Meet the tennis media: Ben Rothenberg

One of the young guns in the American tennis media is Washington DC-based New York Times contributing writer Ben Rothenberg, who almost got to play with Treat Huey back in the day, caught the eye of Maria Sharapova, and even had a flash “Federer moment” on the court during a high school match…
First memory of tennis: The first one that pops in my head… I remember walking down the stairs, my dad was watching TV and it was Martina Navratilova on. And I was just baffled by that word “Navratilova.”

Why do you love tennis: I like the individualness of it. I like the ‘you win if you’re better than the other person and if you’re not you lose.’ There’s accountability and transparency in that that I appreciate. And it’s sort of a Zen thing to watch: people hitting a ball back and forth over and over. I’m sure I’ve seen a million balls hit at this point. It’s almost meditational.

Favorite players to interview: It’s different in press conferences and one on one. So far, I like a bunch of the consistent ones like Sharapova and Federer. They’re both very reliable and you know what you’re going to get – you’re going to get an answer you can use. From a work point of view, that’s easy and reliable. In terms of more fun and spontaneous ones, I would say Andrea Petkovic is one of my favorites for that. And Ernests Gulbis also.

Greatest tennis moment: Hmmm…I’m not used to being on this end of interviews, it’s harder than it looks [smiles]…how about, one thing I really liked was in Cincinnati. They let writers sit in the photo pit, you could be like court level sitting on the court. I saw Federer-Nadal there last year, court level. Serena-Azarenka. Li Na Sharapova. So just seeing it that up close was pretty cool. You get to see the footwork and how hard they’re working. You can’t really see from television their faces when they play, and where their eyes are going and all that stuff.”

Best moment as a player: “I was not a very good player. The best I got was three or four on the high school team (Washington DC area). It was a good area for tennis. Like Treat Huey was on one of the teams in our conference. I never played against him but I nearly did. The best moment I remember hitting one – I had a horrible serve – I randomly hit one well. I had like a dropshot serve, sidearm-slider thing. And one time I hit a real hard serve and followed it up with a winning forehand. A real one-two punch, it was like nothing I ever did before. And it made me really happy. I think I lost that match like love-and-one. But I had one perfect point in the middle there. And that was all I needed. And the coach, who was roving and just happened to be standing there in that moment, he said: ‘Why don’t you do that all the time?’ I don’t know. But that definitely never happened again.

Cool story as a media insider: I’ve been doing a lot more this year. So I’ve seen Maria Sharapova in Brisbane, Melbourne, I was at the Olympics so I saw her in Sochi. I saw her in Indian Wells and I saw her here (Sony Open in Key Biscayne). And she was like standing up after her press conference (and said to me), ‘You need to take a break. You’re around too much.’ So that was sort of funny. So it made me feel like this year especially, more of the pace of the tour. Understanding how it gets to be less glamorous traveling around when you’re doing it always and not stopping.

"I'm sure I've seen millions of balls hit"

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