Kids might be right,

‘‘Please don’t go away,’’ pleaded the announcer at the Cincinnati tennis

Masters.

But the punters were already on the move. They were not going to hang around for a prize ceremony that meant nothing to them. And the fans continue to go away or at least the young ones do. They have no connection to tennis any more. It’s too long. It’s boring. And it’s smug.

I may look at Roger Federer and see one of the great sporting champions, but most teenagers see a sell-out. Federer is not one of them. He’s a bloke who has morphed into a part of their parents’ generation. He is a Swiss banker in tennis shorts.

That’s what happens when the lunatics take over the asylum. It is telling that the two sports with the oldest demographic are golf, with a median age of 64, and men’s tennis, with a median age of 61. It’s telling because these are the two sports which are run by the players themselves.

So the players start to selfregulate. The kids have no authority to kick against because they are the authority. Novak Djokovic had a bit of cheek when he first came onto the scene, but Federer and Rafael Nadal soon ironed that out of him. Now Djokovic is head of the ATP Player Council and talks like a Wall Street suit.

At last year’s US Open Nick Kyrgios said to himself during a change of ends: ‘‘You could not have picked a more boring sport as a profession’’.

That scandalised most of his peers, but Kyrgios was speaking the truth of his generation. The kids think tennis is boring. They don’t identify with any of these people. And they are right. Tennis is boring for them. Get used to it.

Did you see many kids at last week’s ASB Classic in Auckland? No, nor did I. I saw a lot of rich people and I saw a lot of older people. Sky presenter Jordan Vandermade did a piece to camera coming out of a drinks lounge with a glass of pink bubbly. But Vandermade looked violently out of place. There were no other people of his age or ethnicity to be seen.

The sports with the youngest fans in America are basketball and soccer. Pam El, the NBA’s chief marketing officer, said: ‘‘The youthfulness you see in the NBA is by design. Children start playing basketball at a young age and we have a strong youth program. Our players are popstar icons and have strong appeal to young people. They have huge followings and young people follow young people.’’

Kyrgios plays basketball in his spare time. No surprise there. Same with my son. He’s into the Dallas Mavericks who are a young and upcoming team. And he’s a fan of the 20-year-old Luka Doncic, who is the same age as he is. But one thing he will not be watching this week is the 32-yearold Fabio Fognini playing at the ASB Classic.

I will be watching because like many of my generation I have a frame of reference. When I was a kid I watched Bjorn Borg and Vitas Gerulaitis and John McEnroe. These guys were super cool, they were rebels and they had charisma.

McEnroe raged against the world and the other two went to the hippest New York night club and then carried McEnroe home. And unlike Federer who just goes on and on, in more ways than one, Borg retired young because, well, that’s what Jimmy Dean would have done. Who wants middle-aged heroes?

But our kids don’t see tennis like that because it no longer exists. They see a sport that goes on and on for hours as men’s