THE tennisreporters.net NEWSLETTER: SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 16

Rosewall: Men's tennis deserves "A"
Players need to support ATP more
Spaniards dissing game by not playing grass

By Douglas Robson
For tennisreporters.net

FROM THE TENNIS MASTERS CUP SHANGHAI – If only Ken Rosewall had been grading my college papers. It might have pushed my mediocre GPA into cum laude territory.

At the Masters Cup in Shanghai this week, the Aussie legend – who won his first Grand Slam at 19 and was still winning tournaments at 43 – gave the men's game a resounding "A." But despite the high mark, Rosewall spilled plenty of red ink in criticizing the state of the sport.

Why is the multiple Grand Slam winner so high on the men? Mostly, it boils down to depth and variety. "I think it's very strong," Rosewall, a spry 68, said of men's tennis in 2002. "There's good players from every country in the world. When you go back many years, there were good players from just three, four, or five countries and a lot of other players from other countries, but they weren't so good." He credits opening the game to professionals in 1968 and its inclusion in the Olympics for helping grow tennis globally. "If you take the Davis Cup as an example, 30 years ago there were 30 countries playing, but now we have 130 playing every year," he said.

Asked whether superior depth doesn't actually hurt the men's game because it means top personalities are prone to upsets and not assured of making the later rounds of tournaments, Rosewall agreed it poses problems.

"You can't change the format," he said. "This year at Wimbledon, it was unfortunate for the overall event to have Agassi and Sampras lose early, with all due respect to the other players. But with an elimination event, that's always a possibility." He still sees the element of surprise as something that enhances rather than detracts from the men's circuit.

Money was also on his mind. Rosewall, who was nicknamed "Muscles" and earned only about $1.6 million in a career that spanned three decades and included both the pro and amateur eras, bemoaned the lack of support today's players throw behind the ATP.

Players need to support ATP more
While he didn't mention names, he said many circuit stars act selfishly and don't provide the backbone tennis needs – a sport struggling with flagging TV ratings and a myriad of financial and structural issues.

"Obviously some players have feelings about what they should do and what they should not do," he said. "But they have to realize that the ATP has done a hell of a lot for men's tennis, made a lot of the players into really wealthy people and helped their off-court earnings tremendously." He laughingly called his own earnings "unmentionable compared to some of the players of today."

The 5'9" 135-pound Sydney native, known for his court coverage and silky smooth backhand, isn't a big fan of power tennis, either. Supercharged racket technology has spawned legions of baseliners, which, in turn, has sucked variety and strategy out of the game, he said. "You do see too much power, which is not the way tennis is supposed to be played," he groused.

While the tennis Hall-of-Famer admits he is from a different generation of players who were weaned on wood, today's pros rely too much on power, which has contributed to one-dimensional tennis – and that's a shame.

"As a perfect example, which some years ago would have been unthought of (sic), is Lleyton Hewitt winning Wimbledon by never going to the net on grass courts," he said of the the 21-year-old Australian world No. 1. But whether going back to wood, increasing ball size or making surfaces slower would remedy the situation, Rosewall couldn't say. He thinks such changes should be explored, however.

For a man with nine Grand Slam titles, plus nine in doubles, Rosewall is surprisingly unsympathetic to the plight of doubles specialists, who face diminished prize money in 2003. While he believes doubles has a place in the game, he said players who fill seats deserve the lion's share of compensation.

"You have to support the players more generously who are doing more for sponsors and bringing the people through the gate," he said. "In a way, it's probably fair to say that some of the doubles events should be downgraded or maybe eliminated to some degree."

He also thinks top singles players should be required to play more doubles events – even if it takes "an edge off your game," as it sometimes did when he played singles, doubles and mixed at the Grand Slams. "It would be helpful to tournaments and sponsors for the leading singles players to play doubles some of the time," he said.

Spaniards dissing game by not playing on grass
Likewise, he has no time for complaints about grass. For players who grumble about bad bounces at Wimbledon, where Centre Court can look like an inverted T burned into the grass by aliens by the end of the tournament, Rosewall suggests you get what you play with.

"Let's face it, if the players want to have the type of tennis shoe that tears up the court and then they complain about it, well, let them use shoes that players had some years ago where you didn't get quite as good a traction," he snapped. He has even less patience for players who skip the summer's brief grass court season because it's not their best surface. "For half a dozen Spanish or other players not to play because they don't like grass is a disrespect to the game," he said.