Kevin Patrick
Hall of Fame
I just got the Tennis Channel recently & was very surprised at how sparse the crowds were in Hamburg. I know that Germany lost the Year-End Masters, Stuttgart Masters-Series, the Grand Slam Cup & another indoor event in Essen in recent years. Things aren't looking good, just read this, from Peter Bodo of Tennis magazine:
"If I had told you less than a decade ago that tennis, once the No. 2 or 3 sport in Germany (soccer rules, and Formula 1 racing is very strong), would not only vanish off the public radar but virtually vanish from the German sporting landscape, would you have believed it? Well, that’s just what has happened, and here’s the sad, puzzling, and perhaps appropriately unsatisfying eulogy by someone who knows a thing or two about the subject, Boris Becker.
Could it really have been that, as recently as the mid-1990s, Becker and Steffi Graf towered over the game? And Germany was famous for providing something like 90 percent of the ATP’s operating revenues (thanks to bidding wars between German television networks and the exorbitant fees they were willing to pay for the privilege of broadcasting tennis)? Do you remember how all those sharply dressed men and women, dripping gold, fought and clawed over tickets to second-round action in places like Düsseldorf?
Since those halcyon days the game in Germany has exploded. But not in a good way. Nobody plays anymore; German tennis courts are being converted to self-storage facilities and model railroad platforms at a record clip. You can’t find tennis on German TV, not even cable. Not even public access cable. Sure, the Germans are unabashedly chauvinistic; if there’s no German star, the sport doesn’t exist. But the speed and depth of the fall is still staggering.
And it certainly didn’t help that Tommy Haas and Nicolas Kiefer turned out to be such distinctly un-Germanic whiners and underachievers (although Tommy had a good run to reach No. 3 a couple of years ago, the big cats of the game licked their chops whenever they had to play him in a tournament that meant anything).
It’s like Kiefer and Haas, once promising talents, both strapped on suicide vests, infiltrated the upper regions of the rankings, then detonated. On the women’s side, Graf was briefly involved with some up-and-coming junior players, but nary a word has been heard from any of them since. And we all know Steffi is otherwise occupied, as Andre Agassi’s wife and the mother of two.
Guess she decided to get out while the gettin’ was good. She always had great timing, that girl, and on things other than that buggy-whip forehand!"
http://www.peterbodostennisworld.com/
"If I had told you less than a decade ago that tennis, once the No. 2 or 3 sport in Germany (soccer rules, and Formula 1 racing is very strong), would not only vanish off the public radar but virtually vanish from the German sporting landscape, would you have believed it? Well, that’s just what has happened, and here’s the sad, puzzling, and perhaps appropriately unsatisfying eulogy by someone who knows a thing or two about the subject, Boris Becker.
Could it really have been that, as recently as the mid-1990s, Becker and Steffi Graf towered over the game? And Germany was famous for providing something like 90 percent of the ATP’s operating revenues (thanks to bidding wars between German television networks and the exorbitant fees they were willing to pay for the privilege of broadcasting tennis)? Do you remember how all those sharply dressed men and women, dripping gold, fought and clawed over tickets to second-round action in places like Düsseldorf?
Since those halcyon days the game in Germany has exploded. But not in a good way. Nobody plays anymore; German tennis courts are being converted to self-storage facilities and model railroad platforms at a record clip. You can’t find tennis on German TV, not even cable. Not even public access cable. Sure, the Germans are unabashedly chauvinistic; if there’s no German star, the sport doesn’t exist. But the speed and depth of the fall is still staggering.
And it certainly didn’t help that Tommy Haas and Nicolas Kiefer turned out to be such distinctly un-Germanic whiners and underachievers (although Tommy had a good run to reach No. 3 a couple of years ago, the big cats of the game licked their chops whenever they had to play him in a tournament that meant anything).
It’s like Kiefer and Haas, once promising talents, both strapped on suicide vests, infiltrated the upper regions of the rankings, then detonated. On the women’s side, Graf was briefly involved with some up-and-coming junior players, but nary a word has been heard from any of them since. And we all know Steffi is otherwise occupied, as Andre Agassi’s wife and the mother of two.
Guess she decided to get out while the gettin’ was good. She always had great timing, that girl, and on things other than that buggy-whip forehand!"
http://www.peterbodostennisworld.com/
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