We were excited to get our new Sports Illustrated today and to see that the venerable chronicler of sport had chosen a tennis cover this week, but then we read the headline:
"Serena Williams, Love Her, Hate Her, She's the Best Ever", and we almost fell off our chairs laughing. What's going on, Sports Illustrated, are you tired of the Tea Bagger crowd grabbing all the headlines this year for all the outrageously crazy things they say and do, and you've decided to make a conscious effort to snatch the mantle of "Most Crazy" away from them? Are you going for "Epic Crazy", you know, the type of crazy that leads one to don sackcloth and stand on the street corner yelling for the masses to repent for the coming of the Lord? Or did you just suffer a momentary lapse of good judgement in a slow sports news week and allow yourselves to publish a headline and article which is not only laughable but one which seriously erodes your credibility? Or is it just that the writer of the article, L. Jon Wertheim, has been hanging out in the Wimbledon locker room, banging Serena between sets?
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Something's going on, because no serious fan of tennis can take this article seriously. And it's most surprising to come from someone of Jon Wertheim's stature; he's a Senior Editor at Sports Illustrated and a very accomplished writer of sports and tennis books. He knows the game of tennis. But yet when we read the article, we couldn't help but think it sounded like something written by a 6th grader who had been asked to write an article about his most admired person, and he writes about his pretty, young teacher whiles he stares at her across the room and pines away.
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Look, we love Serena Williams, and we think what she and sister, Venus, has brought to the women's game of tennis has been tremendous. They've certainly helped the women's game to evolve, and if it weren't for them, no American would have won a Grand Slam tennis title since 2003. And after winning her fourth Wimbledon last week, which was also her thirteenth Grand Slam title, Serena certainly places herself among the all-time greats. But that's the key word: among. We all know, as any serious follower of sport knows, that you can never call one athlete the "greatest of all time" in his or her sport. It's impossible to compare players from different eras. In tennis, there has been the talk for years that Roger Federer is the greatest male player of all time, but we all know that you can't really make that claim with a straight face, among the many, many reasons being that Federer is playing with a completely different type of racket that didn't even exist 30 years ago. Who knows what Rod Laver, Jimmy Connors, Bjorn Borg or John McEnroe would have done with Federer's racket? We'll never know, and that's the point. The best one can do is to be satisfied with noting that certain players are among the greatest, but to name one as "the greatest" is just silly.
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But L. Jon Wertheim gave it his best effort. He gushed in his article about the physical strength of Serena and how she mows down her opponents; we guess he's forgetting that in just the past year, Serena didn't even make it to the finals of the U.S. Open or the French Open. But most laughable, he mentions the other greats that are still ahead of Serena in number of Grand Slam titles, Navratilova, Evert, Graf, but then, astonishingly, he simply wipes them all away by stating that Serena would have "just overpowered them" or "easily dissected their backhands". Really, Jon? Sorry, buddy, but you're out of your mind. Serena is downright gawky at times, and she can't move her massive bulk around the court without panting breathlessly; Steffi Graf would have run her ragged. And if you think Serena would have effortlessly passed Martina Navratilova at the net, you're nuts. Martina's net game was devastating on her opponents, which is why she has nine Wimbledon titles to Serena's four. Billie Jean King would have certainly been "smarter" on the court than Serena; no one could beat King in strategic thinking or aggression. We don't even think Serena could have beaten Monica Seles at her peak, in fact, the only reason why Seles doesn't have more Grand Slam titles than Serena is because of the stabbing which derailed Seles' career at its height. Unbelievably, Wertheim goes on to mention that the serve is the greatest stroke in tennis, and because Serena's serve is the hardest, that makes her the best player. Again, Jon, really? You might tell that to Steffi Graf who had a very soft serve, but whose overpowering forehand led her to 22 Grand Slam titles, including winning the "Grand Slam", (winning all four major titles in the same calendar year), and an Olympic gold medal in tennis. Chris Evert, between 1971 and 1983 never failed to reach at least the semi-finals of every Grand Slam event she entered, and of the 56 total Grand Slam tournaments in which she played, she made the semi-finals of 52 of them, made the finals of 34 of them, and won 18 of them. That's a breathtaking achievement, and one to which Serena will never even come close. Are you embarrassed yet, Wertheim? Even comparing Serena to the players of her own era, Wertheim must be conveniently forgetting that Justine Henin was routinely beating Serena just a few years ago before Henin abruptly retired from the game.
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So, please, SI, and especially L. Jon Wertheim, take a deep breath and get a huge, massive grip on yourselves. We understand that the magazine world is crumbling before our eyes, and that you need to skirt the edges of responsible journalism with your covers and headlines, at times, to continue to sell magazines, but publishing stories like the one you did this week with the Serena article is simply beyond the pale. It's laughable, it's insulting to people who really know the game of tennis, not to mention the other tennis "greats", and it strips you of any real credibility. What's next week's cover: "Andy Roddick: Greatest American Tennis Player of All Time"? Bitch, please!
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