A famous Arizona politician once quipped after losing a presidential bid: “If I had to do it over, I’d be born in Texas”. In competitive tennis circles, an equivalent comment could be made about Europe.
Perusing the rankings landscape for both men and women, we see that 39 out of the top 50 men players and 38 out of the top 50 women players hail from Europe. As the world population certainly does not break down along these statistical lines, we thought it would be of interest to check the event calendars for these elite men and women players. What we find is 34 men’s events are held in Europe and 32 events are held in the rest of the world. Likewise for women, 25 events are held in Europe and 32 events are held in the rest of the world. Evidently, home crowds, home cooking and a great transportation infrastructure are the keys to tennis success.
“What about the rest of us?”, you may ask. We can only offer guiding solace with more words of bumper sticker wisdom:
“I wasn’t born in Texas, but I got here as fast as I could”.
-TtM
