Pressing Matters
It's a relatively dry period for tennis but, oddly enough, that often translates to a spurt of creativity at the various tennis websites and weblogs. I know the Tribe has a number of serious and committed readers, and I want to make sure all of you know about Tennis magazne's book club.
This was the brainchild of Pennsyltucky's very own Steve Tignor in cahoots with the mother ship's Mistress of the Dark Web Arts, Kamakshi Tandon. They're currently engaged in a very high-minded discussion of Gordon Forbes's seminal tennis memoirs (first installment here, others in sequence). It's great stuff, and the lit-crit twins promise more - I hear rumors of an upcoming Book Club meeting being devoted to Mike Agassi's tome. I'm going to take part in that one, for sure.
Recently, I also ponied up for a subscription to Tennis-X's newsletter, which is now being delivered to my inbox. Luke and his boys are really kicking it; who needs the mainstream media anymore, when it comes to tennis news? I'm really proud of what the mother ship has achieved in the last year or so; I believe we (Tennis.com) have made a great transition and jumped out as the primary and most diverse source of tennis news, anywhere - print, electronic, or otherwise. But I also want to acknowledge and support those folks who don't have the luxury that me or Jon Wertheim enjoy - the support, financial and otherwise, of a substantial media company.
For my money, the emerging star at Tennis-X is their Senior Writer, Richard Vach. This guy knows his stuff and he's a diligent, accurate, just-the-facts, m'am style reporter.Which reminds me: A hat tip to that pioneer of internet tennis journalism, Bob Larson. His Tennis News is an indispensable, wide-ranging, comprehensive source, and his Daily Tennis (a subscription- based service) is exhaustive - and exhausting. You want to know how a third-round doubles loss at Bangkok by Max Mirnyi may affect his year-end doubles ranking, where he was ranked at this time last year, and how many buffet-line meal chits he'll be defending in Aix en Provence, Larson will know. And tell.
And let's not forget The Tennis Reporters, Matt Cronin's site. Matt has more or less become a one-man band, but he covers a lot of territory, he travels to most Grand Slams, and he's not reluctant to express an opinion. That was amply demonstrated in his current newsletter (subscription only), where he posted an extraordinary personal attack on Charles Bricker - triggered, oddly enough, by Bricker's positive review of Vince Spadea's book, Break Point. Here's but one excerpt from Matt's screed:
It's gets even worse, folks - so bad, in fact, that I've offered Bricker a chance (via email) to respond at this site, which he politely declined. The crazy thing is that while Bricker certainly is not the most popular guy in the press room, his professionalism - as far as I know - is unimpeachable. He covers the sport the way a hard-bitten football or hockey writer covers his (or hers), with a soupcon of the tennis nut (which he is) thrown into the mix. There are other good, mainstream tennis reporters out there, but I'm not sure any of them has as much leeway to write and even blog as many diverse stories as Brick, owing to the demographics of the Sun-Sentinel's readership.
The strange part, though, is that I can't imagine anyone reading Bricker's work and finding anything that even remotely supports Matt's accusations (but I'm certainly open to persuasion). It's one thing to trash a guy's personality, for any number of reasons, but that has no bearing whatsoever on the work he produces. I have a feeling we many not have heard the end of this one. . .
So much for pressing matters. I'll be posting the answers Randy Brown of The Tennis Channel gave to your questions later.