Monday, February 9, 2009

A Question

This has been bothering me for the past couple of days. In every team sport, like baseball, football, soccer, hockey, volleyball and basketball, there is a raucous crowd situation. Often music plays loudly throughout the game, and there is a kind of party atmosphere (or picnic atmosphere if you're at a baseball game). In other words, at these kinds of events, you can chat, cheer, boo; basically be yourself at all times.

However, in solitary sports, like golf or bowling, the crowd is expected and in fact required to be quiet during an actual point. Sure, they can applaud between points, but there is a definite sense of distance and restraint on the part of the audience during the match. Now, this makes perfect sense in something like golf, where the player is in competition with only him or herself, and can rely on no one but themselves to succeed.

But why does tennis, which is NOT a solitary sport (in other words, you're playing against another opponent, albeit without a team), require the crowd to be silent during the match, only to cheer between points? I know there's the whole "gentleman's sport" excuse, but come on. The sport attracts pompous personalities that it trumpets (McEnroe and Agassi to name a few), it's fast-paced and high energy, and everyone wears casual wear to the matches. Heck, boxing is a sport with two people squaring off against each other where the crowd is raucous, and people used to wear suits and ties to it!

Why do tennis players need silence to deeply focus in the same way golf players do during a shot? I'm sure it helps, but that kind of silence would help in any sport. In fact, the more I think about it, tennis players would probably love feeding off the energy of the crowd during play. What do you think?

4 comments:

  1. As a formerly avid tennis player who once beat the fourth-ranked female amateur tennis player in the state of Rhode Island, I respectfully disagree. There is an art to tennis not seen in other sports that not only require the players' full attention, but also gives the audience an opportunity to fully enjoy the beauty of the game that just can't be fully experienced while screaming your head off like a moron (as I do for Raider games) :-)

    ReplyDelete
  2. OK, you have to tell me the story of the Rhode Island tennis player at some point. Sounds exciting. :)

    I must ask you respectfully though; what art not seen in other sports? The only thing I can think of is the serve, which admittedly is difficult to pull off consistently, and it could be very distracting if someone catcalled every time someone lobbed the serve. But other than that, you're running around hitting a ball. Being a formerly avid racquetball and squash player who has played in front of audiences before, I can safely say that the audience cheering during matches was damn fun and didn't break my concentration at all. Racket sports like tennis and squash don't exactly lend themselves to audiences screaming every second anyways; people would probably call out occasionally, but more it'd be people talking and going "ooh" and "aah." . I'm just confused more by the total silence rule.

    ReplyDelete
  3. As a tennis player part of tennis is being able to hear the ball off the racket of the other player. If you can't hear it, that makes it harder to play. It's also a matter of respect. In tennis, audiences used to not cheer unless the player won the point full out. You'd never cheer for a ball in the net or a mishit ball. That's just disrespectful of the players. But tennis has change and now people whistle and cheer for anything.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Okay, the not being able to hear the ball argument makes some sense. But shouldn't you be able to see the ball being hit off the racket anyways? How much of a factor does being able to hear the ball in addition to seeing it being hit play? Also, in the pros, where balls are routinely hit/served at well over 100 miles per hour, I think you'd be able to hear the ball regardless of low crowd noise.

    Interesting in regards to the noncheering; I didn't know about that. The only two sports I can think of where noncheers happen like that are bowling and pool. I've always found that curious in professional bowling, where any shot that isn't a strike, even if it's a great shot that leaves an easy spare, isn't cheered.

    ReplyDelete