Redrafted.
Firstly, let me preface this post by saying that while it is a little off topic for the Marion Bartoli Fan Blog, it does contain issues relevant to Marion as a professional, and that have been vexing me as blogwriter and casual tennis fan for quite some time.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * *
BURN OUT
I have been reading some of the many contributions offered by the tennis world in the aftermath of Justine Henin's retirement.
The following comments by Pat Cash summed it up,
"It's a lot of pressure to keep playing at that level. Certain players like Bjorn Borg retired early, and you cant blame them.. It's a loss for the game as a whole.. Tennis is quite stressful for players. There isnt much of an off-season. It's not surprising that she's worn out and had enough. When you lose your motivation and the losses start to come, it's no fun. I'm guessing she just thought she couldnt push herself any more and needed to Stop"
Only Justine knows in her own mind the process she went through to reach this decision. With gracious tributes, and a sigh of dissapointment, the tennis world accepts that the seven-time grand slam champion has moved on. And that the Wimbledon trophy will forever remain unrequited in the bussom of a tennis legend - Dearly held hopes of becoming grand slam champion on all surfaces, deferred at the last attempt by a certain Miss. Bartoli. Only Justine can say whether 2007 was to be the final attempt.
I think Pat Cash alludes to some issues which may have at least factored in the regrettable retirement of Justine, aged just 25. Issues that are being voiced by players on both the mens and womens tour.
PRESSURES AND PITFALLS
For example, the pressures and unrealistic expectations placed upon players by the tour, and the inegality of the existing relationship between officiating bodies, media, and sponsors on one side, and the players on the other.
Over the years we have seen the consequences of the demands made by the sport, the annual vicissitudes of success and failure as some rise to stardom and some fade into obscurity.
We recall the difficulties between Steffi Graf and her father... Jelena Dokic and hers... The obsessed fan who stabbed Monica Seles and ruined her career. Then there's Jeniffer Capriatti's difficulties with drugs and the law and her subsequent redemption. A very American story for an all American girl.
Even a seasoned ex-pro like Boris Becker went off the rails for a while. Having nothing to fall back on after retirement.
The list of players who encounter serious difficulty goes on and on. Assaulted by a broad spectrum of issues directly or indirectly related to the pressures placed on them by the tour.
One minute your Myskina, Sprem, Dokic, top 20, top 10.. then something happens...
More recently we hear of; drug allegations surrounding Martina Hingis.. A robbery at the family home of rising star Anna Chakvetadze.. And players embroiled in allegations of illegal betting and match fixing amid rumors of Russia mafia involvement!
Just some examples of the enhanced risk these sporting protege's can become exposed to - The rewards can be good. The pitfalls great.
Obstacles experienced by players lower down the rankings are no-less challenging, and no-less unfair. We just dont hear about them. Jim was telling me recently about Alexandra Stevenson getting the nickname 'K-MART'. How even a top 100 player had to seriously scrimp and cut corners to make a living.
Sometimes these players may find themselves constrained by their circumstances, making personal compromises that ideally they maybe rather would not.
Showing even more daring income-creativity than Stevenson, are two fellow players in the lower reaches of the top 100;
Nuria Llagostera Vives recently posed nude for a Spanish publication, while Ashley Harkleroad did likewise for Playboy.
According to one article (The Sun), Llagostera had medical bills to pay. And Harkleroad didnt have a proper sponsorship deal.
It isnt my concern to be prescriptive about the choices of others, as long as they are actually real choices. As professional tennis players, it seems Harkleroad and Llagostera Vives may have felt the need to make conditionally inconvenient choices.
So, I have cited just some examples where players are faced with difficulties. And the choices players make dont always have helpful outcomes. Should more be done to help players? Just who should be responsible for their welfare?
DUTY OF CARE
As I see it, the tennis world has a duty of care to it's players.
I recognise that a kind of duty of care already exists in the tennis community. Evidenced for example by the way top players rallied to the plight of the Klemenschits sisters who were diagnosed with cancer and had difficulty meeting their medical bills.
But what about something more structural in the way of helping players?
The WTA has a mentoring scheme and educational programme called Pro-U, designed to equip players with the skills and maturity to become exemplary professionals in our modern media and commercial age. Assisting them to negotiate the hazards players face at the highest echelons of the sport.
Marion herself began to be be mentored by former Wimbledon Finalist Nathalie Tauziat in 2003. However I am not clear on what the current status of this arrangement is.
Nevertheless there is definately a need for these type of infrastructural and mentoring support programmes throughout the sport. Whether on the main tour or challenger circuit.
Pro-U sounds good if you read the blurb on the WTA website and bother to download the PDF documents. But I have to say that there is a paucity of firm information on this. You need to insert some pretty complex search terms into Google to find a shred info, outwith the official tour website. Even then only a handful of results are returned.
The WTA ought to improve their PR on matters surrounding player welfare and support. The WTA should publicise, show, and demonstrate, how they are protecting their players. What steps are being taken to ensure the risk of players going off the rails or getting burned-out is kept to a minimum.
We need to know more about how the WTA is preventing players from suffering bullying or harrasment, or enduring a life of solitary confinement in a golden cage, shipped from tournament to tournament, continent to continent like a commodity - And where their interaction with an adoring public is highly mediated, censored, controlled, and ghost-written. That isnt happening, is it?
The general public need to be reassured that the WTA dont see their players as a consumer commodity. Therefore the WTA needs to make a greater effort to publicise it's commitment to player care, so that the fairly casual fan like myself is immediately able to reference and access information about that commitment, and the work that they are doing to implement it.
Put simply, I want to hear Martina Navratilova or Larry Scott talk about it on my telly during Wimbledon. I want to be able to easily access press releases and articles on the internet about what's being done to protect players. I want to see the WTA get the message out there, lest the casual fan becomes dissilusioned with tennis in the way they have done with cycling, athletics, Italian football, etc.
In addition, the WTA ought to adopt a clearer commitment on a Duty Of Care towards it's players. A formal policy that is transparent, accountable, subject to external audit, and legal jurisdiction.
TOUR SCHEDULE
Rafael Nadal doesnt seem to think that officiating bodies care about player wellbeing. In relation to the exhausting schedule Rafa said,
"These people are destroying the foundation of the tour."
"I think when a player loses in the first round or pulls out and gets criticised, the tournament should ring these people (the ATP) and tell them that it is their fault"
He continues,
"I have some email conversations with these people, but it's true that they just end up doing what they like, and I am getting tired of it"
Likewise Andy Roddick, Novak Djokovic, and Andy Murray, have all expressed their displeasure.
Players on both sides of the tour are saying they are being forced to play when they are carrying injuries, or face huge fines if they do not. And conversely, forced to feign injury in order to withdraw from tournaments. Players feel they are simply unable to meet the extraordinary demands made by the tour, and imply they are treated like property.
Justine herself, was threatened with a $20,000 fine if she defaulted on her schedule commitments by pulling out of Rome. Well she did pull out. For good.
Then there's Marion's conflict with the French Tennis Federation which we have visited here before. A conflict over the impact on her schedule, and their insistence on dictating the terms of her inclusion in the team. Expected to fly halfway around the world to play in Beijing over a weekend immediately preceding a tournament.... Sure, travel without ones coach to Timbuctoo and *jump* when Georges Goven and the FFT say so.... And if you or the team lose Marion we'll blame you anyway....
What did they ever do for her?
Marion and Jelena Jankovic played more than any other player last year. We have seen at Roland Garros the difficulty Jelena is having with her shoulder and arm. And Marion... strains, viruses, fatigue, and an all round pretty difficult 12 months post-Wimbledon.
PHOTO SHOOTS
But the problem isnt just about players playing too much, but players trying to balance that against a whole host of other media and celebrity type commitments.
Maria Sharapova recently accused the WTA of forcing her into doing a 5 hour photo shoot immediately prior to the tournament in Rome.
Maria has since reached a compromise with the WTA, but not before a series of embarressing blog posts about the matter were published by Maria on her own website. Including a multiple choice poll inviting fans to vote on whether or not she should actually take legal action against the WTA!
And what's it all for? Not all of the general public or tennis fans want to be bombarded with glamorous vanity 24/7.
I confess to feeling quite ambivalent about some of the off-court photos of Marion.
On the one hand It's greatly pleasing to see all and any photos of Marion, in a variety of contexts and settings. But on the other hand I find myself asking internally, is she actually comfortable and happy doing this photo op?
At what stage do photos result from a process of intrusion? And at what stage do the results disseminated for public consumption become contrived? Do the players themselves feel like pawns, objects, commodities? Or am I over-dramatising? It would be helpful to know sometimes.
I consider images of Marion Bartoli my privelige, not my entitlement or property. And when I see the absense of a smile, I just get this nagging doubt, one that questions the degree of sincere consent offered by the one who the lense is focused upon. I ask, Is this just something that's, happening to her, rather than her actually, wanting it? This lense in her face.
Is the lack of a smile her passive-aggressive response to it all? A silent protest?
If this is so, then what kind of relationship does that sound like... And what kind of pictures do they then become... and what role is the WTA actually then playing in offering them... I'll leave you the reader to figure that...
I'd rather see court-action shots of Bartoli still competing 5 years down the line, with that wonderfully contorted commited full-face banging a return down the line! Yeah!! Another Superhero run to snatch a Grand Slam because I believe she can.... Than have all those other types of pics and 1st round exits, and gone from the sport in a few months.
I'd also like to see her play half as many tournaments for twice as many years. This is partly how a player like Tsipora Obziler reached the top 100 for the first time in her career aged 34! 35 now, and ran Venus Williams all the way at Roland Garros last week. That's more like it!
On top of an intense playing schedule, players are required to do all this other stuff. It's damaging the sport. No burnt-out Bartoli please.
Glamorous photos, whether of Sharapova, Ivanovic, or whoever, are extraneous to the sport. I am not convinced that adding celebrity type portfolio's makes tennis any more attractive or succesful. I just think it risks alienating the sport from it's grassroots support. From the ordinary (albeit generally priveliged) fan.
Nathalie Tauziat wrote laconicly,
"aesthetics and charisma are winning out over sporting performance"
(Les Dessous Du Tennis Feminin)
Martina Navratilova puts it like this,
"I dont criticise the players themselves, but WTA policy which encourages them to exploit the glamour side. You have to realise that sex is part of the circuit and the WTA is in favor. I'm against this outrageous policy, I think we have a good product, good players, who are good athletes. I dont think it's useful to ask the players to wear knecklines that go lower and lower to promote themselves"
(L'equipe)
PUBLIC PERCEPTION
If it's true what some players themselves are saying, then the WTA and ATP are in danger of being percieved as presiding over something like a cartel. A global junket pimping players to mammon media and Murdoch. The whole thing in danger of being percieved as corrupt from the point of production to the point of sale. Percieved as effectively in the hands of a few powerful monopolisers. whether Eurosport, the WTA, Arab Oil, or global management firms, all complicit in the exchange of glamour and sex as goods and services, rather than nurturing and celebrating skill and ability as the core asset. And also percieved as maintaining certain inherant conflicts of interest in the process.
Now, I readily accept all such perceptions are not just an over-simplification, but also wrong and not representative of the professional tennis circuit, or the hard work that people within the WTA do, and also not reflective of the commitment to the sport the people within the tour offer. I am glad to say that at this stage such a negative perception of the sport is probably not a widely held one. Nevertheless, public perception is vital to the success of the sport as a commercial venture and social instrument, and should be treated with great care.
As one of the little people, just a fan, I detect more than a modicum of cynicism out there at times. One that is consonant with the kind of language and phrases I used above, and just below. It is alarming when I hear people use phrases like "cheat", "corrupt", "gravy train", "porn" "glass ceiling" whenever tennis enters the conversation. That's pretty disturbing isnt it.
It should be a wake up call to action, for those who have the priveliged responsibilty of overseeing the sport. So that a little cynicism here and there doesnt become a destructive tsunami.
To repeat, tennis has to take further steps to shore itself up against the same wave of public scepticism that engulfed cycling and athletics. Steps that will ensure the health, sustainability, viability of the tour itself.
An excessive preoccupation with glamour and money could eventually result in the tour fragmenting and imploding. That eventuality isn't so far fetched. The tour has to ensure it's priorities remain right; Simple... Tennis. The Locus; player welfare.
And if you'll indulge me a little blue sky moment...
If it was feasible, the wealthy interests around the sport should commit to a levvy scheme or something similar in aid of player welfare. For those players that fall on hard times through injury, retirement, or other hardships.
But I guess that's a way too enlightened proposal in the money era...
It's a sad day when a player like Henin is burnt out. And with respect of Marion's last comments at Roland Garros, I can say I would be heartbroken if she ever went the same way.
Edited 14:00 06/06/08
