Tennis, Everyone?

Sunday, Aug. 24, 2003 By YURI ZARAKHOVICH | PERKHLYAI

RALLYING CALL: Zhbanova on the only court in Perkhlyai. She has the talent to make it in tennis, but can she scrape together enough money to compete?

SERGEI GUNEYEV for TIME

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Some parents do sell their possessions to pay for their children's tennis career, hoping for future returns that almost never come. But tennis requires far more funds than the Zhbanovs can raise. An average club charges $10 to $50 per hour to play. Tennis gear costs run into the hundreds. Taking part in a three-day tournament abroad costs at least $1,500 per person, and the kids have to be escorted by their parents. Still, "so many people have dollar signs in their eyes," sighs Larisa Preobrazhenskaya, the legend of Russian tennis, once the first female racket of the U.S.S.R., and coach since 1964 — the one who raised and trained Kournikova. She frets that "crazy tennis parents" motivated by greed are pushing their kids like slaves only to ruin them. It's not just the poor who do it, she says: "Glamour is a more sophisticated drug than money." Parents are bringing their hopefuls to her from all over Russia. "But they're taking horrible risks," she sighs. "And what if all their effort proves in vain?"

At the same time, "tennis parents" remain the only way kids can get discovered. Russian tennis cannot afford scouts to comb the country for talent. Children might catch the eye of a tennis boss as they move upward from local to regional and national tournaments in the RTT. But unless parents like Zhbanova's make an effort to promote their stars and find sponsors, they have no chance.

Historically, tennis was neglected by the Soviet sports machine. It was simply not useful. The state gave priority to Olympic sports that could boost its worldwide image, and tennis was dropped from the Games in 1924. It was only in 1988, when tennis was restored as a medal Olympic sport, that the state slowly began to support the game. The regime kept a special tennis coach for the top members of the Communist Party, as well as spies and diplomats — "to make contacts and develop sources," Tarpishchev says. Tennis was compulsory as well for the cosmonauts' training program as the only game that fully relaxes one's brain.

But the real breakthrough happened in 1990, when Yeltsin was photographed on a tennis court in shorts. His immense popularity at the time helped bring tennis to the masses. "Several factors just fell into place," says Yevgeny Zuyenko, Izvestia's sports editor. The élite followed the leader. The poor saw the money that top players were making. And bureaucrats and businessmen found a way to make a killing.

In 1992, after Tarpishchev, Yeltsin's coach and longtime confidant, founded the National Sports Foundation (nsf), Yeltsin gave it the right to import untaxed alcohol and tobacco. In the next four years, some $9 billion in revenues was allegedly diverted from the nsf. The ensuing scandal helped drive from power the Kremlin faction Tarpischev belonged to, though he has denied wrongdoing and no one has ever been charged. Moreover, tennis also makes a nice place to park ill-gotten gains. "The dirty money invested in courts seems more presentable than the dirty money just tucked away," says Izvestia's Zuyenko.

Far removed from such concerns, Zhbanova doggedly sticks to her practice. Last January, she happened to be in Saransk as rtt officials were showing off the Davis Cup, won in Paris a month earlier by Mikhail Youzhny. It was -25�C, Kalinichenko recalls, but some 8,000 people, including Zhbanova, gathered in the city square to stare at the cup, "so proud and patriotic they felt about our country's great victory."

Zhbanova is more pragmatic. "The sight of that cup," she remembers, "made me even more eager to make it." Then she grabs her racket and gets back to work.