Tennis Channel's Central Court

Chris Myers is one of those sports guys who you feel you've seen forever, but don't know all that well. The danger of having a sportscaster host a tennis show is that he doesn't know what he's talking about. For many years, especially throughout the early 80s, tennis was broadcast like a second-tier sport.

By second-tier, I mean the tennis announcers assumed the audience was not a tennis audience but was a general audience, and that they lacked the patience to learn the sport. This made sense. There was no Google to query, no web to seek answers. Finding more about tennis required real research, possibly going to a real library.

I don't know how many times Tony Trabert had to explain the rules of the tiebreak. I'm sure the producers of the CBS shows asked him to do it over and over again. By contrast, baseball, basketball, and football never suffered from that. They never said "A field goal is worth 3 points. Most field goal kickers can only kick about 40-50 yards". But tennis announcers would talk like that.

Typically, they would pair an expert with a general sports announcers, whose primary responsibility was not tennis. Thus, Pat Summerall and Jim Simpson (who was Cliff Drysdale's early sidekick back before he paired up with Fred Stolle) and Al Trautwig (who paired with Mary Carillo to cover women's tennis in the early 80s) were needed to provide a common sports guy's approach to the sport. At times, the tennis expert was not particularly good. You might have Tracy Austin or Chris Evert, players that basically relied on their personal experience to tell you about the current players, but often had no idea how a certain player had played in the weeks leading up to the tournament. In other words, despite being top players, they weren't being professionals, doing background research.

Mary Carillo and John McEnroe really helped elevate some of the professionalism of men's tennis. McEnroe, in particular, would do his homework. It's not that Carillo didn't do it---she did, but that you wouldn't expect a world's former number 1 would actually do research. McEnroe had a good memory for players, matches they had played, and so forth.

So, historically, tennis coverage was spotty, and only in the 90s, did it begin to get better.

Central Court is Tennis Channel's interview show where players in various stages in their careers, from those that are in the twilight (Martina), to current players (Nadal), to up-and-coming players (Sam Querrey) are interviewed. Chris Myers shows he's done the research to find out as much as he can about the player, and that shows a respect to the tennis fan whose watching the channel.

What Tennis Channel is currently missing is a really good tennis instructional show. By good, I mean that they analyze how current pros hit the ball, and discuss how to hit the ball, and work with beginners to find out what issues they are having.

Beyond that, I've become more impressed with Tennis Channel, the more I watch. The commentary could be a little better (Leif Shiras and Jimmy Arias do the announcing). I like hearing Martina doing commentary, but mostly because she says what is on her mind. I'd say that McEnroe and Carillo are still the best at commentary. I miss listening to Fred Stolle and Cliff Drysdale gently rib one another. ESPN took a big risk putting two non-Americans (well, Drysdale did get American citizenship early on, but he was born in South Africa) as commentators, and leaving out a generic sports announcers (Stolle is Australian, but spent a lot of time in the US).

Admittedly, the channel has its hiccups. I was watching a Center Court episode with John McEnroe. After the commercial break, it went back to a different show. It's about instruction, I admit, but not entirely what I'm looking for.