There Is a Lesson to Be Learned Here

The trouble with pro tennis is that so many of the young stars haven’t a clue about why there is trouble with pro tennis.

This is a sport that dotes on children, promotes them to deities, markets them into the public psyche as adults and then is stunned when they sulk and act petulant.

Sunday night and Monday at the Tennis Masters Series event here, all of the above was in evidence, with an emphasis on petulance. There was an interesting juxtaposition in the midst of it all, Pete Sampras, an adult, introducing perspective on a day when little of it existed elsewhere at this tournament.

This is what started it all: The Women’s Tennis Assn., an organization trying mightily to further its mission of furthering its game, chose this tournament, in the legendary glamour of Palm Springs, to hold a glitzy awards event. It invited Hollywood stars, rented a ballroom in one of the nicer hotels, scheduled the event on the first Sunday night of an 11-day tournament and created a bunch of awards to further deify its stars.

There was no night tennis scheduled Sunday. The event was held in the same hotel in which most of the players were staying, meaning that attendance would involve taking a shower, combing hair, putting on a nice dress and walking to the elevator.

Of the top 10 women on the WTA tour, one showed, Serena Williams. Her sister, Venus, who was to receive the award as the player of the year in 2000, stayed in her room. So did Martina Hingis and Lindsay Davenport, ranked first and second in the world.

For the WTA, which was trying its best to do something good, the evening had to be an embarrassment. Months of effort and planning and thousands of dollars spent, and the very people for whom the effort was made stayed in their hotel rooms.

Maybe this isn’t unique to tennis. Maybe it’s a sports disease. There might even be a name for it: Gary Sheffield syndrome?

Hingis, when confronted about this after her victory Monday, responded by saying: “Well, was Venus there?” and “It wasn’t mandatory.”

Venus, benefiting from a later match and a later news conference, which meant that she’d probably been given a heads-up, said: “I heard it was a wonderful event. I was really sad that I couldn’t go.” And, “It’s been tough on me because I’m still on East Coast time. By the time 8:20 comes around, to me it feels close to 12.”

Let’s translate here: Hingis didn’t go because Venus was getting the award as the top player, which Williams deserved to win, seeing as how she’d won the last two Grand Slam events of the year and the Olympic gold medal.

Sulking. Petulance.

And Venus, who has had almost a week to get on West Coast time and didn’t have a match until 2 p.m., didn’t go because she’d wanted to play the night match Monday, and Serena got it instead.

Sulking. Petulance.

At least Davenport was a bit less evasive when asked about her absence.

“I think I knew I wasn’t going to win,” she said.

Certainly, all the female players do lots of promotional things for tennis, but this was an event planned and produced for their good, by the people who coddle them daily and are paid to plan and produce things for their good.

Also--key thing here--there should be recognition of what the sport has done for them. In the case of Hingis, 20; Davenport, 24; and Venus Williams, 20; the sport has done the following, respectively, through the year 2000: $15,080,325; $11,934,628; $6,656,727.

And that’s just the prize money, not endorsements and appearance fees and other opportunities that may double those figures.

Enter Sampras, 29, who looked and played like somebody who has won a record 13 Grand Slam event titles in his 6-4, 6-4 dispatch of Germany’s David Prinosil in a first-round men’s match.

Sampras didn’t go to the WTA event, either, even though he is on West Coast time. But he did, in his news conference, show a respect for the issues of the game that some of his younger counterparts, both on the men’s and women’s tour, do not grasp.

He was asked about his emotional response at the recent ESPY awards, when they rolled a tape of his venture into the stands to hug his parents after his record 13th Grand Slam event victory at Wimbledon last summer.

“Whenever I see that tape, it brings me back to that place where I was last year with my folks at Wimbledon,” he said. “I can’t help but feel it today. It’s a reflection of my career, what I’ve done. There are times when I haven’t appreciated it enough. Going week to week, you don’t think much about what you’re becoming. It was an honor to win that [ESPY] award.”

He talked about the new kids coming up, those the ATP Tour is promoting with the “New Balls, Please” campaign. He praised Brazil’s Gustavo Kuerten as somebody people can warm up to, Russia’s Marat Safin as a guy with a funny personality and Australia’s Lleyton Hewitt as a Michael-Chang bulldog type.

And he concluded: “The game will always be strong, but we need some good young Americans to carry the torch when Andre [Agassi] and I are gone.”

There is a high-ranking ATP official who has a favorite saying about the players on the tennis tours. He repeated it Monday: “They never learn how to say hello until it is time to say goodbye.”

Sampras has long since learned how to say hello. So has Agassi, who has remarked in recent years that he can’t even stand looking at films of himself as a youngster. Thankfully, for tennis, neither is quite ready to say goodbye yet.

But when they do, here’s hoping some others in tennis will step up and realize that there is no sulking or petulance in saying hello.