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Tennis A Sociological Perspective Essay, Research Paper

Young people have to devote a large portion of their time to studies and/or part-time work. As a result, many of them do not have enough time to engage in leisure activities. Some people, somehow, manage to find some spare time to engage in a number of leisure activities in order to release the pressure from boring daily routine.

Although people may be able to find time to do sports, only a very small number are found on the tennis court. This is surprising for the reason that tennis is a popular sport in many countries. Despite its popularity, there are many perceivable barriers in terms of age, race and gender.

Because of the high speed and power of the game, tennis has a great demand on physical strength. Most people who engage in tennis are in their adolescence or early adulthood. While a number of seniors find it hard to keep up the pace and eventually change to other less rigorous activities such as: jogging, swimming, golfing and bowling. 10-times grand slam champion and former world No.1, Ivan Lendl, at the age of 38, admitted to the Tennis Magazine “I have increased my interest in Golf over the past few years as I feel that my physical strength is diminishing in a rapid fashion.” The average age of a female player who is ranked in the top 100 is 21.91 while the average age of a male player who is ranked in the top 100 is 25.32. The trend of the average age of the tennis players is still decreasing. It is not surprising that all of my fellow tennis partners are in their early 20’s. Most of them are college students who manage to spend some time on the tennis court.

Race seems to be a factor in determining the likelihood of a person becoming a

1 Data from WTA web site

2 Data from ATP web site

tennis player. There are two obvious natural causes of such racial differences: climate or geographical condition and physical statue. Everyone realizes that ice hockey is largely a European and North American sport because of the cold weather and ice field accessibility. Although tennis does not need such special requirement of an ice field and skates, still, the majority people who play tennis are white. Although wealthy residences have access to tennis facilities in larger African cities such as Johannesburg, Cairo and Casablanca, many countries still do not have a standard tennis court open for public. The lack of adequate tennis court, rackets and funding in sports programs that discourage many African residences in playing tennis.

Traditionally, only a few Asians are engage in tennis. Shorter people tend to have more problems with serving and volleying than taller people do. Because of the physical disadvantages, Asians are more likely to engage in sports that do not have such apparent disadvantages. For example, table tennis, gymnastics and badminton. Though in recent years, more and more Asians are willing to pick up their rackets, perhaps inspired by the success of Michael Chang. Michael Chang is American born Chinese and he is about 173 cm tall. Chang overcame his physical disadvantage and won the prestigious French Open in 1989. He still holds the honour of being the youngest male player ever to win a grand slam title. In addition to the recent successes of Michael Chang, Kimiko Date and a few other Asian players, technological improvement of the tennis equipment also encourages more Asian to play tennis. In particular, the extra-long racket which helps shorter player to serve and volley more accurately and powerfully.

While the number of Asian tennis players has increased steadily over the past decade, the numbers of black participants remain unchanged in most countries. The lack of facility disadvantage is not the only reason for the lack of black participants.

Controversially, the racial prejudice is another huge reason. Professional athlete’s opinions about racism discourage many coloured people from playing the sport. Recent racism controversy between Venus William and Irina Spirlea has worsened the racial problems in tennis. During the semi-final match of the 1997 US Open semi-final, Irina Spirlea purposely or unpurposely gave Venus an elbow. Aftewards, they have been verbally insulted each other in a numbers of occasions. Phases like white turkey and black idiot definitely make the racism problem in tennis even more complicated. The racism accounts for the major reason on why the blacks in the United States, who have access to public tennis court, still are not that interest in tennis anyway. The lack of black’s success in major

tennis tournaments is certainly another factor for such attitude. In addition to that, black children grow up under the powerful influences of NBA. They admire star NBA players and other athletes who shine in track and field. It is quite understandable that they will try to find their way into those sports instead of tennis.

While race seems to be an important factor in determining whether a person will engage in tennis, gender may be an even a more dominant factor. Some people think that tennis is too challenging for women because of the physical demand. Therefore, girls are not supposed to engage in such rigorous sport. Besides, when people think about women tennis players, many of them have the “Hollywoood-stereotype”that some upper class girls are wearing short skirts and gathering in the tennis court regularly. Rarely do a person associate a sports figure with women tennis players. In response to the stereotype and inequality between men and women players, Monica Seles, a nine times grand slam winner and youngest ever woman champion of French Open, told the media at a press conference that,”It’s a traditional common sense, but I think a lot of traditions should change.” (Seles, 119) There is hardly any evidence to show or suggest that tennis is too challenging

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