I have a real problem with sportsmanship. That is to say, I think that I am generally a pretty good sport. However, I am unconvinced that sportsmanship is a characteristic that can be credibly self-assessed. In my experience in tennis, I have played and watched some stunning examples of poor sportsmanship from people who have later extolled their own virtues of that attribute to me. While I strive to be fair, respect my opponents, and exhibit courtesy on the court, there will always be some granular level of self-doubt because sportsmanship is an attribute that can only be determined by other people. So while I try my best to embody courtesy both on and off the court, the best I can do is sincerely hope that I am succeeding.
I bristle at the notion of “superior” sportsmanship. The primary reason is because I have a binary mental model for sportsmanship informed by my electrical engineering education and a lifetime working on cyber-enabled systems. The simplest way to explain my thought process is that I regard sportsmanship as either a true or false condition. Behaviors and actions are either sportsmanlike or not. There is no sliding scale. In tennis, no player should receive accolades for behaving according to the courtesies of the sport that are expected of them.
The (now-deprecated) text from Principle 1 of The Code from the 2001 USTA Friend at Court hints that the original spirit and intent of the rule may have reflected a similar mental approach or ethos.
Courtesy. Tennis is a game that requires cooperation and courtesy from all participants. Make tennis a fun game by praising your opponents’ good shots and by not:
- Conducting loud postmortems after points;
- Complaining about shots like lobs and drop shots;
- Embarrassing a weak opponent by being overly gracious or condescending;
- Losing your temper, using vile language, throwing a racquet, or slamming a ball in anger; or
- Sulking when you are losing.
USTA Friend at Court 2001 , The Code, Principle 1
When I look at the structure of the text, I know exactly how a software engineer would code the logic. Depending on the language used, it would be a giant if-then-else tree, a case statement, or a switch construct. The default assumption would be that sportsmanship is TRUE, and then a series of cascading evaluations would examine specific behaviors to determine if the value should be updated to FALSE. Put more succinctly, The Code, and particularly the longer, more verbose versions, start with a baseline expectation of courtesy, and go on to define a litany of behaviors and actions that are not sportsmanlike.
In other words, we don’t know what sportsmanship really is. Rather, we have a long list of things that we know it is not.
This is why I struggle with the concept of sportsmanship awards and recognition in general. Part of that tension is intensely personal and I will share one specific PTSD-related reason for that on Sunday. However, at the fundamental root of it, I think that sportsmanship awards frequently evolve into a vacuous popularity contest.
At the same time, the USTA and (as far as I can tell) every other tennis advocacy organization has a persistent desire to give out sportsmanship awards. In fact, promoting and supporting sportsmanship is closely aligned with exactly what those groups should be doing. Handing out awards is a tangible way to show activity toward executing that part of their mission. As long as courtesy is supposed to be woven into the fabric of our sport, sportsmanship awards are unavoidable and inescapable.
So, I accept that it is a given that sportsmanship awards will always be a tool used by the administrative advocacy side of tennis. However, I think that modern technology can actually help us gather data, perform analysis, and make better decisions on which players actually merit being singled out for elevated sportsmanship recognition.
How we can pull that off is the subject of tomorrow’s post.
