"You can almost watch a couple play mixed doubles and know whether they should stay together."
Dr. Herbert Hendin Psychiatrist, Columbia University
This Labor Day weekend all across the land, in nearly unimaginable numbers, Americans will be hard at work, puffing and stroking and grinding their teeth as they enjoy a game that seems to consist of swatting fuzz-covered rubber balls across a net. For some years now, this phenomenon has been comfortably referred to as the tennis boom. But the phrase simply no longer serves to describe the massive outpourings of cash and angst, the pop convolutions of status and commerce now going on in the once staid world of tennis. Even the word orgy, though it has some of the right resonances, sounds too temporary and frivolous.
If the zeal displayed were directed only at the ball, the game would be played better, and the current madness might be dismissed as an eccentric fad—and boon to retailers—in a class, say, with the Hula-Hoop or Saturday-night mah-jongg. But this is the age of the ME shirt, of instant psychological replay, of backyard Zen and Women's Liberation. With characteristically passionate optimism, American men and women pursue on the tennis court such things as health and ego reinforcement, true love and sexual aggression, social status and a special vision of the good life. "Let's face it," a Westchester housewife explains. "I took up tennis so we'd be invited to the Saturday parties at the club."
Says a single woman, lately removed to the suburbs: "It's a good way to meet a fairly decent sort of man." No less a student of American mores than Art Buchwald (a tennis player noted for his murderous lob) recently observed that in Washington, at least, the latest problem for divorce lawyers is which spouse will get custody of the tennis membership. "Ninety percent of the men who play tennis with women," says Designer Oleg Cassini, who has lately branched out into alluring multicolored outfits for tennis players, "do so with some hope of sexual reward." As a tennis player, Cassini should know better. But these days who will blame him for hustling his own products, or think him entirely wrong? Meanwhile, in California, a lanky 38-year-old tennis pro named Timothy Gallwey is becoming a national personality (with his own TV show and a bestselling book called The Inner Game of Tennis) by blending Freud and Zen in his instruction and telling audiences that the way to play tennis, and the great game of life as well, is to win the inner struggle with yourself.
Few win that struggle. But 35 million people are now trying to play tennis; some 24 million play seriously. The total figure has more than tripled in the past five years, nearly doubled since 1973 and is still growing. Last year Americans spent $100 million on tennis balls, $200 million on togs, $230 million on new racquets, stringing, etc. Close to $400 million went to new court construction. Prize money and promotion for pro tournaments and expanding TV coverage, which helped foster the tennis craze, came to more than $10 million.