My Hopman Cup Runneth Over

At the beginning of the year Australia picks up all of the tennis it can find lying around and throws it at the viewing audience in one big messy lump.  There are a series of tournaments culminating in the Australian Open when such of the tennis elite as haven't injured themselves in the previous tournaments stagger exhausted and jet lagged into Melbourne and there compete in a grim endurance match until only one survives.  At least I think that's what happens.  By this time I've watched a fair bit of tennis myself and I'm almost as weary and jetlagged as the players.

My favourite competition is the Hopman Cup, partly because it occurs while I'm on a break from the office and can actually watch some of it and partly because it involves mixed doubles and not just as an embarrassing afterthought.  I am slowly coming to the conclusion however that the organisers, TV broadcaster and the commentators actually hate the Hopman Cup.

Firstly there is the broadcast itself.  There is actually another tennis competition going on at the same time and the broadcaster is showing both on different channels.  No problem you might think.  If you want the Hopman Cup you watch Channel A and if you want the other (the Brisbane International I think) you watch Channel B.  But no, approximately every thirty seconds during the Hopman Cup they cut across to Brisbane to show us what is happening there.  Apparently the thought that we might be more interested in what is happening in the Hopman Cup doesn't occur to them.  I don't think I've seen a complete match of the Hopman Cup as we're alway losing bits because the people doing the broadcasting seem to think we're more interested in a tournament we decided not to watch than the one we did.  On one occasion they cut away so we could watch Nick Kyrgios walking down a corridor.  If we have to see Nick Kyrgios can he at least be doing something interesting like abusing an umpire or sacrificing a goat.  Whatever his other talents his corridor walking skills aren't much of an advance on my own.

Then there are the interviews.  Of course there are interviews after a match.  I have absolutely no interest in them, by the time the interview is conducted the tennis player has stopped doing the one thing I'm interested in watching them do but I accept that its part of the colour.  However in the Hopman Cup should some hapless tennis player decide to catch another match (and since its a team competition they frequently do to cheer on their compatriot) then an eagle eyed commentator will descend on them like a vulture on a zebra carcass and conduct an adhoc interview on the fly.  While the next match is going on.  This means that instead of seeing a tennis match we're treated to a clumsy interview while asinine questions are asked of some poor character who replies in broken English while trying to keep one eye on their team mate in case something interesting happens out on the court.  A possibility that the commentary team seems to have discounted.

Then there is the "fast four" format.  The Hopman Cup was initiated at least in part to revive interest in the mixed doubles version of the game.  Fast forward thirty years and the organisers seem to have decided that was a dreadful mistake.  But rather than put a merciful bullet it its head they've initiated the fast four version of the game.

How best to describe fast four?  Its rather like tennis for people who've got better things to do than sit around watching tennis.  The organisers should simply make an announcement at the end of the singles matches.  "Ladies and gentlemen we are now obliged to present you with some mixed doubles but don't worry it will be over as quickly as we can arrange and don't feel as though you have to hang around if you need to get home."  At the very least they could get rid of that stupid "lets are live" rule which seems to be confusing everybody and does nothing except reward a mistake.  That's a great message to send the kiddies although since the mixed doubles are always the last to be played the kiddies have probably been hospitalised with an epileptic seizure from all that cutting away to other matches, corridor walks and interviews by the time the mixed doubles is reluctantly permitted onto the court.

The final is on tonight and rather predictably Switzerland is one of the finalists.  I say predictably because the Swiss team consists of Belinda Bencic and Roger Federer.  That's right ROGER FEDERER!!!!!  While the commentators seem to be ambivalent about the value of the entire tournament they have no such hesitation about ROGER FEDERER. He is a god who walks among us.  He is not like mortal men.  He plays tennis at an age when others have decently crawled away to die.  He wrangles quokkas, he blows up social media and reduces the entire commentary team to a damp pantied state of gasping ecstacy.  What's ROGER FEDERER doing right now?  Whatever it is its certainly more interesting than the tennis match they're notionally commenting on.  Remember all those interviews I mentioned?  Most of them consisted of the commentators asking the player in question their opinion of ROGER FEDERER.  Are they really expecting anyone to say,  "Actually he's a bit of a prick really."?

OK, Roger Federer is awesome.  One of the greatest players of all time and an absolute ornament of the game.  But we don't need the commentators to tell us that.  They can demonstrate it just by broadcasting his matches without cutting away every thirty seconds to watch Nick Kyrgios tieing his shoelaces.