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.