental health of athletes. The big storyline at the outset of last year’s French Open was Naomi Osaka’s announcement that she would not attend press conferences at the tournament due to mental health considerations. “I hope the considerable amount that I get fined for this goes towards a mental health charity,” she said at the time. Fine her they did, though the tour announced it would welcome dialogue with Osaka about mental health.

Osaka is cut from a different cloth generally and whether it is the success she enjoys or real mental trauma she experiences with the media, she was not having the “you struggle on clay” firing squad another year in Paris. Good for her. Following the tournament’s response and some behind the scenes discussion, Osaka pulled out of the tournament completely. Who did that hurt more? You can bet Osaka wasn’t crying about it. Weeks later she was lighting the Olympic cauldron and still making $55.2 million per year.

At 24, Osaka does seem too sensitive at times and clearly struggles coping with the pressures of being an elite athlete. Professional tennis tends to rob young women of emotional development years. The WTA tour is full of teenagers while men take longer growing into their bodies. Since her breakthrough US Open win in 2018, Osaka has found her voice on social justice issues and matters of tennis governance. Knowing she would face backlash, fines, and threats from the French Tennis Federation, Osaka, decided the time was right to risk comparatively little for herself (she doesn’t make her money on clay courts anyway) to start a conversation about mental health and the role of the media.

Mental health considerations aside, Osaka could afford to put her foot down in Paris. She is the biggest celebrity in the sport today and the highest paid female athlete in the world. Calling into question the WTA’s punitive approach toward skipping pressers, Osaka also underscored the truth of athlete press conferences; they are usually a complete waste.

Using press conferences to draw attention to an event is becoming less important today with social media replacing traditional news outlets and traditional marketing. Meanwhile, the post-game press conference, which has always been problematic, is becoming increasingly toxic.

Whether it is ignorance or inability to fathom what really makes an elite athlete, sportswriters perpetuate a “sports ethic,” that elite athletes all share unwavering sacrifice, play through pain, never quit, and hold winning as their all-consuming goal. They question the toughness and desire of Simone Biles at the Olympics, as if launching oneself twisting through the air wouldn’t put any of them in the hospital or worse. They routinely show themselves unqualified to write about tennis.

The majority of tennis press knows next to nothing about the sport. Have you listened to these people? Unprofessional, lost, the only sportswriter left on staff at their dying print publication, they have no framework for discussing the game. Half the time they haven’t even watched the match under discussion. The guy who is supposed to be the best asks questions like this one. Tennis doesn’t need these people writing its stories. The disdain for the sport and lack of respect for players doesn’t serve the game. The psychobabble and disinterest in strategic tennis is revealing. If the media is no better than hecklers in the crowd, why should sports leagues give them the time of day?

Professional sports is entertainment. ESPN stands for Entertainment Sports Programming Network. Athletes are entertainers. For some reason, the sports press conference is held sacrosanct while Patti Lupone skips home every night following performances of Company. Where is the accountability for Patti Lupone? Does Taylor Swift need to meet the press to discuss every concert she gives across the world? Is Chris Rock breaking down the anatomy of jokes in post-show post-mortems?

Donald Trump gave 3 solo press conferences as president in all of 2019. He gave one solo press conference in 2017. President Biden had 6 solo press conferences in 2021. Why do we hold tennis players and free safeties up to scrutiny for their performance when we barely ask questions of our leaders? What makes tennis players more accountable to the public than presidents? Is Naomi Osaka spending taxpayer money? Is Micah Hyde not delivering for the schools of Buffalo?

What we have here is a failure to communicate… priorities. There are also clear differences across generations. Osaka is born in a generation that is much more guarded about traditional media. When you have politicians assailing the press and public figures getting canceled for made up or overblown infractions, who can blame them? Osaka finds social media far better for marketing herself. Why let others write her story? She announced her decision to skip French press via Twitter. Athletes can reach the most people and control the quality of their message on social media platforms.

Tiger Woods has 2.8 million followers on Instagram. Golfers are increasingly not talking to the press between rounds. They are technically mid-competition and have every right to keep their focus. Perhaps tennis tournaments should be looked on the same way. A tournament press secretary could serve the promotional needs of an event and its players by relaying questions from the press and filtering appropriate submissions; allowing players to give thoughtful responses through the medium of their choosing.

Naomi Osaka is right that athletes are the “centerpiece” of the tennis business. They need not accept a bad part of their job in entertainment because the tennis tours are slow to evolve in modern communications.

Freeze Russian Tennis

Given recent events in Ukraine, it is encouraging to see nations and international institutions uniting quickly against Vladimir Putin’s violent attempt at recolonization. It may be difficult to process as events move quickly, but it appears a world war has begun. An isolated, delusional, misinformed, and underprepared Russia, chasing shadows of a world that hasn’t existed for more than 30 years, is bringing hell on Ukraine right now. What ultimately befalls the Russian people may prove worse (and last longer).

As World War II looked very different from World War I in tactics and technology, World War 3 (as it will ultimately be referred) is already playing out on fields of battle that didn’t exist in 1940. This world war takes place in a landscape shaped to avoid and deter the devastation wrought upon Europe and Asia twice before. That includes mutual assured destruction (MAD) should nuclear weapons come into play, but also the flattened planet of the internet, social media, and an international financial system able to be weaponized against rogue actors in the case of strong consensus.

This is going to play out in ways we are not used to seeing. In fact, the Russian invasion may fall apart in the face of the Russian people’s own resistance to war and autocracy. Make no mistake, this is Putin’s war. Most Russians, including FSB, appear to be blindsided by their own country’s aggression and the reality that there are no Nazis in Ukraine’s government.

Whether we realize it now or later, the invasion of Ukraine is epochal. The West, including the United States, is already at war. This is the defining event of our century thus far. It will reshape the international order and change economies forever. The unraveling of events today, the blowback, the reconstruction, the psychological imprint, will define the decades of future generations.

Though the war on the battlefield could end without the United States having to fire a single shot, NATO may also decide the risk of nuclear war is low enough to move against Russia’s paper tiger ground force. This would end the conventional conflict and spare innocents in Ukraine. Since there is a pretty coordinated war effort already afoot, with weapons systems flowing to Ukraine from every direction, it is a safe bet that war rooms across the globe are watching the Ukrainian resistance and playing out scenarios for an end to conventional warfare.

Yes, this is a blog about tennis. Every two years, international politics and sports do a carefully choreographed dance at the Olympics. Sometimes the dance is a sight wondrous to behold. Too often, geopolitical events crash the party and nobody feels much like dancing. Though Putin did China the “favor” of waiting until the Olympics concluded before invading Ukraine, China’s own human rights violations are enough to put a damper on any Olympic spirit. Where is Peng Shuai right now?

While geopolitical events so often influence sport, sport can sometimes turn the tables. Usually we see a sport’s national federation boycotting another to make a political statement or protest. Boycotts of South African teams during apartheid come to mind.

While it is staggering to see gigantic oil companies and tech firms walk away from enormous investments in Russia over Ukraine, it is also interesting that sports institutions with long histories of corruption and turning a blind eye to misconduct have joined the war effort so quickly. International soccer’s governing bodies, FIFA and UEFA, banned Russia and all Russian club teams from international competition. That’s akin to neutral Switzerland joining EU sanctions and freezing Russian assets in their banks. Wait, that happened too?!

It is a rare moment. Of course, it took mind-boggling backward thinking, needless aggression and suffering to unite nations and institutions like this. The situation in Ukraine is likely to get much worse before it gets better. However, if soccer’s governing bodies can exert their influence along with Apple, Starlink, and McDonald’s, international tennis tours can send a clear message of their own. Tennis is massively popular outside the U.S. and especially in Europe.

At the outset of the invasion, Elina Svitolina Monfils, a Ukrainian star on the WTA tour, took the boycott path, announcing in a statement that she refused to play a Russian opponent in Monterrey last week and would not play any matches against Russian or Belarusian players moving forward unless the WTA took action of its own. In her statement, she thanked the Russian and Belarusian players who denounced the war.

By the end of the week, the WTA and ATP Boards took action by canceling the WTA/ATP combined event scheduled this October in Moscow. The ITF Board then suspended the Russian Tennis Federation and Belarusian Tennis Federation memberships. Russian and Belarusian players will no longer be able to compete in team events, including the prestigious Davis Cup. However, they will still be allowed to compete individually (without the name or flag of their country). “The international governing bodies of tennis stand united in our condemnation of Russia’s actions.” said the ATP and the WTA in a joint statement. Satisfied that the tour had taken the right steps, Svitolina played and beat her Russian opponent in Monterrey, promising to donate her prize money to Ukrainian relief efforts.

While the steps taken by the tours sends a strong political and economic message to Russia, it is not far enough. The International Olympic Committee moved to ban all Russian and Belarusian figure skaters from international competition. The ATP and WTA tours should follow the lead of other sports and ban all Russian players from competition until Russia has withdrawn from Ukraine. Freeze their rankings to mitigate damage to their careers when they are able to return. However, to exert the most political pressure inside Russia, make it hurt financially and socially to be a Russian trying to make a living abroad.

Of course, there are those who argue that athletes, kids really, shouldn’t be penalized for their autocratic leader losing his mind. And Russians will suffer enough under sanctions and economic isolation. However, this is about using every lever of political influence within Russia to stop Putin. Banks are freezing the laundered wealth of Russian oligarchs. Russian tennis players, enjoying their international lives, competing across the globe, need to suffer inconvenience too.

Even if a Russian player is against the war and bravely comes out and says so, they should realize that Putin is the one undermining their opportunity to be part of the international community; the community their country attacked when it invaded Ukraine and shattered 30 years of peace in Europe. It is their problem. If they don’t like it, they should use their influence as international superstars to put pressure on Putin and rally peace-loving Russians to help end the war. The wonderful and deserving Daniil Medvedev became ATP #1 this past week. A Russian player ban could not be better timed to attract the most possible attention.

With the world united, this is a moment where tennis can help influence geopolitical events. Though sanctions certainly hurt Russians, they are a mere inconvenience for many of Russia’s elite. Sanctions are unlikely to deter Putin, because he is playing a long-term legacy game that rational people cannot understand; chasing fossil fuels in Georgia, Crimea and Ukraine. Putin could recalibrate with an internal existential threat to his regime. Inconveniencing as many Russian elites by taking them off the world stage may put enough political pressure on Putin (an intra-oligarch schism) to make a difference.

Game Changer

6/1/21 1:04pm 8 lbs Miss Q Game Changer 🎾

Growing Tennis in 2021

These days it only takes a longboard, some Ocean Spray Cran-Raspberry and that Stevie Nicks vibe to distract me from putting down thoughts on tennis. They say legacy brands like Ocean Spray are seeing massive sales numbers during the pandemic as consumers come home to comfort foods and products that offer certainty during uncertain times.

For tennis fans, having any form of ATP, WTA or even ITA tennis the last few months has been a sorely missed diversion. Grateful that tennis leads the way as a socially distanced sport, with continuing storylines of dominance (Nadal) and disgrace (Djokovic), the year in tennis provided several memorable moments that will be talked about for decades. Yet, one must acknowledge that tennis is not comfort food for the average sports fan in the U.S. Ask an American what they think about decisions to reorganize the 2021 tennis schedule and they will look at you with a blank stare.

While tennis is one of the most popular spectator sports in the world, with an estimated following of over one billion people (surpassing the NBA, NFL and MLB), the popularity and reach of tennis in the United States is palpably in retreat. Much has been written about the junior competitive pathway, the factors that keep potential tennis players from finding the game, and the strange investment strategy the USTA employs to grow the sport. One must also acknowledge how tennis participation lags population share among African Americans (8.9 to 13.4%).

Keeping tennis relevant in the United States is tied to how tennis events are produced for television. When tennis was booming in the 70s and 80s, it was network television that brought the game out of the country clubs to the masses. When tennis was relatively new as a professional sport (the Open Era), network television had a captive audience and tennis had a stable of personalities who were also some of the greatest athletes in the world.

Pro tennis events are best in person when a fan can roam the grounds surveying a smörgåsbord of options between men’s and women’s singles and doubles; and if they’re lucky, find a spot to view multiple matches at once. Live college tennis has that same festival atmosphere. Most college meets begin with three simultaneous sets of doubles across three courts. The event then moves to six courts of singles action, where each match counts for a point on the big scoreboard. Throw in a partisan crowd and things get wild. Still, nobody seems to have figured out how to produce college tennis compellingly for TV. Some of that is a function of limited resources.  Yet, even ESPN, when it carries the NCAA team tennis finals, misses the story while it’s unfolding. The immediacy of the team element is mostly ignored. The smörgåsbord is left on the table.

College matches are not the only disappointment in television coverage of tennis. Many casual observers lack an appreciation for the speed of the game, or the physicality that used to make Dick Enberg exclaim, “Oh my!” The camera angle during live points has not changed since 1939. TV producers experiment with new perspectives from time to time, but television is never content to let viewers see a point from ground level for more than a serve and return; always reverting to the long view of the court.

While the long view has its place, why not try a full point from a fixed corner, or from over the shoulder of the server? If viewers can understand what 130mph looks like at ground level, they will appreciate the speed of the game. With new camera angles and more variety, fans may see how patterns open the court from the players’ perspective.

Understanding what is happening strategically in a tennis match is a challenge for seasoned fans, much less casual observers. Television viewers get no help whatsoever from tennis announcers. Tennis announcing has been the object of mockery for a long time now. I always think back to the vapid announcers in Terrence McNally’s 2007 Broadway play, Deuce.

Tennis announcing today reflects a conversation in the player’s lounge circa 1990; gossipy, fratty, white and only peripherally attuned to tennis. What once seemed connected to the inside game is now completely out of touch and insulting on many levels. Tennis announcing today degrades the sport. Consider the insane obsession of TV announcers this past year discussing players on the women’s tour who are also mothers. How backwards is the thinking to believe the world’s greatest female athletes would be challenged to continue competing while raising a child? What year is it? Why is this notable beyond a brief mention in the context of a return to fitness after pregnancy? Why are we in awe that women can have careers and be mothers? Can Victoria Azarenka not afford child care on a weekend? Is there a player on tour raising a child alone? Is it really that inspiring to realize a tennis career is not finished with childbirth? Hearing Chrissie Evert and Pam Shriver discuss this marvelous new world is like hearing one’s great grandmother discuss knee-length skirts. And they do this on live television!

Tennis on TV doesn’t just provide little of substance, it alienates casual observers the sport needs to convert into fans. The “voice” of tennis is out of touch with our time. It’s not diverse, it’s not cool, it expresses none of the urgency and immediacy of the battle on court. Tennis coverage on TV also leaves the most loyal fans without an ounce of insight into the modern game. Analytics has taught us so much that was previously hidden about tennis. Analytics leaders like Craig O’Shannessy and Warren Pretorius have redefined strategy for touring pros and college players. O’Shannessy has written extensively about which stats matter most to winning and losing and how training should change to reflect this. Yet, the lead announcers and former champions who call tennis on TV struggle to describe the game as it is played today.

The statistics that most determine winning and losing (forehands on first shot after serve, rally length, net point %, forehand %) are completely missing from tennis coverage on TV. Instead, serve speed, aces and unforced errors dominate the light statistical discussion. Talk of “unforced errors” often devolves into psychobabble about nerves and inner strength. I mean what could be less useful to tennis viewers than discussion of a meaningless statistic that isn’t even real? Unforced errors? Anyone who has ever played at a reasonably competitive level of tennis knows, there is no such thing as an unforced error. Every error is forced in some way, by varying degrees. The idea that a professional tennis player can become more competitive if they could just stop making mistakes, stop choking, insults the players and the viewer’s intelligence. Are we to believe that the world’s fittest athletes are just out there goofing up?

I grant that even pros miss “sitting winners.” These moments are rare. They are not the majority of “unforced errors” and they don’t have meaningful statistical impact on the match result. Yet, former world champions, who know better, are handed stat sheets in the broadcast booth and feel obligated to mention which player has more or fewer unforced errors without discussing the myriad ways a player’s technique has been broken down by their opponent.

Restructuring the professional schedule, increased coverage of college tennis and unionization of touring professionals are all on the agenda for 2021. However, if I have only one wish for tennis in the new year, it would be for television coverage to bring fans closer to the strategic game. O’Shannessy’s work reveals the true battles within a tennis match. Helping a nation of rabid sports fans follow the action will go a long way to growing tennis again.   – Jeff Menaker

Glimmers of Hope for College Tennis

With the daily announcement of cuts to athletic departments at universities across the country, the impact of COVID-19 on educational budgets weighs heavily on the tennis community. With the shocking termination of men’s tennis at UConn and men’s and women’s tennis at Winthrop (programs with staunch alumni and historical success), it feels like no program is safe. As of July 14,  CovidTeamTracker.com lists 65 college sports cut since March at Division 1 schools. Men’s tennis leads all of those sports with 11 cut programs.

Here are the tennis programs dropped within the last year:
Connecticut Men
Northern Colorado M&W
Southern Utah M&W
Winthrop M&W
Appalachian State Men
Arkansas Pine Bluff  M&W
Wright State M&W
East Carolina M&W
Florida A&M Men
UMKC Men
USC Upstate M&W

UW Green Bay M&W

Valparaiso Men

Pittsburgh Women (Men cut previously)

Akron Women (Men cut previously)

Detroit M&W

There has been no shortage of preaching from college tennis’ privileged class on strategies coaches can use to keep tennis off the chopping block. Most of it is how to run a good tennis program when you have a massive athletics department around you. I always chuckle when a Pac-12 coach at some symposium advises coaches of at-risk programs to bring a suitcase of hats and t-shirts whenever the team travels, to distribute among supporters in the airports, hotels and tennis clubs. Forming those relationships is certainly critical to fundraising and creating excitement about your team. Having those t-shirts, having a budget to fly, having tennis courts to even host a match, having alumni all over the country is why the Pac-12 coach has a six figure salary and a stable job. The coach of a tennis program that is about to be cut is often part-time, the 5th coach the program has seen in the last 10 years, managing both the men and women, and making do with outdated or off-campus facilities in an environment of limited resources and mismanagement.

Economic crises always expose fiscal mismanagement, no matter what industry you’re looking at. Cutting sports is a tacit admission of mismanagement for a university. At mid-major schools like those listed above, the culprit is often delusional ambition. So many of the schools now cutting tennis have gotten out over their skis in funding projects peripheral to their educational mission and the mission of athletics as curriculum (or at least complimentary to curriculum). This usually takes the form of over-emphasis on football.

The trend of $500K strength coaches, the mere existence of “quality control” coaches, locker room waterfalls, and team hotels the night before home games, are just a sprinkling of the waste around college football. Increasingly, we see schools with zero national recognition in football following a fantasy path to BCS riches in lieu of professional planning and fiscal realism. The money wasted expanding football stadiums and press box suites at universities like East Carolina, Northern Colorado and UConn are prime examples of failing to know your market. At East Carolina, we’re talking about a region saturated with football, where the SEC and ACC take up nearly all the oxygen in the room. At UConn, the idea that college football will be a golden goose, worth substantial investment, could not be more preposterous. With the Patriots, Jets and Giants, Connecticut is in the middle of pro sports Mecca. The Northeast has shown far more appetite for indoor college basketball than cold, blustery Saturdays of mid-major football. Even the first college football program, Rutgers, and their Big-10 neighbors, Maryland, struggle to fill their stands.

A school like Stanford, which is not a mid-major and did not cut tennis, has an endowment of  $27.7 billion. Yet, Stanford cut 11 sports this month to cover the university’s $12 million deficit. Something is off here. The school is still required to honor coaches’ contracts and student athlete scholarships. So it’s hard to fathom how cutting the operating budgets of 11 “Olympic” sports plugs a gap athletics did not cause. The intention is clear: the 240 student athletes affected by the cuts is the exact number of students needed at full-price tuition to cover $12 million per year. Instead of cutting those sports and praying the remaining athletes will transfer, if Stanford transitioned a segment of incoming athletes to non-scholarship, made intelligent cuts to operating budgets and future coaching contracts, one could argue adding sports would have been a better path.

Adding sports may seem irresponsible in a fiscal crisis, but athletics-generated tuition is an underappreciated, quantifiable, revenue stream. What school doesn’t covet increased tuition revenue and capacity enrollment? A school without tennis programs, could add non-scholarship men’s and women’s tennis and attract 20-25 tuition-paying athletes who would not have considered the school without the offering of competitive Division 1 tennis. At a state school, many of those students would come from out of state and pay a higher tuition rate. Depending on the school, that could translate to $1.25 million in annual tuition from tennis alone. The school could fund tennis with 15-20% of that $1.25 million and have over $1 million left, each year.

While scholarship athletes may take space from paying students at capacity enrollment Stanford, that isn’t the case at most mid-majors. Adding sports, transitioning to non-scholarship athletes, or both, is a great way for mid-majors to increase tuition income. Don’t tell me non-scholarship teams can’t compete. There are nationally ranked tennis programs that are part of Division 1 conferences like the Patriot League and the Ivy League where athletic scholarships are prohibited. Columbia’s Men’s Tennis team has never lost to Pac-12 power Stanford. Ever. Non-scholarship can be a very competitive model, even at the Division 1 level.

COVID will certainly have its way with university budgets and enrollment. The financial implications of not playing college football this fall will vary from school to school. Among mid-majors, where tennis is most at risk, canceling football is going to save some schools money. Others, that miss out on a payout from playing a Power 5 opponent, could suffer. Of course, university leadership will always mandate cuts in the face of financial hardship. Institutional focus and accounting are often two ships passing in the night. It’s up to athletic directors to demonstrate revenue, push expansion of a tuition-paying athletics model and explain how cutting sports often translates to lost tuition and larger deficits. Non-scholarship athletes, who enroll specifically for a sport, are a stream of revenue that is not easily replaced during difficult times.

Bad accounting practice is so pervasive in education that athletic directors, under relentless budget pressure from above, have been accused of colluding to determine which sports they can cut, together, across a conference. When that starts happening, you have a few rogue administrators making existential decisions for a conference of their competitors and for student athletes across that conference. That gets into the realm of unfair business practice laws that prevent industries from colluding in a way that damages competitors or eliminates a segment of the industry.

This is where national-level leadership comes into play. The ITA (Intercollegiate Tennis Association) the governing body of college tennis, works with the NCAA, NJCAA, USCAA and NAIA to administer tennis across the country. College tennis is under assault. It would be great to see the ITA take a more aggressive stance in matters where a member job disappears, athletic directors engage in unfair business practices or a school cuts a tennis program in violation of Title IX. Too often, tennis coaches and parents are alone in mounting legal challenges to obvious Title IX violations (see Albany, Pitt). Other sports don’t have an ITA to file grievances. If we are to keep the interests of tennis on the forefront, the ITA needs to be willing to fight back. If college presidents and athletic administrators know that tennis is the sport you will get sued for cutting, the dynamic would change rapidly.

Title IX is not just a proportionality law. It’s an opportunity/access law. When schools make the short-sighted decision to cut sports, they cannot cut women’s sports without counterbalancing the proportion of male athletes. They eliminate men’s sports to “stay compliant.” This is where men’s tennis so often gets cut. However, it is false compliance to reduce opportunity for women. The choice to eliminate any women’s sport, while protecting a bloated football budget, is discriminatory. What women’s sport commands protection from any and all cuts the way football does? When eliminating no sport or adding sports is a reasonable, feasible alternative, any cut to women’s sports is a Title IX violation that deserves its day in court. If cutting men’s tennis is “compliance” for cutting women’s rowing, the ITA needs to be in court on behalf of those rowers and the interests of tennis. The ITA has had no in-house counsel until [checks notes] yesterday! Here’s hoping they found a Marvin Miller!

There is another flicker of good news amidst the wave of program cuts and COVID madness. While Division 1 mid-majors are most likely to exhibit the unreasonable expectations and poor fiscal management that lead to sad reckonings, several Division 2 schools have demonstrated proper planning as part of their efforts to join Division 1. Where several mid-majors have collapsed under the financial strains of 2008 and 2020, a new crop of fiscally sound Division 1 programs has risen from Division 2, with healthy tennis programs in tow. Welcome St. Thomas, Bellarmine, Merrimack, Dixie State, Tarleton State, UC San Diego and North Alabama. We’re going to hear a lot more about you (if we can ever learn to wear a mask in this country).

On a bit of a side note, the Division 2 model is increasingly bizarre. Any school that can pay young athletes to study there and has steady enrollment should be in Division 1. The process of moving to Division 1 is a good litmus test of sustainability. Ultimately, I am optimistic that well-managed Division 2 institutions can continue taking the place of declining mid-majors. Still, without a little sanity in college football and a little fight from college tennis’ governing body, the drip drip drip of poorly conceived (and sometimes illegal) program cuts will continue.

– Jeff Menaker

Anti-vaxx Djokovic (and other points of ignorance)

Update: At the start of the Adria Tour last week, I wrote the post below about Novak Djokovic expressing anti-vaccine sentiments and hosting a multi-city tennis event without a semblance of public health safety or precaution. Doubling down on hubris, Novak then:

-Declared water can be purified with positive emotions.

-Posted Instagrams of himself and other players playing soccer, basketball, dancing in a club, all in perpetual physical contact- without masks or social distancing.

-Encouraged 5,000 fans to pack a small tennis stadium to watch Adria Tour matches without any health safety protocols.

-Held a kids day event with large crowds and no social distancing.

-Left Croatia and crossed borders without a COVID test, fully aware that players and coaches he brought together had just tested positive.

-Tested positive for COVID (along with his wife) back in Serbia.

The Adria Tour was a super spreader event for Europe. In addition to the tennis players, coaches, staff and an untold number of fans who now have COVID, NBA star Nikola Jokic, who played a little basketball with Djokovic’s posse, also tested positive for COVID. Viktor Troiki and his pregnant wife tested positive. WTA insider, Courtney Nguyen, may have summarized the “irresponsible,” “weird” Adria Tour best: “This isn’t a seat belt issue. This is a drunk driving issue… Family, friends, innocent strangers, kids, hotel workers, food service, transportation workers. I don’t care if YOU get sick. I care if the people around you get sick and the people around them and the people around them.”

There is a movement afoot among ATP players to have Djokovic removed from the ATP Players Council of which he is the current president. When Nick Kyrgios has taken the moral high ground over your behavior, there’s a strong argument you do not belong in a position of leadership.

Here’s my post from last week:

One of the greatest disappointments of tennis’ COVID-induced hiatus is the revelation last month that World #1, Novak Djokovic, is an anti-vaxxer. “Personally, I am opposed to vaccination, and I wouldn’t want to be forced by someone to take a vaccine in order to be able to travel.” Could there be a more cringe-worthy statement during a public health crisis?

This shocked many across the world as Djokovic has shown himself to be a generally enlightened kind of person. He is a leader on the ATP Players Council and joined with fellow superstars Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer to implement a plan assisting lower-ranked ATP competitors who are struggling financially during suspension of the tour. Through tiered donations from the world’s highest paid players, Djokovic demonstrated the kind of leadership, compassion and foresight needed in this moment. Still, Djokovic is among the ever-growing, ignorant minority on the subject of vaccination.

Djokovic never attended college. In an interview for NDTV in 2012, he lamented his lack of formal education: “I never went to university. Well, if I can say, that’s one wish I have in life, one regret, that I would like to go in some university, because I really like the idea of educating yourself and being part of a group of students.” As a Tour leader, he may want to pursue a bachelor’s degree in Public Health before undermining global health officials on a matter of such extreme seriousness… or organizing a stadium full of fans amidst a global pandemic.

Many pro tennis players lack a college education. Not that attending college enlightens all minds. In the case of former University of Tennessee standout, Tennys Sandgren, that includes homophobic and anti-abortion comments, supportive online exchanges with white supremacists and his endorsement of “pizzagate”, the b@tsh:t crazy conspiracy theory claiming that Hillary Clinton was linked to a child sex-trafficking ring.

John Isner, who graduated from the University of Georgia as the #1 player in the NCAA, found himself being savaged on Twitter last week over a series of tweets and replies that seemed more concerned about law and order than black lives. Isner, who has expressed admiration for President Trump in the past, repeated the President’s view that violent protesters were members of Antifa and should be branded terrorists. He had also “liked” several tweets from accounts that mocked protesters while focusing on opportunists looting stores during the civil unrest. If Isner had ever had an African American teammate at Georgia, perhaps he would have a different take on current events.

Tennis has a long history of bigotry and biased thinking. The most glaring stain on the sport currently resides Down Under. Women’s tennis legend Margaret Court is an unabashed, vocal homophobe. Her steady antagonism of lesbian players on tour and her history of supporting apartheid in South Africa have led people across the sport to call for renaming Margaret Court Arena in Melbourne Park. Even so, it boggles the mind that there is not a single member of the ATP Tour who is openly gay. Recognizing the statistical impossibility, what is it about the ATP that has prevented gay male athletes from feeling safe in 2020?

There is hope for the future. Coco Gauff, who isn’t old enough to attend college, who had wins over Venus Williams and Naomi Osaka before she turned 16, has shown an enlightened outlook. Gauff has put the stars of the men’s tour to shame, showing precisely how a platform can be utilized for good. When the top men’s player is amplifying vaccine conspiracy theories and flouting social distancing guidelines, it’s nice to know there is a better future for the sport. In Gauff’s case, it is widely agreed, the quality of parenting makes a real difference in the kind of person one grows up to be. To quote Steven Sondheim, “Children may not obey, but, children will listen.”

– Jeffrey Menaker

The Economics of Simultaneous Format

Lisa Stone of Parenting Aces had an interview yesterday with Tim Russell, the CEO of the Intercollegiate Tennis Association (ITA). She mentioned my recent post on match format in asking whether simultaneous format was a way to preserve college tennis during the impending COVID funding crisis for education and collegiate athletics. Mr. Russell’s answer was thoughtful and touched on several points including the fact that simultaneous format received serious ITA consideration in the past. He said it was an interesting idea and he liked it from a fan perspective. However, one thing Mr. Russell said concerned me: “Simultaneous format doesn’t address the issues [athletic directors] are facing, which are financial.”

That’s not quite correct. One of the benefits of simultaneous format, of course, is that dual matches would run even faster than the current “diminished doubles/no-ad” format. That allows for several fundamental shifts that have true impact on an athletics budget.

The ability to play more than one dual match per day or to use courts multiple times between men’s and women’s matches provides flexibility in scheduling. That has an economic impact. Playing doubleheaders, like baseball or volleyball, or scheduling a men’s/women’s doubleheader is much more feasible with a shorter event. Even with recent changes to speed up contests, turning over courts (doubles followed by six singles matches) makes it impossible to play doubleheaders of competitive significance. Nowadays, when teams schedule doubleheaders, they are not playing their strongest competition (it would be a competitive risk) and they are usually precluding the other team on campus from playing at home that day.

With simultaneous format, a team match is short enough that tennis could start scheduling doubleheaders, tri-meets and more! This could effectively reduce total dates of competition and reduce expenditure.

Every time an athletic department hosts a match, there is money being spent. Event staff, utilities, security, cleaning, officials’ per diem, student workers, meals, everything an event space must prepare to host the public, amounts to an expense. Tennis becomes less wasteful if that expenditure is going into two, three, four events split between two teams (men and women) in a single day. The value of that expenditure expands by holding more than one event per day and reducing the total number of days these expenditures are needed.

This concept comes into stark relief when you consider travel for away matches. If college tennis has a format that allows tri-matches, coaches can schedule fewer dates of travel while potentially playing more road matches than they do currently. Fewer road trips, fewer hotels, fewer meals, shorter distances to face opponents at tri-match sites are all good for budgets and good for the game.

When you consider the major financial obligations of a college tennis budget, the two most significant pieces at the Division I level are coaching salaries and player scholarships. Mr. Russell did qualify his comment about financial issues facing athletic directors by granting that if you reduce the number of athletes on a team by changing the format, you could conceivably reduce the number of scholarships offered. That’s not really the aim of simultaneous format and it isn’t feasible if we still plan to use six courts in a dual match.

However, salary budget can benefit from the schedule flexibility discussed above using simultaneous format. Among my collegiate coaching assignments, I was briefly the Director of Tennis, Head Men’s and Women’s Coach for a Division I institution. It was the most fun I’ve ever had coaching, managing two teams at once. Many schools look to combine their coaching positions between men’s and women’s teams for Olympic sports. You see it in the swimming pool, on the track, in the boats and on the tennis courts. There is practical savings in combining head coach salaries not to mention administrative efficiency. Assistant coaches can work with both teams as well. When contests fit time constraints and scheduling is easy, the way it is for volleyball, athletic programs can keep their men’s and women’s teams together for home contests while traveling together reduces redundancy and provides more bang for the buck. Granted, combining a coaching staff is not going to work everywhere. Still, combining the roles of assistant coaches is a savings that could not happen without the scheduling flexibility that simultaneous format presents.

Scheduling flexibility through simultaneous format also addresses the wear and tear of a grueling tennis season. Players are taxed less with fewer dates of competition. Even a double-header or tri-match would not ask more from our players physically than in the past. The scheduling freedom we gain from simultaneous format could grant our athletes more time to be students, more time to be members of the general campus community (something D-I athletes lament not having) and more time to heal physically and mentally from the demands of the schedule. As the parent of a D-I athlete, I witness the toll the schedule takes on her body and spirit. As a coach, I want my players to be able to perform to the best of their ability. Schedule is an enormous part of getting the student athlete experience right. Simultaneous format does more for schedule than any measure the NCAA has taken to reduce match length.

Since many of those recent time saving measures do more to hurt the game by empowering cheaters, stunting player development, cheapening competitive value and turning off fans, why not turn to a solution that eliminates all of that? Allow players to play the same game of tennis the pros play. Regular scoring, two out of three sets.

College Tennis is about to face its greatest existential crisis. I agree with Mr. Russell that the health of the Power Five is a major concern. As Mr. Russell says, we have to help the athletic directors who have million dollar tennis budgets make those much smaller. For non-Power Five conferences, the Ivy and Patriot League model of no scholarships may be the way to save a majority of Division-I tennis programs. However, across all of tennis, simultaneous format and the scheduling flexibility it allows may provide enough budget relief to save the game. Even a Power Five tennis budget.

Jeffrey Menaker

Simultaneous Format can save NCAA Tennis

In summer of 2015, the NCAA Division I Competition Oversight Committee, following the lead of the Intercollegiate Tennis Association (ITA), approved no-ad scoring for all matches at the NCAA Team Tennis Championships, starting in 2016.

In no-ad scoring, when a game is tied at 40-40 (deuce), the player who wins the next point wins the game. In normal scoring, games are played until a player wins by two. If you don’t win by two, the score reverts “back to deuce.” No-ad scoring was promoted in the 1970s by Jimmy Van Alen, father of the tiebreaker. It was embraced by World Team Tennis, college tennis and high schools. However, college coaches returned their game to standard scoring in the 1990s with the prevailing feeling that no-ad cheapened the sport and failed to prepare their elite players for the pros.

Nevertheless, in 2014, the NCAA Division I Men’s & Women’s Tennis Committee, with support from ITA and USTA, made a recommendation to modify the D-I tennis championships for the stated purpose of reducing match length. No-ad scoring was then adopted in 2016 and extended to all regular-season matches across Division I with several other changes designed to speed up college tennis. Those measures also included the absurdity of reducing doubles matches to a six-game set.

These changes reflected serious concern. A lack of television coverage at the time and athletic directors cutting tennis programs in the residual funding crisis of the Great Recession raised alarm bells across the tennis world. The future of college tennis was keeping the sport away from fickle athletic directors’ chopping blocks. This was particularly true for men’s tennis, which does not counterbalance any male football scholarships for athletic programs with Title IX considerations. That tennis is one of the oldest sports in our collegiate athletic tradition, with comparatively tiny budgets, has not swayed overextended athletic directors from cutting storied tennis programs. There’s nothing suggesting that trend will stop with renewed financial hardship. After COVID-19, the existence of tennis as an NCAA sport will undoubtedly come up for debate.

The idea that college tennis should create some revenue, most effectively through television coverage, is not unreasonable. However, growing the status of the game goes beyond keeping tennis meaningful to athletic directors. Getting matches on TV is one thing, but building attendance for live matches is what ignites tennis on campus and in communities. Baylor men’s coach, Brian Boland, was interviewed about no-ad by Zootennis back in 2014: “College coaches want to skip the hard work to get people engaged. [No-ad] is not the answer at all. I went to the College World Series (in Omaha) to support my good friend and neighbor and several of the games lasted over four hours, but I doubt they’re looking to go to six innings. They respect their game and have tremendous leadership.”

There is a clear divide between those like Boland, with a Field of Dreams approach to building up the game, and those who see made-for-TV events as a silver bullet. While a mere set for doubles is definitely a bitter pill, what really keeps the traditionalist coach from accepting the NCAA’s speed-the-game measures is no-ad scoring. There are unintended consequences of no-ad. While time-saving measures have managed to cut college meets by 30 minutes or more, observers of junior tennis know all too well, no-ad scoring is the cheater’s paradise. Having coached or been a spectator at dozens of college matches over the last few years, the majority of questionable line calls happen on deuce/deciding point. The most shared moment of the 2018 NCAA Men’s Singles Tournament on Twitter was the public shaming of a player for an unfortunate line call in the quarterfinals. Was it a no-ad deuce point? You betcha! This is not a good look for college sports and it’s exactly what athletic directors don’t want to see from tennis.

The tennis blog excoriating no-ad has become a bit of a cliché in recent years, but there are many solid arguments being made against it. Winning by two is a fundamental tenet of racquet sports like tennis and other games that derive from Jeu de Paume, because fluky stuff affects points all the time.

Chuck Kriese, who literally wrote the book on coaching tennis during his years at Clemson, demolished no-ad scoring back in 1988 in an interview with Randy Walker, “We’ve got to get rid of [no-ad] if we’re going to do anything for American tennis.” For Kriese, no-ad was hurting the development of college players by creating a “choking” environment at deuce for the game’s most talented athletes. Taking an analytical view: “If I’m an underdog, I’d want to play no-ad all the time… The statistics on Compu-Tennis show that as kids come up through the age groups, 12’s 14′s, 16′s, 18′s, they have more and more aggressive play. On key points, our college players play more tentative than 18 year-olds.”

Leaving aside the stunting of player development which Kriese saw in the analytics, or the cheating empowered by sudden death, or the abandonment of a character-building scoring format, what is most irksome about Division I reverting to no-ad is a lost opportunity to reconfigure the event itself. Recognizing that a traditional tennis match is already an amazing fan experience, maximize that game’s exposure. The one thing no-ad scoring may help, a product that fits TV time constraints, is easily achieved without using no-ad.

Since 1977, NCAA team tennis has been played as some variation of six singles matches and three doubles matches in a “dual match” format. Players may play both singles and doubles in a day’s meet. There have been several iterations which lasted all day. It was beautiful for extremely committed spectators, but, ultimately bad for the game and bad for student athletes. Currently, a Division I dual features three courts of doubles; just a six game set on each court. These three bastardized doubles sets count altogether for just one team point or the equivalent of one singles point. This renders doubles mostly impotent in a seven point team contest. Doubles is followed by six singles matches worth one point each. Unlike doubles, these matches are best of three sets.

In all the formats since 1977, courts must be turned over once, accommodating doubles players who also play singles. Even with doubles reduced to a single set, we’re still asking fans to attend something akin to a baseball double-header every time they come out to see a match. This is the crux of college tennis’ time challenge. The solution is staring us in the face. Stop turning over courts. There are singles players and there are doubles players and they don’t need to play both in one dual. One might get to play both over the course of a season and certainly there are individual events for both. However, in a dual match, the substance of a college tennis season, everything should happen simultaneously. This is how high school tennis works nearly everywhere.

Because tennis has been played in a format requiring no more than six courts at a time, most schools with budget considerations have the minimum six courts for their tennis programs. Any reconfiguration of college tennis format must take this into account because the first way to lose a tennis program is to make facilities a problem for athletic directors.

The restructuring of the format should fit to six courts in simultaneous use. There are several options in this vein worth debating. My own preference would be four singles matches played simultaneously with two doubles matches. This provides opportunities for more players to participate in a meet than the typical six or seven. It allows matches to be played using standard scoring. Without court turnover, a team tennis event fits into a TV broadcast like any ATP match. Doubles or singles could be weighted more heavily to avoid a 3-3 tie, or, better yet, a 3-3 tie could trigger an exciting overtime in which coaches could chose any players on their roster to play a doubles tiebreaker or a full doubles set.

Listen, any option is better than the cheater’s paradise we visit all too frequently through no-ad scoring. Like it or hate it, no-ad scoring in college tennis was a cheap fix to a problem that needed more investment. When the economic impact of COVID-19 decimates college athletics (it already has), tennis needs to be very efficient and very relevant to survive. It’s time to consider simultaneous format.

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It’s a little late, but I wanted to use this space to pay tribute to legendary Smith College Coach Chris Davis for receiving the ITA’s Meritorious Service Award in December. Chris, who I hereby nominate for Commissioner of Professional Tennis, coached for 39 years at Smith College. Not surprisingly, she was an early champion of simultaneous format dating back decades to the Seven Sisters Team Tournaments in New England. Way to go, Chris!

In Memoriam: Terrence McNally

A man who saw drama in tennis and put the game’s social reckoning on stage before we even understood it was happening.

Four-time Tony Award-winning playwright, Emmy Award winner, the prolific “Bard of the American Theater,” Terrence McNally, died from complications of COVID-19 on March 24. He was a gentle, classy, humble man who I once had the pleasure to work for as a playwright’s assistant. In a career that spanned six decades, Terrence famously enjoyed opera, India, Bob Dylan, the Florida Keys and tennis! His 2007 Broadway play, Deuce, featured Angela Lansbury and Marian Seldes playing retired tennis greats returning to the U.S. Open to be honored at a women’s quarterfinal. They sit courtside and reflect on the great athletes who preceded them like Babe Didrikson and Althea Gibson. They consider the state of the modern women’s game and critique everything from its fashion to its lack of grace (before Serena Williams experienced her first legendary U.S. Open meltdown).

With Seldes and Lansbury in the leads, it was impossible to miss the parallels Terrence was making between athletic and theatrical performance and the personality traits of the divas that occupy those respective stages. The play also delves into class disparities that tennis still struggles to discuss. That original production also took time to skewer tennis announcers for lacking substance, something which still plagues tennis on TV more than a decade later.

Deuce was well-received by audiences, but, panned by critics, though Lansbury was nominated for a Tony and Seldes was praised for her performance. I actually don’t think the director understood the play. Eric Grode of the awful New York Sun wrote quite fairly of the director: “[He] appears to have staged the play when he had a few hours to kill one afternoon.” Painful.

In late 2000, I directed Terrence’s anti-war play Bringing It All Back Home (which he named for the Dylan album) in New York and I assisted him on one of his most challenging works, Some Men, in 2006. Those experiences changed my life and I will miss running into Terrence around town and saying hi. May he rest in peace and may we prevail in defeating the scourge that has swept our planet and stolen so many a gentle soul like his.

Jeffrey Menaker

Tennis Hygiene and COVID-19

The COVID-19 public health crisis and the suspension of the NCAA, ATP and WTA tennis seasons bring to mind a long-simmering hygiene problem in professional tennis.

As the Governor of New York announced his quarantine order yesterday, closing non-essential businesses and asking citizens to stay in their homes, a wave of relief came over me. Somebody in government has finally taken a bold step to thwart the scourge of COVID-19 and to mitigate its effects, flatten the curve, until our best and brightest scientists and doctors can get ahead of this predicted global pandemic. With tennis lessons on hiatus, a porch bench sanded and painted, and no Miami Open to watch on TV, the post I’ve been meaning to write since February is finally on the screen before me. Play The Let, Quarantine Edition: Tennis has a hygiene problem and there couldn’t be a better time to discuss it and hopefully make a lasting change.

I was reminded of this hygiene issue while sitting courtside at the New York ATP 250 event at Nassau Coliseum last month. The #4 seed was ill. He had received a bye in the first round and had beaten Marcos Giron handily to set up a quarterfinal with upcoming Serbian, Miomir Kecmanovic. As the match with Kecmanovic wore on, it was clear the #4 was ailing. His eyes were glassy. He was walking slowly between points, clearing his throat repeatedly on changeovers. He was the higher seed, but he was on his way to losing in 3 sets and he did not look or sound well. His nose was running. Then I saw it. The player called for his towel with the universal hand to face gesture. A ball person, a young lady from Queens College who had volunteered to assist the players at this tournament, ran the towel out from the corner. The player proceeded to blow his nose right into the towel and hand it back to the girl. Disgusted, the ballgirl held as little of the towel as possible, returning it to a hook in the corner of the court. The match continued. Not a word from the chair umpire. No acknowledgement whatsoever from the player.

This may seem like an extreme circumstance of unsanitary behavior from a barely adult touring tennis pro. However, as a supposed first-ballot member of the Ball Person Hall of Fame, I can attest that mucus is par for the course when it comes to tour players and their towels. Tennis players wipe sweat, blood and who knows what else onto their towels. At some stage in the late ’90s, something that was considered taboo in society somehow became the norm on the tennis court; expecting somebody else (ball people specifically) to carry a used towel.

Ball people used to just manage the balls. They were never asked to hand players their towels. This changed during the decade that I worked at the U.S. Open. I was in college and working one of my final U.S. Opens as a ball person. Tennis fashion was changing. The utilitarian headband and sweatbands made popular during the ’70s and ’80s had given way to more “stylish” bandannas and hats in the ’90s. These new accessories, while selling like hotcakes at the concession stand, did not get the job done in managing sweat. By the late ’90s, I observed more and more players bringing towels out on court.

At first, players would bring the towel out and hang it on the fence or throw it on the ground near the fence. They would visit the towel intermittently, when needed. Visiting the towel, whether necessary or not, became a tool to help players refocus, to take a breath and consider their plan for the next point. Though I’m sure he is not the first, Greg Rusedski is the player who comes to mind when I think of ball people being asked to run the towel from the fence to the player. I worked a U.S. Open semifinal of his and I probably ran his towel a greater distance than he ran the entire match. Of course, visiting the towel also became a ploy to throw off the rhythm of an opponent. So use of the towel gradually fell under the hawkish eyes of chair umpires concerned about pace of play. Somewhere between efficiency and expedience, the task of speeding towel usage fell to ball people.

Why not?  The player has to be ready for the next point. Ball people, who spend most of their time standing at attention, are talented enough to handle two jobs simultaneously; moving the balls around the court and delivering player towels. After all, ball people are somehow now responsible for drying wet courts, garbage disposal, serving players drinks, peeling their bananas, delivering coffee, and putting on pointless showy displays for the crowd.

With the onus on ball people, players now use the towel incessantly. The result is longer matches. When umpires enforce pace of play rules, players blame the ball people who can’t deliver fast enough. The ATP considered the pace of play aspect serious enough in 2018 to test new towel rules, forcing players to manage their own towels. However, what is missing from consideration is the matter of hygiene.

In the early days of this public health crisis (last week), a New York City tennis club sent out an email reminder that it was still open for business and that tennis already features the social distancing of a 78 foot court. Of course, it’s difficult for players to avoid holding the ball. I would be interested to see a study on how a virus fares in the felt of a ball being struck repeatedly, experiencing the abrasion of court surface and strings, while repeatedly losing and returning to shape. I’ll never forget the man who got himself banned from a tennis club for wiping his sweaty brow with the ball before each serve. He considered it a sort of legal spitball, a competitive advantage for the sweaty. His partners and opponents considered it disgusting and complained enough that club management ultimately had to send him on his way. What professional tennis players do to ball people with towels is actually more disgusting, unsanitary and despicable and it’s time the tours put a stop to it:

COVID-19 provides an opportunity to return tennis to sanitary sanity. Indeed, before they canceled the event entirely, Indian Wells banned players from giving their towels to ball people. The ball people would also wear gloves. In a global pandemic, these measures make sense. Even in normal times, players don’t know what ball people have on their hands and vice versa. Players travel all over the world and are probably more likely to be carriers of exotic pathogens than a volunteer 14 year old from Cincinnati. Hence, professional tennis should permanently adopt the rule that players handle their own towels. Put hooks at the back of the court where they can access towels quickly. Let the ball people focus on moving balls around the court and running for no reason. Pace of play will improve and so will hygiene.

Jeff Menaker