It is fall so tennis fans huddle waiting patiently in Neverland.
We yearn to witness sensational tennis shots ricochet off the rackets of Federer, Nadal, Djokovic, and Murray. But any match will do. Maybe racket magic will reappear shortly in Madrid—if only we could watch.
ATP Tennis is scheduled 11 months a year, covering over 65 tournaments. In the U.S., if we are lucky, we might get to see the four Grand Slams and maybe a couple of Masters Events on U.S. television networks. This represents a tiny portion of all the ATP tennis being played and, speaking for all tennis lovers here in the U.S., we are sick of it!
We demand more live coverage, even if it is via computer through live streaming. We have remained in the dark long enough.
If poker can be broadcast as an athletic event on ESPN, then tennis deserves it, too.
We realize that most U.S. sports fans consider tennis a rather prissy sport for snobs. In other words, they would bet money that Roger Federer could not match moves with Adrian Peterson, or that he could not hang with Kobe or LeBron. Or that the Swiss master is clinical and competent with a racket in his hand but is not a real athlete.
These same individuals will feel a bit better about Rafael Nadal because he at least sweats buckets.
U.S. sports fans need beer, bean dip, burritos, bouts of swearing, and even barfing at sporting events at the professional level.
Deep down they suspect tennis is not a real sport—sort of like golf—except that because they play it, they tolerate golf and more specifically admire Tiger Woods.
Tennis will never find tenure in the hearts and souls of most U.S. sports fans—not now or anytime in the future, because tennis is not integral to the typical American sports psyche.
The un-silent majority fail to appreciate a sport where the umpire tells you to sit down and shut up—all very gently, of course.
It also doesn’t help that currently men's tennis is ruled by Europeans.
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