Everyone claims to leave Las Vegas a winner. It’s surprising airliners aren’t dropping into the vast desert, what with the hidden weight of $100 bills bulging from pockets and bullion stuffed into carry-on luggage. I possess a considerable body of anecdotal evidence on this subject, accumulated over decades, indicating that just about all of you are filthy liars. Either that or the mammoth, multibillion-dollar replications of Venice, Paris, New York, ancient Rome, the Pyramids, pirate battles (all essentially lobbies to hotels so boundless that room numbers like 17106 are normal and casinos so vast it can, after a few cocktails, become impossible to find your way out) are all made possible by me and the $1,000 I lose — regularly — each year. It should make me glow, knowing that my gambling inadequacies make all this amusement possible for the rest of you, but, though I’m a giver by nature, it does not.
I like to play craps. I come to the table properly capitalized. I make the correct bets — staying, for the most part, away from the sucker plays. Nonetheless, often within 30 minutes, my session’s wiped out under a relentless barrage of sevens and numbers rolled that are not mine. An icy craps table is as frigid and inhospitable an environment as there is on earth. I’ve seen many.
The casino sports books are excellent spots to while away the hours between the afternoon massacre and the impending evening slaughter. For 20 bucks I can spend the afternoon waiting for this unavoidable result: My team won’t cover the spread because a wealthy teenager tossed up a half-hearted shot from midcourt at the buzzer, fluffing the net on the way down, so his team lost by 8 instead of 11. Nine, of course, being the number of points I needed to cover.
This all leads to this week’s column, born inside the sports book of the Mirage Hotel, where I sullenly sip another bad — but free! — vodka and tonic … nursing my many gaping, oozing wounds. On the bank of TV screens enveloping any sports book are almost every sporting event imaginable, from all over the world, 24 hours a day. Baseball, hockey, basketball, senior golf in Vegas, the PGA in Greensboro, Europeans in Marrakech … if it was televised it was on the wall. But through all the hours spent in this unproductive, degenerate fashion, I never saw a single moment of tennis. Surely somewhere in our wide world, tennis professionals were hitting forehands and sliding on red clay. Surely.
It’s oft repeated dogma-of-the-day; the popularity of tennis and golf are cyclical things. This is typical of American thinking, where bridges built in 1936 are worthy historical edifices, and music of the Seventies is considered classic. Big Picture thinking eludes us. I might legitimately argue, from the perspective of 3,000 years, that war or economic booms and busts are cyclical. But when used to reference to recreational endeavors unknown to anyone prior to 1955, it’s a bit of a stretch.
There’s no doubt that golf’s in an ascending moon these days, though I believe the aging of America has more to do with this than the commonly accepted Tiger Theory. Millions like me, who once mocked everything golf and country clubs stood for, now happily pay dues, wear pink, collared shirts and Bermuda shorts, and feel good if the club pro knows our name. Golf ratings will continue to rise as baby boomers don’t want to go outside any more. Golf courses will become, if possible, more congested.
A few weeks ago, America, featuring Pete Sampras and Andre Agassi, and coached by John McEnroe, played a Davis Cup match in Los Angeles. The front page of the L.A. Times had a picture and story, but it was, after all, a local event. USA Today ran a one-paragraph story on the dramatic last-second victory over the Czech Republic. The entire sports section was dominated by an obscure duffer from the Fiji Islands and his victory in the Masters.
This puny coverage is, I’m certain, an accurate reflection of American interest in tennis: not good news. But worse, I fear, is right round the corner. Pete and Andre, the best of their generation, are past 30, ancient for tennis pros. Since Jimmy Connors ushered in the American tennis boom in the early Seventies, we’ve seen an unbroken stream of talented and mostly charismatic American male tennis stars drive the sport. Up-and-coming American tennis stars? I can’t name one. The pipeline seems dangerously dry.
My amateur demographics indicate tennis is in for a tough stretch. Tennis isn’t a game 50-year-olds take up, though golf most assuredly is. Tennis (a game suited for younger people with less free time) benefited from Connors, Evert, McEnroe, and the boomer bulge. Now it’s golf’s turn. With fewer youngsters around, and no compelling American players in sight to stir up excitement with the cell-phone-in-each-hand generation, American interest in tennis will continue to slump.
It took about four hours in the Mirage Sports Book — where I lost only 10 dollars — to work this all out. My work done, it’s time to head back out on the casino floor. Construction on a new hotel across the street (modeled after a sultan’s palace) is slowing down. My duty to you calls.
This article appears in April 28 • 2000.