Tennis Chatter: Weekend Thoughts

I had a busy first week at my new job with Seena Hamilton & Associates, but I'm learning a ton while helping plan a great event - The Easter Bowl. This tournament is a stronghold in junior tennis - some (including Seena), call it the 'blockbuster of junior tennis' - and attracts players from all over the country to the Indian Wells area for an incredible week of springtime tennis. Needless to say, it's a storied event.

One of the many things that my eyes were opened to this weekend is an individual known as Gene Scott. Among other things, Gene was the founder and editor at Tennis Week for many years, and was a pioneer in a variety of ways. When you start learning about an individual like Gene, it makes you look at tennis from a different angle. Such an angle might be that this is a 'lifetime game' or that tennis can teach us things we can't learn anywhere else.

My point is that Gene wasn't just a good tennis player, he was a stand-out human being. When he passed away unexpectedly in 2006, there was a great sense of loss in the tennis community. Who would come up with a "Vantage Point" similar to Gene's? Who would continue to criticize a game that he or she loved so much?

It makes me appreciate and respect players like Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal, who take their celebrity status and positions in the game to do good - to improve tennis and the world around it. Players like these guys and others - Andre Agassi comes to mind - make this game so great. We must continue to self-criticize (as a sport) and not shy away from challenging who we are and what we are as an institution in order to move forward.

No, I don't think tennis is the platform to change the world, but it can be a platform. Martina Navratilova and Amelie Mauresmo did so when they came out, Agassi, Andy Roddick and others do so with their charities and non-profits, and Andrea Jaeger proved that the tennis afterlife could be more than just coaching clinics and commentating gigs.

That's a funny thing to think of - The Tennis Afterlife - isn't it? I look at players like Irina Spirlea or Richard Krajicek and can't really muster up any thoughts or feelings other than how oversized tennis clothes were in the mid-90s. No, not every player can be an Agassi on and off the court, but tennis is just a game - a game encompassed in a life that asks us to work together and for each other, not alone and against each other.

So maybe that's why so many tennis players are so socially awkward (myself included). We are taught to be tenacious, to go for it, to "Off with their heads!" on the court and then asked to be buddy buddy with our over-the-net foe when we're off. It's not an easy switch to turn on and off.

That's one reason why I love working for The Easter Bowl so far: this isn't a pro tennis tournament. This is a junior tournament, where American kids are bred to be champions but few - and fewer these days, right? - actually play competitive tennis past college. This is a junior tennis tournament where a future outside of tennis is likely for all, and a chance to do good in the world is only just beginning to form.

I think that's an idea Gene Scott would've liked.

Tennis Chatter: Foggy Saturday

It's a foggy Saturday morning and I've already been up for three hours. But things have been slow at the coffee shop, so I get to peruse the internet and catch up on emails and blogging.

Yesterday the "Yikes factor" went up three fold with Nicolay Davydenko's fine from the ATP for "lack of effort". Is this really happening? See what Tennis Planet has to say about how our sport is handling a rather embarrassing scandal.

Speaking of turn-around matches, Andy Murray came back to beat Dmitry Tursonov in three sets in St. Petersburg yesterday. Is Tursonov going to get a fine now too?

Wertheim chats it up about all the goings on in the tennis world.

Things are getting sloppy between Andre Agassi and Target.

Patty Schnyder beat Anna Chakvetadze in Linz today. It took 39 minutes. Ouch.

A Farewell Tour

There's much to be admired about the Farewell Tour of Kim Clijsters. Last year, it was Andre Agassi doing his own shortened version of such a farewell, giving fans an opportunity to reflect and bid good-bye to one of the game's greatest champions.

This year will be a bit different for the gal from Belgium. She certainly doesn't have the track record of Agassi, or - of course - the longevity. If she doesn't win another slam this year, Clijsters will certainly go down as the most talented one-slam wonder of all time, man or woman.

Yet there's some good these departures do for the game: they give us a chance to think. Agassi let us look at where tennis has gone from the mid '80s to today and Clijsters - I believe - will make us look more inside ourselves than anywhere else.

Tennis is about personalities. It's about people who do good things on the court, but great things off the court. Billie Jean King. Arthur Ashe. Andre Agassi. These champions will always be remembered for who they were as tennis players, but they are household names today because of who they are as people.

Kim Clijsters will never reach the household-name status that those other champions did. But Clijsters made us all think about ourselves, about the kind of people we are and the kind of people we want to be. Clijsters just may be one of the best tennis athletes we've ever seen, but for Kimmie, it's time for family and friends.

As much as I hate to see Clijsters go, I respect her decision and understand that tennis is not her life. She has other plans. Maybe that's something we should all think about.