Without the personalities, rivalries and characters tennis is just another game

Irish Times

25-04-2025

The queues at Adidas were the longest of any stall at Roland Garros in 1999. The Los Angeles Times reported that Anna Kournikova, the most glamorous player in women's tennis, had one of her dresses cut up and made into keyrings that her sponsors were giving away for free.
Then ranked 20th in the world, everyone knew who Kournikova was, especially teenage boys, who were drooling over the pieces of fabric. Creepy as the stunt was even by last century standards, the Russian star was a household name.
At the time Adidas didn't know how many dresses they were going to have to destroy to satisfy an expected distribution of 150,000 keyrings. The current world number 20 is Liudmila Samsonova. Great athlete, ever heard of her?
As much as Kournikova was being adored, that same year Martina Hingis was finding out how hateful and lonely the centre court could be in the city of love. Facing an ageing Steffi Graf in the final, the then 18-year-old served for the title leading 6-4, 5-4.
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But the German player, inspired by the French crowd chanting 'Steffi! Steffi!' broke the Swiss Miss serve to win eight of the next 10 games and take the third set and Grand Slam title number 22.
Hingis crossed the net to dispute a line call, took an extended bathroom break at the end of the second set, was issued with two penalties, docked a point and served underhanded on Graf's first championship point.
At the end of the match, Hingis left the court, and, in tears, returned in the arms of her mother for the trophy presentation. Drama.
Anna Kournikova of Russia in May, 1999, serves during the French Open at Roland Garros. Photograph: Clive Brunskill/Allsport
The year after that a young kid no more than 14 years old walked in through the gates of the Parisian club at Boulevard d'Auteuil and turned left to walk up towards Court Suzanne Lenglen. A British colleague turned and said: 'That Spanish kid is beating senior players.'
The Spanish kid wore a sleeveless top and had ripped arms. Rafa Nadal, at 14, had begun his professional career and was already winning against adults. Five years later, on his 19th birthday, he defeated Roger Federer in the semi-final before winning the first of his 14 French Open tiles on his first attempt.
This week the headlines were about Carlos Alcaraz saying he doesn't want to be labelled Nadal's successor. The current tennis sensation has been promoting his three-part docu-series on Netflix, Carlos Alcaraz: My Way, where the big reveal appears to be that he went to Ibiza and partied before winning his first Wimbledon title in 2023.
The problem for Alcaraz is that he is in an era where Novak Djokovic, who will be 38 years old next month, is, with Alcaraz, the most recognisable player in the sport and we're not far away from saying perhaps the only recognisable faces in the sport.
The current world number one player, Jannik Sinner, has yet to return from his three-month doping ban. The sport tried to save the Italian when the International Tennis Integrity Agency ruled that he wasn't at fault for the positive tests, accepting that the contamination was caused by a physio applying an over-the-counter spray.
The World Anti-Doping Agency then stepped in and lodged an appeal with the Court of Arbitration for Sport, leading to Sinner accepting a suspension that will end on May 4th.
The likelihood is that Sinner couldn't be picked out of a line-up of tennis players except by the most devoted fans. Neither could they identify Alex de Minaur, the world number seven or Holger Rune, who is ranked ninth in the world.
Italy's Jannik Sinner (left) greets Australia's Alex de Minaur after his victory in their men's singles quarter-final match on day 11 of the Australian Open tennis tournament in Melbourne on January 22nd, 2025. Photograph: Yuichi Yamazaki/AFP via Getty Images
The sixth-ranked woman in the world is an Italian player, Jasmine Paolini, while the world number eight is Qinwen Zheng from China. There is a strong chance sponsors won't be cutting up their dresses to make 150,000 keyrings.
Rivalry, personalities and X factor have long been the mainstay of tennis. The lack of that is not a new phenomenon, it just seems to have become worse. Ten years ago, before he served eight months of a 2½ year prison sentence for hiding millions of euros in a fraud case, Boris Becker argued that the game was in danger of lacking real characters because of the intense scrutiny on them.
The three-time Wimbledon champion said the rise of microscopic social media and news coverage had sterilised players' personalities.
'Nowadays everything is so supervised and so observed and everybody is very judgmental,' said Becker, who claimed players were more emotional on and off court when he competed. And so, he proved in a brief broom cupboard encounter with a model in Mayfair's Nobu restaurant during which his daughter was conceived.
It's easy to see the past with rose-tinted specs and say how it was more interesting and colourful with greater rivalries and more daring personalities. Sure, players probably reach many more people now because of social media, but if the current world number one woman player, Aryna Sabalenka, was dressed in her civvies, could most people pick her out of a crowd?
The sport can do without cutting up teenage players' dresses and handing the bits out to infatuated adolescents. Alcaraz and Djokovic aside, a Roland Garros without Federer, Nadal or Andy Murray coming up in a matter of weeks seems much more difficult to get excited about.