If anyone’s a tennis fan, they would know who these 2 guys are. It’s a rather old video, but it’s the first time I’m watching this extended version. On the tennis courts, both of this fierce competitors puts on a serious face to focus on every point, every shot, every moment of the game to achieve their ultimate goal of winning titles and becoming the best tennis player in the world. However, in this video, we see a side of tennis players not often revealed to the general public. The way media has portray this two men are serious, fierce competitive warriors, even during interviews, press conferences, or TV appearances, they are somewhat “coached” not like how they should play tennis, but how they should carry themselves in front of the camera.

A certain code of conduct has to be observed when it comes to such shooting, and we see here that even the top tennis players, while pulling out miraculous, out-of-this-world tennis shots to score points, they are still humans after all. And every human being are programmed with this things called emotions. We see a whole different side of Roger Federer, the man on the right with the grey collared tshirt, laughing non stop to the point where we can hear a little hint of frustration from the producers instructing him not to laugh. Does that really work? Somehow to me, if I were laughing as hard as he was, and someone were to tell me to stop laughing, it just provokes me to laugh even more.

These professional athletes have gone through much training, not just training on the tennis court on how to be the best tennis player, but training to look a certain way, to talk or behave in a way that is easily identifiable and expressed through mainstream media. Is this healthy for the both sporting and media industry? Are advertising corporations having too much control over sporting athletes with brand sponsorships, and endorsements to the point where athletes are pretty much selling their names to generate income? This might cause a stir whether athletes are in it for the money or have they lost focus on their main goals which are to perform well in tournaments and capturing the top rank?

Then again, without all these publicity, these 2 gentlemen might not have been as famous as they are today. Owe it to mainstream media in publicising their key milestones of their career. When Federer won his 15th Grand Slam, breaking Pete Sampras’s 14 Grand Slams, of most Grand Slams won by a male tennis player, people who weren’t tennis players or tennis fans started turning up at tennis tournaments around the world. And all these were driven by mainstream media (TV, radio, tabloids, magazines and more).

Like many industries, I believe that both rely heavily on each other and there must be a balance between both worlds. Sports and media are always seen together, and maybe a little closer than we think. While athletes are performing on the biggest stages in the world, media will always be on the sidelines, cheering, condemning, commenting, or good’o commentating.