Tennis year ends with whimpers:: International Herald Tribune

Tennis year ends with whimpers
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Christopher Clarey is one of my favorite tennis journalists and in this recent story, he seems to despair of the sport ever finding the commissioner that could fix the wacky schedule and the injuries it seems to produce.

This week and next are the "off-season" for junior tennis, as the ITF tournaments are Grade 4s & 5s in places like Bolivia, Indonesia, Peru and Rwanda. With the clamor to shorten the professional season becoming deafening, it's interesting that the junior tennis calendar hasn't produced a similar outcry. It has the same grand slams, five other Grade A events and team events like Junior Davis Cup--and that's just the ITF portion. If a player from the United States plays the USTA nationals, add four more "majors," leaving the schedule very similar to that of a professional. And junior players of course, are still expected, at least in this country, to be going to school too.

So if the tennis demands (or opportunities) are the same as those in the professional ranks, what keeps junior tennis from the current rash of withdrawals and injuries that are plaguing the year-ending competitions on the ATP and WTA tours?

1. Junior tennis isn't star-driven. With the possible exception of Donald Young, no one pays to see a junior tennis player, and in fact, Kalamazoo is the only junior tournament charging admission that I know of. (Unless you count Grand Slam grounds passes). Juniors haven't had quite enough time to develop the celebrity-itis that seems to infect its share of top pros.

2. There is no players organization like the WTA or ATP to represent junior tennis players. No one demands they play x number of events or attend press conferences nor is there anyone to market them or the tournaments they play in.

3. Sponsors are extremely rare in junior tennis, and nearly all are local. With no sponsors and no paying fans, just who is going to complain when the top junior players aren't present or leave injured?

This is not to imply that junior tennis is intrinsically better because it lacks these things. It's just that sponsors and fans and money and television and player organizations come with problems -- just as the lack of all these things does. It was singer Sophie Tucker who said, "I've been rich and I've been poor. Believe me, honey, rich is better." But maybe not for the tennis fan.