ESPN loses with jingoistic tennis coverage

Once upon a time, you could not tell the players without a scoreboard at the ballpark. Nowadays, you cannot watch tennis on ESPN without using the mute button on your remote control.

Unless you make tennis on ESPN sound like the award-winning silent film, "The Artist," ESPN's jingoistic "America versus the world" approach to the sport would render its coverage completely unwatchable.

"Serena Williams is the only American left in the main draw," ESPN told viewers often during its Friday night/Saturday morning presentation of the Australian Open before the mute button was pressed.

As if a player's nationality matters in tennis. It doesn't. It never has. And never will to the vast majority of viewers despite ESPN's attempt to brainwash people.

Tennis is an individualistic sport. Serena Williams does not play for Team USA any more than Rafael Nadal plays for the Spanish Armadas or Roger Federer represents the Swiss Cheeses.

Serena plays for Serena. If she wins the Aussie Open, it is her victory, not a reason for a flag-waving public celebration. A Serena triumph Down Under would not validate the American way of life, whatever that is, any more than a Serena defeat would bring shame to those values Americans hold dear (which in our increasingly divisive political climate is harder than ever to define).

Yet ESPN insists on sabotaging its tennis coverage with constant prattle about how the Americans are doing in a given tournament, even though that is not why tennis fans watch tennis.

Tennis fans love the drama, contrasting styles and prodigious artistry of a Nadal-Federer match. That neither player is American is utterly irrelevant. Always has been.

Unfortunately, ESPN remains tone-deaf to the truth: Tennis will not achieve NFL-type ratings here if such American players as Mardy Fish, Donald Young, Christina McHale and Melanie Oudin (who has done nothing since the 2009 U.S. Open) join Serena in the second week of a major tournament.

Tennis is a niche sport in America. Most sports fans don't watch tennis. But avid fans will watch the Grand Slam tournaments regardless of who wins the events. Why? Because we enjoy tennis. We especially enjoy our tennis with intelligent and insightful commentary that enhances our appreciation of the players involved, their biographies, strategies, strengths and weaknesses.

Alas, intelligent and insightful commentary on ESPN tennis coverage has been in such short supply that the sport's best TV analyst, Mary Carillo, finally got fed up two years ago and left the network.

Carillo wants to talk tennis, which she does now for Tennis Channel and for CBS at the U.S. Open. She does not want to wave pom-poms for American players. She does not want to spend infinitely more time talking about an American teen-ager making her Wimbledon debut than Novak Djokovic trying to repeat as the tournament champion.

Now that Disney-owned ESPN has wrested the TV rights to Wimbledon from NBC, we will no longer be able to hear Carillo's commentary of the tournament during championship weekend. Our loss.

What constitutes an even bigger loss for viewers is the realization that ESPN can substantially outbid other networks for the right to televise marquee tennis events without having any clue as to how to present the sport properly.

So, like many tennis fans, I'll be watching "Breakfast at Wimbledon" this July, ESPN-style--with my oatmeal and fresh fruit on the table, and the audio on mute.

Charging the Net: A History of Blacks in Tennis from Althea Gibson and Arthur Ashe to the Williams Sisters

With every powerful serve and deft ground stroke, with every graceful volley and determined charge to the net, black tennis players – from Hall of Famers Althea Gibson, Arthur Ashe, Evonne Goolagong, and Yannick Noah to future legends James Blake and the sisters Venus Williams and Serena Williams – have forced open the sport’s shuttered gates and demanded to be acknowledged.

In Charging the Net, Cecil Harris and Larryette Kyle-DeBose draw on personal interviews and extensive research to chronicle the humiliations and triumphs of blacks in professional tennis from the 1940s to the present. For many fans and writers Ashe, Gibson, and the Williams sisters personify the achievement of African-Americans in tennis, but others too have made their mark. Charging the Net spotlights a wide range of competitors as well as the American Tennis Association, an organization that thrived despite racial segregation, thanks to such benefactors as Dr. R. Walter Johnson.

The book also introduces readers to two black officials whose success was short-lived; both have sued the United States Tennis Association, alleging discrimination based on race, gender, and age.

Harlem-trained, Harvard-educated James Blake, who overcame career-threatening injuries to achieve World Top Ten status, has written a Foreword to Charging the Net. The Afterword is written by Robert Ryland, the first black to compete in a major college tournament, who later found the doors to tennis’s premier venues marked “Whites Only.” With a clear vision, this eighty-six-year-old coach now looks at how far blacks in tennis have come and how far they have yet to travel.

With 8 pages of photographs.

Cecil Harris has written on sports for Newsday, the New York Post, The Sporting News, and USA Today, and has covered tennis for The Indianapolis Star and for Gannett Suburban Newspapers (now The Journal News) in Westchester County, New York. His other books include Breaking the Ice: The Black Experience in Professional Hockey and Call the Yankees My Daddy: Reflections on Baseball, Race, and Family. He lives in Yonkers, New York.

Larryette Kyle-DeBose is a player-captain in the Atlanta Lawn Tennis Association. She has worked as a photojournalist for the Swazi Times in Africa and is the author of The African-American Guide to Real Estate Investing. She lives in Stone Mountain, Georgia.