No fun anymore

If he wasn't leaping out of bedroom windows because someone's husband had come home, he was hitchhiking to tournaments all over North America, or nursing a hangover through the first set of a championship match. 

I am talking about the greatest amateur tennis star of the sixties -- and maybe all time -- Whitney Reed.  Throughout his career, he beat the best of them, but had a ton of fun doing it.  So did Emerson and Laver, who co-wrote a wonderful book entitled, "Tennis for the Bloody Fun of It".

Sadly, those days are long gone.  No one's having any. 

Take the eternally-injured and always-boring Milos Raonic.  Having withdrawn from the Monte Carlo Masters in April and missing the clay-court season and French Open, Raonic pulled out of the Paris Masters with yet another right elbow injury.  Gee, wonder if it had anything to do with the fact that his next opponent was to have been Federer?  The guy is an embarrassment, always needing court-side treatment on his back and every other body part during matches.  Why this is allowed is a mystery?  Why are tennis players permitted to stop dead in the middle of matches to call for a masseur?  If you're losing because your back hurts, you lose. 

Whitney Reed would never have done that. 

But worse is Denis Shapovalov's ditching Paris because he was "exhausted".  What??!!  You're 19 years old, for Gawd's sake.  How can you be "exhausted"?  Another Canadian bites the dust to national shame.

But one of the all-time toppers is the chronically-broken Raphael Nadal.  Returning from a right-knee injury, which saw him retire from the US Open, Nadal also bailed on Paris.  "Maybe I can play today, but if I try to win, my abdomen will be injured for sure," he said.  "It would not be fair to say it is a real injury, but if I play it will be," he continued.  In other words, I am not injured, but I might be injured, so I won't play. 

How's that for logic!  Hey, I haven't been hit by a car yet, but if I go out today I might be, so I'll just stay home.  That's what the guy is actually saying.

Waaaaay too much money and over-training has ruined the game.  Whitney, where are you when we need you?