Chasing Tennis Stars

Well, three out of four ain’t bad.

News writing is never simple when you don’t have someone or something to write about. I was supposed to show you a transcript of an interview with world number one tennis player, Roger Federer.

The interview is there, but it was not done by me. Long story, but worth telling.

Federer played former world number one Pete Sampras in the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur on November 22, 2007. Spain’s Rafael Nadal and France’s Richard Gasquet played each other on Tuesday, November 20.

I was supposed to have five minutes with each player. Reuters, one of my clients, wanted me to ask each of them about the match-fixing controversy in tennis.

On Tuesday, I interviewed Nadal and Gasquet and wrote an article about how they are confident of catching Federer. You can read the article here.

I had also asked them about match-fixing but wanted to save my quotes until after I sat with Sampras and Federer the next day.

On Wednesday, I had my five minutes with Sampras and was about to go inside the room to interview Federer only to be told by organizers that time was running short and the players were in a rush to have dinner with Malaysia’s deputy prime minister.

Naturally, as world number one, Federer’s quotes were the most important to the story. Still, I discussed it with the Reuters Asian sports editor and we agreed that something had to go out that night.

We had to somehow work Federer into the story and the result is this article, done in simple news writing style.

The next day, the Reuters reporter from the Kuala Lumpur bureau, Hsu Chuang Khoo, contacted me and told me he was going to watch the match.

I told him there was no point two of us going for one match, so I would stay at home

Couple of hours before the match started, I got a call from the organizers saying Federer had agreed to pay back his five minutes about an hour before he was due to go on court.

I contacted Chuang and informed him about the interview. We agreed that he would complete the interview, phone the quotes over to me, and I would file the article.

And that’s the story, and here’s the article.

Check out my website about news writing and learn how you can write like a journalist.