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Dear Yevgeny, A personal message to the world's No. 2 player
Posted: Friday November 26, 1999 09:57 AM
He's the Australian Open Champion, doubtless a multi-millionaire, and he spends his life traveling to some of the most glamorous venues in the world playing tennis for a living. To us mere mortals, it would seem like world No. 2 Yevgeny Kafelnikov, has it made. Apparently though, he's lacking for one thing ... attention. "I was pretty embarrassed to watch CNN this morning," he said, speaking from the ATP Tour World Championship in Hanover, Germany. " As soon as the show started, they had Agassi and Sampras, and then 20 minutes later they had a small piece on the rest of the tournament." The source of his embarrassment of course, was the show I co-host, World Sport, a program with the daunting brief of covering all the day's major sporting news worldwide in just half an hour. As you can imagine, that's no easy task, and one which requires a great deal of prioritizing on behalf of our producers. So, for the benefit of Mr. Kafelnikov, and any other international sports figure who felt overlooked, let's have a look at what we had to fit in on the day in question. As Mr. Kafelnikov rightly said, we kicked off with two minutes, 15 seconds of Sampras and Agassi coverage -- a contest featuring a re-match of the Wimbledon final, the current No. 1 against the former No. 1, and the two most dominant players of their generation going head to head. All of which made it a no brainer for a lead story, which even a man with Yevgeny's vast editorial experience would have to agree. Next up, came the football results from the Champions League -- the most prestigious club tournament in the world's most popular game taking up a whopping one minute, 15 seconds in total. No fat there, eh Yevgeny?
We followed that with three minutes, 15 seconds on the Grand Slam of Golf, a competition for the four major winners. Our coverage incorporated the latest on the tragic death of U.S Open winner, Payne Stewart; the progress of world No. 1 Tiger Woods; plus news of an injury to British Open champion, Paul Lawrie, in his match with Masters' champion, Jose Maria Olazabal, that put him out of the tournament. What do you think Yevgeny? A minute and quarter of Alpine superstar, Herman Maier's World Cup Giant Slalom, then took us to the break, with nine minutes gone, and four sports covered in seven countries. How are we doing so far Yevgeny? On the other side of the break, 11 and a half minutes -- not 20 minutes after we said hello -- we were back to tennis and the Tour Championship in Hanover. Thomas Enqvist's unremarkable straight-sets defeat of Nicolas Kiefer and Gustavo Kuerten's 6-1, 6-2 demolition of Nicolas Lapentti were given 1 minute, 15 seconds. That's a total of three and half minutes on the ATP season-ender, more than any other single event in the show, and we were only 13 and half minutes or so into its running time. Granted, the tennis was top heavy with Sampras and Agassi, but given the routine nature of the other two matches, that's hardly surprising is it? There was also no Kafelnikov in our coverage. Maybe it's because he didn't play that day. Of course, you can't please all the people all of the time, and inevitably sometimes there are going to be people and events trimmed or left out. It's nothing personal, you understand, and nothing to get paranoid about. It's just that sports journalism, rather like a rally in tennis, is all about making the right choices. This time we chose Pete and Andre, and we feel we hit a winner. But that's a judgment call. All the same Yevgeny, we sincerely hope you'll keep watching, because, who knows, next time it could be you.
Terry Baddoo is a co-host of "World Sport," the international sports show that airs live on CNN/Sports Illustrated and CNN International.
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