Tennis on the radio is scarce, but someone's doing it

                    

	As the author learned from providing color during Justine Henin-Hardenne's victory over Lindsay Davenport, radio tennis isn't easy. David E. Klutho/SI
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Thirty minutes to air and I need advice. How much should I talk? Should I talk over points? How on earth do you call tennis on the radio?

"I can think of 457 other sports that lend themselves to radio better than tennis," said Mary Carillo, the Emmy Award-winning (television) broadcaster and longtime tennis analyst, "and that includes curling. Lots of luck on this one."

Great. Maybe a baseball guy can help.

"To be honest with you, I can't even conceive tennis on the radio," said ESPN's Dan Shulman, who resides on the short list of baseball's top play-by-play callers. "I didn't even know it was broadcast on the radio."

When we think about sports on the radio in America, Vin Scully comes to mind. Not Vince Spadea. The sounds of smashes and slice backhands? Shulman is right: It is hard to conceive tennis on the dial. But the sport has a long and rich history on the air. The first radio broadcast of tennis took place in 1927 from Wimbledon, and the BBC's radio coverage of the Championships has entertained millions of fans around the world.

Luckily, I found a radio shaman in the form of Bud Collins, the Boston Globe writer, noted broadcaster and a man who has covered tennis since the Peloponnesian War. Over the past five decades Collins has called tennis for ABC Radio in Australia and various other outlets. At this year's U.S. Open he's working for XM Satellite Radio, calling matches and hosting a talk show.

"You have to draw a picture for people, and I try, because it's my bent, to throw in as much history as I can," Collins said. "What you can't do is call every stroke. That's impossible."

Collins said he first heard tennis on the radio in 1942 while growing up in Berea, Ohio. After a playing a couple of sets at the courts on the campus of Baldwin-Wallace College, he recalled listening on a portable Zenith to a broadcast of Fred Schroeder beating Frank Parker at Forest Hills.

"I heard the announcer say they were playing at Forest Hills," Collins said. "They are playing in a forest? With hills? I was hooked after that."

I understood. I've co-hosted a daily sports talk show on a 50,000-watt station and I've bored countless listeners from Maine to California as a guest. But never had I called a professional sporting event until Wednesday, when the folks at USOpen.org Radio let me sit in as an analyst for the Justine Henin- Hardenne-Lindsay Davenport quarterfinal match.

The virtual radio station provides continuous coverage from the Open's five major courts (Ashe, Armstrong, Grandstand, Court 10 and Court 11), a daily talk show and postmatch press-conference coverage. There are two full-time play-by-play broadcasters at USOpen.org Radio, Marc Ernay and Andrew Bogusch. Both are radio professionals in New York. Ernay works as a sports anchor for 1010 WINS-AM. Bogusch is a sports host at Sirius Satellite Radio and also calls matches at the French Open for RolandGarros.com.

The main color analyst is Matt Cronin, one of the top tennis writers in the country and the managing editor of the California-based Inside Tennis magazine. Among the USOpen.org Radio alumni is Spero Dedes, who now does play-by-play for the Los Angeles Lakers.

"Radio is a good medium for tennis," said Cronin, "because it combines frequent action and enough pauses to discuss the action and other issues."

But is anyone listening? Jeffrey Volk, the director of Advance Media for the USTA, said that as of Wednesday, USOpen.org Radio had served up 2.3 million streams (up 30 percent from 2005). Volk said the site draws hard-core tennis fans listening at work, and plenty of international traffic.

The broadcast booth for USOpen.org Radio is a small room high above Arthur Ashe Stadium, directly across from the Citizen scoreboard. Inside the booth you'll find two televisions, a board operator (Pat Hayes), a studio coordinator (Greg Giombarrese) and an aerial view behind the east baseline. One television was tuned to our match so we could watch replays. The other provided statistics of the match and play from the other courts.

I knew ahead of time that I was assigned to the Henin-Hardenne-Davenport match, so to prepare I read every possible clip and stat I could on both players. I would have been dead otherwise. Some points ended quickly, some went on for 20-something strokes, and it's a skill to offer a salient thought (if you're doing color) while working within the flow of the match.

It is simply impossible for the play-by-play person to call every stroke. Bogusch and Ernay did a terrific job of keeping listeners abreast of the play while giving Cronin and me room to ruminate about a particular point or a player. It is remarkable that both announcers often do these matches solo.

"You'd have to be descriptive," said Ernay, who normally calls four matches a day during the Open fortnight. "Honestly, it's the hardest thing I've ever done in radio, and I've done every sport. Hockey is hard, but tennis is tougher."

Though he has never called tennis, Shulman offered me some valuable words to remember: "The first thing I would think of for any sport on the radio is you are the eyes of your audience," he said. "They are 100 percent completely and totally dependent on you to know everything that is happening. Your play-by-play guy will engage you. Speak to him, but do so in enough time to get it back to him."

Officially, I was introduced to my play-by-play partner only after we went to break following the third game of the first set. Bogusch was on the air when I walked into the booth and there was no time for introductions.

Davenport played well, but Henin-Hardenne's tennis was simply at a higher standard. Her ground strokes were punishing from both sides and she pounded Davenport in straight sets. Ernay came in at the start of the second set to give Bogusch a break.

Once you get the rhythm, it's remarkable how much information a 90-minute radio tennis broadcast can contain in addition to calling points. The biggest screw-up I made was saying Davenport had not hit a forehand winner in the match when she had four at the time. (I corrected my mistake, though stumbled again in my correction.)

With his no-holds-barred opinions and encyclopedic knowledge of the current players on tour, Cronin carried me, which I was grateful for. I played most of my comments off his -- and simply tried to stay out of the way. Ernay ended our match with a nice signature out: "Justine Henin may have sent Lindsay Davenport into the sunset at Flushing Meadow."

I asked Ernay for an honest assessment. "You gave a fine accounting of yourself," Ernay said. "You held your own with Cronin, and that's hard to do."

He was being kind, but I'll take it. If the BBC is interested, I work cheap.

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