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Is all this tennis racket necessary?
Posted: Monday January 31, 2000 09:50 PM
We should feel honoured that so many tennis players choose to watch our daily international sports show "World Sport." But we might end up with a bit of a complex if they're not more gentle with us. First it was Richard Krajicek getting in a dig at CNN's coverage of tennis back in 1996. He claimed showing a few points and a results board was hardly comprehensive. I'm not sure Richard grasped that we do that with every sport because that's the nature of the show. Short highlights are essential in our half-hour offering. Brevity is the key as we sweep the globe to cover as many events as possible in a limited amount of time. We rarely please all the people all the time, although we do our best. But we most certainly wouldn't touch on even half the sports we do if we had to show major chunks of tennis action -- or golf or soccer. More recently, Yevgeny Kafelnikov has twice mentioned CNN broadcasts which have "embarrassed" him. One concerned our constant reminder that although he was about to be crowned world number one, it was somewhat ridiculous because he'd lost in his opening round in six straight tournaments. That was a criticism of the ranking system, not him. He just happened to be the "quirk of the sytem" in question.
He would later question our editorial content. Leading with Andre Agassi against Pete Sampras in the World Championship, but not getting to the rest of tournament action until later in the show "embarrassed" him. Remember, all these player comments are being made publicly to journalists and broadcasters. On that editorial score, let me say that Agassi and Sampras immediately engage viewers. Thomas Enqvist and Nicolas Lapentti, a match shown later in the show, less so. Yevgeny shouldn't work himself up into such a lather about this stuff. Doesn't he know stress can take years off your life? Then this week, it was our dear friend Goran Ivanisevic's turn to slight us for slighting him. Goran suggested we'd accused him of tanking a match last year in Prague. The moment I heard his quote, I remembered the story. A tournament director was considering withholding the Croatian's appearance money, something in the region of $100,000, I believe, for losing in the opening round. He was of the belief Goran might not have tried his hardest, even though -- as the player pointed out in his Australian Open press conference on Tuesday -- the match did go the full three sets. Clearly we didn't say Goran tanked. This other fella did. That's not to say we haven't come down hard on Ivanisevic on occasion. For one blessed with such talent, he hasn't always put it to the best use. On that score we have often called him to task. But telling a player he's tanking matches -- in other words purposely giving up the fight to lose -- isn't our bag, baby. Never has been. And I trust never will be.
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