Australian Tennis: Nature Of The Game	Browse Other Pages Homepage A Viewpoint on the Game How It Began A Viewpoint on the Game 2 A Viewpoint on the Game 3 Concentration; Practice Condition, Physical and Mental Keep Your Eye on the Ball Footwork and Weight Control Women's Tennis The Grips The Service The Drive The Chop and the Slice The Volley The Subtle Shots Courage Your Opponent's Weaknesses General Tactics Outside Conditions Pressure on Your Opponent Doubles and Mixed Doubles The Coaching Job Legendary Tennis Players Olympic Tennis Does Youth Rule Tennis Hall of Fame Amateurism to Open Tennis Some Defects in Tennis Doping Olympic Review Technology and Sport The Slice Service Flat Serve The American Twist The Drive The Backhand Drive Drive - The Main Uses The Volley Net Position The Volley Position The Overhead Smash The Half-Volley The Drop Shot The Mechanics of the Slice The Main Uses of a Slice The Grips Doubles and Mixed Doubles To Open the Court Doubles In Europe and US Legendary Tennis Players (1940's) Questions in Australian Tennis History of Australian Tennis History of Australian Tennis 2 History of Australian Tennis Players Women's Tennis in Australia Australian Tennis: Nature Ages of Tennis Players The Careers of Women Players
	Previous Tennis has a unique atmosphere and ethos that separates it from other major sports. The crucial points of fundamental difference are first, an absence of body contact. This means a major emphasis on skill and technique as distinct from factors of force. Second, tennis is not a team sport. This means emphasis is placed on the individual; it is a highly personalised game, though it cannot really be played alone. The question that occurs here, particularly also in the light of why a study of sport, particularly tennis has been ignored, is who or what is being written about? It appears that tennis is a graduated game which moves downward from the pinnacle of the top ten in the world to the club or social players at the bottom - a smooth pyramid analogy. Is this really so? No. At the top, the nature of the game, the environment, conditions, level of reward, standard of performance and personal demands and performance patterns are radically different from those experienced and comprehended at the bottom. Such is the enormous range of existing forms which the game takes that covering and organising this historically is extremely difficult. It is not one game, but a hierarchy of games, interacting with each other in a complex and fluctuating way. How does one write a history which can bridge the gulf in understanding between backyard and Wimbledon? The nature of the game changes from casual social pursuit, to various levels of skill and personal rivalry for recreation, to national contest and symbol, to individual pursuit of fame, fortune and excellence. Can the same historical, analytic questions be asked and produce the same answers about these different games? Patently, no. All this raises the question of who played the game. Here perhaps a survey of those involved in tennis would be appropriate with emphasis on the importance of family background, connections with royalty, money, politicians, education, and religion in tennis circles. This has not as yet been attempted and again the question is why not? Given that choice of sport is substantially, though not entirely, a voluntary activity, the choice of tennis is an interesting and revealing social comment. Do Australian 'tennis' people reflect or try to emulate a British social group? Indeed, is the lack of true understanding of the meaning of amateurism in the British sense the reason Australian players had such success in the tennis world for so long? The existence of tennis points to the importance in Australia of a group whose sporting expectations and attitudes contrast markedly with the football/cricket, body contact/team, yobbo/beer stereotype which tends to dominate the images of the Australian sporting world. To carry this point further, does the same crowd which watches tennis also watch football or, for that matter, cricket? It also raises the question of sportmanship: how tennis concerns itself with this and the implications it has in relation to traditionalism and later commercialism. And it also brings to light a further question. Why did overseas players attract bigger crowds when the Australians at various periods were the best in the world? Perhaps this suggests a snobbery value, that is, a maintenance of contact with the British amateur ethos and the wider world. And yet, the importance of the Davis Cup as an expression of national pride cannot be ignored. It is not enough to assume, however, that this is simply an expression of snobbery and middle-class values. It was. But it was more than that. Why did tennis players play tennis? Because they enjoyed it? Why did they enjoy it? Because it corresponded to their requirements for a game: it was clean, without body contact, personalised, dependent not on force or luck, but on skill and technique and attracted not crowds, but small well-behaved groups. But why do tennis crowds differ from other sporting crowds in their reactions and expectations; and does the cost of entry to watch or play tennis determine the type and numbers involved? Tennis was, in a word, civilised. Its appearance was a mark of civilisation - in the British Victorian sense - in Australia. This was, of course, associated with a monied elite. It can be questioned how often upward social mobility has truly been a reality in tennis or whether it has always been predetermined by position in society from the start, i.e. an impenetrable elite group where their reactionary policies reflect a wish to 'stay British'. Civilizations wax and wane, grow, decline and fall - and the changes in tennis mirror the changes in civilisation and its declining fortunes. So here one must ask how much bureaucracy has helped or hindered tennis? Why do disruptions occur in tennis administration, what is at stake, and have they increased with the introduction of open tennis? The various conflicts noted in these questions reflect the disharmony between the forces of the old and new orders. The old order saw tennis as a game to be enjoyed, the new as a sport to be exploited. More recently the questions that can be asked of tennis are: who controls whom and who owns what? What is in conflict are two basically different attitudes to a particular human activity. Questions concerning America's rise as a world power and the powerful sports/business attitude to tennis that emanated from such characters as Jack Kramer and Lamar Hunt which had such an affect on Australian tennis,must be analysed closely. For the old brigade,tennis was a pleasant and appropriate outgrowth of a refined civilisation they knew and valued. So they should: they owned it. Thus, can tennis be viewed as a form of control within society or by a particular social group? The new forces have descended on tennis from outside like invading barbarians occupying the refined civilisation of ancient Rome. Like those barbarians, these new ones have immense energy and drive, and no respect whatever for the refinements of civilisation, merely a determined greed to seize its wealth. So do a certain type of people - a different type - now play tennis? For example could it be said that players of working class backgrounds or those from communist countries are forced or have greater motivation to train hard and do better? Could this be the reason that Australia has in recent years failed to produce many top players? Does the winning game now need the German Democratic Republic type of training or do Australians have to establish a distinctly Australian method to suit its national character? Is it enough to copy others? Obviously not. The Australian Sports Institute in Canberra, however, is attempting to combine both overseas and Australian training methods. In the past thirty years, therefore, upstarts and outsiders possessed of great power and ability to exploit a source of wealth and determined to use rather than play the game, have flavoured the tennis world. In the old order, tennis was merely an adjunct to wealth, an outgrowth of a particular refined civilised life-style. Arguably, this is why tennis administrators sometimes resent justifiable criticism. Or is it just human nature? Now tennis is a means to wealth, its whole ethos is in radical change. 'The concept of sport loses its objective social basis and becomes the vehicle of ideologies, interest, and tradition'. It remains to be seen whether this is actually so. So, the unasked questions about tennis are what sort of a game was it, why was it played and have the answers to these two questions changed over time and are they still changing? These questions are fundamental to all the unasked questions raised in relation to Australian tennis. So to return to the initial point, why have these questions been unasked? Questions about tennis have not been asked because it is, or has been, a refined activity at the centre of an elite's view of the dimensions of their own concept of civilisation. That is, it is part of an immensely complex and subtle world system with unspoken values and assumptions and a rigid insider/outsider dichotomy: it is thus a mysterious and sacred preserve, more to be experienced and enjoyed than understood. In some ways tennis has been a very private game: which is one reason why television, professionalism and all their adjuncts have seemed so scandalous. Recent developments have been an outrageous intrusion into the mystique, Perhaps this helps answer the question as to why tennis has been spiced with hypocrisy and bias throughout its history, especially in relation to the subtleties of amateurism and professionalism. And this 'private' nature of the game may explain why tennis heroes are in a category different from those of cricket or even golf , neither of which have the same intensity and degree of personal contact as tennis. Tennis endeavour is too personal, too individual to be taken to others' hearts. We watch tennis but it is too distancing an activity to identify with: the television beer advertisements recognise this with their concentration on football and cricket. It is not only a social distancing from the mob; it is something in the nature of the game which will not sell beer. Also the female preserve changes the nature of the game; so female tennis is good for advertising soap powder or fruit juice. By raising the unasked questions of Australian tennis, it is hoped that a history of tennis between 1878 and 1939 will demonstrate both the unique nature of the sport and how it reflects and illuminates a sector of Australian society. Home