Sandgren’s Statement to Media

Hartt – I’m in total agreement with you and I’m not saying anything further on the matter.

Dan – My personal views are irrelevant but I doubt very many readers here would imagine that I line up behind any of the bigoted ideas expressed.

I mention politics because that subject has unfortunately come up again recently in discussion. There are forums for politics and let those conversations happen there.

Tennis please. A great start to the year. Plenty to talk about.

Andrew – please don’t take another vacation yet. It’s like a merry-go-round. And I’m sure I’ll take time off as well if it all gets too much. But I hope not.

Things will change when the action moves closer to the US and the insider stories start coming, and the analysis.

As I mentioned before, I think agents, particularly of the women players, do protect the players and run interference. In a previous age, before the internet, this wasn’t so necessary. Now it is. And I do believe that all players, WTA and ATP, should be given guidance and rules on the use of Twitter. Whatever you write someone’s going to see it.

Oh I’ll have some inside analysis on Tennys when I meet up with him at the next two tournaments in the states, Long Island and Delray Beach. I think what some of you are missing is one of the thing that’s makes Tennis more dramatic is when the sport transcends and heightens what happens on the court because we see more of the personalities of the players. Tennys is out there; there’s no going back because media members like me are going to up the ante now. We’re going to try to get to know him better and let you get to know him too. I always thought the greatest thing about McEnroe (and I’m going to ask John what he thinks of Tennys when I see him in a couple of weeks) is that he had the genius in his game and his personality to make his big matches Uber fascinating. We’re going to find out if Tennys can rise to the occasion or if he’ll shut down and go back to Challenger status. The truly great players they take the limelight and run with it. Tennys Anyone?

I’m not missing the business of personalities – please Dan, stop with this ‘some of you’. Not me.

I think if I was working in the business now I’d find it frustrating – the game’s opaque, same with other sports. So many barriers to understanding or appreciating players – communication blocks, choreographed press conferences etc etc. I do respect privacy and I’m not interested in gossip but years ago life was more relaxed, less populated and frenziedly defensive. You got a sense of the real person.

I know those days are gone for good and it’s only when someone like Tennys pops up with his eccentric tweets and quotes that we have a glimpse of what’s going on back there. I’ve no objection to that. As long as we keep a perspective.

Generally we know very little about the top players – mainly just what they want us to know. That’s created a gap which has to be filled with speculation and reading between the lines. So many ‘interviews’, so little real knowledge.

I have no idea who will win the final, but am rooting for Simona, I just find her more appealing than Caro. But when Woz is slightly more aggressive and not just being the Wall, I do enjoy watching her. Imagine you are right, Simona should have a good chance for the FO title.

I speak for Hartt too because I’ve never ever seen her indulge in the activities you mention or throw around inappropriate comments of any kind.

Ok I think it’s time to back off here and talk tennis. My interest in players’ personalities is because I remember when Connor, Mac, Vitas and Vilas were at the top of the game and they were much more open with their emotions on and off the court. And when they were at the height of their games in the 70’s and 80’s with Borg, Lendl, Becker and Cash too, Tennis was a much more popular sport. When Mac played Connors at the Ipen, the tennis was stirring, but no more so than the clash of personalities. Look, good press coverage builds and creates more interest in the sport as much as the quality of the tennis. When Deford, Curry Kirkpatrick, S. L. Price and Feinstein were writing great articles and books about the game and the players weren’t so defensive about showing who they were, Tennis was a lot more popular and interesting.

That’s why I like the big personalities—they don’t have to be great players like an Andrew Ilie or a Gimelstob and of course Agassi too and Courier, Noah and Tarango—and I don’t like players who rail against the press. We’re not trying to write sensationalist stories; we’re trying to write compelling ones so tennis won’t decline in popularity even further. I’ve got a son who’s the no. 56th player ranked amongst 11 year old’s in the US and I’m hoping if he makes it as a pro player, they’ll still be tournaments in the US that I can go watch him play in.

Dan, tennis has changed, alóng with other sports in the US and all over the world but I’m sure there will be tóurnaments for your son to play in if he makes it as a pro player at whatever level.

Good writing will always be around, and I remember the writers yóu mention, but the writing may be different – how, I don’t precisely knów.

That’s true. I wrote for Tennis, World Tennis, Tennis Week and The old Racquet Magazine as well as Sports Illustrated and the New York Times on Tennis. You had writers like Bodo, Wertheim and Feinstein writing serious observational books on the sport while now publishers probably won’t touch a book like those anymore unless they’re attached to a star player. The game has lost a lot of its allure because great writers draw closer allegiances to the game. It takes on more of a mystical attraction.

A good writer, a good piece of writing, brings the reader in closer to the game, Catherine. In today’s age of Twitter and internet posts, the game isn’t mythologized the way it was say when John McPhee wrote his classic book Bout Tennis, Levels of the Game. A good piece of writing give you a front tow seat to the action and makes you care about the players and the sport more. A good writer gets the reader to us his imagination and makes the toes that bind a tennis fan deeper through his prose. This is not happening at nearly the same level as when many more observational Tennis books by master writers were being written. I can’t think of any now that have come out in the past decade, told from the author’s point of view, rather than the payer’s. You either ascribe to the power of the written word or you don’t.

Yes, I’d agree with that. And I’d go so far as to say the ubiquity of twitter etc and the accessibility of the game in a certain way has permanently changed the way it’s written about.

In other ways tennis and the players have become less accessible and the result is books which are either pedestrian and dull or the kind of ‘fan’ books which are all about the writer and his (usually his) relationship, mainly imaginary, to a famous player. Some people enjoy books like that but I find them a bit embarrassing, maybe revealing more about the writer than was originally intended.

I did read your book with Vince Spadea years ago and I enjoyed it. But I wonder if that kind of book could be published now.

Scoop – yes, but I’d class a lot of social media information as ‘ersatz intimacy’ – you’re told, in the main, what people want you to know and they advertise a closeness which isn’t real. Like the old time movie stars. You learn the truth when everyone’s dead. And the dead can’t be libelled.

However, your ‘Facing….’ series is pretty good I think, and as I’ve said before, a great resource.

Press conferences are so stupid – I really wonder why anyone bothers with them these days. Watch a few on Youtube and you can feel your brain dissolving.

I liked A Handful of Summers but when I reviewed it I didn’t really say so for some reason – I think I got hung up on his young man’s attitude to girls (this was the 70s after all)and then I met him at W’don and told him I’d enjoyed the book, and afterwards felt really guilty and frightened that he’d read the review and think, what a liar.
I’m sure he never did read it.

The best thing about Twitter is what someone doesn’t tell you. Eg last year I used to look at Kerber’s occasionally and I noticed when she was feeling good there was a bit of chatter but when she was doing badly there were long stretches where she wrote nothing at all. Fill in the blanks – because she wasn’t going to.

Well Hartt – you’d better be prepared for more of the Same Old Thing when Serena hits the circuit again.

Catherine, it has started already. There is a New York Times article with the headline, “Serena Williams is Set to Reclaim Her Leading Role in Tennis.” I don’t want to use one of my limited times to access that article, have a pretty good idea of what it says.

Scoop – I’ve been hearing that particular allegation for years – it was being offered around to the trashier papers here last year and of course they wouldn’t touch it with a barge pole because of libel etc, bearing in mind libel laws are stricter in Britain than in many other countries, including the US.

I don’t happen to believe it myself. I also believe that everyone, famous tennis players included, has a right to a private life. Unless you happen to be Bluebeard.

Otherwise, yes, there are lots of interesting stories the beat writers won’t touch because they’re terrified of having their credentials whipped away. I think that’s just unprofessional and whimpish. Result is so much milk and water stuff any reasonably intelligent person could write without ever entering a press room in their lives.

LOL. Play the Challenger tour and see the world!

Scoop – totally with you there. And people who don’t want to make a public display of their sexuality should be respected for that.

Hartt – I think the AO should be moved to Tas – would be a good deal cooler 🙂

I’m sure everyone loves Melbourne but it’s not the tournament every player wants to win.

Actually Melbourne used to be famous for being the most boring capital city in Australia 🙂