The Tradition

My latest post for ESPN should be up now, but before I continue the theme I addressed there – that Roger Federer has taken over the role of Ambassador-at-Large from Andre Agassi -  I have a note for those of you who consume the tennis literature. The Tennis Bookshop is a great source for old, rare and/or out-of-print volumes. It’s run by an Englishman, Alan Chalmers, who also works as a steward at Wimbledon (the press gate is his beat; we’ve gotten to know each other over the years). Alan sends out email alerts (you can get on his list easily enough)  when he gets hold of a special volume pertaining to tennis, as well as other racquet sports.

So getting back to The Mighty Fed. The quote I used at the ESPN entry makes it abundantly clear that Roger has thought a fair amount about what Agassi brought to the game, and that he recognizes a torch when it’s being passed to him.  I wish the ATP would make a little more of this, or at least acknowledge and publicize it. I mean, how often do you get players at the peak of their powers taking on the role of representing and promoting their sport? It doesn’t appear that Kobe Bryant, Tiger Woods, Peyton Manning, or Derek Jeter have embraced that concept. To them, the idea that their sport needs an “ambassador”, rather than a guy who can hit for 45 points in a playoff game or pull down a $10 million signing bonus, probably sounds strange.

This isn’t a criticism, either. It’s a comment on the environment in which sports stars exist and the ethos regulating it. It’s good to keep in mind that, with partial exceptions for golf and even basketball, those sports can hardly be described as international. And another thing: they’re overwhelmingly popular in the U.S.

You don’t need an ambassador if you don’t have a negotiation to pursue, or need to make or keep friends.

But you probably can argue that tennis is sufficiently popular not to need an ambassador, either. Yet there’s something admirable and honorable in the way tennis nuts at every level from the grass roots to the top of the pro game feel obliged to proselytize on behalf of tennis. It has about it the pleasant glow of the past. Before pro sports became an industry, impassioned pedagogues with an appreciation for sports argued that kids ought to participate in games not just because they were fun, but because the lessons learned on the playing fields would carry over to the plain of adult life.

So TMF’s attitude represents a very old-school sensibility, and a clinging to elements of a besieged and embattled tennis tradition. Jimmy Connors had no use for those elements – he was just in it for the fame and money. Bjorn Borg, the first European tennis Superstar and cradle-to-grave professional, might look at you as if you were from Mars if you started talking about tennis having a value that transcended professional opportunity. He wasn’t in school long enough to be exposed to such ideas. And I don’t know that Marat Safin or even Rafael Nadal thinks very much about these things either.

This is another way in which TMF is strikingly and, in some ways, surprisingly, old school. His most natural role model would be a Borg, but his true peers are the old-guard Australians (Rod Laver, Ken Rosewall, et al) and Arthur Ashe. Billie Jean King was also on that track, until she decided that there were bigger fish to fry in a market that was maturing rapidly during her career, gender equality.

Even if these individuals do not always articulate the tradition directly (Ashe came the closest to doing that), they embodied the notion that tennis is all about character (a prime exponent of that philosophy was the iconic Aussie coach, Harry Hopman). And it follows that anything that builds character and ingrains values like sportsmanship and self-reliance is a powerful tool for personal development. Underneath it all, that’s still the driving factor in the notion that tennis ought to recruit; that it ought to have ambassadors. Come play tennis, the conventional and perhaps even passé article-of-faith goes,  and it will give you reward far greater than trophies, checks, or a good workout.

In that same presser (post-Australian Open final), TW’s own spiritual adviser, Miguel Seabra, asked Federer if he felt he may inspire kids to play “beautiful” tennis (in Seabraese, that means playing a one-handed backhand!). TMF answered:

At the end of the day, it isn’t just about playing a beautiful game,though; it’s also about playing a valuable one. And it looks like Roger Federer understands that, although I can't quite figure out how he got there.  Whatever the route, I'm glad he arrived, and I hope he develops a fuller ability to articulate The Tradition.