If ‘packaging’ can turn cricket into a circus then why not give the same treatment to the humdrum, relatively monotonous world of power tennis? The International Premier Tennis League scheduled for November this year brings together the current champs with former champs like Andre Agassi and Pete Sampras to create four teams (Bangkok, Dubai, Singapore and Mumbai) which cities will also be the venues for the traveling show.
Before we discuss exactly how dramatically the purist tennis lover will commit hara-kiri over the mutated format, let’s take a quick gander at it. Ten players to a team and a one set game which goes into a tie breaker if the score reaches 5 all. The teams will fight each other in men’s singles, women’s singles, men’s doubles, mixed doubles, and legends’ singles. Each team will play eight such matches, half at home and half away. Sunday night serve and volley for eight weeks.
The money is huge. Like a massive energy pill. In the million of dollars. Even Nadal, who has been whining about the strenuous tennis schedule and no rest period since his famous 2009 quote when he slagged off those who worked the calendar has perked up and got a second wind for these post season matches. In fairness, if you are getting a million dollars a night to muck about the court with no ATP points in the mix and only ‘entertainment’ as your act, you’d be surprised how exhaustion would disappear. This is a holiday. It’s Billy Butlin meets Club Med time.
Obviously, the League hasn’t made many friends. Obscenely rich in sponsorship (or so it indicates) , it has swiftly pummeled traditional tennis into submission…Bobo the clown has won. While sports writers are moaning about this fall from grace and the divisive texture of the proposed annual carnival the only thing that really matters is whether it will take off or suffer a broken wing. Cricket played in costumes festooned with ads and all the new electronic doodahs not only has a strong mass base but it is taken very seriously by the fans and the players. Tennis is a lot more elitist and limited both in stadium capacity and eyeballs for adspend so the risk factor is higher. Also, while the promise of the money has been made the success of the experiment will depend on it being received. If the bank gives you the nod for that kind of bread, darling you take the kids to Gstaad, I am going to Bangkok for the weekend.
We can grumble as much as we like about sport turning into absurd theater but if there is money in it and people enjoy the show and the antics of these famous players catch on and there is a mix of audio-visual theatrics and talent, well, OK, game on. Surely, Mahesh Bhupathi, the mastermind behind the league has already arranged scriptwriters to create snazzy one liners and happy ‘confrontational’ scenarios just short of ‘outrageous.’ Keep the fans rolling with mirth. It’s, after all, showtime.
Roger Federer is the only senior player to have scratched his name off the list. Conservative for now, he might just be watching to see if it takes off before he goes shopping for pom poms and a funny hat.
There is nothing so sacrosanct about sports celebs. If they are marketable, market them till their ‘sell by’ age and everyone make money till then.
There is only one major area of concern. If the league does catch on and becomes a fun thing to watch and attracts all the controversy that big money events do including betting and gambling and match fixing and then the four teams become eight and then twelve and turns competitive what happens to the relatively dreary Grand Slams and the current circuit. They will lose what little fizz is left. See what T20 did to Test cricket and even the one-dayers. It slew them despite all the artificial respiration to the contrary.
Bring on the dancing girls, the live bands and the movie stars who’ll bankroll the franchises. Tennis has become a teenybopper.
Teams
Singapore: Tomas Berdych, Andre Agassi, Lleyton Hewitt, Bruno Soares, Patrick Rafter, Daniela Hantuchova, Nick Krygios,Serena Williams
Bangkok: Jo-Wilfred Tsonga, Victoria Azarenka, Andy Murray, Daniel Nestor, Carlos Moya, Kirsten Flipkens
Mumbai: Rafael Nadal, Gael Monfils, Pete Sampras, Rohan Bopanna, Ana Ivanovic, Sania Mirza, Fabrice Santoro
Dubai: Novak Djokovic, Caroline Wozniacki, Goran Ivanizevic, Janko Tipsarevic, Nenad Zimonic, Malek Jaziri, Martina Hingis.
