USA TODAY International Edition
TENNIS ALL ABOUT SLAMS
Career stats often get little recognition
NEW YORK If a milestone falls and nobody hears about it, did it matter? In tennis, it’s a viable question. When Bob and Mike Bryan became the first team to pass 800 wins in the Houston tournament in April, the ATP Tour posted an article on its website and gave them a cake. Otherwise, the unprecedented accomplishment went largely unnoticed.
Last week in the U. S. Open qualifying tournament, Germany’s Julian Reister recorded a rare feat: He won the final set against compatriot Tim Puetz without dropping a point, a socalled “golden set.” Only five perfect sets have been recorded on the professional level.
Reister’s 24 points of flawless tennis — akin to a perfect game in baseball — barely moved even the blogosphere dial.
For better or worse, tennis remains largely a Grand Slam- centric sport, with ascending to the No. 1 ranking a distant second.
While other big American team sports celebrate everything from 1,000- yard rushing seasons to 300win careers to 50- point games, tennis has little traction outside these two areas, not unlike golf.
Many significant achievements — Roger Federer’s 1,000th match, Andy Roddick’s 600th win, Serena Williams’ 50th WTA title — have flown under the radar.
If Rafael Nadal wins the U. S. Open, he would tie Andre Agassi in eighth place with 60 titles — an accomplishment that would be completely overshadowed by his 13th major championship.
No. 1 Novak Djokovic of Serbia agrees that some important stats are “kept behind the door.”
“The statistics are there,” the U. S. Open’s top seed said this month. “It’s just a matter of bringing that up publicly and just making sure it’s official or not.”
Opinions vary on why the game hasn’t done a better job of promoting recognizable achievements.
Coco Vandeweghe, who won her first- round match Monday against Serbia’s Aleksandra Krunic 6- 4, 7- 6 ( 7- 5), said it was a question of exposure.
“Baseball is on every night during the season,” said Vandeweghe, whose uncle is former NBA player and coach Kiki Vandeweghe. “Same with basketball and football. ... When you read a newspaper, it’s only a para- graph here or there if that. How can you keep track of something when you don’t see it day to day and baseball has RBIs and god knows what else?”
Some cited fantasy leagues for team sports as another reason statistics get undersold in tennis.
Former top- ranked doubles player Liezel Huber said players themselves could do a better job if they were less insular.
“Tennis is so individual that everybody celebrates on their own,” the American said. “If you asked a player if they had 500 wins, they wouldn’t know. I think it’s the mentality that we have. We’re selfish. We don’t think of the bigger picture in it.”
Others, such as Bob Bryan, said the tours should be responsible for marketing milestones.
That argument resonated with ATP board member Justin Gimelstob, who said the men had increased efforts but could do more. “We’ve made a bigger issue on the rankings,” he said. “We celebrate match victories. We calculate aces per year. But we need to make a conscious effort of creating more story lines in the sport. It’s a numbers age. It’s an information age. It’s a data age. It should be more of an issue.”
Brian Baker said tennis had not traditionally been a stats- heavy sport and thought it was up to the news media because they “drive milestones.”
“Brian Baker, 300- match winner, has a nice ring to it,” said the 185thranked American, who is playing his first major since injuring his knee in January’s Australian Open. “It’s not like the schedule has changed that much, so I think the stats would hold up well over time. I think it would be a cool thing to have a few benchmarks lofty enough to make them prestigious.”
On one point most agreed: There is room for improvement.
“I’ve never heard a fan come up to me and say, ‘ Congrats on winning 800 matches,’ ” Mike Bryan said.