
My friend Phil K wrote me this morning, not long after Federer came through against Wawrinka: “After all these years, with so many young players coming up, here we will likely have Venus-Serena/Roger-Rafa finals. Is that a good thing?”
So, is this a good thing?
In part it depends on your definition of a good thing. Without a doubt it guarantees tennis headlines that would never be written were the finals Pliskova/Lucic-Baroni and (even) Wawrinka/Dimitrov. We might not want to admit as much, but it’s true.
Did you see the ubitennis article about 5 Things Tennis Can Do To Increase TV Ratings Without Changing Tennis? Clearly we missed one: have the Williams sisters play each other in the final, with Federer/Nadal on the men’s side.
Think of the hoary PR dictum, There’s no such thing as bad press, and you see my point.
(There’s Brendan Behan’s comment, “There’s no such thing as bad publicity except your own obituary,” but that’s another discussion….)
So yeah, in a Right Now!, PR way this is absolutely a good thing.
On the other hand you have to wonder: is it a good thing as a harbinger of tennis to come? Probably not. Certainly these finals don’t build an audience for the tennis of 5 years from now. (These players have to retire by then, don’t they?)
For years, the WTA and ATP have been trying to create buzz around the upcoming crop of players. No, scratch that; against an ever-changing crop of upcoming players. Every few years (since, forever?) the tours have bunched together young players who’ve just made a splash or two, looking to generate the same worldwide, beyond-the-died-in-the-wool-tennis-fan attention paid to McEnroe/Borg, Evert/Navratilova, Sampras/Agassi, Williams/Williams, and Federer/Nadal. Remember the ATP’s New Balls Please and Next Generation campaigns, and the WTA’s Strong Is Beautiful?
In that regard we have to see the Williams/Williams final, and potential Federer/Nadal final, as backward steps. At the least they’re very now-oriented good news stories, but without currency for the game going forwards. It’s not a unique problem. Museums and orchestras are working on similar challenges; how to generate a momentum of interest that brings in new and ever younger supporters. That should make tennis feel a little better, but we’ll have to craft our own solutions.
Then again, perhaps the message is a deeper one: we’re looking at four players the likes of which we’ve very rarely seen before, and won’t again see again for a long, long time. That’s never bad.
With apologies to Philip Roth, and h/t to Philip K