Stephen Bierley Tennis
In a few days men’s professional tennis will officially and triumphantly announce, in an attempt to enter the next millennium with something approaching a bang, that it has re-invented itself.
Its top nine tournaments will be re- branded as a cohesive unit and its end-of- season tournament re-titled, while the ranking system has been simplified, with every player beginning next year on zero points. The marketing men are beside themselves.
Nobody can be sure whether this brave new world will work. And to a great extent it does not matter anyway. Because the only four tennis events that are globally of any true significance are those of the grand slam – Wimbledon and the French, Australian and United States Opens.
These four annual tournaments are the star makers, the grand stage, the players’s Everest. The rest, apart from the Davis Cup, is about making money.
Andre Agassi, whose return to grace this year has so thrilled the public, at the same time lifting the profile of tennis, has achieved this recognition by winning the French and US Opens, and by finishing runner-up to Pete Sampras at Wimbledon.
Had he failed in the big-four events, it would have mattered not a jot if he had won every single Mercedes Super 9 on the ATP (Association of Tennis Professionals) tour. Who can remember from one year to the next who is the champion of Indian Wells, Rome or Cincinnati ? And no amount of fancy revamping is likely to change that.
Agassi has left his indelible mark on tennis history this year by becoming only the fifth player ever, behind Rod Laver, Fred Perry, Don Budge and Roy Emerson, to have won all four grand-slam titles. It is as beautifully simple as that.
Fortunately the ATP tour has little or no control over the grand slam events. This is why any attempt to tinker with the rules, for the sake of television schedules alone, must be sternly resisted by those who run them and the Davis Cup.
The re-packaging of the tour, with digital television certain to make a large impact, will work only if the product (a horrible marketing word) is good enough. Television is intent on shortening matches to make scheduling easier. But the basic problem is the sport’s inability to market the players’ personalities, such as they are.
Of course, the wasting of talent is the greatest sporting sin and until this year Agassi had been its most prodigal son. The ATP tour could trumpet his 1998 victories in San Jose, Scottsdale, Washington, Los Angeles and Ostrava but the man himself knew where the real judgment rested: the grand-slam events.
He had not won one since the 1995 Australian Open and had failed to get to a grand-slam final since losing to Sampras in that year’s US Open.
Few believed, after what had amounted to a two-year absence, that Agassi could resurrect himself at this highest level.
“It’s part of sport that you are going to have your highs and lows. We all knew that Andre had as much talent as anybody in the game but, when he went away from the game for a while, that really hurt the game,” said Sampras this week.
Nobody can be quite sure precisely why Agassi’s motivation deserted him between the end of 1995 and the start of his reawakening two years later. Clearly it was related to his marriage to Brooke Shields, but Agassi’s private life is pretty much a closed book. Even his relationship with Steffi Graf, for all its outward high profile, remains ambiguous, although it is not doing his tennis any harm.
Sampras, who has always bemoaned the lack of a long-standing rivalry since Agassi’s slide and Boris Becker’s retirement, would relish beginning the new millennium locked in intense on-court rivalry with his fellow American.
But Sampras is understandably guarded. “He’s had a great year, the hottest player. The question is will he be able to sustain it ?”
The pattern of Agassi’s past suggests not, while age is fast catching up with both of them. In three years’ time the US men’s tennis cupboard may be bare, so the Europeans should already be steadfastly resisting the American-led marketing hype. Fortunately, even if the ATP tour goes bust, the grand slams will always exist.
n Graf, who announced her retirement from the women’s tour in August, will be playing three exhibition matches against Amanda Coetzer in South Africa next week as part of her farewell world tour.
The Spar Challenge will take place at Westridge Park in Durban on December 7, at the University of Stellenbosch on December 10, and at Johannesburg’s Standard Bank Arena on December 12.
ENDS