30/03/2018
Why do top tennis players treat each other with such respect and courtesy compared to other athletes?
A number of factors feed in here.
- History. Tennis started off as a gentleman’s sport. Indeed Wimbledon mens trophy is called, “the Wimbledon gentleman’s trophy”. History forms part of culture, the assumed ways of thinking and behaving. So this has a large effect. But there is more.
- Tennis players are cosmopolitan, they travel a lot, meet diverse people and are exposed to many different cultures and different ways of thinking. This has an educational influence on the players. Either they start out being open minded, or they don’t, but become that way. Open mindedness, tolerance and the ability to see and understand others view points are characteristics of liberal thinking. Liberals tend to be more agreeable and polite (Jost et al. 2003, Duckitt and Sibley, 2008). A person with a redneck mentality would stick out like a sore thumb in tennis. Oh, there was something about the US player Tennys Sandgren who deleted tweets sharing alt right friends on twitter. He was called out on this by many including Serena Williams. I would not be too harsh on Tennys, as his educational process has just started. Now that he will be playing the master series events, his travel will broaden his mind, and I expect him to develop into a fine gentleman.
- There is some justification for saying that tennis requires intelligence. Having to serve randomly so that the opponent cannot read where the next one is coming is an exercise that depends upon working memory capacity (a proxy for IQ). Federer is the master, and his tennis brilliance, is in many ways an outcome of intelligence. On the whole, more intelligent people tend to be more considerate (Beaumeister and Bushman, 2016). As it happens, IQ is also associated with liberal thinking (Onraet et al. 2015, Sparkman et al. 2017). Ilie Nastasie does not come across as an intelligent man. Again, he stands out like a sore thumb. As does Margaret Court, who happens to be ultra conservative.
- Becoming good at tennis requires being good at learning, being critical of oneself, and a willingness to face reality. All this is very much the same ingredients required to be considerate of others. There is no sense to have a great ego and then getting beat consistently. Tennis forces reality checking.
- Other sports are different because they are not one on one. Golf for example, where people play the course. Of course the culture is different here. There is somewhat of a transatlantic divide. Golf’s roots quickly changed to become the sport of older men who were senior in business. The US PGA dominates. It was more insular, and with the business association, became attractive for more of the GOP. Indeed, over 70% of US golfers are republican. They are less disagreeable. Phil Michelson of course is very agreeable, love the guy. But most are. One can easily see this through the nationalist attire that many wear. Nationalism of course is associated with prejudice (Duckitt & Sibley, 2013, Allport 1954, Altemyer, 1996) and so on. Too many citations here. So, to a large extent golfers and tennis players are different breeds of people, indeed, opposite. It is no coincidence that golf has lost a lot of sponsorship. Indeed, it can only rarely get sponsorship outside of the sport, and even then it is confined to US companies. In addition, and as a result of many golf players who are shall we say “less pleasant and more individualistic” golf is loosing young players. Tennis on the other hand is on the up. In a way, tennis is built for sponsorship, mostly due to the personality profile of its players, who prove attractive to people around the world. Tennis has all the marquee sponsors in the world. Just to put this in context. The majors in the US have about $12 million in prize money. Contrast this with tennis who has equal pay for males and females, and the prize money in Australia now is $55 million, set to go to $110 million in 4 years in was announced last week. The PGA, through sheer ignorance, (the mind boggles of what calibre of marketing people they hire) have a severe problem, much more likely to get worse. Indeed, it might be in terminal decline. I am from Ireland, and my fellow countryman, Rory McEllory had zero interest in going to the olympics, because he wasn’t getting paid. There were others besides. Contrast this with the tennis players who made it a priority to get there and a loss by Novak devastated him, left him in tears, inflicted much more damage than all his final losses together. Novak is a very intelligent man, speaks 6 languages, and wanted to represent tennis as well as Serbia. You are seeing different mindsets here. Golf is to a large degree populated by individualistic selfish people. In tennis Federer said today that while he and Marin Cilic (his opponent on Sunday in a slam final) were on holidays in the Maldives, they met up for a chat and a practice session. There is more comrades amongst direct one on one competitors.
- Role models. Tennis has had many good role models. I am not old enough to remember the oldies. Rod Lever and his generation were models, and Arthur Ashe was an all round hero, a couple of times to Jimmy Connors villain (who was not well liked). Bjorg, the man oozes class, and always will. Lendl (an extravert off the court, and developer of many young tennis players including his later rival Samprass). Agassi developed into a fine man, and many many more, Patrick Rafter, all the Swedes, the brits, and so on, Jim Courier, Andy Roddick, James Blake. Indeed practically all were role models. Federer is a role model to the world. Golf, had Jack Nichlaus, and a few others, but were fewer.
I think the forced reality checking of winning/losing matches, examining weaknesses and strengths of others, and meeting so many diverse people, plus the historical culture of tennis are the big influencers. I would be interested to hear your thoughts.