Tennis - true suck

I loved tennis in the 70s and early 80s. Then came the large head rackets made from composite materials. Then came Ivan Lendl, who was a cyborg with some recognizably human qualities. After him came Stefan Edberg, who ushered in the age of the machine. Tennis, I predict, will be the first sport where humans will be actually be replaced by androids, where the stars of the game will be the labs that produce the top players. Some might miss the human element that live players brought to the game, until they remember that the human element that pervaded professional tennis was uniformly petulant, gutless, and juvenile. I predict this shift will occur in 2026, after the death of the last person who might have been able to articulate exactly what the Davis Cup was, as well as how and to what end it was contested.

The practical problem is this – about 95 percent of the time with tennis, you can tell who is going to win the match by the first set, and it doesn't matter if it's a first round match in Abu Dhabi or a grand slam final between the top two players in the world. Once in blue moon, there's a classic match that reminds you of how entertaining the game can be, but if you don’t watch a lot of tennis, you have to be Powerball lucky to stumble upon it.