Completely missing the point on Tiger vs. Federer

In a June 16 article for ESPN the Magazine, Bill Simmons (the Sports Guy) lays out his theories on why tennis lags behind golf in popularity and what can be done to bring the sport back from the dead. Unfortunately, he completely misses the single most important reason why the casual American fan won't be watching Wimbledon (or any other major tennis tournament) this year is that Federer, Nadal, and Djokovic -- the only players with legitimate shots to win a major -- aren't American. I guarantee that:

• if Tiger and Mediate met in the (tennis) U.S. Open finals while Federer and Nadal meet in a playoff to decide the (golf) U.S. Open, most Americans would watch Tiger and Mediate, not because Tiger is a "better personality" than Federer (they have roughly the same personality, to poke at another of his theories), but because Tiger and Mediate are Americans and Federer and Nadal are Euros.
  
• if no American had won a golf major since 2003 (the year Roddick won the U.S. Open), while Americans had dominated major tennis tournaments during that time period, Simmons would be writing about why golf was "once a successful mainstream sport"

It's really as simple as that. That's really the only substantive point I have to make, but just to rub it in, SG also makes the "the game of tennis has gotten too fast for the equipment" argument, saying

When John McEnroe and Björn Borg had their "Battle of 18-16" at Wimbledon, it wasn't serve-and-volley, serve-and-volley, serve-and-volley

...which was a valid concern 10 years ago when "Pistol Pete", Patrick Rafter, and their ilk were on top of the tennis world, with Agassi as "the counterpuncher", but the top players have largely not been serve-and-volley players for several years, so the points are lasting longer (than 10 years ago; with today's conditioning, I don't think we can go back to the pace of the Wilander-Lendl Finals).

As far as the claim that

succeeding at tennis lends itself to being an exceedingly boring person. You need to be calm, focused and diligent, 24 hours a day

...apparently, he's never seen Djokovic doing imitations. Next!