Apathy is killing women's tennis

By Tom Kosinski Sports Central Columnist

NASDAQ 100 tournament director and owner Peter Burwash (coincidently, the best player/coach to come out of Canada ever, sorry Greg Rudzedski) was hopping mad over the women's draw at this years tournament.

The two week, joint ATP-WTA tour stop is one of the few events that rivals the grand slams and has simultaneous men's and women's tournaments. If you want, you can call it the "Grand Slam of Miami."

Burwash was fuming over the lack of top women's players in the draw. Prior to tournament time, world No. 1 Justine Henin-Hardenne had withdrawn (citing hypoglycemia as the problem), Kim Clijsters was missing (various injuries), and Lindsay Davenport decided to skip the event altogether following her runner-up finish at Indian Wells.

While both Williams sisters were in attendance, and the tournament marked the official comeback of Serena, the draw lacked the top players in the women's game and gave a less then spectacular draw.

Over the decade or so that Burwash has run the NASDAQ 100 tournament, he has taken it from a small, non-descript tour stop to one of the five or six premier and lucrative events on either tour. I have to side with him, as the amount of prize money alone would warrant the fullest tour participation. But as I have said here before, the players no longer feel as if they have any obligations to the game of tennis or the sponsors who make their paychecks so big.

I don't see why either the men's or women's tour has lost the power they used to have. Sure, the tennis season is longer than it has ever been, and there are many more opportunities for players to make a good living without playing in every regular tournament, but the tour should be able to enforce some sort of uniform appearance schedule on the players.

If you saw the NASDAQ, you would have said that the tournament was boring and, despite the arrival of a slew of new Russian women, the outcome was predictable from day one. Elena Dementieva managed to knock off Venus on her way to the final and then summarily got spanked by Serena Williams in the final.

The overnight viewing numbers reflected the poor quality of the final and signaled to the sponsors that maybe their money would be best invested on another sports product. While the sponsors are loyal to Burwash, sources close to the tournament director have indicated that finding the money for next year's tournament won't be as easy.

I also noted that on all the popular tennis web sites there are a slew of headlines about injuries and sicknesses ailing the top men and women this year. Between Henin-Hardenne's hypoglycemia (which they now think might be like mononucleosis, but I predict she is pregnant... yep, you heard it here first... ask any one of your mothers what the first few weeks were like when they had you!), Clijsters' shoulder/wrist/knees, Venus' stomach muscle, Serena's knees, and a host of other WTA injuries there just seems to be something wrong. I'm going out on a limb, but I think its called apathy!

I have decried here many times about the lack of respect for the game, and the focus of the athletes on themselves to the exclusion of all else. No, it's not jealousy, but maybe an "old school" mentality that said that as long as they are paying you to play a game, and not to work in a mine or some other slave labor, you should be thankful and play as much as possible and appear wherever it benefits not just yourself, but the game, too.

I really don't think any of today's players really get that, and now even more so the women. Women's tennis was on the rise a short time ago, but seems on the decline despite the incredible diversity and beauty in the game.

So what's my point? Peter Burwash got hosed, Larry Scott and the WTA gladly took his money, but stood back and did nothing, and tennis comes out the big looser. Plain and simple. The women have a problem, and they better address it soon. If a tournament as lucrative as the NASDAQ 100 continues to provide a poor draw like this one, the sponsors will leave quickly and the once great paycheck will disappear along with a great early year tournament.

Tennis at its heyday worked so well because we saw every top player in just about every big tournament, even if they were injured. They made sure that their name was on the draw to sell the game, and expected little in return. The WTA Tour needs to learn its lessons fast. It's hard for me to believe that "we've come a long way, baby" is now "you've fallen far away, ladies!"

For whatever it's worth..

Article courtesy of Sports Central.