In the past, Gelf has answered some of Bill Simmons's seemingly rhetorical questions. We found that our answers often didn't match the ones he implied. Recently, Simmons wrote a piece in ESPN the Magazine about the state of professional tennis. Once again, we found Simmons assuming we would answer his questions in a vastly different way.

He begins the article by asking, "If I guaranteed you that the 2008 Wimbledon men's final would be the best tennis match of the past 20 years, would you watch it?" Why, yes, Bill, I would love to watch that. "When was the last time you watched a big match from start to finish?" The men's French Open Final was less than two weeks ago. "When was the last time you attended one?" I usually go to the US Open when it comes around. "When did you last have an argument about something tennis-related that didn't boil down to 'Who do you think is hotter?' " Just this week, a friend and I had a heated discussion about whether the Simmons article was arrogant and condescending or simply lazy and inaccurate.

I was arguing the latter. Simmons has stopped watching tennis himself, and assumes the world has too—though, paradoxically, he admits the ratings have been steady. To save the sport, Simmons recommends three radical, and—might I add, borderline brain-dead—ways to fix the game. 1) Allow crowd noise. 2) Make the Australian Open a mixed-doubles tournament. (This one makes absolutely no sense. There already is an Australian Open Mixed Doubles tournament, and not all great singles players enjoy, or are even good at, doubles play.) 3) Change the format to best-of-five abridged sets for women and best-of-seven for men, because some people don’t have the patience to sit through a 30-minute set. The last argument is tantamount to arguing that some people only watch the fourth quarter of basketball games, so let's do away with the first three.

Jon Wertheim, who covers tennis for Sports Illustrated (and is a Varsity Letters alum), sees Simmons's column as emblematic of the challenges men's tennis is facing. "Honestly, this should be required reading for the tennis suits," says Wertheim."Not because it’s filled with insight or realistic suggestions for improvement. But because, sadly, it’s illustrative of a real problem tennis faces. Much of the mainstream media—and, by extension, the casual fans who were attracted during the 'Tennis boom'—has turned on the sport."

Even though many of the criticisms cited by Simmons are invalid, they reveal a harsh reality in the average sports fan's mindset. "At some point, perception has become reality," Wertheim continues. " 'Tennis is boring. Federer is boring. There are no rivalries. Ratings are falling.' Most of these points are easily countered both anecdotally and empirically. McEnroe and Borg played each other 14 times; Federer and Nadal have already met 17 times. No rivalries? Really? But because tennis is a) so poorly marketed; b) so structurally screwed up; and c) seeing its nerve center shift overseas, this drumbeat of criticism tends to go unchallenged."

We understand that picking on Simmons can be as original as disapproving of George W. Bush, but we go after him here because, generally, we like his stuff. You don’t see us ripping on Skip Bayless, do you?

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