There was a lot of tennis, 90 some hours, most of it live tennis. Much of it was prime time coverage of feature matches played under the lights. When some of the matches ran past the allotted time or a feature match was late starting, USA didn't hesitate to interrupt regular programming to show the entire match. The tennis commentary was, for the most part, good, although many of the commentators suffered from that occupational disease, diarrhea of the mouth (We'll explore that topic sometime in the near future). Also, most of the memorable matches were on USA, not CBS.
     So here was the USA Network hosting the greatest tennis show on earth. It should have been a feast for tennis fans. Yet, if you were like me, you were infuriated by the frequent and unwarranted interruption of the tennis action by commercials, travelogues, interviews, films, visits with celebrities, and some guy running in and out of the stadium doing all kinds of goofy feature stuff.
     Often, they ran so many commercials during side changes that by the time they got back to the tennis, you'd missed most of or all of the next game. Another annoying thing they did was break away from matches to interview winners of previous matches. A huge hunk of tennis was preempted by an interview with Venus Williams that went on and on and on. Anything significant she had to say was said in the first couple of minutes of the interview. Yet the interviewer kept asking silly question after silly question. The end of the interview was, of course, followed immediately by a long string of commercials.
     The longest interruption of play I've ever seen happened when they ran what seemed like a feature length film on the life and times of Ivan Lendel, who was voted into the Tennis Hall of Fame this year. Can you imagine live action of a telecast of a NBA basketball game or a NFL football being preempted by biographies of new hall of famers Moses Malone or Lynne Swann! Can you imagine live action of a football, basketball, or baseball ever being preempted by anything! Only in tennis.
     It's not that the feature stuff was so bad. In fact a lot of it was quite good. It's just that when I get wrapped in a match and the match gets yanked off the screen for any reason, I become enraged and sometimes blow my legendary cool and scream, "get back to the tennis, get back to the tennis you (expletives deleted)"!!!
     As bad as all this was, they saved the worst 'til last.
     The new kid on the block and future great, Andy Roddick was the star of prime time night tennis, where most of his matches could be seen. He breezed through the draw and in a much anticipated quarterfinal match met Leyton Hewitt, the fireball from Australia. The prospect of having an all American final, Sampras and Roddick, seemed real. The winner of this match was a shoo-in for the finals since his next opponent would be Kafelnikov who upset the number one seed, Kuerton, who either didn't show up for the match or was injured.
     It was a dramatic, hard fought match played under the lights with Roddick winning the first and fourth sets while losing sets two and three. They were on serve at four-five with Roddick's serve coming up after the court change. Then came the announcement that went something like this. "Due to contractual commitments, we are going off the air. Tune in to your local CBS station to see the rest of the match." Well, somebody forgot to tell my local TV station about this. When I tuned in all they had was a rerun of "Married With Children".
     This is the worst case I've seen of sports fans being left hanging since some idiot pulled the plug many years ago on a telecast of the final climactic moments of an NFL football playoff game so the network could run a Disney movie.
     Not until next day did I find out that Roddick lost his serve and the match after a controversial reversal of a line call by the chair umpire. Hewitt got to the finals, easily, by demolishing Kafelnikov 6-1, 6-2, 6-1.
     To TV producers of tennis events I would say, quoting a little Shakespeare, "The play's the thing". Keep your focus on the play on the courts-that's what's important, that's what tennis fans want to see. The feature and background stuff is fine and can add a lot to the enjoyment of the game, but never, never let it interfere with the game.
     To tennis fans, like myself, who get upset with the way tennis is presented on TV, I would say, get mad as hell and decide you're not going to take it anymore, to paraphrase the famous movie line. Then vent you anger at the offending parties. When the aforementioned TV network cut off the final moments of the football playoff game to go to regular programming, so many irate football fans called the network it blew out their telephone system. Never again was a NFL football game preempted!


(If you have any comments, Jim Swetnam, the Netman, can be reached at editor@AmericaToday.com or directly at jswetnam1@msn.com)