BARCELONA ’92 OLYMPICS / DAY 6 : A LOT OF LOVE IN THE COVERAGE

If you are an Olympic tennis fan, there may be good news on the NBC front.

In 1988 at Seoul, the first time tennis was a medal sport since 1924 in Paris, NBC flooded the viewers with a grand total of six minutes of coverage. That, in a year in which Steffi Graf of Germany added an Olympic gold medal in women’s singles to her Grand Slam tournament sweep, accomplishing what many journalists labeled the Golden Slam.

But 1992 looks better, according to commentator Bud Collins of NBC, who was critical of what his network did in ’88. He said the network has already shown 2 1/2 minutes of Boris Becker’s near upset by an unheralded Norwegian on the first day of competition, raising his hopes for much more.

“Right now, we are on a record pace,” said the ever-sarcastic Collins.

* This a daily roundup of Olympic-related items from reporters in Barcelona from the Los Angeles Times, Newsday, Baltimore Sun and Hartford Courant, all Times-Mirror newspapers.