How Do You Spell Douche? S-I-M-M-O-N-S

Bill Simmons, like Carl Everett, does not believe in the existence of dinosaurs. You know why? If Bill Simmons does not experience something first hand then that event did not happen and was not noteworthy. Whereas if he did experience an event then the event immediately becomes incredibly significant. I will call this the Simmons Corollary. As a part of the Simmons Corollary, if Bill does not like something then that certain something is struggling and needs help. Bill is incredibly self centered. If he were Charlie from Willy Wonka he would have thought they were making all the candy just for him. If he went to a funeral he would think that everyone came to hear him speak. You get the point.

Now he fucked with tennis.

As a disclaimer, I played tennis in high school and pretty much my whole adult life. I was not a champion but I definitely love the sport and still play as much as I can to this day. This article is ungood.

http://sports.espn.go.com/espnmag/story?id=3446552

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?

Yes.

Amazingly, many sports fans would say no. Maybe they'd flick over to NBC a few times to "monitor the action." Maybe they'd swing by for the fifth set.

Granted, the ratings for the Finals of both the men's and women's tennis matches got a 1.8, which is fairly low. Overall viewership of the French Open is up though. You should know this, it is on your company's channel.

http://www.multichannel.com/article/CA6568961.html

Also, consider this and the fact the French Open is not quite as popular as Wimbledon and the U.S. Open and realize tennis is not struggling that much.

But I don't have a single friend who'd watch four hours of tennis on a Sunday morning and, I'm guessing, neither do you.

This is the real problem. Bill does not have any friends who watch four hours of tennis on a Sunday morning, so he assumes no one else does either. Does anyone else realize how egotastical this is? Here is how his brain works:

"I don't have a child who is autistic, I don't have a single friend whose child is autistic, so autism must no longer be a condition children are born with. Great, let me write an article about it."

Even though I don't watch soccer, I am not going to be so self centered as to say no one else likes the sport. As a Simmonsologist, I say he has the worst case of only-child-syndrome I have ever seen. Everything is about him.

But when was the last time you watched a big match from start to finish?

A week and a half ago. I agree that not everyone is a huge tennis fan, but not everyone is a huge NBA basketball fan either. I would actually argue more of America has a stronger stance against the NBA than they do tennis, it just so happens basketball is more popular in your mind than tennis so you write about tennis.

When did you last have an argument about something tennis-related that didn't boil down to "Who do you think is hotter?"

Here is the wonderful thing about tennis. It is an individual sport where each player plays another player one on one, so there is no need to argue, the match decides it for you. How novel and quaint! There is no homefield advantage, though there is certainly surface advantage, but each player is on a level playing field generally. As the Cranberries said, no need to argue.

Oh, and it is not Lindsay Davenport that is hotter.

When tennis develops its own version of Tiger—first Pete Sampras, then Roger Federer—the guys do almost more damage than good.

This makes no sense. You would think a dominant player would make the sport more popular and fun, but Bill says no. I wonder how the dominant tennis player, Roger Federer, has damaged tennis, but we will never know because Bill does not explain. So far he has proven he knows three current player's names.

Now he explains in horrible terms how tennis is different from golf and Federer kills everyone's interest.

We see the best tennis stars as the Ping-Pong player at a family gathering who destroys all the uncles and cousins, and eventually kills everyone's interest in playing Ping-Pong for the day.

Obviously Bill was never good at Ping Pong nor tennis. I am good at both and personally like to get everyone's interest picqued in the sport by beating people left handed. (I am right handed.)
See? I would just brag about myself if I wrote this article, but isn't that a little better than what he writes?

Golf is a sport that hinges on luck and timing, streaks and slumps, and the quirks of different courses.

I feel like a woman at a bar Bill is trying to pick up. "Oh my God, so does tennis, they actually have so much in common. What do you like to do for fun?"

This is my main criticism of Bill Simmons. He does no research. None. Zippo. Zilch. Tennis players also have streaks, slumps and timing. You may recall Agassi not playing well when he was married to Brooke Shields. I also recall that tennis is also played on several different surfaces, like grass, concrete and clay, so I think the different courts have quirks as well in tennis, just like golf. Unless Simmons has seen Tiger hit the ball off clay lately.

But for Federer to dominate, it's completely conceivable. And boring.

Imagine if Simmons did any research before he started spitting any columns out. He would know that Federer can not beat Nadal on clay and would not write this last sentence. Federer is #1 in the world and is dominate, but it is not boring because he does lose tournaments, and most of all can not beat Nadal in the French Open. Now imagine if Tiger could not beat Phil Mickelson in the U.S. Open of golf. Bill would probably not find it boring even though Tiger dominates everywhere else, but for some reason he finds Federer being obliterated on clay as boring.

Also, if he did any research, he would know despite Federer being #1 in the world, Nadal has a winning record against him. So not boring.

By contrast, a great tennis career always unfolds the same way: Guy kills himself for a few years getting to the top and staying there; guy gets bored; guy starts sleeping with actresses/models; guy drops in the rankings; guy makes a brief resurgence; guy loses hair and retires; guy disappears forever.

Or it could unfold like Pete Sampras and every other tennis player besides Andre Agassi, who you just described: Guy kills himself to get to the top, has great matches against his biggest rivals, guy begins dating an actress and continues to perform well on the tennis court, guy never drops in ranking until later in his career, guy retires, and finally plays exhibition matches against current top ranked player and beats him.

Simmons career could be described like this: guy works at a bar and becomes one of the first bloggers, guy begins to write for a major online sports web site and almost revolutionizes the idea of writing a column, guy marries some woman and has kids, won't shut up about them so he can go to Hell, guy gets lazy and only writes articles that involve him not having to do any research, guy begins to see a backlash against him so puts himself in a position to not be critiqued, guy realizes he is over his head at a national online web site and begins to cater to his niche audience.

This has to have happened 47 times since I was 10.

One instance fits the description you described. Andre Agassi. I would ask him to name one more but he is a little bitch who protects himself from critiques from outside sources so he does not have to defend anything he says. How can he get by with just saying shit like this? I have no problems with observations and opinions but this is very wrong.

Another big problem: Tennis got too fast (thanks to high-tech rackets, superior conditioning and 130 mph serves), which turned it into a young person's game. Remember an aging Jimmy Connors willing himself into the 1991 U.S. Open semis at age 39? Those days are long gone.

That was fucking awesome and I do remember it. I just don't see how superior conditioning is a bad thing. So Bill's plan to get tennis more popular is to use wooden rackets, have fat old people play and make sure the serve speed is slowed down. Brilliant plan. This is equivalent to using a peach basket and making the ball out of real horsehide to get back to how they played basketball in the 1950's. When he runs ESPN8, I hope he acts on this plan.

The game has evolved to a faster version of itself, and that's that. But we'll never see anything like Borg-McEnroe again. The equipment prevents it.

There is this thing called women's tennis. It is personally my favorite because the points last longer and it is more like what Bill wants. I bet he does not even know there are women's tennis tournaments or even a women's tour. He does not even mention it once. If he does not really know this, then no wonder his friends don't want to play "Who do you think is hotter?" with him.

But these days, succeeding at tennis lends itself to being an exceedingly boring person. You need to be calm, focused and diligent, 24 hours a day.

Just like with the Andre Agassi example above, Bill takes one example and tries to make it work for everyone. Roger Federer is boring, that does not mean every tennis player is.

A quick list of tennis players who are not boring (I am too lazy to look up some spellings):

-Andy Roddick
-Novak Djokavic
-Rafael Nadal
-Maria Sharapova
-Serena Williams
-Venus Williams

There are plenty more but you get my point. On the court, boring and focused, off the court, not boring.

Now Bill's fixes for the struggling sport of tennis:

Fix No. 1

Allow cheering, booing, hooting, chanting—anything short of hooliganism—during matches.

How will this help exactly? It would cause the level of play to go down.

If A-Rod can hit a 101 mph fastball at Fenway with fans yelling about his sexual preference, Venus and Roger can handle a second serve amid some background noise.

When has A Rod had to hit a 101 MPH fastball at Fenway Park? Probably never, so quit exaggerating.

Here are the problems with Bill's horseshit fix:

-Hitting a serve and a baseball pitch are not the same. I would prefer a tennis player did not only hit the ball back at a 50% pace. If the crowd was louder I am going to go ahead and predict it would make it harder for the tennis player to concentrate so the points would be shorter, thereby not fixing the problem.

-Also, in baseball the batter does not have to swing at every pitch, in tennis every serve, if it is in, has to be swung at and there is a lot more ground to cover to do so.

-A Rod also does not have the pitch hit back at him immediately after he hits it.

-You said yourself tennis requires focus, "You need to be calm, focused and diligent, 24 hours a day," how will noise help the focus situation?

Tennis and golf are the only sporting events at which you're expected to drink liquor and not make noise. How does that make sense? I don't like being anyplace where I might be shushed. It's just one of my rules in life.

You are allowed to make noise, just not during the swing or during the points. It's not that hard to understand. Besides if you drink liquor that often then you are a pansy. Drink beer, be a man. Besides, how old are you that you have to make noise at all times?

Fix No. 2
You can't have four "majors" when absolutely nobody cares about one of them. Why not make the Australian a major mixed-doubles event?

They already do that and no one watches. This point absolutely blows.

Would they fall in love, like they do in Dancing With the Stars?

Just keep drinking your liquor and watching dancing on television, princess.

Fix No. 3
Change the set format—make women play best of five, men best of seven—but tighten them (to first to four games) and extend tiebreakers (from first to seven points to first to nine). It's the Short Attention Span era, and there's no going back.

I don't understand why you would do this. Let's do the math since Bill is a fucking illiterate.

The minimum games a woman would play currently: 12 games
The mininum games a woman would play under Bill's plan: 12 games

The minimum games a man would play currently: 18 games
The minimum games a man would play under Bill's plan: 24 games

Also the tie breakers will now take more time by increasing the points needed to win it. This would lengthen a tennis match and not even come close to shortening it. This is the single dumbest idea Simmons has thought of ever.

Yup, our attention is occupied every second of the day, and that cripples tennis worse than anything else.

So let's make it worse.

By adding sets, shortening the length of those sets and extending tiebreakers, we'd be redistributing the number of points and increasing their collective importance.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Bill has to be the most retarded fucking person I have ever met in my life and I promise you, I meet some fucking stupid people every day and all day.

Which of the following situations makes each individual game or set more important:

A. One game playoff series
B. One set as a part of 5 sets
C. One set as a part of 7 sets
D. A seven game playoff series

The collective importance of something is magnified when you decrease the times a person has a chance to achieve that something. If you get 7 sets to win, it makes each set less important than a five set match. This is not that hard of a principle to grasp.

It's a radical move but a logical one. See, tennis didn't change. We changed.

These changes would ruin tennis. Burn in Hell asshole.