Welcome back to the Monday Tennis Briefing, where The Athletic will explain the stories behind the stories from the past week on court.
This week, the Madrid Open’s beautiful weather created a classic tennis media problem, world No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka kept eking out wins, and Casper Ruud showed that he contains multitudes.
The curious case of the disappearing tennis player?
After a Madrid Open at which the power went out and players raged about ball marks on the clay not aligning with electronic line calling (ELC), another issue occupied the minds of many fans who watched the tournament on television.
During several daytime matches at the Caja Mágica, sections of the broadcast feed — sometimes one quadrant of the court, sometimes half the picture — were flooded with dazzlingly bright light. So bright that the players and the ball would disappear whenever they entered it, making the sun seem like a portal to another dimension and making the match borderline unwatchable.
This is part of a wider problem in tennis, whereby the architecture of certain venues — especially ones that aren’t purpose-built for the sport — turns what should be a spectacle into an eyesore. The orientation of the court, the position of television cameras and retractable roofs can all become problematic, leaving watching fans baffled as to how the elite level of a sport can fail so basically. Perhaps even more baffling is the extent to which the very obvious problem of players disappearing from view goes unmentioned by commentators. Drawing attention to a negative experience is not desirable for broadcasters, but pretending it’s not happening is also doing a disservice to the people watching.
Away from Madrid, tournaments in Halle and Berlin, both in Germany, and the Italian Open, in Rome, also suffer from the shadowy court patterns, some from stadia and some from overhanging flora, but all of which draw ire from fans.
Short of redesigning courts, introducing awnings for broadcast or only playing tennis at venues used exclusively for the sport, not a lot can be done. But with tennis competing with so many other sports for eyeballs, these issues are really not welcome.