With July just about ready to give way to August, and this Sports Fan sitting in the stands at a pro tennis tournament, it came to mind that I am approaching the one-year anniversary of the birth of this crazy project. It was at the WTA’s Los Angeles Open (now relocated to San Diego) last August that this concept of speed-dating with the entire sporting world emerged. See, my good friend and partner in sports marketing crime The C.O. and I were doing some market research and…well, that’s a story for another time.

Today let’s talk tennis. As in the ATP Farmers Classic, which if you lived far removed from the southwestern stronghold of the Farmers Insurance Company, you might think was sponsored by an agricultural concern. Because if Northwestern Mutual is “the quiet company”, Farmers has been downright mute. Until recently.

For Farmers has suddenly come out of nowhere on the national sports sponsorship landscape. In addition to signing on as title sponsor of the venerable Los Angeles pro tennis event that brings me to the UCLA Tennis Center, they are also the new title sponsor of the PGA Tour’s tournament at La Jolla – known for years as the Buick Invitational. They are also a major sponsor of the WNBA’s L.A. Sparks, and on a more grassroots level provide significant financial support for California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) playoff competitions in a wide range of sports.

This is at first a little puzzling, given that Farmers has been owned since 1988 by Zurich Financial, an international financial services conglomerate that invests quite a bit in sports sponsorship under its own flag. Come to find out however, that Farmers Insurance is headquartered in Los Angeles, and has been since its founding in 1928. Taking center stage in the sports marketing world in Southern California is simply part of a well-executed plan to increase its visibility nationally, and strengthen its presence in its backyard.

Why they’ve waited until now to do so…that’s tough to say. But Zurich Financial recently launched a massive global marketing campaign, the goal of which was to address in a head-on manner consumers’ general mistrust of insurance companies. Clearly, they felt that getting involved in sports was a great avenue for building trust – in stark contrast to U.S.-based financial services companies who fled en masse in 2009 from the sports marketing stage, lest they be publicly chastised by grandstanding politicians. But I digress.

When we last spoke, I was settling into someone else’s expensive seat to watch a match between Robby Ginepri and Rainer Schuettler. Ginepri was struggling to overcome a string of unforced errors, and finally in a fit of pique, he slammed his racquet to the ground with such force that it bounced off the surface and somersaulted into the stands. Rather than hustle over himself to apologize to the woman hit by the racquet though, he waited for the ball boy to retrieve it. As this was being done, Ginepri headed in that direction as well. I assumed that he did so to apologize, but rather than address the woman, he turned his full attention to inspecting the racquet.

To my mind, the crowd reacted quite unusually to all this. At first there was a groundswell of heightened murmuring that, had it been almost any other sport, would have grown into a boo. It quickly died down however, for to boo would be uncivilized and such rude behavior in this setting would probably be cause for ejection. Unless you are a professional tennis player. And an American. This is John McEnroe’s legacy to the game. I immediately became a huge Rainer Schuettler fan and settled in for the remainder of the match.

Schuettler did indeed win the match, 6-3, 3-6, 6-4. To his credit, despite his petulant performance on the court, Ginepri was gracious in extending what looked like heartfelt congratulations to his opponent. But the lasting image I will have of him is of boorish behavior. Not quite as despicable as Serena William’s conduct in actually threatening a volunteer during a tournament last year, but in the same general category. Maybe that’s why I’m not a big pro tennis fan.

What I am a big fan of are the quirks and traditions that set each sport uniquely apart. And one of those quirks in tennis is the way in which players receive the tennis balls to be used for their serves.

At each end of the court are stationed two ball kids, who are tasked with the job of supplying the player about to serve with a choice of tennis balls. For some unknown reason, the way in which this is done is for the ball kid to stand at attention with arms raised to the heavens, holding a ball in each hand. When the player motions for a ball, the ball kid, with arms still stretched skyward, “dispenses” a tennis ball from the chosen hand. The word “Pez” comes to mind. This looks for all the world like an innocent kid is being robbed at racquet-point by the player – providing a source of endless entertainment for me. But then again, I’m easily amused.

Beyond amusing, and lapsing into the realm of spellbinding, was a match later in the day between Somdev Dewarman and Janko Tipsarevic.

                   

Dewarman is a collegiate legend – the only player to have made it to three consecutive NCAA singles championships, the latter two of which he won. When he graduated in 2008, the University of Virginia retired his jersey. His short pro career however, has seen its ups and downs, and he had to advance through the qualifying rounds in order to even make the draw here in L.A.

                   

In contrast, Tipsarevic has been a fixture on the ATP since 2002. He appears much older than his 26 years, and perhaps that stems from his hobby of reading the books of Nietzsche, Dostojevski and Goethe. As the #6 seed in the draw, he was the highest-ranked player that I had seen to that point, and he carried himself with a little bit of a rock star swagger. The first thing that came to mind when I saw him was a Serbian version of Bono.

This match shaped up nicely as a classic battle between the Young Gun and the Cagey Veteran, and it did not disappoint.

Dewarman came out blazing, winning four of the first five games with serves regularly in excess of 120 mph. It looked like he was going to quickly dispatch Tipsarevic in an upset, as the latter appeared to be sleep-walking through the first set.

I can’t say for sure whether this was deliberate or not, but down 1-4, Tipsarevic began to slow down play by challenging several points in a short period of time, thus exhausting himself of that option early on. He lost all of his challenges, but the disruption in flow seemed to work in his favor. And when he won a long rally to move within 4-5, he suddenly became very animated.

From there it was a clash of pure power versus strategy. On more than one occasion, Tipsarevic sent his energetic opponent running from side to side to return shots from the baseline – and then elegantly executed a soft drop shot to win the point. He did just this to win the point that sent the set to a highly entertaining tiebreaker that Tipsarevic eventually won 11-9.

That seemed to break the spirit of Dewarman, who dropped the first three games of the second set before recovering. It was too little, too late though and Tipsarevic, now firmly in control of the pace of the game, ground out a 6-2 win in the second set.

Speaking on behalf of Cagey Veterans everywhere, I couldn’t have been more pleased. I think I pulled a muscle clapping though.