Blistering service at the net Open

Online tennis comes of age with superb coverage from Melbourne.

By PETER SINCLAIR

Many years ago in another life, this breathless old columnist was a competitive tennis-player: young, gilded, supple; barricading the baseline, flying to the net

Those days are gone, but I'm still there at the net - the internet - where tennis continues to be my sport of choice.

Thanks largely to IBM, tennis is one of the web's sporting success stories. NBC may have frozen the net out of the Olympics last year, but it will not be able to pull a stunt like that again.

From now on, as the broadband revolution picks up speed, the web will take its place as one of the major options for keeping up with the play and watching it on demand.

IBM has made quantum technological leaps in presenting tennis online.

From hesitant beginnings, where online play proceeded erratically if at all and attempts at a virtual venue were less than successful, the company has got it all together in a glossy real-time package that made the Australian Open a satisfying online experience.

Marvel at the Williams' cleavage! Weep at the fall of Sampras! Gasp at the impossible flying volleys of Andrew Ilie ...

It was all there: draws, scoreboards, news, photos, sound and video clips, player biographies and plenty of drama.

On top of that were all the interactive features that the net is uniquely able to provide: NetCam ("the next-best thing to being there"); SlamCam, which let you control your choice of five cameras scattered throughout Melbourne Park, including the Rod Laver arena itself; a daily Venue Gallery of people wearing (and doing) silly things, along with virtual tours of the complex.

The online shop offered stuff you might actually want, including one unexpected sellout - Slazenger's giant tennis ball at $A40 ($49.82). About 8000 of these basketball-sized souvenirs sold out in two days to autograph-seekers, many later pirated at double the price.

Even the official wallpaper was arresting.

Best of all, for the office-bound, was the IBM Real-Time Scoreboard, a feisty little applet that, in the enhanced version, offers a comprehensive array of instant stats as the match unwinds. A slimmed-down window is also available to the bandwidth-challenged.

The net doesn't yet replace the television set: the Australian Open last year had an international television home reach of 545 million, an increase of more than 27 million homes on the 1999 figure, and this year looks set to better that increase.

There was nothing like TV3's late-night coverage to savour in retrospect the finer points of each day's play. But in terms of immediacy, especially for the desk-bound, the web is unbeatable.

Can we look forward to an equally satisfying experience next year? Don't count on it.

Ford, the Open's main sponsor, has announced its withdrawal after more than a decade, citing insufficient exposure.

Even worse, IBM looks set to follow suit, a body-blow to the entire sport and, possibly, the next Olympics.

Without the technological giant's expertise, online coverage of the French Open at Roland Garros, the US Open and Wimbledon itself could be a shadow of what we have come to expect.

The ungraciousness of Kafelnikov, the grit of Hingis, the grunt of the Williams sisters could become something you read about later rather than experience live in streaming video from the historic courts of the world.

Let's keep our fingers crossed and hope it doesn't come to that.

But if the worst comes to the worst, I've still got an ancient wooden racquet stored somewhere, faithfully waiting to pat a ball back and forth across the net after all these years in its press.

Links


Australian Open

French Open

US Open

Wimbledon