Fore!
Yesterday the online magazine Slate ran this article, which I found really interesting. It's a comparison of the divergent tracks in popularity taken over the last few decades by the two great country club sports, golf and tennis. The opposing fates of these two sports are something that I've wondered about for quite some time now.
Like most American men, I like to play golf when I can. I would be willing to bet that golf is one of the few sports that Americans actually like to play more than they like to watch on TV (much as I like golf, it is excruciatingly boring on television). Also like most American men, I haven't seriously played tennis since I was a teenager--I'm 32 now--and can't name a single male player who would rank in the world's top 20 besides Andre Agassi, and I know him only because he's been around for 20 years now.
When I was a kid there seemed to be two sports that all suburban kids in America were playing, sports which had never reached a wide audience in this country, but which in the late 70's and early 80's seemed poised to ensnare an entire young generation: Soccer--"It's the sport of the future in America, and it always will be"--and tennis. It seemed like every kid played one or the other or both. Soccer's perpetual inability to capture more than a niche market in the U.S. has been written about to death and is subject enough for it's own post (so save your comments, daniel), but these days it seems hard to believe that around 1979 tennis appeared poised to join football, baseball and basketball in the pantheon of sports Americans really care about. I can remember going to tennis camp as a kid. Once, when my family lived in San Antonio, my mother took me to see an exhibition match featuring John MacEnroe, and I was thrilled. My family, like most families I knew of back then, owned several tennis rackets that although rarely used, were a sign that in those days tennis was something that average people actually went out and did. It doesn't really seem that way anymore.
Golf basically did not exist in my childhood and adolescent world, although I did play a couple of times when I was a teenager. Golf always seemed to reek of privilege and elitism, a pseudo-athletic pursuit for rich, middle-aged fat men. I never really enjoyed playing it until I was in college. How could something be a sport if you could suck on a stogie while doing it?
But somewhere along the line things changed dramatically. I was somewhat shocked a few years ago to realize that golf had transcended it's upper-crust history and managed to become a sport of The People, the sort of sport you're not surprised to turn on the TV and see Tony Soprano or Hank "King of the Hill" Hill playing.
The Slate article postulates a number of theories as to why these two sports, both of which carry histories that speak to leisure-class privilege, have come to such different fates. The most prominent seems to be that in attempting to reach as wide an audience as possible (regardless of the social class of the surrounding neighborhood, a great many public parks in this country contain tennis courts in various states of decay) tennis lost much of it's mystique and became something anyone who owned a racket and a canister of tennis balls could do, while golf maintained it's aspirational allure. But I think the answer is simpler than that; I think tennis requires a lot of hard physical exertion while golf is more like a mildly competitive walk in the park. Put another way, tennis is hard work, and golf is just a good time.
Just for fun a couple of years ago I tried to play tennis with a friend at the gym we belonged to. This may sound odd, but I had forgotten what an absolutely insane amount of running back and forth tennis entails. I'm in decent shape, but I was exhausted after a single game--and keep in mind, you have to win six or sometimes seven games to win a set, and three out of five sets to win a match in men's play. It's no wonder to me that tennis players seem to age so quickly and burn out so fast.
Golf, on the other hand, only becomes more enjoyable as the years go by. It's a chance to get outside in a beautiful setting, walk around at a casual pace, spend time with/harass and cajole friends, practice what is actually a deceptively challenging game, and wind the whole thing up with a beer in the shade. What a great way to spend a summer afternoon.
I certainly have nothing against tennis--it's great exercise, and not entirely un-entertaining to watch when played well. But if I had to chose one of these two sports to spend a precious day off playing, well, to me that isn't really a choice at all.
Like most American men, I like to play golf when I can. I would be willing to bet that golf is one of the few sports that Americans actually like to play more than they like to watch on TV (much as I like golf, it is excruciatingly boring on television). Also like most American men, I haven't seriously played tennis since I was a teenager--I'm 32 now--and can't name a single male player who would rank in the world's top 20 besides Andre Agassi, and I know him only because he's been around for 20 years now.
When I was a kid there seemed to be two sports that all suburban kids in America were playing, sports which had never reached a wide audience in this country, but which in the late 70's and early 80's seemed poised to ensnare an entire young generation: Soccer--"It's the sport of the future in America, and it always will be"--and tennis. It seemed like every kid played one or the other or both. Soccer's perpetual inability to capture more than a niche market in the U.S. has been written about to death and is subject enough for it's own post (so save your comments, daniel), but these days it seems hard to believe that around 1979 tennis appeared poised to join football, baseball and basketball in the pantheon of sports Americans really care about. I can remember going to tennis camp as a kid. Once, when my family lived in San Antonio, my mother took me to see an exhibition match featuring John MacEnroe, and I was thrilled. My family, like most families I knew of back then, owned several tennis rackets that although rarely used, were a sign that in those days tennis was something that average people actually went out and did. It doesn't really seem that way anymore.
Golf basically did not exist in my childhood and adolescent world, although I did play a couple of times when I was a teenager. Golf always seemed to reek of privilege and elitism, a pseudo-athletic pursuit for rich, middle-aged fat men. I never really enjoyed playing it until I was in college. How could something be a sport if you could suck on a stogie while doing it?
But somewhere along the line things changed dramatically. I was somewhat shocked a few years ago to realize that golf had transcended it's upper-crust history and managed to become a sport of The People, the sort of sport you're not surprised to turn on the TV and see Tony Soprano or Hank "King of the Hill" Hill playing.
The Slate article postulates a number of theories as to why these two sports, both of which carry histories that speak to leisure-class privilege, have come to such different fates. The most prominent seems to be that in attempting to reach as wide an audience as possible (regardless of the social class of the surrounding neighborhood, a great many public parks in this country contain tennis courts in various states of decay) tennis lost much of it's mystique and became something anyone who owned a racket and a canister of tennis balls could do, while golf maintained it's aspirational allure. But I think the answer is simpler than that; I think tennis requires a lot of hard physical exertion while golf is more like a mildly competitive walk in the park. Put another way, tennis is hard work, and golf is just a good time.
Just for fun a couple of years ago I tried to play tennis with a friend at the gym we belonged to. This may sound odd, but I had forgotten what an absolutely insane amount of running back and forth tennis entails. I'm in decent shape, but I was exhausted after a single game--and keep in mind, you have to win six or sometimes seven games to win a set, and three out of five sets to win a match in men's play. It's no wonder to me that tennis players seem to age so quickly and burn out so fast.
Golf, on the other hand, only becomes more enjoyable as the years go by. It's a chance to get outside in a beautiful setting, walk around at a casual pace, spend time with/harass and cajole friends, practice what is actually a deceptively challenging game, and wind the whole thing up with a beer in the shade. What a great way to spend a summer afternoon.
I certainly have nothing against tennis--it's great exercise, and not entirely un-entertaining to watch when played well. But if I had to chose one of these two sports to spend a precious day off playing, well, to me that isn't really a choice at all.
posted by Yukon Sully | 3:06 PM
1 Comments:
looking forward to that soccer article.
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