Tennis Prose




Mar/15

16

McEnroe’s Ideas, Federer Drawn To Pacquiao vs. Floyd, Serena-Sloane4

pacsmile

John McEnroe shared some ideas about changing tennis as the sport evolves into the future. Mac would like to see lines people taken out of the equation, so the players could call their own lines, with Hawk-Eye system as the judge for the players.

Mac feels this new system would create new excitement for the sport, and for the fans, by seeing how the players conduct themselves against their opponents regarding line calls. All kinds of drama and controversy can erupt from such a system, which McEnroe feels needs to think about changing. Customs change and so must the game, says McEnroe who is part of the ATP legends committee.

I think it’s a fascinating idea to imagine how Federer and Nadal, or any players, would call their lines knowing Hawk-Eye was there in the background to confirm or deny the calls.

***

Roger Federer is not a boxing fan. He says he stopped following the sport when Mie Tyson retired about ten years ago. But the hysteria of the forthcoming Manny Pacquiao vs. Floyd Mayweather fight on May 2 has gotten his attention. Federer says “everybody is talking about it” and he is going to pay attention to the build up.

http://ringobserver.com/articles/pacquiao-vs-mayweather-is-even-sparking-interest-of-roger-federer

***

Sloane Stephens defeated Svetlana Kuznetsova yesterday to set up a showdown with Serena Williams. After the match, Sloane, who says she hasn’t looker at her draw, spoke with Justin Gimelstob on Tennis Channel and practically begged not to be told who here next opponent is.

Gimelstob did not and who knows, maybe Sloane still doesn’t know she has to play Serena for the fourth time in her career.

Clearly, Sloane’s career has stumbled since the social media war she engaged in with Serena a couple of years ago, highlighted by Serena’s infamous Tweet to Sloane, “I made you.”

Apparently, Sloane still is uncomfortable with the whole rivalry, and is trying to avoid another confrontation with her former friend turned “colleague.”

It will be very interesting to see how Serena handles this matchup, in her first appearance in Indian Wells in over a decade. Will she be on her best behavior? Or will she bring out the beast again to subdue young Sloane?

No tags

5 comments

  • Gaurang · March 16, 2015 at 3:51 pm

    I think the hawk eye system should be made faster and reliable. And then used for every ball continuously. It should be able to call out whenever the ball goes out. There’s no need for any linesmen. The umpire should still be human.

    One flip side is that having linesmen increases enthusiam of the sport for youngsters who can participate that way.

  • Scoop Malinowski · March 16, 2015 at 5:44 pm

    Hawk Eye on every court is expensive Gaurang. If they could afford that expense, it would be very interesting to see what happens. But it’s a major change to the traditional foundation of the sport. Major changes are very rare in tennis – look what happened to the round robin format they tried in Delray and Vegas.

  • Martin G · March 17, 2015 at 9:58 am

    Serena’s tweet is pretty arrogant, don’t you think Scoop?

  • Scoop Malinowski · March 17, 2015 at 10:07 am

    Martin G, for sure. She did the tweet about two years ago but she has matured and changed a lot since. She is very image conscious now and trying to be a better example. “I made you” reminded of, not sure if you saw this excellent 70’s movie about bodybuilding called “Pumping Iron” and Arnold Schwarzeneggar said in this movie that his rival Franco Columbo was more like a son to him and that he looked up to Arnold like a father. So it was arrogant but it was also kind of true. Serena is more like a mother to Sloane than a sister. Should be a very interesting match today 🙂

  • Andrew Miller · March 20, 2015 at 8:32 pm

    Yeah, McEnroe. I think McEnroe just wants to re-live his life before. Can’t control who inherits the sport and the sport is plenty interesting with Nadal, Djokovic, Federer and Nadal – they handle things their own way. Nishikori is interesting, how many top Japanese players have we ever seen?

    If anything needs to change, it’s the way the sport is covered. I’m not sure how reporters cover it in other countries, but here state side you have some excellent tennis reporters, some outstanding bloggers, a great flagship magazine, Jon Wertheim and then…radio silence.

    A lot of local reporting is, sadly, soft. Some of it is redundant, some of it is derivative, some of it is downright lazy if not wholly innaccurate and on the whole the sport is covered poorly. There was something like a decade between tennis magazine covers for Sports Illustrated (before 2008 when Nadal beat Federer and their match made the cover) – and not because tennis wasn’t worthy enough to at least merit a SI cover.

    Some tournament owners really don’t spend much on advertising or advertise the right way, or don’t spend time getting people who want to be in the sport, in the sport. A lot of money is wasted. The retreat from the public courts to private clubs was devastating. Hail, I know tons of courts that have no proper netting – don’t even talk to me about netting for wind, it’ll never be on some of the U.S.’ public courts. Don’t get me started about the lights!

    Anyways. I’m not so sold on these gimmicky changes to the sport – the lines’ challenge system was the biggest and probably the best change to the sports’ rules in a long time. You also see that some players have a lot worse eye sight than they thought! Plus it’s another way to have the fans involved, watching the big screen with the ball going in or out. They could make the replay’s more exciting on the big screen at tournaments.

    But all in all I’d say McEnroe puts too much pressure on the players. They should be allowed to just play and do their job. At this point, it’s everyone else who isn’t doing their jobs. Journalism departments that are decimated and don’t care, press departments at tournaments that may not be reaching out to bloggers and local media, radio that doesn’t think about doing podcasts, tournament directors that price their seats so high that fans like me, who would bring their whole families, will stay home and youtube the replays at a later date.

    I mean you tell me…the sport has been more elite than it should be and if die hard fans like me can’t make it to a local tournament, you better believe that the sport’s problem isn’t that there are linespeople on the court 🙂

<<

>>

Find it!

Copyright 2010
Tennis-Prose.com
To top