After watching Pete Sampras nearly beat Roger Federer last night, are we the only ones wondering why he remains retired? We know, probably not.
The 36-year-old Sampras, employing a “secret” Wilson prototype racket, took the greatest(?) player in the game to the limit in front of a sold-out crowd at MSG in New York. Ironically though, the men’s tennis tour continues its steep decline, with news out of Las Vegas this week.
Ed Graney of the LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL reports today on the likely demise of the Vegas ATP tour stop, thanks to non-existent crowds. That’s just the latest news in a litany of stories involving cratering attendance at ATP tournaments.
Increasingly, it seems that men’s tennis (and golf) exists only for the major events, and that other tour stops are now an afterthought. Lucrative endorsement deals are mostly to blame for the woes of the respective circuits, which ensures that the best players won’t play much at all except for major tournaments.
The reason they don’t play? They don’t need the money. The incentive to grind it out every week is gone.
So the whole of the game suffers. Less kids play now golf and tennis. And the quality of the level of play continues to go down. Just watching a 36-year-old Sampras nearly beat Federer last night and a 36-hundred pound golfer still playing on the tour has convinced us of that.
4:26 pm on March 13th, 2008
In this week’s Play email from the NYT Will Leitch writes about this match, and his opinion from being there is that Federer was dogging and letting Sampras hang around by playing at 50%.