when i picked up the sports page of yesterday's nytimes and saw harvey araton's column, with a photo of shahar peer, and this headline, "a political swing at one player sours a tournament for all" i thought, uh oh. this is big...
and it's getting bigger...
the situation room: shahar peer, an israeli player currently ranked 45th on the wta tour, was denied a visa to enter the united arab emirates, to compete in a tournament for which she had qualified (and in the eyes of some, based on her play coming into the event, had a decent opportunity to win). while wta officials long feared she might have trouble securing a visa, it seems they were offered some assurances that it would be granted...at the very last hour her visa was denied. officials have gone on record to say that the denial was due to "safety concerns." the atp and its players will also have to confront this issue as it appears that andy ram, a doubles specialist, may also be denied a visa for the upcoming atp tournament there.
the good word: tennis' top writers have weighed in on this, with tennis mag eic james martin, calling out not only wta chief larry scott, but the wta players for their unwillingness to pay more than lip service to the matter; my favorite writer acing one out wiiiide--noting that the atp players (especially federer, who lives and trains there in the off-season) should make their voices heard on this, too; and tom tebbutt asserting that after this year tennis in dubai is done. and how.
my take: many fans are loathe to mix politics and sports, i don't think the two can ever really be separated. sport is a part of our culture, and it reflects whatever dynamics loom large in the world. sometimes it reveals exquisite acts of sportsmanship, but it also exposes cheating, racism, discrimination, violence... and i think that athletes, especially the most high-profile ones, should take a stand, especially when their own sport is affected.
in the perfect world (inside my head), my favorite player would withdraw, offering some simple, but totally right-on, no-nonsense reason: "if it is not fair for one player the way he is treated, it is not right for everyone. it's simple, no?" and then call on everyone to boycott! but with nadal and federer both suffering from injuries, it's possible that both may escape making some kind of statement on the situation that the wta and atp are facing, at least for now...we'll see how things unfold.
i don't toss out the notion of a boycott easily. i took gymnastics for a spell when i was a kid, and was obsessed with the sport. in 1980, kurt thomas was poised to make history as the first american gymnast to finally break through the death grip that the soviets and eastern bloc nations had on the men's event, and win the gold medal...and then president carter ordered the boycott of the moscow games. dream over. as a fan, i was crushed. i don't know how the athletes managed. but when you're part of a team, especially a national team, you have no choice. and anyway, those were very different times. you couldn't try to escape the link between sport and politics...
these days, most athletes will try to dance around a political question (hell, athletes are so media trained, you're hard pressed to find anyone to answer a question about a game that's not rehearsed and repeated from day to day to day, let alone say something political. jordan, jeter, tiger woods are inoffensive to the point of being...uninspiring).
but in this case, absent a brave decision by the atp or wta, or the player's union, the individual players should have the option to boycott the event, without penalty. i don't need the players to tell me their views on middle east politics if they don't want to, but i would want them to simply think about it on a personal level: if you care (and i think you should) and if these players are your friends (as some say they are) and if you put yourself in his or her place, and then think about what it is you might really be losing by taking a stand--or not taking one...take all other considerations about money and points and ranking out of the mix (and this is where some might need a ruling by the sport's "governing bodies" to help them clear their mind?) and make the personal political, then we might start to see progress toward a solution where they all have a safe place to play--here, there, everywhere, from now on.
