The World's Biggest Sporting Event, Starring...You?

Over 700,000 fans attend the US Open Tennis Championships every year, making it the largest attended annual sporting event in the world, and guess what, you can play there, too.

WHAT?

If that's your reaction, that's the essence of my complaint.

No doubt that the goal of the USTA in the last 20-odd years has been the grow the game past country club snobbery and gain a more numerous, diverse playing population that both plays the game and watches professional tournaments. 

In some respects, it has succeeded, with the golden age of Courier/Agassi/Sampras and the rise of the Williams sisters.

At the same time, though, as evidenced by the poor attendance at last week's SAP Open in San Jose (part of the men's ATP professional tennis tour), the game still has a long ways to go. 

Grand-slam quarterfinal-caliber matches were played at this tournament, and the building struggled to gain even half capacity for most sessions of the tournament.

Enter the USTA's most recent ploy to generate interest in the game, the US Open National Playoffs. 

In the same way, the US Open Golf Championships have been accessible to any USGA member who can successfully navigate regional/sectional qualifying, a wild card bid to the US Open Qualifying Tournament is up for grabs for any USTA member over the age of 14 who can win his/her sectional qualifying tournament as well as the finals of the National Playoffs.

(For all of you who don't follow tennis regularly, the qualifying tournament is a mini-tournament for a group of players not ranked high enough to earn a spot in the main draw.  It begins a couple of days before the actual tournament, and usually, about 4 to 8 players from this tournament are awarded spots in the main draw, usually slated to oppose the tournament's top seeds in the first round).

At first glance, it sounds like a great idea.  The fact that just about ANYONE can participate in the playoffs with the shot in the dark hopes of advancing all the way to the US Open's main draw takes from the wonderment that has made "American Idol" and "So You Think You Can Dance" the cultural phenomenons they are. 

The only problem is, you probably haven't heard of the US Open National Playoffs unless you follow the USTA website.

I don't recall seeing any spots for the playoffs during last year's US Open, nor during this year's Australian Open, or even during or at the aforementioned SAP Open. 

And if you figure how long a player would need to train in order to get in shape to make the improbable run starting this spring, you would need potential entrants to know about it well in advance of this spring, when the sectional tournaments begin.

Furthermore, publicity during the Australian Open could get the "pundits" as it were, talking, and generate all sorts of differing story lines regarding how the proverbial "guy off the street" could find himself opposing Roger Federer in Ashe Stadium on night one of the Open. 

No doubt the sport of tennis has come a long way in growing the game, but it still has a long way to go. 

The US Open National Playoffs are a nice way to further the growth, but it needs a little more effective publicity to become the attention-getter it was thought out to be.