Editorial: It's our annual treat, even if we don't win

Maria Sharapova should ensure large crowds for as long as she lasts. Photo / Herald on Sunday

Opinion

Every sport deserves its day in the sun. Today, and for the next two weeks, tennis will have its turn.

Some of the world's top players will be at Stanley St in this week's ASB Classic for women and next week's Heineken Open for men. The tournaments have become such well-established features of an Auckland summer that sports fans may have come to take them for granted. They should not.

Every year, Auckland's tournament director Richard Palmer has to compete with simultaneous events in several Australian cities to lure players for their preparation for the Australian Open, the first of the four "grand slam" tournaments on the international calendar.

The players' prime focus is on Melbourne and it cannot be easy to convince many to come here for their build-up, but every year Mr Palmer succeeds. Often he draws players back for a second or third year, attesting to their appreciation of the facilities and the welcome they receive here.

Sometimes he has secured a big-name drawcard but never one as big, by his own reckoning, as will appear in the women's tournament this week. Maria Sharapova should ensure large crowds for as long as she lasts.

She is not the champion she was when she won three grand slam finals and she might struggle this week if she meets fellow Russians Svetlana Kuznetsova and Dinara Safina or Belgium's Yanina Wickmayer. But Sharapova still has the bearing of a star and the youth to recover her best form at any time. It could happen this week.

It would not be the first time the Auckland tournaments have seen the beginning of greater performances. Last year's Heineken winner, big-serving American John Isner, who is returning next week, later broke into the top 20 rankings and went on to play the longest match in the history of professional tennis in the first round at Wimbledon.

Auckland cannot attract champions at their peak but has often provided a glimpse of them on the way up. A teenage Rafael Nadal played at Stanley St a few years ago. The venue offers a very close, court-side view of top tennis that can be as distracting for the players as it is engrossing for spectators. But as professionals, the players cope with it.

As professionals, they should also give their best every time they play in front of a paying crowd. Plainly some do not. High-ranked players with their sights on Melbourne do not want to exhaust themselves beforehand. Spectators hoping to see them should not leave it to later in the week. The best contests at Stanley St usually involve journeymen on the ATP tour who know they could win a cheque here.

The professional tennis circuit is a hard, lonely grind for most players at all levels. Spectators should bear this in mind when watching our own young hopes this week. Sacha Jones and Marina Erakovic deserve all the encouragement their home town crowd can offer. It will be a double-edged experience for them, bearing the pressure of expectations while relishing the support.

It has been a long time since a New Zealander seemed capable of winning an ATP singles title. Every year, the Auckland tournaments underline our limitations and ask questions of tennis in New Zealand. The sport has been re-organised in recent years as a condition of public funding. The national body may now be more powerful than it was, but few signs of change have appeared.

The road to tennis success takes a promising young player away from New Zealand very young, requires costly and dedicated support from parents or benefactors, and pits the teenager against hundreds of similar hopefuls around the world.

Precious few ever make the grade on display in Auckland this week and next. It is an annual treat.