The art of tennis commentary, where silence is golden and words become pictures
THE ALL ENGLAND CLUB, London — A ball kid scurries along the net before crouching down. The wind ruffles the hem of a skirt. A player wipes the bead of sweat from their brow. They prepare to serve, bouncing the ball, once, twice, three times.
Then it arrives. The percussive thwock of strings meeting ball.
No words have more impact than that sound, and when fans watch tennis on television, they do so in silence. The movements of the players, the geometries that they craft and their speed of thought and shot are all there for them to see. For a commentator, to talk would be to get in the way.
“That’s sacrilege,” Jonathan Overend, a tennis commentator for over 25 years, currently with Sky Sports and previously BBC Radio, said during an interview at Wimbledon. Overend, 53, views tennis commentary as a musical composition, guided by the rhythm of not just the games, sets and matches, but of the action itself.
The server receives the balls. The point plays out. The crowd reacts. The process repeats.
But on the radio, if there is no talking, there is no match, and no tennis. The words are the sport. This division, which sets tennis apart from nearly every sport, aside from snooker and some other target sports like curling, is intrinsic to the art of commentating on it.
That art has evolved just as tennis — and its place in wider culture — has done. Radio commentary now often includes conversational breaks, interjections from different kinds of personalities in the commentary box and even what fans are seeing with their own eyes — or hearing with their own ears — at home.
When Andy Murray was on the verge of his maiden 2013 Wimbledon win, BBC Radio 5 Live received messages from people in the strangest of places, from hot air balloons to supermarket car parks, reliant on the radio to know what was happening on one of the most historic recent days in British sport.
Grand Slam tournaments, which sell their television media rights for hundreds of millions of dollars, have embraced radio not only as an additive audience experience, but also as a commentary vehicle they can market and promote as their own. Wimbledon and the U.S. Open provide radio services for fans on the grounds, who can put on earpieces and hear insights as they sit on court, but the real art of radio commentary is in painting a picture of a match that is otherwise unseen.
“I want people sitting at home to feel like they are here,” Gigi Salmon, presenter and TV and radio commentator for Sky Sports and BBC Radio 5 Live, said during an interview at Wimbledon.
Salmon, 49, opts to describe every ball in a rally. “I just get lost in a world, storytelling,” she said. “That’s how my passion for the sport comes out.”
Here’s how she called seven-time Wimbledon champion Novak Djokovic’s quarterfinal match point against No. 3 seed Félix Auger-Aliassime:
“A second serve, match point Djokovic, he creeps ever closer to the baseline, takes up his position. Second serve into the body, into the hip, the backhand down the line from Djokovic who swivels on the forehand, it goes down the line, the pick up on the backhand from Auger-Aliassime is long.
“And Novak Djokovic has done it! After five hours and 15 minutes, he comes through a five-set epic…”
Radio tennis commentary requires an economy of language and instant but varied vocabulary, especially during a long rally.
“Forehand from B, backhand from A, forehand from B, backhand from A, nobody can listen to that for any length of time,” Rob Nothman, a broadcasting coach, said during an interview. “Tennis on the radio is highly skilled and one of the hardest disciplines.”
Salmon knows this better than most. When she was put on a first-round match at Wimbledon in 2010, little did she know that it would not finish until three days later, after 11 hours and five minutes of play between John Isner of the U.S. and France’s Nicolas Mahut, which ended with Isner winning the final set 70-68.
Salmon leant over the green rail on top of Wimbledon’s broadcast roof, a radio mic in her right hand, a clipboard and pen in the other, and commentated solo for nine and a half hours straight on the second day without going to the toilet. So deep were the crowds on Court 18 that she could not move. She was passed a battery and a bottle of water to ensure she could keep going and, at one point, even the scoreboard broke.
On TV, lead commentators do the whole match while radio commentators usually split sets. It provides an opportunity to rest the voice — fresh pineapple and chamomile tea with honey and lemon are Salmon’s go-to soothers — or go for a walk around the grounds. Stamina is important. In a five-set match, commentators cannot peak too soon and must be in tune to the rhythm of the sport.
For Overend, commentary can sometimes resemble a podcast, with back-and-forth conversation that does not adhere to the rhythm of the match that is going on. Part of being a tennis commentator is tuning audiences in to the shifts in momentum that can be hard to feel without being there in person. Is one player tight? Is the other loose? What is happening on the scoreboard?
“You’re almost like an alert,” he said. “Trying to figure out what might be about to happen to keep the audience on the edge of their seats.”
15-30 is an intriguing point in a given game. If the returner wins the next point, to make it 15-40, two break points are on the line. If the server wins it for 30-30, “we’ve got ourselves a meaty game,” Overend said.
Points like those ones are not the time for thematic conversations or jocular observations, because the whole mood can change in the split-second that it takes for a serve to hit the line or for a shot to go in the net. Early in a game, or at 1-1 in a set, is the time for co-commentators, often former professionals, to provide longer analyses, or add a statistical nugget, a splash of humour or an observation the cameras do not pick up.
In the past couple of years, American broadcasters like ESPN and Tennis Channel have brought on more recently retired professionals to provide more specific analyses than fans have been used to hearing. Andy Roddick, Chris Eubanks and Andrea Petkovic are among some of the strongest. There is more chatter about a player’s groundstroke patterns, and less about who might be in the Royal Box. This is especially important on crucial points.
“It might be a bit of banter, but not too much, and certainly not when the tennis is riveting,” Nothman said.
“At 4-5, 30-40, we don’t need bants. You have the audience in the palm of your hand. But at 5-1, two sets up, it’s a different story.”
Being able to do this requires preparation, just like in any sport. Commentators will usually find out their designated match(es) the night before, giving them some time, but not too much, to do some research into the human behind the athlete.
“It’s more than just a forehand and a backhand, this is a person,” Salmon said.
Often, that research comes in useful, but sometimes it doesn’t get used at all. When Salmon did her BBC Radio 5 Live test, on a match between epochal rivals Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer at the O2 Arena in London, the commentary-box light was not working. She could not see anything, her notes were futile and the set was over in 23 minutes.
Overend had a similar experience during Murray’s 2013 triumph over Novak Djokovic. During Murray’s 2013 triumph over Novak Djokovic, Overend barely glanced at his A4 page, but his eyes were alert as the Scot served for the championship at 5-4 in the third set. Murray brought up three championship points, but Djokovic saved all three and then won the next one to set up a break point.
It was a hinge moment in the match. Murray, who had never won Wimbledon, could start thinking about the gravity of the situation, which in tennis is a recipe for bad things happening.
On the break point, Djokovic walked down right in front of the radio commentators’ corner of Centre Court, at the opposite end from the television cameras, and smirked. “He looked like a Bond villain,” Overend said. “About to dash the dreams of the British hero.”
But then Murray, leading 6-4, 7-5, 5-4, saved three break points to set up match point. Overend picked up his microphone.
“This famous Centre Court could be about to go crazy. Murray serves, here it is, here it is, forehand from Murray, backhand from Djokovic. … Into the net! Murray is the Wimbledon champion! It seems ludicrous to say it. But the British man has just won Wimbledon!”
“It’s that emotion you’re trying to convey, how the moment makes you feel and what it means,” Overend said.
“That, to me, is the art of commentary.”
This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
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