Golf vs. Tennis

How did this come to pass? Every year brings a new crop of tennis-is-dying articles, with a familiar list of theories. Changes in racquet technology have made for a faster, duller game. Too few colorful personalities at the top of the game, and too few Americans. Poor TV coverage. These are more reductive than helpful. The rise of golf and the decline of tennis can be explained by the changing popular perceptions of the games. In the '50s and early '60s, tennis and golf were aspirational sports, part of the American upper-middle-class package: If you wanted to join, you played. Tennis, as it outgrew its country-club demographic in the late '60s and '70s, gradually became more of a sport than a lifestyle. Most tennis was no longer part of a day at the club and all the upturned-collar conversation that entailed. It was simply a couple of hours of hitting a green ball back and forth over a net.

The irony is that golf has thrived and tennis withered precisely because tennis has worked so hard to expand into a wider demographic. In the '70s and '80s, more public courts were built, more outreach programs were started, and racquets got cheaper and easier to use. Andre Agassi, in his younger, wilder years, played in black denim and lime-green Lycra in order to, as he said last week, "bring something to the game that would maybe impact those that don't normally watch it, maybe to draw interest to the game."

Golf has shed its clubby trappings much more slowly. Tiger Woods never plays tournaments in shorts, let alone black denim and Lycra. All three American majors this year were held at private clubs. For better or worse, golf has remained an aspirational sport in the American consciousness, an emblem of the road to success and prosperity. Golf's tent got bigger—and more meritocratic (even Tony Soprano plays golf)—but never lost its peaked shape. Tennis, by becoming a mere sport, plunged into an identity crisis, and was left out of the bounties of American aspiration.