A Twist On Tennis

As participation sports go, tennis is near the top of my list.  It's an exhausting workout, you don't have to be great to enjoy playing and, unlike pickup basketball, it allows you to take advantage of the great weather you often get here in Northern California.  I've played tennis off and on since I was young, but my tours through Southern and now Northern California have correlated with a jump in my time on the courts.

You'll notice, however, that this is the first time I've ever covered anything tennis-related on Caught Looking, and that's because this blog is about sports viewership, not participation.  While watching tennis both in person and TV can be enjoyable, it's missing a key aspect that other popular sports such as baseball, basketball and football thrive on - a captivating team dynamic.  I find tennis fans in general to be too "classy" for my liking, and while I can appreciate the fact that they're rooting for good matches more than they are for any particular outcome, their player agnosticism damages an even big time tennis atmosphere.

Wouldn't it be great if we had high-quality team-based tennis to watch?  Enter this week's Men's Team Tennis National Championships, conveniently located at Stanford through next Tuesday.  I made the short walk down to the tennis courts yesterday to catch some of the Florida Gators highly competitive match versus the Kentucky Wildcats, and really enjoyed the hour I spent in the sun.  While during play the crowd was nearly silent, each point concluded with an eruption from half of the fans and groans from the others.  The breaks between points and games were filled with "Let's Go Gators!" and "Let's Go Wildcats!" chants, and most of the crowd (present company excluded) was decked out in either Florida blue and orange or Kentucky blue and white.

The fans along the sideline brought their school spirit all the way from Lexington and Gainesville.

Given the favorable weather forecast for the rest of the South Bay Area week, I'm hoping to get back down to the courts later this weekend to catch some more men's team tennis action. If you're a Stanford fan, you can catch the Cardinal take on Virginia in the round-of-eight on Saturday at 7 PM (it's free for Stanford students, too).  Let's just hope the support for Stanford at the tennis national championships will be stronger than at football or basketball games.