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Andy Roddick of the US. (Image credit: AFP/Getty Images via @daylife)
Tennis is that unique sport that straddles Business and Jingoism.? It attracts both Big Money and Patriotic Fervor. ?And so it lends itself to some funny, and not so comedic national stereotyping. ?The French as usual get the bad end of it, but so?can?the Big Swinging Dicks from?the United States.? At least that?s how it was growing up in the 1970s and 80s in India. Then, as now, Tennis was the new popular sport of the upwardly mobile (which my family purported to be).??Indian pro-players were generally either too out of shape, or too undisciplined to get?far into a?Grand Slam tournement.? So a Tennis fan?following the matches, was inevitably subjected to the?stellar technique, but?far from acceptable on-court tantrums, and off-court spite of top American players like John McEnroe, Jimmy Connors, continuing almost without a break to Jim Courier, Pete Sampras and Andre Agassi.? Only their fellow citizens, and maybe obsequious Brits, found their antics funny. To the rest of us, they simply reflected everything that was wrong with Americans: they might be a culture of great and progressive thinkers, and innovators, but by golly, were they vainglorious!? And it seemed to reiterate a culture where the end justified the means.?
These diametrically opposite views are best personified in a conversation I had earlier today with my twelve-year old daughter, an avid tennis player, reader of all books tennis, and a true-blood patriotic American.? She has read the autobiographies of almost all the modern era?s tennis greats, and she really is just twelve years old.? Deep in writing this post, I suddenly felt someone?s breath against my neck.? Looking up, I found my daughter lounging against the back of my chair reading over my shoulder.? Ever ready with an opinion (you can guess who she inherited that from) she jumps in, ?You forgot Michael Chang you know?, she says.? Then she adds, ?Give me one example of Sampras being spiteful on court. They were called the ?Golden Generation? for a reason?.? I sigh.? She is after all the very brain-washed citizenry I am writing about.? ?More like the ?Frat Brats? of Tennis, wouldn?t you say??, I rejoin wryly.
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So when I was first introduced to Andy Roddick in the late 1990s (I had by then immigrated to the U.S.), I saw the spiky head of hair; heard the smart-aleck comments; listened to John McEnroe?s fawning commentary, and shuddered. ?Here we go again!? I thought.?
Andy Roddick?s career has had many high and low points, whose hasn?t? ?And as a fan, I feel that there was a certain potential in him that never got fully realized ? maybe because of someone of called Roger Federer, or because of a lack of some extra focus or coaching.? But Andy did something for U.S. Tennis which is more valuable than any Grand Slam he could have ever won.? He brought back sportsmanship to it!? His smart-aleck comments were often self-deprecating,??his assessments in defeat were honest; in victory magnanimous.? ?He had no illusions about himself, his country, or his sport, but he was a committed?and regular team member?for the much ignored (in the U.S.) Davis Cup, and a mentor for up and coming players.? In one fell swoop, along with compatriots James Blake, Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal, ?he set a new standard of on-court professionalism, and off-court courtesy that has transformed the next generation of U.S. and Global Tennis players.? And so we now have young men like John Isner, and hopefully many more of the same ilk.? Thankfully, it is no longer??cool??to scream at empires, insult competitors, or find excuses for defeat (unless you are Serena Williams).
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In a U.S. Sports?profession that is still dominated by the likes of Tiger Woods and Kobe Bryant, one can only be thankful that we are still capable of launching great sportsmen like Andy Roddick.? For that and for more than a decade of great tennis entertainment, we say, ?Thank you Andy?.? And as Roger Federer recently testified, there were, and for Tennis Fans will always be, two?Champions at Wimbledon 2009.
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