John Farley Spotlight: The French Open: Who's in Your Conversation?

The French Open, Roland Garros, is upon us. The high hopes of the qualifiers are now energizing the city as the main draw players alight on the "la Ville Lumiere" and take to the practice courts. And it is this time each year that Madame Anais Flournoy hosts in her palatial accommodations located in Saint Germain-des-Pres in the 6th Arrondissement on the beautiful Seine, the most prestigious of the pre-tournament social events where tennis journalists, broadcast commentators, tournament organizers, tennis sports legends, sponsors, and tennis association and federation biggie-wigs come together to discuss which WTA players should be in the conversation for Roland Garros.

I was quite surprised a few weeks ago when I received an invitation from Madame Flournoy to attend the event. I immediately accepted the invitation and made my travel plans. The invitation made it clear that the event was not a formal affair and that casual dress was preferred. Not being sure what to wear, I thought I'd get in touch with Bethanie Mattek-Sands to see what she thought. Not being able to reach her, I decided to just go with some pleated, beige slacks and a blue-striped banded collar shirt. In her invitation Madame Flournoy explained that bloggers were not usually invited to attend, but I was given a wildcard because she had quite enjoyed a number of blog posts I had written on the WTA. After securing modest accommodations, I flew to Paris, took in some sights, and grabbed a taxi to Madame Flournoy's residence.

I was greeted warmly by an attendant, somewhat hesitatingly put on my name tag which read [John Farley: (wc) Blogger], and graciously given some information on how the event is organized. As is the event custom, the guests are grouped according to whom they feel should be included in the conversation to make the Roland Garros final. Looking out over the very spacious area I noticed banners on poles around the room with players names on them with a group gathered around each banner. At quick glance of the banners I saw the names Radwanska, Muguruza, Svitolina, Williams, Halep, Mladenovic, Wozniacki, Kerber, Konta, Kuznetsova, Vandeweghe, and others. (I learned later that the Vandeweghe contingent had "crashed the party" and brought their own pole and banner.).

Around the room there were a few familiar faces I had seen on the TV or computer screen - mostly Tennis Channel commentators - Tracy Austin, Brett Haber, Paul Annacone, Justin Gimelstob, Lindsay Davenport, and others. I saw Tracy Austin talking to Justine Henin under the Svitolina banner. Ben Rothenberg, freelance writer for The New York Times, had just joined the group. So I thought I'd mingle and go over there and catch their conversation. Austin and Henin were talking about Rothenberg's hair. ("He looks like he just lets the north wind comb his hair. No, I heard roto-rooter does his hair.") Everybody chuckled. Old joke I thought, anyway Svitolina has won 4 tournaments this year and they're talking about Rothenberg's hair?

I decided to move on. But as I was mingling I thought to myself: "Ok, Kerber is in a funk, Serena is pregnant, Halep turned her ankle in Rome, Muguruza's got a pain in the neck which hopefully isn't Sam Sumyk, Radwanska lost in the first round of Stuttgart and didn't play Madrid and Rome because of injury, Cibulkova didn't make it beyond the 2nd round in either Madrid or Rome, Konta got bounced early in Stuttgart and Madrid reaching only the R16 in Rome, Keys didn't make it past the first round at either Madrid or Rome and hasn't gone deep since her wrist surgery, Wozniacki retired in a first-round match in Strasbourg, and Camila Giorgi is now ranked #99." Yea, so who has a convincing conversation? (May the injured heal quickly.)

I decided to stop thinking and mingle some more. I dropped by the Karolina Pliskova banner where an argument was ensuing between arch supporters and a waiter (serving rich French pastries and glasses of Chateau Lafite Rothschild) who felt Kristina Mladenovic's (the French #1) recent gain of momentum put her at a higher level in the conversation. Like kids on the playground they went at it in the best English they could muster:

Pliskova Supporters (PS): "She's ranked #3 in the world and #2 in the Porsche Road to Singapore."
Waiter (W): (imagine French accent) "But we are talking about who is the hotter player now. Kristina was in the finals in both Stuttgart and Madrid. Pliskova lost in the first round in Prague to Giorgi and in the second round in Madrid."
PS: "Yes, but Kristina lost in the first round in Rome."
W:  "She was exhausted from all those finals - a mere nothing, not even a blip in her momentum."
PS: "Karolina won in Doha and reached the semis in both Indian Wells and Miami."
W:  "My point exactly, she's on a slide. Kristina is on the rise."
PS: "What? Karolina reached the QFs in Rome.  She has a bigger game that can take out more players. She's been in the US Open Final.  She's been there."
W:  "She was knocked out in the first round here last year. She doesn't have a clay game."
PS: "Yea well, Mladenovic only made it to the 3rd round here last year."
W:  "She had a bad draw. Had to play Serena. Anyway, that was last year. She's more French now a year later."

Anyway, I bailed at that point, but before I did I took a glass of the Rothschild just to say I actually sipped a wine that expensive.

Journalists were at a high level of alertness and taking notes like crazy. I mean, you don't want to be left out of the conversation about who's in the conversation. I saw Jon Wertheim, tennis journalist for Sports Illustrated, making the banner rounds probably looking for material for one of those elegant collages he pieces together for Tennis Channel. Madame Flournoy was flitting about enjoying reminiscing with some of the tennis legends the days when there were only four or five banners at the event. I noticed Mary Carillo was herding a group of them over to the photo-shoot area. They were all still looking pretty good. Not a make-up girl in sight.( By the way, the most number of French Open wins is held by Chris Evert at 7.)

I wasn't sure where to go next - so many options. I caught sight of the Halep banner so I wandered over there still sipping the Rothschild. Darren Cahill, Halep's coach, was there. I knew coaches were not invited to the event so I figured he was invited in his capacity as a Tennis Channel commentator. Anyway, he was talking with Katrina Adams, USTA President and Steve Simon, WTA CEO. I figured that might be a juicy exchange so I nonchalantly made my ear available to the conversation. To my delight and surprise actually, Cahill and Adams weren't talking players but were giving Simon an earful about the WTA Media Platform not yet being operational. I thought now there's something worthy of conversation. I was eagerly awaiting Simon's response, but just then Madame Flournoy got on the microphone to thank everyone for coming and, as she said, "thrilling all of Paris with their presence." She also mentioned that the attendants would be bringing out Chocolate Grand Marnier Souffles to the buffet tables. (Simon - saved by the Belle) I wasn't sure how the Rothschild would go with the Grand Marnier, so I backed off the souffle. Cahill, Adams, and Simon headed to the buffet tables, so I went looking for a new banner to hang out at.

I looked around. I was surprised to see a Kvitova banner so I headed over there. She put herself in the conversation with an announcement that her name was on the official entry list for Roland Garros. Her banner groupies said she was definitely on track for Wimbledon and would make a last minute decision soon on Roland Garros. The Wimbledon conversation will definitely have a different flavor with Azarenka, Sharapova, and Kvitova in there. Talk is cheap they say but not with those three. Meanwhile, back to the French.

I noticed Courtney Nyugen, writer for the WTA and the queen of eclectic twitter minutiae, surfing the banner locales. I thought if she's looking for a guest for her next webcast, WTA Insider, I volunteer. Might be refreshing to get a perspective on this event from the only blogger in the house. I lost sight of her as she got consumed by the overflowing Muguruza banner crowd.

I walked over to an inviting sofa to relax. As I sat there the banners were coming down and the groups dispersing. Time to go I thought. I found Madame Flournoy, thanked her for the invitation, and promised her I'd send her the blog post that came out of my visit. As banner bearers passed by, she graciously saw me to the door. I stepped out into the glittering Paris night and hailed down a taxi. As I was chauffeured of sorts back to my hotel, I tried to take it all in.

So who does have a convincing conversation? Of course there are the names of those on a obvious hot streak - Svitolina, Mladenovic, Halep, Karolina Pliskova, and maybe a few others, but there are so many who could take it. That's what makes this year's Roland Garros so exciting. Recently in a post-match interview Simona Halep was asked who she felt the favorite was for winning the French. After making the point that it was definitely not her, she said, "about 15 players." I agree with her in spirit but not in quantity. The number could easily be twice that. These days nobody comes out of nowhere. The radar is full of players bulging with the potential. Who knows who may get tapped by the magic wand of good fortune from mother nature and roll through those 7 matches (or more) and emerge from the pack hoisting the Coupe Suzanne Lenglen Trophy.

Epilogue: The movie shown on my flight back to the states was "The Conversation," an Academy Award nominated film by Francis Ford Coppola. It was about a guy who professionally eavesdropped on people's conversations. What can I say?



Anyway, that's how I see it.

John Farley Spotlight: A Letter to Steve Simon, WTA CEO

Dear Steve,

I want to congratulate you on the direction you are taking the WTA. With the level of attention now on women's tennis, it is obviously time the WTA had its own media platform, able to control its global broadcasting. I remember reading some announcement at the end of last year that with the new platform we will be able to see all the WTA tournaments and have the option to view multiple courts. Mouthwatering words to me. However, not apparent is a defendable reason for the delay of the launch of the media platform. The delay is now into the 2nd quarter of the year. There has been a troubling lack of transparency coming from the WTA regarding this delay, which leads me to believe there has been a breakdown in the coordination of the parties that had to come together to make this happen. I and your subscriber base, current and future, don't know. We are bewildered. Let's look at this a little more closely.

You were quoted last year as saying, "We're embarking this year on an initiative that is a long time coming.." Well you can say that again. It is May 8, the Mutua Madrid Open has begun, Rome and Roland Garros are just around the tennis season corner, and the WTA Media Platform, which was due to be launched and operational by January 1, 2017, is still not up. You described this time as a "dark period" of "short-term" pain. I have to tell you Steve it's not short-term anymore and many computer, mobile device, and TV screens of tennis fans are darker than ever from a want of tennis tournament matches. One WTA announcement encouraged fans to "stay tuned." Stay tuned to what - pirated or illicit on-line streams or betting sites? (On my computer, I watched Mladenovic and Sharapova in Stuttgart on a betting site that displayed the betting odds on each player in the upper right-hand corner. It was very interesting to watch the odds change from just point to point. The visual of the match was what I would describe as staccato-choppy)

You also said the "gap in streaming coverage was unavoidable," and that a "bumpy transition was inevitable." This I don't understand - unavoidable and inevitable?  Why? The contract with PERFORM, one of the world's leading digital sports content group, was set over 3 years ago to kick in the beginning of 2017. You knew 3 years ago you had to be ready at the beginning of 2017. The five-year, 30 country television deal to begin January 1, 2017 with beIN Sports was cut in April last year and announced during the French Open in May, a full 8-9 months before you knew you had to be operational by the end of the year. With all that time to coordinate all parties and all operational dynamics for the January launch, why was a gap unavoidable and inevitable?

In October of last year you said, "We're in the first step. We just put our toe into the water of this entire project..." What? The WTA was just in a first step then when long ago it made the commitment to launch January 1?" We just put our toe into the water..?" I would have thought that toe would have been put in years ago really, and that you should be by now trying to keep your head above water working out any kinks from the launch.

To get some answers to my questions and to get clarification on the WTA's situation, I called your US Headquarters in St. Petersburg and was told the launch team was led by a woman in your London Office. (I won't mention names) I emailed her with my questions on February 6, 2017. After patiently waiting 10 days or so and having got no response, I again called your St. Petersburg offices to see if someone there could give me some answers. I got back a robo email from "information" a few days later (Feb. 16) describing how wonderful the new site will be ("thrills, suspense, and fun moments on and off the court") and to be patient, for it will all be worth it. So in trying to get some relevant input from the WTA for my post, I got essentially nothing, which seems to be consistent with a nonchalance other writers of the tennis scene have noticed in the WTA's public relation responses.

I like to keep things in perspective. We live in a world of geopolitical upheaval, alternative facts, virtual realities, governments governing through social media, and other dangers and absurdities that form our experiential landscape that calls to us to do something that will change these trends toward the creation of a better world. In that context, missing the matches of a few professional women's tennis tournaments is not such a big deal, but it's nice to have the enjoyment of that distraction.

I think it's time to come clean with the patient tennis fans who will be forming the subscriber base of your new media platform and with the many broadcast commentators and sports writers who present the WTA action to the world.  Come clean means to explain the reasons the WTA was not ready to launch the platform on January 1, why, well into 2017, it is still not ready, and to provide a realistic date for the launch. I realize bringing many parties together to accomplish your goal is and has been a delicate endeavor and only so much information can be divulged, but certainly within that context you can provide some explanation to end this lingering bewilderment among your fans. We are eagerly awaiting your announcement.

Best wishes for a successful launch, respectfully,

John Farley


PS: I recently read a tweet by Jon Wertheim: "Tough questions for Steve Simon..." Jon was referring to an interview you had with Mary Carillo. I watched the short interview. The "tough" questions she asked, as you may remember, were in regard to players grunting and on-court coaching. I tweeted in response: "The tough question to S. Simon is why isn't the WTA Media Platform operational that was due to be up Jan.1."  I got a robust response from the twitter community agreeing with me. They want answers Steve, not appeasement.


Anyway, that's how I see it.

John Farley Spotlight: Tennis: A Hold To Love

She hears those words, "game, set, match," and she heads to the net for the handshake, but it wasn't her name she heard after those words. She put everything she had into that match. She drew more from herself than she thought she had. As she heads to the net, those few shots, those few moments that could have made the difference fly through her head. She feels the disappointment, yet as she clasps hands at the net, she gives a smile, perhaps some words of encouragement to her opponent as she moves on to the next round. Then she packs up her bag and heads for the locker room. A wave to an appreciative crowd and a few autographs belie the sadness she feels. She wasn't picked to win, but in that 6-4, 5-7, 6-7 loss she left her heart on that court, even some blood and skin, maybe a few tears.

Then the next day she reads a tennis sports writer's account of the match that her opponent had swatted her aside, dumped her out of, brushed her aside, dismissed her, or sent her packing among others. These are terms I often see in match accounts by tennis sports writers.

Swatted her aside? I get the image of a mosquito or a fly buzzing around on the other side of the net, a minor annoyance that a ball kid has to come out and shoo away from time to time. Recently I read a sports writers account of a game where a player was "swatted aside" and the score was 7-5, 6-4. Swatted aside? Are you kidding? We're talking a net one service break per set. Must have been a huge mosquito.

Dumped her out of? Here I get the image of a Waste Management truck coming onto the court, scooping up the opponent, exiting the stadium, and depositing her in the nearest dumpster along with the empty popcorn bags and hot dog wrappers.

Brushed her aside? Here I get the image of the court maintenance men coming onto the court with brooms and sweeping the opponent off the court, down the hallway, and into the locker room. How humiliating? Maybe the writer would now like to have his or her name air-brushed off the article.

Dismissed her? You may go now. What? Is she in second grade and the bell just rang? I guess the writer thought the winner was a former elementary school teacher or something.

Sent her packing? Maybe she wasn't leaving right away. Maybe she had a doubles match later that day or the next or just wanted to hang around a while and take in the sights.

There are other zingers too I've seen like crushed, pushed aside, cut down, and demolished. All these terms denigrate the losing player. They feel badly enough, then they have to read this! There are terms though that sports writers have used that are respectful of the losing player - overcame, triumphed, emerged victorious, battled through, and edged for example. Even if the score were somewhat lopsided, the writer can give an accurate account of the match while using terms that acknowledge the effort a player made even in losing. We know and the players know that a score is not necessarily an indication of the closeness of a match, and if a writer has not seen the match, but knows only the score, they should not be presumptuous of the nature of the contest. All players should be treated fairly, win or lose.

Also, I would like to see tennis sports writers and tennis commentators put a stop to an apparent beginning-of-tournament tradition of formally calling the "probable" R16, quarterfinal, semifinal, and even final match-ups. The attitude at the beginning of a tournament among writers and commentators should be player parity. We know we are in an era of women's tennis where the margins are minute far into the rankings. (Charleston: Laura Siegemund beats Venus Williams, Fanny Stollar beats Elena Vesnina. Biel Bienne: Marketa Vondrousova beats Barbora Strycova and goes on to win the title. Stuttgart: Anett Kontaveit beats Garbine Muguruza, Anastasija Sevastova beats Johanna Konta, Laura Siegemund beats Svetlana Kuznetsova, then Karolina Pliskova, then Simona Halep and then beats Kristina Mladenovic, winning the tournament. Prague: Camila Giorgi beats #1 seed Karolina Pliskova. Did you predict those?)  Maybe predictions play for good press, but they are not consistent with the inherent nobility of the sport.

Some may have forgotten, but, at its core, the language of tennis, both vocal and visual, attempts to soften some of the stings of competition. It's a sport where a lost game may give you love, an adverse net cord bounce gets you an apology, and a clean service game gives you a hold to love. But some of the terms used by some writers to describe a player's defeat are, at best, more than mildly incongruent with this spirit of the language of the sport, and the calling of "probable" match-ups is an insult to the other players in the draw and even discouraging.

Our player, who just lost that close match, 6-4, 5-7, 6-7 must now pull herself together, find the "positives" as they say, in that defeat, and move on to the next tournament where we hope the writers write fairly and kindly, and the match-up predictors keep it to themselves. This is only what would be expected of the representatives of this most noble sport, where the dignity of every player can be assured in a hold to love.

Anyway, that's how I see it.