Perhaps the thing most emblematic of tennis’ ratings woes is that John McEnroe, the man calling the sport on TV who hasn’t played a singles match since 1994, is more famous than any American man currently playing the sport.
Understandably so. After all, McEnroe won seven Grand Slam titles during his playing days. No American man has come close to that level of success ever since. As most who even casually follow the sport know, the last American man to win a Grand Slam event was Andy Roddick in the 2003 U.S. Open.
Therein lies the problem. Tennis has missed an entire generation of young fans because few Americans have even sniffed a major title. Sure, it didn’t help that Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, and Novak Djokovic dominated the sport during that period. But for the Americans to go two decades and running without a single Grand Slam win has put tennis firmly in the background for most sports fans stateside.
Viewership figures would seem to support that theory. Last year’s men’s Wimbledon final drew just over two million viewers. The French Open averaged 1.62 million. The U.S. Open, which competes head-to-head with Week 1 of the NFL season, attracted just 1.67 million viewers last year. And the Australian Open, which airs in the overnight hours in the United States, averaged fewer than half a million viewers.
Compare that with golf, an individual sport similarly structured with four annual tentpole events, but with much more recent American success, and the difference is stark. Golf majors average anywhere between five million and 13 million viewers for their final rounds.
McEnroe, who is calling the French Open for TNT Sports in the network’s inaugural season broadcasting the event stateside, attributed some of the viewership struggles to the struggles of American tennis players. Luckily for the sport, there are a young crop of emerging American stars who might be able to contend for Grand Slam titles in the coming years.
“Obviously, the key thing is, we gotta get a Ben Shelton to win one. We gotta get some American men to win some majors. And that would make it, to me, much more interesting, if [Frances] Tiafoe, or Tommy Paul [stepped up],” McEnroe said in a press call last week, per Sportico.
“We need a fresh generation in our sport, big time,” McEnroe continued. “It’s a transition period where we have to do a much better job [of] marketing ourselves, and hopefully this is … the beginning of something where we can do just that, with this tournament.”
The sport of tennis in the United States has dug itself a big hole from an interest perspective. One that will take some time to climb out of. An American (or Americans) finding success on the court might be the spark tennis needs to reinvigorate the country’s interest in the sport.