On Monday, Jason Collins came out as an active NBA player who is gay.  Now, this proclamation is somewhat borderline.  It’s not like Collins is a star player, and while he is technically on a team, he’s a free agent and will need to be signed.  And, unlike, say Jackie Robinson, who played with actively antagonistic crowds and needed someone on a team to champion him, Collins announcement was met with some fanfare, but nothing like it would have been 30 years ago, or even if it had been someone of more importance.  It wasn’t even clear, to many fans of the NBA, which team Collins was playing for or had played for.

Tennis can, in its way, claim it’s been the pioneer in LGBT events, from Billie Jean King and Martina Navratilova announcing they were lesbians at a time when the public acceptance was far lower than it is now.  And really, perhaps the biggest announcement was Renee Richards announcing she was a transsexual, and perhaps the most influential transsexual to have ever lived.  She brought a face to something that would, otherwise, be obscure.

Critics will say that coming out in an individual sport is not the same as a team sport where there are so many more people who can criticize you, all the way from teammates to the coach to the owner to the fans.  Indeed, until Collins came out, no athlete still active in competition had come out in a major US team sport: football, basketball, baseball, and hockey.

Despite tennis’s advance in providing a face to out athletes, it’s been all women lately.  There’s been Gigi Fernandez, Amelie Mauresmo, Rennae Stubbs, to name a few.  But what about the men?

You have to go back decades to find a gay tennis player, and even then, it was not widely known.  The most famous was, of course, Big Bill Tilden.  But it turns out that Gottfried Von Cramm who had a famous duel with Don Budge in Davis Cup, known for a certain call from a German leader with a distinct moustache, to encourage said player, was also accused of homosexual acts.

Still, no male player in modern times has come out.  And it seems strange because tennis is an individual sport, and it’s already made a breakthrough in women’s game decades ago, and yet, no male.

The top male pros are generally either married or seen with a girlfriend.  Djokovic, Nadal, and Murray have been seen with girlfriends.  Federer is married.  There are some players that don’t seem to have well-displayed girlfriends, but that may mean very little.  Jim Courier and Michael Chang didn’t marry until well into their 30s.

So, in a weird way, even an individual sport like men’s tennis has yet to produce a player willing to say he’s out.  It’s been claimed there are some, but they are closeted, presumably to increase their marketability.  For a long time, Martina struggled getting endorsements once she came out.  She was finally seen as something of an elder hero mostly because of her accomplishments with age, sort of the female Jimmy Connors.

The interesting part of tennis is that outside the very top, most fans are somewhat unaware of the players out there.  If someone like Vasek Pospisil were to come out, would anyone know?  Outside of Canada, that is.  Tennis is not a leading sport in the US, so it may also matter a lot less to the public than in a more “major” sport like football or basketball.

It may say something where society is getting to a point where the issue has become something of a non-issue.  Andy Roddick and Mardy Fish tweeted their support to Collins and presumably would be happy to support anyone (esp. given Roddick’s friendship with Elton John who helped him start his charity foundation) ready to take that step.