Tuesday, June 2, 2009

Tennis News


Mr. (Mrs.?) Hsu thinks we need more awful parents in tennis for America to take more grand slam titles: http://www.slate.com/id/2219229/.

Both of my kids played academy level tennis at one point, the eldest being pretty good before burning out. The whole tennis scene was kind of eye opening for me--we didn't do tennis where I grew up, concentrating instead on baseball, football, and vandalism. What amazed me most about tennis was the amount of cheating that goes on--it's widespread and part of the sport's amateur fabric. Certain kids are infamous as cheaters, making subtle and sometimes flagrant line calls (players mostly do their own calls in amateur matches) and even changing scores mid-game. Some awful parents, too, but you can see that in pretty much any sport. I disliked the tournament scene, too. Endless days spent in oftentimes crappy locales in miserable weather before going back to the crappy hotel and then the crappy drive back on Sunday, without feeling that anyone had all that much fun. Essentially, a lot of crap. Maybe it was just us but I don't think so.

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