Dialogue: It's a great time to be a sporting couch potato

By JOHN ROUGHAN

This is a golden age on the couch. The new year has served up treats in tennis, then golf, now tennis again and cricket - there is no going past it.

We knew the golf would command attention from the moment Tiger Woods was signed.

And we knew we'd watch the cricket tri-series, much as we'd watch a train crash. We had no idea the Kiwis' new coach, Denis Aberhart, would make them competitive by using their heads.

They drew a test series before Christmas with patience and guile and now they're out-thinking the Australians in one-dayers.

It is particularly pleasant at home on the couch because so far the eternally confident Aussie commentators have no idea what is going on. Richie Benaud, Bill Lawry and Tony Greig were still talking about "New Zealand's disastrous start" the other night while Cairns, Harris, Vettori and Co were quietly strangling the Australian finish.

It's a treat, but the surprise of the summer is tennis. The Australian Open has been on screen in our household often this week. That is not unusual when a grand slam tournament comes around, but this time it is not my fault.

Normally it is just me sitting engrossed in those big baseline exchanges that make up the modern game. I've tried telling the others that tennis is a mental contest as much as a physical one and you can see it if you watch closely.

But they seldom stay long enough to notice the players wrestling with their temperaments, concentration or confidence. The longer it takes, the better, I say. It is in the grand slams, where a match may go to five sets, that fortunes can fluctuate several times and you see epics of mental resilience.

For a week or two every May, June and September I sit up half the night to savour the different delights of the French, Wimbledon and US Opens. But when the tour comes closer to our time zone, I'm usually outvoted.

Not this week. The reason, I can only think, was in Auckland a fortnight ago. The impact of Anna Kournikova must have exceeded the dreams of those who enticed her to the preparatory tournament here. People who rarely watch tennis tuned in and stayed tuned after her exit. Many are still watching.

Tiger Woods did the same for the NZ Golf Open last weekend, which I'd have thought was obvious. Yet two days ago on this page a secondary school teacher of commerce, Peter Lyons, argued that the likes of Woods and Kournikova are paid much more than they are worth.

According to his reading (and, heaven forbid, teaching) of "pure market theory" differences of income between people in the same trade ought to reflect their different levels of productivity, which is a function of their level of skill, education, training and natural talent.

Yet income inequalities in Western economies over the past 20 years had widened, he wrote, by much more than those differences of "human capital" could explain.

One of the more interesting theories for that, he thought, was a "winner take all" tendency of markets to reward a few participants with disproportionate incomes on the basis of astute marketing rather than superior quality, reputation rather than performance, or maybe the sheer luck to be in the right place at the right time.

He suspects the attraction of "winner take all" incomes accounts for the popularity of careers in law, marketing, fashion design, sports and entertainment, and the shortages of aspiring teachers, nurses, engineers and machinists.

This, he believed, was hindering the country's economic performance. He thinks students should be guided away from careers in which the rewards are high for a few and towards those where expectations are more realistic.

And we wonder why we cannot develop top tennis players these days.

It is a wonder, after all the attention Kournikova has attracted for the game, that we are not hearing the usual call for a dedicated, state-funded academy.

We have hundreds of academies in this country. One of them, Rotorua Boys High School, has an exceptional teacher of golf and some of his proteges featured in the tournament with Tiger.

Any parent of a child showing exceptional golfing potential should be making arrangements for secondary school in Rotorua.

We could have a high school offering an exceptional environment for young tennis players, or for numerous other talents that need the company and competition of peers to develop to world class.

The reason Rotorua BHS is the exception rather than the rule is that schools in this country are geared, and once again zoned, for egalitarian mediocrity.

The guiding principle is that every child has the right to attend the nearest state school at which they should find an education no better or worse than anywhere else.

This is getting a bit sombre for summer. There's another week of Melbourne's tennis coming up, and more cricket. I'm going back to the couch.