It's The Architecture -- Tennis Culture In A Larger Sense

This post will not focus so much on what tennis needs to do -- reform X for problem Y -- as it will deal with the way the sport should consider various tension points in ways which shape the culture of the sport.

Everything is capable of evolving, and over time, most things actually do evolve. (Negative entities can evolve as much as positive ones, to be clear.)

Tennis is no different.

If you recall from last year, Tennis Channel produced and aired Barnstormers, a documentary on the growth of men's tennis and its transition from the amateur era to the Open era. Making that switch from amateur to professional tennis required planning, foresight, and an understanding of how the landscape of tennis:

A) had already changed;

B) needed to continue to change to support a future vision.

Tennis (for men and women alike) had to walk through the thicket of considerations which had to be handled, managed and absorbed in order for the sport to find a more profitable and modernized incarnation.

One simple reductionist way to view tennis during its transition from the amateur to professional structures is little different from the challenge of the present moment: Take what's always been great about tennis, shed what's bad, and constantly move forward with an awareness of those two points.

This is how any sport must juggle present, past and future. The purpose of mentioning the 1960s is to simply underscore the fact that tennis had to undergo significant transformations. It can do so again if it chooses, and on some levels, it will probably have to.

Culture is tricky in that way -- many people might like it as it is (the traditionalists), other people might want it to change (the futurists/reformers), and still others might like the core while wanting to tweak on the periphery (pragmatists/moderates).

The question becomes: How to achieve cultural change in tennis at any level and to any degree?

Remember, this is not about achieving reform of "The One Thing" or "The One Issue," but about plans and methods for achieving reform on a broader level in a wide array of circumstances.

The quote above could have contained a certain degree of playfulness. It may or may not be an accurate sense of what is -- or is supposed to -- happen in ATP or WTA press rooms after matches or tournaments. I'm not here to litigate those points, though I have strong views on what is and isn't proper in a press room. (I know others have equally strong opposing views or, if not necessarily opposing views, ones which certainly cut in sharply different directions.)

I can simply say that interactions on Twitter over the past few days, plus recollections of other recent episodes in press rooms, such as Novak Djokovic offering cake to reporters at an Australian Open presser, have elicited different responses from the larger community of tennis fans and commentators. If the discussion was broadened to involve hundreds of tennis tweeps, not just a handful, the level and specificity of input would increase tenfold if not more.

I am not interested in rendering (or hearing) any verdict on the wisdom of a given practice (or how frequently that practice is observed or conducted). My aim here is to simply establish an architecture for future discussions of tennis reform. I can do that by saying the following:

Whether or not post-match applause in a press room is a reasonably routine development -- it might vary among continents, but as a stay-at-home blogger with meager budget, I don't travel to tournaments -- this is what matters: The answer (yes, it is a conventional occurrence, or no, it is not) matters a great deal in terms of shaping our awareness of tennis culture.

If it's conventional for journalists to applaud athletes, or if it's not, those two scenarios both have a lot to say not just about the interrelationship between athlete and journalist, but therefore between the tennis player and the full tennis ecosystem in which s/he makes a living.

Whether or not one agrees with the idea that journalists should not clap in a work setting, one can at least make the note that in one of his farewell press conferences, former United States President Barack Obama told the White House press corps that it needed to do its job and ask tough questions. Obama was up front about telling the press that its obligation was not to him, but to the truth.

It is a healthy and necessary question to ask and think about -- not just now, but always: How different should sports journalism be from political ("news/current affairs") journalism? Is sports, sometimes referred to as "the candy store" or "toy shop" of journalism and writing (because it is ostensibly about fun and games), something to be seen in a lighter vein than "hard news," or should the wall between journalists and the public figures they cover remain solid and impenetrable?

Again, I have my thoughts on these issues, but they're not important here. What's important is that all of us wrestle with and process these questions, realizing that our answers shape how we feel about the larger culture of tennis, and how the infrastructure of tennis makes reforms more or less achievable, through certain channels, in certain contexts? Different sets of answers will lead different people in different directions on various questions of reform.

Let's appreciate how much a larger architecture matters when we grapple with various issues -- not just the single issue du jour.