After Atalanta

OK, yes, in the " killing fields of Flushing " as one reporter put this year's US Open women's field, Melanie Oudin is the proverbial (or hackneyed) beacon of hope, ray of sunshine, girl-next-door. But she is not going to save women's tennis or even American tennis all by herself. And she's going to be facing a lot more pressure than that imposed by Caroline Wozniacki's backhand if she is deemed thus by the media. But it already seems to be happening. In fact, after all the putting down of women's tennis in the lead-up to the US Open, this NYT article is suggesting the women's draw is far more interesting than the men's this year. Um, yeah, I think so too. But I always thought that. In a separate but related story, the NYT also addresses the lack of diversity in American women's tennis post-Williams sisters. It's true. For a while--like that one summer many years ago--it looked like Alexandra Stevenson could be a suitable successor, but...

I received an email a little while ago announcing a new partnership between Texas A&M and the NCAA through the former's Laboratory for Diversity in Sport. I am pleased the NCAA is doing more than speaking about its commitment to diversity (a la Myles Brand's state of the association speech the other day) by putting some dollars behind it. But I find the announcement (linked above) so very strange. Perhaps it is because I come from a humanities background and not the social sciences (despite my attempts to "pass"), but I just find it so odd that we're going to study diversity in a laboratory. What does that look like exactly? Lab, to me, implies testing of subjects. In a kinesiology department (which the Laboratory for Diversity in Sport is associated with), I picture athletes on treadmills or other such human subject experiments based around performance. But when we are looking at how to increase diversity in intercollegiate athletics, how do you test for that...