objectivity
Banned
i think you vastly underestimate the sheer difficulty of professional soccer. we'll just leave it at that.
Is football and basketball really the reason why american tennis suffers?
- Thread starter dominikk1985
- Start date
i think you vastly underestimate the sheer difficulty of professional soccer. we'll just leave it at that.
sundaypunch
Hall of Fame
This is exactly correct. Baseball is known as "America's pastime" - basically unofficial national sport of the country. While it may not be as popular as it used to be, it is still probably the most common sport for boys to play as kids. You see Little League teams everywhere. Many, many fewer kids play tennis.
If you want a college scholarship and have an athletic kid, the smart money is to have them play baseball. It is also the most likely route to a pro career. You have a better chance of winning the lottery than having your kid make a good living as a pro tennis player.
I didn't underestimate anything. If you think soccer, or tennis for that matter, is more difficult to play than baseball, then there's no point in discussing this.
JustBob
Hall of Fame
Apples and oranges. Comparing baseball to tennis or soccer is like comparing golf to 400 m running...
FrontHeadlock
Hall of Fame
Is this post serious? Perhaps you work for ESPN?
You can't compare taking a pass from Donovan or kicking a penalty to getting a major league hit. Those are completely false and misleading analogies. Maybe you could compare a hit with kicking a cross in a full sprint past a defender on target to a teammate. Think the average schlub can do that?
Also, this whole post is typical American Sports-fan talk. Just because Americans like flashy sports, or sports with more offense, doesn't make those sports better, and it certainly doesn't make those athletes better. Many Europeans and South Americans prefer more subtle sports, such as soccer, tennis, track, etc.
You do have one thing right. Americans tend to prefer sports they can't physically do, usually because they're not big enough. They love sports like the NFL and NBA with gigantic freaks, probably because it makes them feel better that they aren't professional athletes.
FrontHeadlock
Hall of Fame
Quite a compelling argument.
I didn't compare baseball to soccer or tennis. I said baseball is the most difficult sport to play. I'm not sure what is unclear there. There's a reason the structure of baseball for kids gradually builds from hitting off of a tee, to a pitching machine, to actual live pitching.
Half joking, yes. Regardless, perhaps not the average schlub, but let me ask you this, which is more difficult - taking a pass and connecting with a cross at full sprint, or taking a pass at full stride (25-30 MPH) on a razor blade with a stick and wristing home a skidding, bouncing, or knuckling puck on a 6 x 4 net with a defender draped over you with a goalie covering at least 80% of the net? I'm not arguing that there isn't skill and difficulty in soccer people. I'm saying baseball, and hockey for that matter, are simply more skilled and harder sports to play. You don't have to agree with me and I'm not trying to convince a bunch of people who very likely never played either sport at even a youth level. I'm not s soccer hater. I watch soccer. I understand the game and the skill involved, it's simply just not on par with baseball and hockey, sorry.
You do have one thing right. Americans tend to prefer sports they can't physically do, usually because they're not big enough. They love sports like the NFL and NBA with gigantic freaks, probably because it makes them feel better that they aren't professional athletes.
nah...not much to do with size. There's a certain danger to playing baseball, hockey or football that the other sports don't have. Whether it's the potential to have one's career ended on any one hit in football or hockey, or taking a baseball off of one's face and ending up like Tony Conigliaro. If you've never played hockey, and I suspect most of you soccer honks haven't, there's a certain psychological disorientation of being on the ice in a partially enclosed surface with competition taking runs at you at 30 MPH carrying a weapon..pads or not. Never mind the legal fighting or getting sliced by skates. You can think that one gets accustomed to it the more you play, but the fear is always there just as it is when you're standing in the batter's box facing a guy with questionable control throwing 95 MPH.
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objectivity
Banned
i think you seriously don't quite know how soccer is like in countries which care about it. the academies, the club organization, the grassroot structure of the sport in countries like the UK and Spain. it is no less structured and progressive like baseball in the US. top clubs like barcelona and manchester united, actually scout GLOBALLY for young talents (7, 8 years old) to bring to their academies for training. the scale of the sport outside of the US is something that americans can't really grasp. put it this way. you have a maximum of 600m-1b people worth of potential talent for baseball (US + central america + japan). for soccer, you quite literally have 4-5b worth. its that vast.
FrontHeadlock
Hall of Fame
Plenty of people can do each of them. Any attempt to answer that question is pure speculation, and likely depends on the talents of the individual.
Most of my athletic success was on the wrestling mat, but I'm certainly not so arrogant to say that wrestling is "harder" than another sport or vice versa, whatever "harder" means.
objectivity
Banned
i think you may have a point that certain skills in some sports might be harder... but i think it is difficult to claim that hockey or baseball is harder overall than soccer. i haven't played hockey nor baseball, but i actually competed at high school level in soccer and softball. i think both sports are hard, but i genuinely find soccer a more complex sport. the tactics are extremely fluid and players need to be constantly thinking and adjusting. soccer also requires much higher level of cardio-vascular fitness. and the technique of properly striking a soccer ball is tough, really tough.
anyway your points are taken and well received. cheers.
doobiedoodoo
Rookie
Just look at the US Open scheduling. It is not about tennis. USTA just cares about $$$
namelessone
Legend
Another thing that I've noticed with americans and their sport is the obsession with STATS!!!!!
Look, I've met some people who are absolutely crazy about football(soccer), who would even get into fistfights over their favorite teams but they wouldn't know s**t about the stats of their fav player(s), the exception being how many goals they scored per season.
Most major american sports track tens if not hundreds of stats. Football, like tennis, has maybe a couple and most are not relevant to the average fan. Perceived skill is seen on the pitch in relation to the opponent and most of all the TIMING of said skill is what matters. No one will care that a goalie saved 4-5 opportunities on goals if he fumbles the ball into the net in the 90th minute. To people he will be a sub-average goalie. No one cares that a defender was near impecable for 45 minutes(and the subsequent stats he will gather during those 45 minutes) if his defence concedes 2-3 goals in the second half.
Agree on the Donovan penalty analogy. The reason some people think football(soccer) doesn't really require technical or physical skill is because they have been conditioned so by the american media who only show dives and say the game is "low-scoring". Let me tell you something, when you have the ball and you have one-two people coming at you to take it away, you have a couple of secs to react and in key positions, if you lose the ball, you might as well score in your own net because you have doomed your team. You need to have quick reactions with your feet(not hands, which would come more natural for most people) and you need to use your whole body to shield the ball(or if you have an opening, pass) while keeping your balance.
As for low-scoring it again relates to american obsession with quantity over quality. Football is such a great game because a 3-3 draw with maybe 8-9 opportunities on goal(for 90 minutes) can be so dull while a 1-1,2-1 match with 20 or more opportunities on goal can be far more entertaining. Of course goals matter but what matters far more to the people watching is the RHYTHM of the match. If you have at least one team that likes to attack then you've got yourself a match. If two even better. If both teams have defensive coaches then you'll probably get a snoozer.
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that's great, but what does any of that have to do with the difficulty of the sport, which was the entire narrative of the prior post. I'm well aware of the amateur scouting and training in soccer and any parallel to baseball on that front.
no, just arrogant enough to craft a narrative out of thin air and broad-brush a nation.
You do have one thing right. Americans tend to prefer sports they can't physically do, usually because they're not big enough. They love sports like the NFL and NBA with gigantic freaks, probably because it makes them feel better that they aren't professional athletes
who is this, they? I don't know anyone that watches a sport based on one's size unless you're talking about pro wrestling and Andre The Giant's ghost is among us. Are there people out there watching Zdeno Chara play hockey because he's 6'9 or because he's good at hockey? Were people tuning into watch Randy Johnson be 6'10, or to watch him dominate hitters?
That's right. How many people in US make a good living out of playing in the NFL? Over 1000 compared to less than 30 in tennis
redpurusha
Rookie
I'm from Europe but grew up here in NJ and there was no tennis team at my high school, let alone kids in town that would play. There are just so many sports in the US that are more popular. I ended up playing tennis first time in my mid 20s.. when I read in my local paper "Record" sports section I see every year some dominant player who goes undefeated like his entire career, (I think those who get put into tennis early just are many levels ahead of everyone else that there is this huge gap in the best players and then everyone else). Then I don't know what happens to these guys, I guess they never get the hard competition you need to make them pros and world ranked players. In my town there recently put in 2 new artifical grass baseball fields, 2 new tracks along with a football field, a new recreation building, a swimming pool.... (in past 10 years). But guess what's not done? yep, the tennis courts. I have to play in neighboring towns (not far). But just shows how little priority tennis has in general in an average American suburban town.
When I go out and play locally I've noticed the majority of the players are immigrants. (like me). There are many Indian ethnic players I notice who like tennis and with JJ doing good I see a larger amount of fellow Poles on the courts. Then in my USTA league 2/3 of the players I face are immigrants..
When I go out and play locally I've noticed the majority of the players are immigrants. (like me). There are many Indian ethnic players I notice who like tennis and with JJ doing good I see a larger amount of fellow Poles on the courts. Then in my USTA league 2/3 of the players I face are immigrants..
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auburnlull
New User
This is a great thread and I think almost everybody is making good points. One very small bit of speculation I would like to add would be the effect of the relative amounts of clay court tennis being played in the US currently vs. the rest of the world and even in the American past. I did not play on clay until fairly recently and there are just so many ways that it enhances the learning process even for faster surfaces. For example, I end up playing way more net points and just generally use more variety because of the more intricate exchanges and strategic opportunities that longer rallies allow. Add to this the lower rate of debilitating injuries and I think there might be some cumulative effect.
nothing wrong with being analytical in sports and the main reason for this is the average fan wants to be the franchise's general manager and in American sports, at least the major sports, the GM these days typically has a business/analytical background. Especially in baseball. The days of the ex-player who becomes the GM are all but dead. So if you want to try to figure out what the team is doing player personnel wise, why they're making various roster moves or whatnot, it's largely based on stats. Baseball has always been about stats anyway because it's really an individual sport played in the team construct and it's the easiest sport to isolate individual performance. Football and basketball are nowhere near the level of baseball in terms of statistical analysis, and neither is tennis because there are no teams to pay for and/or develop this info to gain an edge on the competition. Soccer is also well behind the times, but from what I've read, more statistical analysis is being developed...at least by independent sources such as SportVU which I'm led to believe a few soccer clubs have purchased statistical info packages from. It's kind of absurd that 10+ years after baseball sites developed range factors for players - charting one's ability to close ground in the field and reads that a sport like soccer still hasn't caught up. Apparently it's being worked on, though.
toddrobert38
Rookie
bottom line is weak competition locally leaves only rich kids who can afford coaches and travel to high level tourneys as potential professionals. usta caters to those who already have a head start (Player Dev) instead of those who have very little (lower & middle class). sad
Beacon Hill
Hall of Fame
I believe you are oversimplifying, generalizing and perhaps referring to a bygone era. You will find an abundance of parents in the US that coddle, spoil and shelter their children to the point that it's hard to imagine they will ever be able to do anything on their own. I also don't believe it's accurate to describe baseball as largely a game that rewards sacrifice for the greater good.
heftylefty
Hall of Fame
I subscribed to the belief that the best athletes in the US don't play tennis at least at the junior level. But now I feel that the Powers That Be in tennis don't know jack about recognizing potential. And the USTA does not appear to care. They are in the poaching player business. It's cheaper and the Fat Cats up the food chain at the USTA don't have to worry about losing their seven figure gigs. They are like a lobby house for the tennis industry. The USTA is all about selling products, not player development. They are more concerned about selling gear than address the fact that tennis is a global game played by some of the best athletes outside the U.S.
If the USTA was truly interested in developing the next great tennis player, they would try to widen the pool of players by driving the cost down. Plus they need to stop hyping players after one good win. It's the kiss of death.
If the USTA was truly interested in developing the next great tennis player, they would try to widen the pool of players by driving the cost down. Plus they need to stop hyping players after one good win. It's the kiss of death.
namelessone
Legend
The difference being that the average european football fan won't know any stats about his favorite player(s) other than maybe goals scored in a season. Stats matter to actual managers. The teams that the guys make up in their minds in football rely on subjective preferences, not stats. No one will pick player x in their virtual team because he has the most assists in a season, they will pick him cause they like the way he dribbles, how he handles himself on the pitch, if he gives all for his team etc.
There are quite a few cases of player who had overall the best numbers in a given category in a particular season but who failed to show up in the biggest matches of the season and their team suffered for it. That kind of thing is pretty hard to show up in the stats.
JustBob
Hall of Fame
No point? Really? When you state that baseball is more difficult to play than tennis or soccer, it's not a fact, it's merely your opinion. Heck, not only have you failed to define "harder" or "more difficult", but you have also conveniently reduced baseball to a single component, i.e. hitting a baseball. Sure, that requires a great deal of hand-eye coordination, but what about power, strength, endurance, spatial recognition, agility, etc... In short, you have proven nothing.
PhrygianDominant
Hall of Fame
Although you are right about the equipment, the playing on public courts is about the same as basketball if everyone is playing doubles.
GoaLaSSo
Semi-Pro
What?
I have played baseball, hockey, basketball, soccer, tennis, and done some mixed martial arts. The two hardest by far were mixed martial arts and tennis. All sports are very difficult at the highest level, and I don't understand why you think soccer and tennis are so easy. Personally, I could never really love watching or playing baseball because of all of the inactivity involved.
Everyone wants to think that their special sport is the hardest, but the truth is that difficulty is mostly about perspective. Baseball is also one of the easiest sports around to ascend to higher levels of play and make a descent living. There are many different pro feeder leagues full of teams containing large amounts of players. Players from my old high school that were above average were all off to play D1 baseball, while the one that was truly exceptional went straight to the pros. It arguably harder to get into D1 tennis in the US. There are far fewer spots available and the competition for those spots includes tons of international students from every country in the world outside of the African continent.
heninfan99
Talk Tennis Guru
Of course. Imagine a young Allen Iverson on a tennis court. He'd own Federer & Nadal with the right training but then again he doesn't love to practice.
Being an excellent athlete is one of many prerequisites of becoming a great tennis player.
That young Allen Iverson would need world class coaching for many years at the right time. Who is going to teaching him all the strokes and how to move efficiently on the court? These things don't come naturally no matter how good an athlete you have. His family and other close ones would have had to make tremendous sacrifice to support him for years and make a number of correct strategic decisions.
He would also need tremendous mental capacity to train and compete hard without the benefit of having his buddies around. He would also need to be smart and make the right tactical and strategic decisions on and off the court. Just look at Nadal. When you do see him make a mental mistake or even make a bad shot selection?
In addition, as mentioned, tennis requires many different skills. It is like having to possess the skills to play all the different positions in baseball (5-tool-player) and then some.
A long story short, it is a fallacy to think that a great athlete will necessarily make a great tennis player.
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FrontHeadlock
Hall of Fame
Yes. Success in team sports often doesn't translate to similar success in individual sports and vice versa.
objectivity
Banned
i respect your views. i can only speak from my own experiences. i gravitated towards tennis because i hated team sports. i am highly individualistic by nature and i hated the idea of participating in a team effort. heck, i even hate playing doubles, lol. i find tennis is such an individualistic expression of joy. i win and lose purely by my own effort -- that really appeals to me. i just can't find the same experience in team sports like baseball, basketball, soccer etc.
(although my political/cultural inclinations are more towards collectivist ideals -- my ideal state is the Nordic welfare state -- my personal behavior is much more individualistic than collectivist... but that's a different matter.)
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tacou
G.O.A.T.
USTA is a big issue but how intently do you follow US basketball and football? Obviously Kevin Durant and Tom Brady don't have great tennis bodies, but there are tons of smaller guys who I can imagine being a beast on tour.
Also, consider Tsonga (and Monfils) from a different perspective; when on, they are amazing. But both are very inconsistent, injury-prone, and mentally weak. You could put the injury aspect on their builds, but overall they are just not cut out to be greats. Give me 50-60 up and coming players with those body types and athletic abilities, and you know at least one of them will come with the mental game too.
dominikk1985
Legend
It is true that tennis is a skill sport and technique and tactics are the most important things.
however still you can't turn a truck into a race car. in modern tennis athleticism is extremely important.
the american players don't lack so much skill but athleticism. people always complain about americans just being able to bomb serves and FHs but they have to because they lack the movement.
ryan harrison for example has very good technique and power but he is erratic because he lacks the movement.
and you've proven, or disproven my opinion with what in your vague narrative, exactly? btw, it's not just my opinion.
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/sports/ten-hardest-splash.htm
and I wasn't planning on getting this in depth because folks around here tend to go with the aforementioned vague narratives. But perhaps if you've ever watched Sports Science you'd be familiar with their criteria (in terms of difficulty in sports) based on the below metrics
Endurance = 4.63
Strength = 5.00
Power = 4.13
Speed = 4.25
Agility = 6.63
Flexibility = 5.50
Nerve = 8.25 (the ability to overcome fear)
Durability = 5.50
Hand-Eye Coordination = 7.58
Analytic Aptitude = 4.88
Rankings
baseball - 72.87
boxing - 71.79
hockey - 69.81
football (the American kind) - 67.37
martial arts - 66.77
basketball - 65.47
tennis - 62.84
gymnastics - 62.50
soccer - 61.22
Alpine skiing - 60.88
this isn't even taking account in season length which baseball obviously blows any other away. And FTR I'm not reducing baseball to what occurs in the batter's box, but hitting a baseball is, again IMO, the most difficult feat in sports to achieve...especially at the pro level when you factor in the average pitcher's velocity, specialized relievers, playing 6 or 7 games a week etc. I pitched in college. I've taken line drives off of my chest/arms/legs from shots back up the box. Going out at 90 MPH and coming back at 105 MPH - 54 ish feet away. Trust me, I know how difficult it is to also defend and I know how difficult it is to track down a knuckling or tailing line-drive hit right at a center fielder or attempting to track an infield pop-up staring into the sun. Or a right fielder getting off an accurate throw to peg a runner at 3B 250 feet away. I'm not reducing the defensive portion, nor the pitcher's portion of attempting to consistently repeat one's mechanics 100 pitches a game or even quite simply being able to throw 100 pitches per game when the body wasn't constructed to throw overhand to which exactly one third of all pitchers currently employed by MLB all share the familiar triangular scar that is the result of Tommy John surgery. It's all factored in.
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FrontHeadlock
Hall of Fame
What is with this bizarre obsession with proving baseball is a "harder" sport than others? Baseball is a difficult sport, everyone agrees with that. It's not harder than any other sport. In fact, at the highest levels, whether a sport is "harder" than another is more a function of the individual abilities of a specific athlete more than anything else.
Where did you get those numbers, I don't see it in the article.
Yes, hitting a baseball is about the most difficult things in sports, but that leaves out a bunch of other things that separates a tennis player from a baseball player.
You're telling me John Kruk was a great athlete with speed and flexibility? Baseball does not require great athletes for some of the positions. Most are just hyper-coordinated people.
Yes, hitting a baseball is about the most difficult things in sports, but that leaves out a bunch of other things that separates a tennis player from a baseball player.
You're telling me John Kruk was a great athlete with speed and flexibility? Baseball does not require great athletes for some of the positions. Most are just hyper-coordinated people.
JustBob
Hall of Fame
I'm well aware that hitting a baseball is hard. I've already stated that it is.
I'm well aware of those criteria as well, which is why I brought the fact that there is more to sports than hand-eye coordination.
Please provide a link for those rankings.
The rest of your post about your personal experience in baseball is irrelevant. Anyone who played a sport at a high level can come up with a paragraph listing stuff that makes their sport hard.
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I think AI would have made a great tennis player. Probably the quickest guy on tour. His 5'11"-6'0" wiry frame is perfect for the sport, not to mention no lob would get over his head. I think he'd be exactly like Marcelo Rios.
well that was true about a lot of sports fans here twenty years ago too. The last decade there has been a huge shift in how sports are analyzed here. Wins and ERA (earned run average) for pitchers used to be the only stats people paid any attention to. Now no one really cares about either because it's all about ERA+, xFIP (fielding independent pitching) w/OBA (on base avg) allowed, ground ball vs fly ball rates, K/BB rates etc. Give soccer a few more years to catch up and you'll start seeing more stats used on broadcasts in soccer too. It's wildly odd that a player's passing percentage isn't readily available in soccer, or the contributions an isolated defenseman has had in allowing or preventing a goal. This has been done in hockey over the last few years, so it's coming to soccer at some point. Or at least it will in the US. Maybe there isn't interest in it in Europe or S.America or whatever, but it there will be a market for it here and broadcasters and in studio analysts will have to adapt.
no but then again I, nor the data, requires a one player sample size in evaluating players. Just as Ivo Karlovic isn't a "great athlete", he was once ranked #14 in the world. Everyone has their strengths and Kruk was a career .300 hitter.
I still want to hear more about how Americans watch sports based on a guy's size. Talk about that some more because I'm not seeing very many John Isner fans around here.
objectivity
Banned
lol... but the point they are making is that americans AREN'T watching tennis, but prefer watching american football... and the reason they are postulating is that they find watching 300 pound dudes clash is more exciting than 2 skinny 6-1 guys exchanging drop shots at the net.
I'd like to see the link for those rankings, I can't find them in the article.
objectivity
Banned
let me tell you why it is really hard for people to accept that baseball is THE HARDEST sport, or at least it is harder than a sport like soccer. when the greatest baseball player of all time looks like this:
http://cdnl.complex.com/mp/620/400/80/0/bb/1/ffffff/9ff3b5acc40689cb898d91c55b654392/images_/assets/galleries/2011/7535/baberuth-1.jpg
meanwhile, a soccer player looks like this:
http://img2.timeinc.net/people/i/2012/specials/sma/athletes/cristiano-ronaldo-1-435.jpg
do you have reading comprehension difficulty? What was unclear about the "watch" part? It was a TV program on Vs/NBCSN. Baseballprospectus has posted the data on a number of occasions in their hitting mechanics pieces, but BP is a subscriber/pay site hence the copy and paste. I couldn't care less if you don't agree with the data, my opinion, or anything else. If you can add, I don't know, anything that isn't some vague narrative, lmk. Take it to PM, too much non-tennis on this thread anyway.
I can see why someone would compare an athlete in 2013 to one from 1914. Did one soccer player both outpace the entire league in goals as well as play goal which would be the soccer equivalent since Ruth was both the greatest hitter and an elite pitcher.
Russeljones
Talk Tennis Guru
Good post. I'd only add that the expenses of tennis players are sky high compared to their earnings. I think Stakhovski broke even this spring for the first time in his career and he is no spring chicken is he?
that's one factor. People love football because it's the easiest sport to follow. One game per week typically on Sunday when most people are off of work. Add in a short 16 game regular season which means at least for the first 8-10 weeks every game matters to a large degree in terms of putting one's team into playoff contention. Then add the (interactive) fantasy football factor which can't be understated, a wildly popular video game (Madden), as well as football being considered the easiest sport to gamble on of the four major sports here. The gladiatorial/violent nature of the game is one factor, sure. Just as Fed's shot-making ability or a given player's nationality are individual factors in someone's decision to watch Fed/tennis.
