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December 25, 2006
Vantage Point
By Neil Amdur, Tennis Week
The decision to select Dwyane Wade for Sports Illustrated Magazine's
Sportsman of the Year says as much about the current state of sports in
America as it does about tennis' place in the pecking order.
Wade, who helped lead the Miami Heat to an NBA title last year, is a
deserving finalist among any group of athletes. However, no one came close
to Roger Federer's superlative 2006 tennis season, and Federer is even
more of an international ambassador.
But sports is not about performance anymore; in today's marketplace, you
need only check SI's most recent Sportsman of the Year choices to
understand that baseball (1998, '01, '04), football ('05), basketball ('03,
'06) and Tiger Woods ('00) are the hot properties, and style is as
important as substance. And, of course, everyone loves Lance Armstrong ('02).
Tennis is on the outside
looking in, mired in no-man's land, not only because of the diminished
status of American players but because the sport, aside from the U.S.
Open, lacks the marketing muscle to generate more than "Oh, is there a
tournament in town this week?" The rest of the year, tennis floats
between cable television, the anonymity of roundups and agate results
in newspapers or magazines and the occasional ad for Maria Sharapova's
latest corporate pitch. Yes, Sharapova generates $25 million in
earnings and endorsements that puts her in rarefied marketing company.
But that's because of beauty not her backhand.
It was not always this way. In Sports Illustrated's early years, track and
field athletes like Roger Bannister ('54), Bobby Morrow ('56), Rafer
Johnson ('58) and Jim Ryun ('66) earned year-end honors. But as talk radio,
the ESPN empire and other cable subsidiaries created a 24/7 hyperbolic
overflow, major sports now reign, especially when it comes to the promotion
and negativity game; and in the words of programming operatives, negativity
sells.
Even more glaring is the failure of many newspapers, magazines and
television to recognize sports and athletes outside the U.S. To their
credit, the Laureus World Sports Awards honored Federer as their athlete of the
year. But only a handful of foreign athletes — Bannister, boxer Ingemar
Johansson ('59), race car driver Jackie Stewart ('73) and speed skater Johann Olav
Koss ('94) — all males — have won SI's Sportsman of the Year. Not even Rod
Laver's second Grand Slam in 1969 could oust Tom (Terrific) Seaver from the
Mets' glorious championship run that year, and only Chris Evert ('76),
Billie Jean King ('72) and Arthur Ashe ('92) have been honored by the
magazine.
Federer played 17 tournaments in 2006, made 16 finals and finished 92-5,
losing four times to Rafael Nadal (our cover this month) and Andy Murray.
Would Federer have won Sportsman of the Year if he had swept the four
majors? Debatable. More important, Federer played only four tournaments in
the U.S., and he was only the third most recognized tennis player (behind
Andre Agassi and Andy Roddick) in a SportsBusiness Journal survey earlier
this year that measured national consumer awareness. Is it any wonder that
SI preferred a likeable, honorable Wade to promote its magazine?
I have been involved in sports as a reporter and editor for 45 years and
served as sports editor of the New York Times for 12 years. Despite the
emergence of The Tennis Channel, and the excitement generated by the U.S.
Open, there is less media coverage of the sport now than anytime I can
recall, even with refreshingly diverse personalities like Federer, Nadal,
Sharapova, Roddick and James Blake. I'm not talking about hours of tennis
exposure on television; my reference point is public awareness. Do they
care about the sport as water-cooler fodder?
I don't buy the notion that tennis is dying. Participant play is up and
leagues are everywhere, but the pro sport does not help itself with
scheduling confusion and a seemingly endless season. More mega-events, a
consolidated Davis Cup and greater player access (the way Nascar promotes
its drivers) would help; so would using great names from the past to bridge
the identity gap with future stars. But playing tennis and following the
sport are distinctly different: that's why non-golf fans are attracted to
Tiger Woods and why he has won two Sportsman of the Year honors in the last
10 years, even though he has won only three more majors than Federer.
"Dwyane Wade obviously is
an excellent athlete," James Blake recently told Tennis Week.com's
Richard Pagliaro, "and to have won a world championship at such a young
age is incredible. But to name anyone better than Federer seems
ridiculous to me. What he's done in terms of the last three or four
years, his record, I don't know if it's ever going to be matched."
Blake also was asked about the Federer-Woods connection at the U.S. Open.
"Not to take anything away from Tiger Woods, because he's an unbelievable
golfer," James Blake said. "I'd
make a case for Roger Federer being the best athlete of our time. Not
tennis player, athlete. I mean Tiger's won 11 majors, but put him in that
match-play situation and I don't think he's won maybe two of those where
it's a tournament. You have one bad day and you're out. That's what we do
every single week."
Federer is not one to blow his own horn. So let me do it for him: his
sound, as player and person, is beautiful, the equivalent of a Chris Botti
jazz trumpet solo. Sweet. The sweetest sound you'll ever hear — A Sportsman
for All Seasons.
Neil Amdur is Tennis Week's Editor-In-Chief.
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