the episode. The Simpsons show runner Mike Scully has said that he thought this was "probably too long to wait before getting the story started." Maxtone-Graham has similarly said that while he thinks these type of openings "are kind of funny", they may be best avoided. However, Scully liked the fact that the staff included a comment in the episode on its "screw you" beginning by having Homer say "I'll bet you didn't see that coming!" to the viewers when he decides to get the tennis court. The writers had a number of alternate endings to "Tennis the Menace" before deciding on the one eventually used. For instance, at one point, the family was to return home to watch the match in which Serena and Sampras faced off against Venus and Agassi on television. The staff changed it to the final one because they did not want it to feel like the episode petered out. "Tennis the Menace" features guest appearances from Andre Agassi, Pete Sampras, and sisters Venus and Serena Williams. All of them appeared as themselves. Executive producer Al Jean directed Sampras, who Jean thought delivered his lines "very naturally", while Maxtone-Graham directed the Williams sisters. Agassi recorded his lines in the summer of 2000. The Williams sisters, however, recorded their lines in Los Angeles sometime in the winter of 2000–2001. According to Maxtone-Graham, the sisters were "incredibly nice and incredibly generous with their time." This is the second episode—after season seven's "Radioactive Man" (1995)—to be animated with digital ink and paint. This kind of digital coloring would not be used permanently on the show until the season fourteen episodes "Treehouse of Horror XIII" and "The Great Louse Detective" (2002). It was used on "Tennis the Menace" primarily to test the technique. The reason for the long gap between this episode and "The Great Louse Detective" was that the staff of The Simpsons wanted to refine the look some more before doing it full-time. Release The episode originally aired on the Fox network in the United States on February 11, 2001. It was viewed in approximately eight million households that night. With a Nielsen rating of 8.2, the episode tied the X-Files for the 41st place in the ratings for the week of February 5–11, 2001. The episode was the fourth-highest-rated broadcast on Fox that week, following episodes of Temptation Island, Ally McBeal, and Boston Public. On August