"Come On!!"

Glory of True Love - John Prine (mp3)
Serves You Right - Manuok (mp3)

There was a time, decades ago, when ordinary average men would sit around a television set to watch tennis. They did so to watch two seemingly ordinary average American men -- perhaps with a bit more temper than average -- claw and growl and bark their way to the top of the heap.

John McEnroe and Jimmy Connors seemed blue collar. I don't know their life stories, but I know they seemed like guys everyone could root for, so long as you could suffer their brashness and their impatience for little things like rules and decorum. Maybe that's what made them so American.

In the last days of the wooden racket and the early days of the crappy metal ones, serves didn't clock in at 120mph. Forehand blasts didn't leave rubber burn marks on a court surface. In the days of the wooden racket, power was less vital than placement and strategery. You got the feeling McEnroe and Connors survived the circuit more for their bulldog stubbornness than for their power.

My own personal love of watching tennis exploded in 1985. I was bored and watching HBO that summer and witnessed the highlights of a second-round victory by this German teenager named Boris Becker. He was diving and scraping and clawing all over the court. Becker had a lot of bulldog in him, but his rise also marked the early stages of Power Tennis, where strength and height became crucial factors.

Becker and Stefan Edburg became rivals du jour, engaging in serve-and-volley shooting matches that often went five sets but rarely seemed to last more than three or four volleys.

Oddly, it's probably Becker's success -- and the advancing technology of cannon-esque rackets -- that brought on the assassin-like coldness of the last 15 or so years of tennis. Jim Courier and Michael Chang had something of Connors in their game, with the endurance and the stubbornness, but they seemed to lack the personality to seem bigger. And maybe it was also because the days when endurance could compete with power were gone.

Seriously, other than maybe Andre Agassi, who lost a lot of his court personality as he got older, what other great male from the last 15 years has had a smidge of personality? Sampras? Puhleeze. Federer? Knock it off. Nadal? That's as close as you get, which isn't close.

On the women's side, things have been a little better. But where once roamed the petite and adorable likes of Tracy Austin and Chris Evert now roam Amazonian hulk-people. The Williams sisters, Lindsay Davenport, and the Eastern Bloc women, where Sharapova is considered "lithe" at 6'2" and 130 pounds. The hopes of the underdog rest exclusively on the likes of Justine Henin, who retired but hit #1 several times at a mere 5'6" and 120-ish. I cannot possibly explain to you just how difficult that must be. Yet Justine didn't exactly have me running to turn on my TV. She was a teensy bulldog of a gal, but still not particularly compelling.

What I'm saying is, tennis hasn't had any good characters in a long time. It's crammed with amazing talent, raw force, and even decent looks. But personality? Not a lick.

For a brief, shining moment this week, we've seen what tennis could be if the right people could find their way up the ladder. This enlightenment has come in the form of Georgia teenager Melanie Oudin. At 17 and unseeded, she's the first female since Serena Williams to make it to the quarterfinals of the US Open at such a young age, and Serena did it a decade ago.

This girl is mesmerizing. I haven't watched this much tennis in a long, long time, and it ain't because she's hot. Although Ms. Oudin is cute enough, she also looks like the kind of friend you want with you if you get jumped by 20 ninja, because she'd stay in the fight and prolly take out a dozen of the bastards, even if she had to bite and scratch and claw. Or donkey-kick.

In David Foster Wallace's essay damning Tracy Austin's autobiography ("How Tracy Austin Broke My Heart"), he realizes that the quality that tends to make for superior athletes often makes for boring people: they live in the moment. They can bury the fears of the future and the ghosts of the past and completely commit themselves to The Now. (Writers, on the other hand, tend to live in exactly the opposite way, with equally damning results.)

If you ever liked watching tennis. If you ever wondered whether you should give it a shot. If you can tolerate watching any women's sport at all. Tune in on Wednesday and watch Melanie Oudin. I don't know if she's going to win, but I know it's going to be almost impossible to take my eyes off her. She's what tennis could be and should be about.

And you'll be sure to hear what is apparently the Ultimate Tennis Saying for women of all ages and from all countries: "COME ON!!!"

P.S. If you watch Oudin in interviews, she is a perfect match for Anna Farris' movie star character from "Lost in Translation."