Who counts as an American tennis player?
I have been catching up on my TENNIS magazines this week and am on the "Special Report" issue from November/December about the demise of American tennis--an issue the tennis media likes to trot out every few years. Running across the bottom of the special report section are factoids about the history of American tennis including these two juxtaposed on one page: 4: Times in the U.S. Open's 125-year history in which no American made the singles final 13: Times in Open history in which no U.S. woman made the final, including 2006 You see this language all the time in sports media. Basketball and women's basketball; soccer and men's soccer, etc. Usually coverage of tennis does not fall victim to the same habit of othering the women's game. Also, in another article about the history of American tennis, author Stephen Tignor writes that "any list of the sport's legendary names begins and ends here." And then he proceeds to list all the names. Missing ...