The Hindu : Sport / Tennis : Spectator-friendly? How far can one go?

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Wednesday, Jan 07, 2009
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Sport - Tennis

Spectator-friendly? How far can one go?

Kunal Diwan

Schuttler’s coach Hordorff speaks up for the spectators
Vijay Amritraj not for tampering with age-old rules

— Photo: S.R. Raghunathan

A section of the crowd watching the Chennai Open at the SDAT Stadium on Tuesday.

CHENNAI: Imagine a lakh-strong crowd at the Eden Gardens in the middle of a Mexican wave just before Virender Sehwag is about to take strike.

Now imagine an announcement of “Quiet Please” on the public address system, asking the crowd to pipe down as the bowler begins his delivery stride.

An unthinkable scenario in most sports, bossing around spectators is a norm at tennis matches, with viewers not only asked to zip their comments during play, but also being made to wait to enter the stands if a point is in progress.

A sport that has progressed almost unchanged since its halcyon, country-club days, tennis in the 21st century is as spectator friendly as Inzamam-ul-Haq with a bat in hand. Or is it?

Not done

“This is not the done thing,” said Rainier Schuttler’s coach Dirk Hordorff, “the spectators are paying money to watch tennis.

“Not allowing them to cheer or restricting their movement in the stands is not going to make the experience more enjoyable.”

While Hordorff conceded that some spectator guidelines should be in place, he dismissed the notion of the aloof player desirous of pin drop silence as he readies to serve.

“Let the player who gets distracted so easily hire his own court and play alone for as long as he wishes to.

“Which other sport puts so many restrictions on its spectators?” he asked.

Radical suggestions

A man of many parts — he is the Davis Cup coach for Taiwan and also runs a real estate business in his native Germany — Hordorff had some other, radical, suggestions to make the sport more spectator- friendly.

He advocated — much on the lines of the abbreviated cricket leagues in India — a shortening of the game’s format.

“Sets should be awarded to the first player to reach four games.

“That way, viewers will have more action packed into a lesser amount of time. Look how popular the new cricket leagues have turned out to be in this country,” he added.

While the radical German represented one end of the spectrum of change, former player and presenter Vijay Amritraj suffused a whole new light into the matter.

“A player is well within his rights to expect certain decorum while the ball is in play.

“Though the game can certainly be made more interesting for the viewer in other ways…like the tie-break was a path-breaking introduction to tennis in 1970” he said.

Amritraj’s views

The ‘A’ in the holy ABC (Amritraj-Borg-Connors) trinity of the 70s maintained that tampering with age-old rules would be sacrilegious and other avenues needed to be tapped to enliven the viewing experience.

“A good way of ensuring crowd involvement would be to telecast hawk-eye decisions for line calls on the big screen.

“With each player being allowed three incorrect challenges per set, this would the perfect way to add excitement to the viewer’s experience,” he added.

Frustration

While Amritraj and Hordorff — not conventional spectators by the longest stretch of the imagination — spoke from what may well be considered second-hand experience, the observation of a couple of young eager-beavers waiting at the cordoned off entrance to the Davydenko-Koellerer match reeked of juvenile frustration.

“This sucks,” said the fidgety 14-year-old as he waited with his cousin for the point to end, “we paid for the tickets, didn’t we? Things were surely different at the IPL matches I went for.”

Once inside, the duo made its way up to the middle tier of seats, where another group sat taking in the tennis.

“It is just a matter of etiquette,” said US-based physician Binu Matthew, when asked if he found the impositions on the tennis spectator too taxing.

“I play myself, and it can be very distracting to have stray movement in your field of vision.

“So whatever restrictions there are on people in the stands are entirely justified.”

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