Everyone loves to rag on the commentators of tennis.  Mary Carillo’s voice is too deep.  John McEnroe talks too much.  And so forth, but the fact is, today’s tennis commentators are far better, in terms of tennis knowledge, than their predecessors from the early 1980s.  Indeed, as much of a bad rap as Carillo gets, she has to be credited with making commentary more professional.

Once upon a time, you hired Chris Evert, and she would tell you a player’s strengths and weaknesses, not based on their recent play, but based on when she played them on tour.  That information could be out of date, but it didn’t matter.  Mary Carillo used to do some legwork and go to the players and talk to them, getting up-to-date information.  The commentators of the day didn’t seem to do that, as if visiting the players would be an affront to their privacy.

Indeed, these days, the lesser known commentators, folks like Jimmy Arias or Ted Robinson or Leif Shiras often do a fair bit of research whether it be themselves, or the research staff working with them.  Today, for example, David Nalbandian was playing David Ferrer.  The commentators noted how it was tough to come off a win in a tournament, as Nalbandian just did in DC, then play well the following week.  He pointed out how Sam Querrey won LA, beating Tipsarevic after being down a set and 5-1 in a tiebreak, then met him again in DC, and lost to Tipsarevic in the opening round.

That observation would never have been made in the 1970s, where several things were working against commentators.  Number 1, they probably didn’t have a research staff, so no one would tell them information.  Number 2, there was no web and most newspapers didn’t cover tennis results in their sports sections.  Number 3, the commentators didn’t think they had to do much research at all.  I remember watching this guy do commentary with Pancho Gonzalez.  Gonzalez talked about hitting behind the opponent, and the other commentator, often a football or baseball guy, would ask “What does that mean, hitting behind an opponent?”.  The thinking was the average tennis viewer was a dabbler, someone who didn’t play tennis, who didn’t know how to watch tennis, and thus, needed someone to explain basic stuff.  Number 4, there wasn’t that much tennis on TV.

That’s an important consideration.  Back in the 1980s, only the big networks covered sports.  They might cover 7-8 tournaments the entire year.  This included Wimbledon, the US Open, the year-end Masters, then maybe the Family Circle Cup, an exhibition, and, one or two more American events.  Cable improved that.  We started seeing the American clay court circuit with Donald Dell and Barry Mackay doing commentary.  This would be Boston, DC, Stratton (Vermont), and Indianapolis on green or red clay.  Soon, ESPN covered the French Open, then the Australian Open, and they even covered it live.

If commentators only watched a handful of matches a year, they would never see how a player did week to week.  And, one has to recall that American TV, in those days, focused primarily on American players.  It was fortunate there were top American players to focus on.  Right now, they are showing Toronto.  Soderling-Gulbis is a good match to focus on because it puts one top 10 player against a very talented player.  In the 1980s, NBC executives would rather show a replay with an American than focus on two players whose names are hard to pronounce.

These days, commentators let viewers figure this out tennis terms on their own.  They don’t bother explaining how a tiebreak works or how scoring works.  In the 1990s, when Martina started doing commentary, she talked about how certain players hit a heavy ball.  This was slang that was commonly used among the pros, but not widely known to the public.  Today, you hear about how players like Soderling or Berdych can “hit through a clay court” or how they “flatten out a shot” to drive it for a winner.

With the ATP Tour providing a database of information, you can get head-to-head results, something commentators point to when they predict who is going to win.  This stat was simply not available in the 1980s, and so you might have two players that have a history with each other, but if you’ve never seen them play, you might think they would play quite even, when one player had the upper hand.  For example, I remember hearing Barry Mackay think that Johan Kriek, one of the quickest players on the tour in the 1980s, would keep even with Ivan Lendl.  Lendl generally beat Kriek fairly easily because of his power.  These days, you can look this information up.

Indeed, that’s what I did in 2009 when Soderling beat Nadal.  He was going to play Davydenko in the quarterfinals.  Davydenko had just beaten Verdasco easily and Verdasco had just had that marathon match in the Australian Open against Nadal.  Everyone figured Davydenko would beat Soderling.  But, check the head to head, and you found that Soderling had a winning head to head over Davydenko.  And indeed, Soderling beat Davydenko.

Not only are the commentators better educated, frankly, the players are too.  They know, from their coaches, that their opponent has been on a win streak and may be hard to beat.  Murray might refer to how many tournaments Sam Querrey has won in the current year.  This kind of data was just not available.  A guy like Murray can have this information on his laptop or his coach would have this information.

People recall all sorts of details too.  Sam Querrey hurt himself in Bangkok when he fell through a glass table and nearly severed a nerve.  This tournament wasn’t broadcast on TV, but interviewers knew to ask him about it, and how his recovery went.  They knew, in an interview, he claimed to be burned out.  At one point, few people bother to check out interviews, but with the Web, you can find that information immediately.

When Andy Murray parted with Miles Maclagan, that made tennis news.  When rumors had Darren Cahill as a potential coach, Cliff Drysdale was able to ask his ESPN colleague, Darren Cahill, whether he was a prospect for being Murray’s coach.  In the past, the information would not have been widely available, and the question wouldn’t have been asked because no one would have known or cared.  Tennis fans care about Roger Federer and his new coaching situation.  Will it fare better than when he teamed with Jose Higueras?

Indeed, commentators are now so good at their job that the casual fan is often left behind.  When Soderling beat Nadal in the French in 2009, one could say it was a fluke.  Did he reach the semis of Wimbledon?  Did he reach the semis of the US Open?  The answer was no, but in both cases, he ran into Roger Federer, and did pretty well to get that far, all things considered.  A casual fan might only watch the final (even one dedicated to tennis) and think that Soderling was a nobody, when he was actually making his way to being a top 10 player.

The rabid fan tracks players injuries.  They know del Potro hasn’t played since Indian Wells, that Davydenko, although back on tour, is playing subpar tennis, but that this was what happened when he was injured last year in 2009, and it took him about 6 months to get to the top form he had at the end of 2009.  They know Andy Roddick was sick in Madrid, despite having intentions to play.  They may know he skipped Monte Carlo because it was an optional Masters 1000 not required of top players or that he used a veteran exemption to get out of playing Rome.

A rabid fan might know that Soderling is not traveling with Magnus Norman, his coach, who had suffered an injury with his Achilles tendon playing squash, and is at home recovering.  Or that Roger Federer is now working with Paul Annacone ahead of the US Open.  Or the doubles pairing of Djokovic and Nadal is the first time the world’s top singles players have played together since Ashe teamed with Connors.

The Web has provided this huge infrastructure where websites like ESPN can put detailed articles about tennis players that would never have made the local newspaper.  In that respect, the commentators have had to step up their game, trying to find interesting information about players behind the scenes, such as reading the tweets of top players, or conducting interviews to get more information.

So complain all you want about today’s commentators and their personalities.  They are better informed than ever before and, as fans, we can be just as informed by checking out tennis news from selected web sites.