Where the Rubber Meets the Road

Howdy, Tribe. Just finished my Monday ESPN post on my 10 Most Memorable Moments of this year in tennis. You can check it out here when it's proofed and posted. Tomorrow, I'll be attending a function for The Tennis Channel at the tony restaurant, 21, and I'll blog on that Wednesday. I also have a surprise guest blogger lined  up (although his name will be familiar to most of you) for the weekend.

Although it may have seemed like a quiet weekend at TW (other than the usual high-value entertainment and edification in the Comments section), a lot was going on behind the scenes. We're making progress on the stand-apart Tribe website (pics of pets, spouses, and - inevitably, it seems to me - wedding photos of the first marriage between two Tribe members) will be welcome. We'll have lots of other fun features, too.

Also, Steggy hard-wired our Search function, the need for which was not only felt by me, but confirmed by our recent survey. The Search box is located on the right hand column, right below the Categories and Recent Posts listings.

Steggy is also creating a new category, Newcomers, which will contain a TennisWorld FAQ section, along with other elements, including site rules and a glossary of acronyms and nickames (as in Jet Boy and DBR (Dirty Boy Rafa) both of which are TW nicknames for Rafael Nadal.

She also has eliminated that annoying and utterly meaningless "Test" advisory from the top of each archived post.

Regarding the survey - now, the two surveys, here's the dope:

1 - The idea of doing a straw poll to quantify the degree to which Joe Public recognizes Roger Federer has taken off. It was first floated by Steggy over in the comments on my Sports Illustrated Sportsman of the Year controversy, where she observed, with trademark subtlety, that The Mighty Fed would have to "cure cancer" to get on the radar of the general public in the U.S., or at least that portion of the public that frequents Target stores (this was a nod to those who feel Wal-Mart - where I often shop,and unabashedly - is too "down-market").

So we're asking any of you who have a spirit of public service (not to mention adventure), to sally forth to your local bodegas, supermarkets, Taco Bells (if you can find anyone still alive) et al and ask a few folks if they've ever heard of TMF. You can email your results to Steggy, and we'll do a full post on it.

2 - The results of our recent Reader Survey produced some interesting results. The outcry for a proper "Search" function was striking, as was the hunger for a more daunting feature: a chronological listing of all TW posts. We're looking into a Month-by-Month at TW and will keep you posted.

It seems that the Comments section is beloved, and that our collective tendency to go off-topic (OT in the patois) now and then has only minor drawbacks - all of which can be averted if we avoid wandering off into very long IM-type dialogs that leave other subjects (including on-topics ones) buried.

Being largely a polite and well-mannered lot, some of us (not me, though) are gun-shy about interrupting an extended OT discussion. For the record, I'm a big fan of OT, especially in the right time and place.

A recent midnight exchange with Steggy and a few Elders on dogs is my favorite among all my many TennisWorld OT moments.

Y'all know how much we love Miguel Seabra's engagement with TW, but I have to confess that I found his remarks on the Comments section baffling. He made it sound as if a significant number of the TW readers he communed with consider the comments irrelevant or unworthy of perusal; my own take is that without the Comments, TennisWorld is nothing. Zippo. Zilch. Squanto - just another tired old hack, lucky enough to have a megaphone for his opinions, sounding off. Yeah, I know: But, Pete, you're our favorite tired old hack, etc. etc.

I repeat something I've said before: Some of the people posting here are as astute, perceptive, entertaining and independent-minded as any journalist I know. I guess that's why journalism in some circles is still considered a trade, not a profession. I get the feeling that Mikey got a lot of his feedback from press pariahs, some of whom may be either a little too self-important or grim (or both) to relate to TW's mandate to be charming and amusing as well as stentorian and analytical.

One other theme that popped up now and then was the ethnocentric nature of this blog. It's too "American" in its preoccupations and coverage, some said. I understand the complaint, but this is, after all, the weblog of Tennis magazine, an American-based tennis publication. TW reflects that, for better or worse. And there's a practical  dimension to this: you get an Andy Roddick exclusive because that's who I went to interview on behalf of the American Tennis magazine. I, too, have to operate from a comfort zone, and mine is within the U.S. context.

So, overall, our feeling is that we're doing far more things right than wrong, and what we could do a little better or differently doesn't even qualify as a "course correction"in any meaningful sense. The biggest changes you want  involve adding features, not altering or re-tooling existing ones.

Now we move on:

Some final thoughts on the SI Sportsman of the Year issue: A large number of comments posters suggested that SI's move reflected the worst of the magazine's ethnocentrism (It should be called American - er, Gringo - Sportsman of the Year, wrote one indignant reader after another); another large segment bought into the notion that SI's decision was entirely driven by marketing and demographic considerations.

In all honesty, I don't think either is true, although theory 1 (myopia) is more credible than theory 2 (corporate greed). As I wrote in my original post, I believe SI was really searching for something that would "resonate", although I'm the first to admit that it wanted to make a choice that would resonate with its base (Gringo, mainstream sports fans - enter theory 2, right on the heels of theory 1).

In searching for that magical resonance, SI over-reached, and badly, as if it wanted the Wade selection to be so inspirational and so seemingly touched by genius that the magazine honchos simply forgot to make the selection supportable as well. Somebody got too wrapped up in listening to the sound of his - their - own voice and truly blew it at the cognitive/rational level.

Last item: As always, I found the reaction to my criticism of the top players shilling for Dubai interesting. I was a little chagrined by good buddy Ray Stonada' s suggestion that I'm a "pot stirrer," though (although I think he understands my points of discussion). I think of a PS as someone who instigates trouble for the sheer pleasure of it, or revels in controversy for pleasure. Oh, there's a time and place for pot-stirring; it can be fun (see "J' for Jacket, as in Roger Federer's Wimbledon attire), and lead to a lively discussion.

Frankly, though, though, I consider it unsavory and irresponsible to stir the pot over something as important and fraught with significance as the Dubai issue. Look, there was no "controversy" around Dubai until I took the position I did; that is, there was no pot to stir (and apparently still isn't, outside TW). It's as simple as this: I see a legitimate issue with serious implications. No pot-stirring or cynicism involved. Let's bring it out in the open and see how everyone feels, with my interpretation as a baseline. And it isn't Dubai I'm putting on trial, it's the way the players engage the issues at stake. Perhaps you still believe there is no legitimate issue there. I beg to differ.

So to comment poster Maggie, I say: I never called for a boycott of Dubai, nor for any pro-active ATP position on its status as a tournament promoter. All I ever said (now would be a good time to use that "Search" function!) was that it was unseemly for the top players to make it sound as if Dubai is paradise on earth, given some of the features of that Emirate.

Our esteemed Elder MMY also weighed in, suggesting that Canada (not to mention it's southern neighbor) also has a record of human rights abuses, and that many nations "blacklist" certain types people and prevent them from entering. To which I can only say: if it's wrong for a citizen from a nation where human rights abuses have taken place (which is everywhere: in fact, I'll bet dollars to donuts that your own people - by which I mean your personal ancestors - have at times been oppressed, at other times been oppressors), then it was insupportable for Arthur Ashe (and anyone else) to fight against the Apartheid system in South Africa. Relativism, in this sense, equals paralysis.

And on MMY's other point (other posters made both points as well), what does a comparison of these two statements tell us:

1 - You are a convicted sex offender,  you cannot enter our country.

2 -You are a Jew from Israel, you cannot enter our country.

Part of my problem with this entire controversy is that we persistently use "human rights" as a catch-all phrase. That makes me uncomfortable, in that I'm not sure what "human rights" really means, it's such a broad and amorphous concept. Is housing a human "right"? Is free health care a human "right"? However, I am pretty sure that both of things are worth pursuing with the wealth we earn, either directly or by allowing the government to take our money and re-distribute it as it sees fit.

I do have a more solid idea about "individual rights", and find I navigate better using it as my lodestar. The questions I ask, therefore, are more along these lines: Are individuals in this or that nation free to choose where they work? To keep their own money? To participate in what wealth creation exists in the nation where they live? To worship as they choose? To associate freely? To leave or enter their own nation, or others, at will (all things being equal)? To compete on a relatively level socio-economic playing field? To choose where their children go to school? And the list goes on.

Oh, I understand that people are free to trade individual rights for security, and that some places that offer no IRs have stable, orderly, peacable societies. But to me,this, to me, is where the rubber of "human rights" meets the road of "living in an imperfect but improvable world."

Well, we ranged far and wide in this one, and I have two more things to add. The comment some of you noticed in a previous post, attributed to Matt Cronin of Tennisreporters.net, was made by an imposter. It has been nuked. Apologies to Matt, and anyone else to whom it's in order.

And lastly, it seems the ITF has named Justine Henin-Hardenne its official female World Champion for 2006. I think what 2H did in 2006 was remarkable (getting to the finals of all four majors and the year-end championships and Fed Cup to boot), but she was 0-2 against Amelie Mauresmo in major finals, and won just one major to Amelie's two.

I declare Mauresmo TW's official Female World Champion!

Wow. That was sure easy.