DATE: Monday, June 9, 1997                  TAG: 9706090124

SECTION: SPORTS                  PAGE: C1   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Column 

SOURCE: Bob Molinaro 

                                            LENGTH:   56 lines

SADLY, TENNIS HAS BECOME MOSTLY FOREIGN TO AMERICA

The old joke goes something like this: To a tennis player, love means absolutely nothing.

All (bad) jokes aside, for the American couch potato and sports fan, tennis has come to mean next to nothing.

There are no guarantees in big-time tennis anymore, except that the tournaments and personalities will often disappoint. Not even a Grand Slam like the just-completed French Open can break the cycle of apathy.

People who hold their TV clickers with a two-handed backhand grip may have followed Sunday's French Open final between an unknown Brazilian and a well-traveled Spaniard. Perhaps they could even tell the two apart.

In the women's draw, Croatian sensation Iva Majoli's upset of No. 1 Martina Hingis must have had them buzzing at the country club bridge games.

But as we come to the heart of another tennis season, SportsWorld shows a blissful disinterest in the pro racket circus. Andre Agassi's on-again, off-again career makes it even easier for America not to care.

When Agassi, the Las Vegas lounge act, goes off to marry Brooke Shields, tennis is Suddenly Snoozin'.

It doesn't help that Pete Sampras, the world's finest player, is thought to operate with a couple of Duracell batteries stuck in his back.

Or that there are no American women players at the very top of the game.

Steffi Graf, Monica Seles, and Hingis define the women's game. And more Europeans are on their way even as American tennis and the media hope for the unlikely return to prominence of burnout poster child Jennifer Capriati.

On the men's side of the net, it's more of the same. The world's best young talent is foreign to America.

Meanwhile, broadcasts of the French Open featured the commentary of Chris Evert and John McEnroe, two icons whose presence in the booth reminds us that tennis in America once held a loftier position.

For anyone who still likes tennis - as recreation or idle entertainment - and who admires the talent of the best players, it is impossible not to notice how the sport is being dwarfed by golf.

Tiger Woods didn't kill off interest in tennis in America; the net game suffers from self-inflicted wounds.

But with the U.S. Open coming up this week, all the talk will be about Woods and golf. Tennis must be jealous. It could use its own Tiger. Instead, it gets Gustavo Kuerten.

Lately, nobody has had much good to say about professional tennis. So let's take a stab volley at it: Other than gymnastics, figure skating and mud wrestling, tennis is the only sport where competition between the best women is every bit as riveting and excellent as matches between the top men.

Golf can't make that claim. Neither can basketball.

It would surprise no one if the women dominated Wimbledon, only two weeks away, as they just did the French.

In a fortnight, the pros will attempt to get the world high on grass. The venerable championships will have their work cut out for them, though, as tennis tries to dig itself out of a love-40 hole.

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