Temerity over Tradition: Bring the people back to the tennis.
Let me preface this by saying I’m not claiming “oh yeah I could’ve gone pro.” I played tennis for 8 years in my childhood/teenage years, but outside of local tournaments in the Ryde/Balmain region, not much was going on.
Tennis, at its essence, is a lonely, clinical sport. Look up the story of any of the world’s best and you’ll see repeated tales of moving away from home at a young age, adopting the discipline, regiment and dedication of a career executive thirty years their senior.
Of course, dedication and sacrifice aren’t unique to tennis in the world of pro sports. However, the one thing that separates tennis from others is the lonesome nature and lack of real team environment. Tennis is an individual (at large) sport, breaking news I know.
Anyone who has played tennis competitively will attest. In an individual sport, your flaws are magnified. Every action is painstakingly broken down, reworked, analysed and crucified, pressures compounded, no chance to break, no place to hide.
The world of elite tennis is an eternal spotlight on a never-ending fuse box.
Look at the top players of the last generation. Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic, three generational players colliding in the same period of time. Three titans of the sport, three pillars of robotic, ruthless efficiency.
If you told me that these three were made in a lab by the forefathers of the forehand, I wouldn’t bat an eye, such is their repeated, timeless success and clinical execution.
The greatest compliment you can give an athlete is that their success is common, expected. Lack of surprise at otherwise other-worldly achievements isn’t a sign of disrespect, but rather a marker of status among the greats. Through no fault of their own, the ‘Big Three’ have been so dominant it’s generated tennis fatigue.
Take, for example, LeBron James, at worst the second best basketball player of all time. Even now, at age 37, in his 19th NBA season, he’s doing things not able to be replicated by players 15 years his junior, athletically or performance wise. To any sane person or wild-eyed new basketball fan, LeBron is a walk-up MVP finalist every year until he’s on a Zimmer frame.
LeBron has won the MVP four times, but none since 2013. He’s dragged teams that have absolutely no business being more than first round fodder, all the way to the NBA Finals, consistently since the mid 2000s, and yet we sit back and go “ho-hum, I’ve read this book before.” Every time LeBron’s name is mentioned in the MVP race now it almost feels like it’s due to begrudging respect or a legacy nod, rather than due to his insane level of play.
That inhuman level of success of the men’s tennis Big Three has lulled the sport into a slumber, desperately searching for a jolt of new energy. Even the women’s game, with the unprecedented dominance of Serena Williams, still maintains a somewhat baseline level of parity.
The WTA tour has had 23 different Grand Slam champions since 2010. The ATP? 8. Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal alone have won 33 of a possible 47 Grand Slams since 2010. They’ll be in the tennis hall of fame in Rhode Island the second they lay down the racquet.
I fell out of love with tennis due to the strain of lonely training and not feeling like part of a team, especially as I was playing basketball and soccer at the same time. Inherently, we play sports for a sense of belonging and community. Tennis, maybe more so than any other major sport, struggles to capture the imagination of the common viewer, due to this preconceived “sport for the elites” mentality and strict adherence to tradition.
Nick Kyrgios is the obvious chaos agent to tennis’ rigid history. Like John McEnroe before him, a loudmouthed, brash, incorrigible vortex of showmanship and leering bravado, Kyrgios has been ruffling the feathers of the gatekeepers of the sanctity of the sport since he first burst on to the scene.
This resistance to accept alternative, “human” personalities has contributed to the decline of tennis in popularity where it counts, at the teenage level, the next generation of stars.
I’m going to try and run through this next bit without sounding like too much of a boomer at only 26 years of age.
Djokovic, Federer, Nadal, Andy Murray (who I haven’t even mentioned, the stepbrother of success in tennis almost, a great of his time yet always that step below), bastions of the game, legends, but robots. Fair enough?
In the 21st century, with the rising influence of hip hop, basketball culture, superheroes and short form sport, kids are now attracted to things that grab their attention. Loud, flashy, participative and inclusive. The Big Bash League might not be for cricket purists, but it gets kids involved in a carnival of dingers and out in the backyard with their siblings and friends.
Tennis doesn’t do that at all. If anything, in recent history, tennis has presented a united front of conformance and rigidity, tradition over temerity.
Why do you think the run of the Special K’s, as Nick Kyrgios and Thanasi Kokkinakis have been affectionately dubbed, has captured the hearts and minds of the nation? Because they’re loud, they’re confident, the obvious bromance is adorable, and above all, they’re bloody winning games.
When was the last time you watched a doubles tennis match with legitimate interest and not because you couldn’t sleep and it was 2am and there was nothing else on TV?
“I thought the atmosphere was awesome. That’s what sport is,” Kyrgios said. “You’d expect the crowd to be like that. I can understand it’s a gentleman’s game, but it’s about time that people embraced some sort of different energy in this sport otherwise it will die out. It’s just that simple”
The Special Ks have the nation in raptures with their offhand, overt style of play. They use the crowd, winding up the rabid fans like Lionel Messi roaring up a raucous Camp Nou crowd in a fiery El Clasico. That involvement sells, it brings people closer to the match. It makes people care.
Tennis has been tripping over it’s own feet for too long now, it’s time to step into the 21st century. Nick Kyrgios himself said that the game had really only promoted three stars for the last decade. Unfortunately, for as great as they are as players, they’re not the personalities the sport needs to thrive moving forward.
Sport is about entertainment. At the end of the day it’s part of the entertainment industry, and people pay their hard earned to be enthralled and captivated.
People are paying to watch Nick Kyrgios hit tweeners and underarm serves while bellowing to the crowd and chest bumping Kokkinakis. They’re paying to watch Daniil Medvedev and Stefanos Tsitsipas try to hit the living shit out of each other in a bitter rivalry. They’re paying to watch marathon epics and underdog stories.
They’re not paying to watch Michael Venus sourpuss around the court for 45 minutes then call Kyrgios an entitled knob in a postgame presser, saying he’ll never reach his potential, when the irony is no one had probably heard of Venus before his run in with the Special Ks.
Sport needs personality, embrace it tennis. It’s not 1965 anymore.
