... in tennis.
But, starting next week, will (former?) tennis player Mark Philippoussis find love on the NBC summer reality show Age of Love? This age-oriented dating show will have the 30-year old Australian choose between ladies in their 40's (Cougars!) and their 20's (Kittens!). Oy! So why do I even bring this up?
Well, let me tell you about my Mark Philippoussis story....
(That black box below was for a video that never loaded... )
Back in the mid 90s I got to live out one of my fantasies... I was a tennis journalist/photographer for a little online magazine created by some of my online tennis buddies. It was the early days of the Web and it was quite the thing to be an "online only" entity... most of the time I spent explaining to folks how I worked for a magazine that you couldn't hold in your hands.
On the side, in this new online age I also created a tennis stat page for one of my favorite players at the time, Monica Seles. This was before either tour had their own websites and it was a place for people to come as I presented win-loss records, head to heads, etc. Since I had some success with that I decided to do a similar page for a male player. Since I didn't want to try and do all the research (actually going to the library and looking up match results!) I had to do with Seles, I decided to go with a newer player... and yes, you guessed it... it was a teenage-ish Mark Philippoussis. The page was just on-court stats, no homo lusting... though I will certainly admit that his looks didn't hurt when I was deciding on a player.
Here's the story... I'll try to make it brief. I am at our local tournament, I request an interview with Mark via the tour's media person... get it and given a time and place. Having chatted with some other journalists about my stat page, word gets back to Mark's "people"... as the "next big thing" player he already has a sizable entourage. While I am waiting for him, Mark's coach sends over his 6-ish year old daughter to tell me "Mark can't talk to you"... WTF??? This is how they handle things by have a little girl do their dirty work?? I eventually track down his "manager" (or he tracks me down)... and starts to grill me about the webpage... what's on it, why did I start it... and we get to the point "who gave you permission to use his name"... and other legal-actiony threats. So much for providing free publicity or a public service for their player, which I told them as much!
Anyhow... long story short... I travel to the next tournament, a pretty prestigious tournament in the California desert and try to go about my business and do my best to dodge these people. Ultimately, the manager tracks me down and apologizes for the misunderstanding. I guess this is nice and I should feel vindicated... but at this point, any enthusiasm has soured ... I pull the web page shortly thereafter and that's my Mark Philippoussis story.
In all honesty, I doubt Philippoussis ever knew about any of this... these coddlers were far too protective I am guessing to have him worry about much of anything. While he did go on to some success, making the finals of 2003 Wimbledon and the 1998 US Open... he probably is thought to be one of those players who never reached his potential... chronic injuries played a part, but the distractions of fame and fortune and an alleged love of fast cars (and the ladies?) likely didn't help either... worse yet, tennis "next big thing" ended up being his countryman Lleyton Hewitt, who rose to the #1 ranking as well as winning a couple of Slams.
So while I harbor no ill will towards the guy, I am still mildly amused by this dip into a reality dating show... and particularly the way they promote him above...
With his combination of stunning good looks, success, and charm tennis superstar Mark Philippoussis may very well be the most eligible bachelor in America.
Mama always said "if you don't have something nice to say..." ... so I will just bite my tongue on most of those descriptors... but I'll still tune in for at least the premiere, if for anything else to see "hunky fan favorite" and host, Mark Consuelos (aka Mr. Kelly Ripa).
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