Tennis Anyone ?

I don’t know how many of you are interested in the game of tennis .

I was watching the early rounds of the US Open this afternoon and observed that as exciting as the match was between Blake and Haas all the way to the tie breaker , it was disappointing to see Roddick win on the basis of his opponent walking out on the second set due to ill heath .

Among the ladies , high hopes were pinned on two young eighteen year olds , one from Poland ..the other from Serbia ( don’t expect me to remember their complex names ) but they lost due to inexperience and mental crackdown .

Fortunately the era of gentleman players has come back . For a while when Connors an Mckenroe reigned supreme ,insults and bad manners were the name of the game …but not so anymore …thank goodness !

I have also noticed lately ..there is no dearth of tall big hulk players like Davenport or the beautiful Russian Sharpova .
Among the men , the average men’s height now is 6 feet 2 inches with an occasional 6 feet 9 inches Eisner .

The prize money is ridiculous . When Laver was world’s best , having won the grand slam twice , the maximum money he made in one year was $5000 .

Contrast that with the million plus and the usual Lexus or Mercedes thrown in ,,,and we are talking mega bucks .
I am not even including the endorsements that the top players earn in the millions , from Nike , Adidas , etc .

Also because of the new tennis rackets with twice as much speed , the game has often become dull , scoring only with service points .

While the men have kept their attire the same , the women’s shorts seem to be getting shorter .
I expect Roger Federer will be world’s number 1 for a few more years , in the same league as Tiger Woods in the world of Golf

I find it funny that once the tennis player is past the young age of 25 , he suddenly becomes past tense ,as the new 18 year olds keep on coming out of the European countries .

Except for Sania Mirza , Indians don’t really have a tennis player to be called world class ..and she has already lost ..in the early rounds .

Vijay Amritraj was the last of our world class single players , and after Paes and Bhupathi broke up we have not had any doubles champions either .

As far as intellectual dominance and brain power is concerned , I doubt if anyone comes close to our fellow Indians
But surely with a billion people . we can come up an occasional champion or two in tennis or any other field involving physical activity in the future .

Now that we have wealth in India , let us have hundreds of tennis courts with top notch coaches to bring us into the world arena of tennis .

In the meantime we at o3 will rack our brains with different strategies of facing all kinds of opponents and outwitting and out psyching them without much expenditure of energy

…since we can never match the strength of these huge flesh eating westerners .

You game for it ?