roddick overrated!? wtf
he is one of the best tennis players on the fucking planet!
Regardless of how well he played today, he's been undeniably overrated and overhyped his entire career.
Tennis needs dominant Americans in order to be interesting. Remember the days of Courier, Chang, Agassi, Sampras, etc? That's when every tennis major or mini-major was a must-see event. Now people just tune in, at most, for the finals of the majors and even today, most people didn't start watching until the 5th set.
Contrast that to golf, which only a few people ever watched on a week-to-week basis for most of the 80s and 90s. Sure, the majors got attention and larger ratings, but it wasn't *huge* until the advent of Tiger. Now, any event he's in gets Thursday-Friday coverage and if he's playing well, people adjust their weekends just to see him play a few holes on Sunday.
People love the Tiger-Phil rivalry that has emerged now that Phil has a couple of green jackets, but a PGA event only needs Tiger in order to get the viewers.
I grew up playing tennis and was a tennis fanatic most of my life, but have almost no interest at all in the men's game today. I think Federer is brilliant, but too much of his dominance came during a time when there were no challengers. Now, it's not his fault that no one was good enough, but I think that speaks to the overall decline in the quality of the game more than to his simply being the best to ever play the game.
