To my good virtual friend and colleague...tennis_chiro

[don_budge]

Steve,
What a night. OMG! Amazing you didn't become a basketball player. But please, it's Oscar Robertson. He's still alive and I believe he likes to play tennis. Now there's someone that could have served and volleyed! Make an edit.

And I'd be curious about more of your comment on my suggestion that the USTA spend it's money running hundreds of futures and challenger events (instead of about 85) and supporting the American players with practice sites and lodging if they really wanted to grow American pro players.

don

Don...thanks for the exchange. Thanks for pointing out to me that I spelled "The Big O's" name Robinson and not as it should be...Robertson. What a fantastic athlete he was. It's a good thing for white people that athletes such as Oscar Robertson don't play tennis. Look what has happened to golf with Tiger Woods. He stole the thunder...until the media brought him back to earth.

But on to your suggestion that the money could be better spent. Probably so. Absolutely it could be better spent. But here is the question...what is the key to any organization? I used to ask this question to any aspiring applicants into my department at Ford Motor Company years ago. It is kind of a trick question...but an interesting one. The answer to "what is the key to any organization?" is...it's organization.

You have suggested that the money spent by the USTA could be better off spent on developing the structure and breadth of the tournament landscape. I could not agree with you more. In fact I would be willing to go you one better...but then again I must take into account what I now believe about modern life...the problems are so big and complicated that there are no viable solutions. Human beings have lost their ability to manage their dysfunction...which is one of the keys to life. Dysfunction Management.

So yes...spend a ton to develop a structure of competitive environments...but where are the players coming from? You see where this is going? The entire infrastructure that used to produce great tennis in America has been destroyed. It is no coincidence that this infrastructure is gone the way of the traditional nuclear family in America. Ripped apart...right from the roots. In only fifty years. Amazing feat of deconstruction.

There used to be a really sound foundation of competitive structure in American society. It was supported by a vast and large middle class and upper middle class of the population. Communities built local clubs, high schools had tennis teams and summer recreation departments has programs as well. This whole structure was neatly woven together into a nice fabric and voila...there you have it. Tennis...what a unique endeavor. Not necessarily driven by dollars and cents but for the love of the game. For the love of family and community. But all of that sort of useless drivel is a thing of the past now. The big picture is quite humiliating...the politicians sold out the American people and the manufacturing base now is not coming back. The big bucks laid their money down on perpetual war and they are winning. Maybe not winning the war...but they are making money.

See what I mean about the problems being too big to have any viable solutions. I mean...we can round and round the mulberry bush about the "ten and under" question and whether to use this ball or that ball and if one coach doesn't comply we can point our nasty little fingers and call him a bad guy. So where does one start?

Funny as it sounds...maybe hockeyscout has the vision. I have listened to some of his rantings and ravings and at the end of it all...it doesn't sound any more far-fetched than the rest of the morose. Perhaps the results are going to come from individual initiatives. I don't believe any longer that the human race has enough compassion or sympathy for each other left to do much in terms of philanthropy or good deeds. Greed is the buzz word of the day and it will disguise itself as philanthropy from time to time...only to seek a larger profit.

Surely a nice structure for competitive tournaments would be a wonderful goal but where are the participants coming from. I remember when I started to play tennis. The local USTA tournaments in the junior divisions regularly attracted a full 64 player draw in many of the age groups. It was exciting to show up at the public park facilities and see all the players crowding around the draw sheet. The one draw sheet. There was no such thing as 4.0 or 4.5 or ratings in general. If you lost it was back to the drawing board...and looking for the next tournament on the schedule.

The destruction of American tennis started with the equipment change. That was a designed move by the tennis establishment to level the playing field. Bigger racquets allowed weaker participants to be more competitive initially while the established players clung to the old way of life. To tradition as it was. But slowly all of the traditional yearnings were pushed aside in the scramble of competition and the modern age of tennis was born. The academy paradigm soon stole the local prospects and took them to exotic points unknown robbing the local tournament base of the competition...not to mention robbing the next generation of their role models and local heroes.

Slowly the game was engineered to a mode that it finds itself in presently today. Basically the strong gripped forehand, the two handed backhand with mediocre service motion. Virtually engineered out of the game are vital precepts such as serve and volley, approach tactics and technique and the rest of the subtle nature of the game. What a game it was. Now coaches reminisce serve and volley tennis from the Becker and Edberg eras with no appreciation for the subtler form that the "Classic Era" had to offer. It's all shock and awe now. It's frightening.

It's the antithesis of American tennis. Play like the Spaniards little McEnroe and some others start preaching. Hire Jose to sort it out. Sheer lunacy. If the USTA had wanted to save American tennis they would have blocked the ITF from all of the monkeying around but they went along for the ride...and the money. Sold down the river like the rest of it. The American people. The industry. Politicians at work. Working their magic behind the scenes. Elected officials selling and bartering. Selling their own down the river for thirty pieces of silver each. It's human nature.

What's it going to take? Thousands of years I am afraid. First of all..."The Planet of the Apes" and then the rebuilding period. You have to eat you know and this is going to take forever...maybe never. So say goodbye to the days of yesteryear. Risk being called a nostalgist or whatever other term that people will label you with. Pessimist? Not really...more like a realist.

By the way...on a side note. I actually did become a basketball player. That's a hit and miss story just like my tennis career. In my senior year of high school I refused to get a hair cut that complied with the crew cut Head Coach's vision...I was kicked off of the team. It was 1971 and the Vietnam War was still smoldering...50,000 brothers dying in the jungles of SouthEast Asia. They executed the King on the streets of Dallas some years earlier. His brother too. My number was up the next year. Haircuts were optional...there were hippies, you know. Civil disobedience...revolution was in the air. What a farce that was.

The next year I went to the local Junior College and started hanging with my coolest black dude best buddy Winston who was 6' 8" in his sneakers. He took me to the hood...in Detroit where I was hanging with the brothers before it was cool to do so. I quit the tennis team my first year in junior college as my dear old tennis coach Sherman Collins gave me an ultimatum...either stop playing basketball and concentrate on tennis or else. I continued to play ball...mostly in the hood. It often got contentious but there was a cultural tradition about how to solve the discrepancies...I got a handle on it after getting my ass handed to me a couple of times.

One day down at the gymnasium facility at Ohio University...I was pledging a Beta Theta Pi fraternity...we went down to play some basketball. I will never forget that night...it was our first time down together and they wanted to check out what this hot dog from Detroit could do. It was unbelievable...we used to call it the zone. I hit from everywhere. I would pull up just over half court and launch prayers...and everything went in. Everything. Turn around jump shots from dribbling into the corners. Everything. It was the strangest thing. They thought that I was a basketball god or something.

We ended up winning the intramural championships playing the black fraternity in the finals...I was penalized a technical foul for dunking in the warmups. The only time I ever really ever dunked...I was so pumped up on adrenalin.

So I guess what I am saying that unless America can get her legs back under her and change the paradigm there is no slim chance of getting back into the international mix. The first thing we must do is take our country back. I would be very curious to sit down with a number of key politicians and military people hooked up to lie detector machines. Just give me fifteen questions each and we will then have a better idea where we stand as a people. I would like to start with President Oblabla. He who talks a lot and says very little. Eloquent? Nope...not even a good bullshitter.

Manwhile...Mike Russell, a thirty five year old journeyman from West Bloomfield, Michigan is the highest ranking American tennis player competing this past week at the U. S. National Indoors. He lost to a Japanese player. A couple of other foreigners in the bottom half of the draw. How did American tennis sink to this level? Think about it.