If you're anything like me, you love professional tennis but wish it was more accessible on a regular basis.
Sure, we are blessed to have the Tennis Channel, an outlet that does a fantastic job of covering the sport from all angles, but sometimes you just really want to see the game live.
The guys on tour are so talented that it can look easy on television. Watching live and in person reminds a person of just how fast and talented they are. Plus, you get a better feel for tension building with the match when you are there live.
The problem is that most people don't live anywhere near an ATP event. That's only becoming more true as time goes on. The tournaments in Los Angeles and San Jose have recently been moved to international locales and as tennis becomes even more of an international game, that's only going to continue.
Heck, even if you do live in a place that has a tournament, you only get to see the sport up close for one or two weeks a year.
This is precisely why I would suggest that all tennis fans go out and watch college tennis during the spring season.
College tennis at the highest levels gives you everything you love about the sport. These kids might not be Federer or Nadal, but they are very, very good. Most of them were blue chip recruits out of high school or highly-ranked junior players in their home countries.
You are guaranteed to see blistering serves, long rallies and fantastic doubles play. And because these kids might not be as adept at constructing long points as the pros are, you will likely see a lot more serve and volley. I take that as a positive as well.
The best part in my mind, though, is that it takes the things I love about tennis and combines them with the things I love about the more traditional team sports.
The players are competing with the players standing across the net from them, but the point gained from each individual win adds to their team total to help them beat the opposing team in what they call the dual match that pits the two teams against each other.
With this team aspect, the players get really into rooting for their teammates. When a dual match comes down to one final match between two players, it's not uncommon for the players from each team to huddle around the court and act like fans themselves. By this point, the actual fans in the stands will also have congregated around this one court, making what might have started off as a sparse crowd look like a much larger crowd.
Chances are, you have a Division I NCAA tennis program near you. They are littered all over the country. Some programs don't charge admission to get in and watch and even if they do, it will be at a fraction of the cost of attending a pro tournament or really any pro sport, for that matter.
Do yourself, and the sport, a favor. Find the college program nearest you and attend a match there. You will be glad you did and college tennis, dwarfed by the money sports of football and basketball, needs the support.
Saturday, February 23, 2013
Monday, February 11, 2013
Horacio Zeballos Rains on Nadal Parade
Few returns have been as eagerly anticipated as Rafael Nadal's return to the ATP this past week at a clay court tournament in Chile.
Although there have been some fantastic happenings in tennis since his injury occurred, his absence has certainly been felt. There's just no other way to describe it.
Coming into this relatively minor tournament, optimism about Nadal's return was guarded. I think most figured he would have some success in Chile, but I think we all expected him to not quite look like his old self.
The guarded part of that optimism, however, went right out the door as soon as he took the court.
In doubles, he and partner Juan Monaco looked like favorites to win the title. In singles, against relatively soft competition, I will admit, he looked fantastic.
He quickly dispatched Federico Delbonis in his first match and countryman Daniel Gimeno-Traver didn't fare much better in Nadal's second match, the tournament quarterfinals. It was in the semifinals that he really turned it on, though. In that match, he took down Jeremy Chardy, one of the hotter players on tour so far this season by the score of 6-2, 6-2.
It looked like it was smooth sailing from there as he was set to take on little-known Horacio Zeballos in the final.
But then it wasn't.
After taking the first set in a tiebreaker, a set in which most were impressed that Zeballos had just stayed close, Nadal dropped the last two sets to lose the title.
The reaction from the tennis Twitterverse, the real barometer for these types of things in this day and age, was nothing short of shock and awe and why shouldn't it have been?
According to The Tennis Abstract, Nadal had not lost a match to someone outside the top-50 on clay since 2004, before Rafael Nadal was Rafael Nadal, an all-time great.
After stepping back, though, you can see why we might be overreacting to this loss.
For starters, Zeballos isn't bad. He's ranked 73rd in the world, which isn't great, but it's not like this guy is some kid in his first top-level tournament with a ranking in the 200s. He's also coming off something of a high, as he and partner David Nalbandian clinched Argentina's Davis Cup tie two weekends ago against Germany with a win in their doubles rubber.
Physically, Nadal probably isn't quite there yet, either. He admitted as much in the lead up to this event. He was not shy about admitted that his knee isn't 100 percent and that he won't know if the surgery he had truly did the job until weeks later.
It speaks to how good Nadal is on clay that he was able to get as far as he did this week even though he is still battling his body.
Overall, it's hard to have anything but positive things to say about Nadal's return in Chile. He won some matches, he played like his old self in patches and he didn't have any real setbacks.
Most of all, I think he showed us that given time to fully get back into match shape, he's going to get back to his usual level of play, at least on clay.
For me, that's good enough for his first week back.
Although there have been some fantastic happenings in tennis since his injury occurred, his absence has certainly been felt. There's just no other way to describe it.
Coming into this relatively minor tournament, optimism about Nadal's return was guarded. I think most figured he would have some success in Chile, but I think we all expected him to not quite look like his old self.
The guarded part of that optimism, however, went right out the door as soon as he took the court.
In doubles, he and partner Juan Monaco looked like favorites to win the title. In singles, against relatively soft competition, I will admit, he looked fantastic.
He quickly dispatched Federico Delbonis in his first match and countryman Daniel Gimeno-Traver didn't fare much better in Nadal's second match, the tournament quarterfinals. It was in the semifinals that he really turned it on, though. In that match, he took down Jeremy Chardy, one of the hotter players on tour so far this season by the score of 6-2, 6-2.
It looked like it was smooth sailing from there as he was set to take on little-known Horacio Zeballos in the final.
But then it wasn't.
After taking the first set in a tiebreaker, a set in which most were impressed that Zeballos had just stayed close, Nadal dropped the last two sets to lose the title.
The reaction from the tennis Twitterverse, the real barometer for these types of things in this day and age, was nothing short of shock and awe and why shouldn't it have been?
According to The Tennis Abstract, Nadal had not lost a match to someone outside the top-50 on clay since 2004, before Rafael Nadal was Rafael Nadal, an all-time great.
After stepping back, though, you can see why we might be overreacting to this loss.
For starters, Zeballos isn't bad. He's ranked 73rd in the world, which isn't great, but it's not like this guy is some kid in his first top-level tournament with a ranking in the 200s. He's also coming off something of a high, as he and partner David Nalbandian clinched Argentina's Davis Cup tie two weekends ago against Germany with a win in their doubles rubber.
Physically, Nadal probably isn't quite there yet, either. He admitted as much in the lead up to this event. He was not shy about admitted that his knee isn't 100 percent and that he won't know if the surgery he had truly did the job until weeks later.
It speaks to how good Nadal is on clay that he was able to get as far as he did this week even though he is still battling his body.
Overall, it's hard to have anything but positive things to say about Nadal's return in Chile. He won some matches, he played like his old self in patches and he didn't have any real setbacks.
Most of all, I think he showed us that given time to fully get back into match shape, he's going to get back to his usual level of play, at least on clay.
For me, that's good enough for his first week back.
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