Sports officials with no shame
The acclamation of Salvador Andrada as president of the Philippine Tennis Association is not a surprise. It is symptomatic of what is wrong with Philippine sports and why it is the laughing stock of every nation around the region. With a compliant board composed mainly of people who have mishandled tennis for decades, Andrada has been able to weave himself back into the association despite clamor from various stakeholders of the sport for him to step back and allow others to provide a new vision for the association.
But Andrada, who is 81 and suffering from various ailments, refuses to just ride into the sunset. He again wants to inflict his outmoded, unproven and disastrous management style to the association which, under his rule (1986-2006), and those of others who followed him, saw the sport die a slow, excruciating death.
Tennis has not produced any player of respectable talent over the past three decades under Andrada and his successors, and there is no sign this pitiful trend will soon be broken.
Instead, the country has continued to latch its tennis future to foreign born players, relying on imports such as Cecil Mamiit, Eric Taino, Treat Huey and Ruben Gonzales, and women players Katharina Lehnart and Dennis Dy who all leave and return to the comforts of their American homes shortly after their games, leaving the country thousands of dollars poorer.
I have nothing against these players, although I put them in the category of mercenaries. Do you think they will be here if they made it big in their adopted countries?
But because Philta has no grassroots program, tennis continues to suffer and barely survives its international campaigns. Officials seem to be oblivious to the fact that there are 100 million Filipinos and thousands of them are just waiting to be inspired and be developed into world-class athletes.
Which brings us to the kind of people running tennis and other sports associations: They are people who have no shame.
But what do you expect from them? They mirror what is “normal” in Philippine sports. And they follow the leader.
They look at the Philippine Olympic Committee for guidance and what do they see? An 83-year-old man who disqualified his opponent and got himself elected unopposed to a new four-year term as POC president despite having a record that would make any sane person disappear from the face of the earth forever.