If you listen to enough of the television commentary by John McEnroe and Jimmy Arias, you quickly realize that their shticks are different shades of the same broadcast persona. McEnroe being the irritable former champion who still wants to challenge the establishment and question every little detail of the game. In the case of Arias, he’s the former top five player who has a bit of a chip on his shoulder that he didn’t live up to his potential – something he makes clear in his bitter and sometimes flippant commentary.
Still, you might be willing to trudge through a match with them because you’re waiting for that one nugget that nobody else can deliver. They can do that because they’ve been there, right at the top of the sport. They’ve been around the best. They’ve beaten the best. They’ve been coached by the best. And that’s why they can offer that one revelation that moves us one step closer to understanding our perplexing tennis universe.
This comment isn’t one of them: “From my standpoint, I don’t think she’s been great for women’s tennis because she wears her hat so low that you can’t even see her face or her eyes during a match, and so you don’t get a connection as much as you could.” That was Jimmy Arias commenting on Iga Swiatek on the Tennis Channel’s “Inside-In” podcast last week. After going back and listening to the entire episode, this quote making the rounds isn’t out of context. It’s exactly as awful as it sounds.
