sp6r=underrated wrote:Tennis is similar to hockey. Whenever I watch it I think, I should watch this more, this is an awesome sport, and then go 6 months without watching. I don't know much about Osaka but I find the ongoing story fascinating as it tells a lot about the modern athletes relations to fans and media.
Question for tennis fans: Is she treated different than the other mostly white tennis players?
Questions for everyone:
What do you think the media/fan reaction would be if a male athlete acted like Osaka?
What do you think the media/fan reaction would be if a white athlete acted like Osaka?
So, I think the first thing is this:
Osaka gets way more attention than she would otherwise get if she looked different. Call it the Tiger Woods phenomenon. Literally impossible for a white golfer to get as much attention as Tiger got. Why? Because golfers are White, and he's not. For a converse example: Consider Larry Bird who has regularly seen his collectibles go for more than Magic Johnson. Why? Because basketball players are Black, and he's not. Or Jeremy Lin for that matter. (And of course the Williams sisters in tennis.)
When you're a spearhead. It matters to people. Osaka is biracial with a country of origin that hasn't ever produced a dominant player before.
Then there's the attractiveness angle. If I say the name "Anna Kournikova" y'all will know. Why? Not because she was good at tennis - she never won a single professional tournament as a singles player, not Grand Slam tournaments here, she never won even a minor tournament. You know her because she was beautiful. Osaka is beautiful too.
This along with her appearing to emerge as the next great female tennis player after a decade plus without any new great female tennis player emerging, caused her to become a phenomenon.
And what we're seeing is someone who very clearly has major anxiety issues - clear from Day 1 - getting more attention than almost everyone else in the world. It's a recipe for something to go sideways.
I do think the tennis media can be overly "gotcha", and can do so with patronizing, exploitive sexism...but this isn't happening because they are all monsters. It's happening because Osaka just doesn't have the personality to be happy like this...and least for now, but time is ticking.
And tennis is such a mental game - so much harder mentally than a game like basketball. Why didn't Monica Seles go back and dominate the world after she got stabbed? Not because she wasn't physically able, it was the mental strength she never recaptured. She was known as someone with absolute laser focus who growing up as a prospect often didn't even pay attention to the score (Chris Evert was similar). After the attack, it was like she could never stop thinking about all that was around her.
And even beyond that, it's so, so common for great tennis prospects to never reach that top echelon. You can scout the body much easier than the head. An incredible physical talent may have so much success against his/her age group that he/she has little reason to doubt their capabilities. And then you get to the pros, and if you have any mental vulnerability, you're going to hit a wall it's no given you'll be able to climb over.
Feel free to ask if you have any other questions. Tennis is my dad's favorite sport so I grew up with it even more than I grew up with any particular team sport.
