Tennis Column

The Decline of the Masters

2011-11-15T12:00:00.000-08:00

Nope, I'm not writing a column about golf's version of Wimbledon - I'm talking about the year-end championships that used to have all the cachet of a major, and had the one thing that the modern incarnation does not - interest outside of tennis.

The year-end championships of tennis have gone through so many iterations over the years, it's hard, even for the most ardent fan, to keep track of what it has been and become over the years. So imagine the difficulty of getting space "above the fold" in major sports media today, which is the surest measure of the popularity of the game outside the game.

The World Tour Finals, one of the most idiotically named championships in the history of tennis, is the current version of what used to be known as "The Masters", and until 1990, it was magically more than just a tennis tournament - it was an event that the sports world followed almost as closely as the crowned jewels of the game (the four majors). And in a rare moment of agreement with John McEnroe, I think the move away from Madison Square Garden was the beginning of the end for the luster that once accompanied the event.

Of course, in his native New Yorker-narcissism, he thinks the answer is to move it back to the garden, and while I think he's on the right track (and wouldn't disagree with such a move), I think the event is missing something that the other majors have in abundance - an identity. And it is by finding its identity that I think this once great sporting event can return to the pantheon of great sporting events, where it belongs.

In 1970, two years following the advent of open tennis, Grand Prix tennis had been initiated with the help of Jack Kramer, as an answer to the disparate hodge-podge of semi-professional circuits controlled by anyone with enough money to cobble together what passed as a tour. It competed with the WCT championships held in Dallas, which was based on results from the WCT tour, a tour run by Lamar Hunt as an answer to the open invitation to Grand Prix tennis which was controlled by the ITLF.

The first year-end championships were held in Tokyo, which happened to be the highest bidder, and in their never-ending, insatiable appetite for a bigger payday, the event moved six times in six years, to tennis hotbeds such as Paris, Barcelona, Boston, Melbourne and Houston - where it promptly had a problem.

Nobody outside of tennis particularly cared about the event because the rules for qualification, the format of the tournament itself, and the players that participated, were about as reliable as predictions of the weather. In the end, the perceived value of the tournament, outside of tennis, suffered badly, and so too did the event.

Then in 1977, somebody came up with a brilliant idea - bring the mountain to Moses. For the first time in a series of 13 glorious years, the Masters was played at Madison Square Garden - then the mecca of sports entertainment - and with it came all the cachet the tournament could hope for. Sure, along the way there were questions about the format, the rules of qualification, and of course the quality of the tennis. As a matter of fact, very often the tournament was played in the year after the year for which qualification was determined - so late it was in the tennis calendar. And complaints about injuries and fatigue were seen as just a subterfuge for players to tank some matches in favor of bigger fish to fry.

Nevertheless it was an event that people outside of tennis covered with almost as much gusto as the majors. And why wouldn't they - initially the popularity of Connors, Borg and Vilas, would give way to the triumvirate of Connors, Borg and McEnroe, and then Connors, McEnroe and Lendl. In all three cases, the differences in personalities and the personal conflicts between some or all the heads of all the tennis families provided the base, spine and glitter to make it a great event. But as the top players got old, retired, or lost their personal animus towards one another, the event petered. And as Madison Square Garden became less and less of a cachet, the brilliant minds at the newly anointed emperors of tennis (the ATP tour) decided to chase the money and move the event in 1990 to, where else...Frankfurt.

Huh?

That's right, given that the game's dominant players were becoming predominantly European, and given the money they offered to host the tournament, Germany became the new mecca of tennis. First it was Frankfurt from 1990 to 1995, then that other internationally known metropolis, Hanover, hosted the event for a stretch from 1995 to 1999. And as you might expect, despite the star power of Andre Agassi, Pete Sampras and everyone else, the tournament slowly lost its identify, and as a result (in my opinion) its luster outside of tennis.

Along the way, it just so happened that when the ITF was frozen out of control of everything but the majors in tennis, they decided (quite rightly) there was a big, gaping hole that they could fill, and promptly initiated a competing year-end championship called the Grand Slam Cup. And because one thing the ITF is very good at hiding behind is tradition, they at least had the good sense to keep it in Munich for nine years from 1990 to 1999 as well. The other thing they good at hiding in front of is money, but this time, they smartened up and put up an astronomical $3M payday to the winner of "the other" year-end championships if they also won a slam that same year. At the time, this was an astronomical sum of money - more than any of the majors, and way more than the ATP Tour World Championships.

As the ATP's year end championships slowly but surely caught up with the prize money of the Grand Slam Cup (money problems caused them to reduce their prize money to make it closer to the ATP's season finale), the latter suffered, and had to change when the event was held, as well as include a women's championship for two years 1998 and 1999 (both not surprisingly won by Venus Williams and Serena Williams respectively), in an effort to remain relevant. It didn't, and eventually was subsumed by the Tennis Masters Cup in 2000 - itself an homage to both year-end championships. They all figured half of a big pot of money is better than all of a small pot, so did the only sensible thing and merged.

But once the Masters moved from MSG, and the Grand Slam Cup lost its purely capitalist appeal, what was left was an event that served as nothing more than a book-end to the ATP tour nine flagship events, and an anti-climactic denouement to the year's major quadrilogy. This interested nobody beyond the game. Within the game, it can be argued that the importance of the tournament was not only maintained, but improved. After all, points started to count towards ranking and the money was hard to ignore. But something was missing...an identity.

So here's my solution.

If this tournament is really all about the money, then don't be ashamed of it - embrace it! Put the prize money at $10M for the winner if he is both a grand slam champion and finishes the year ranked #1 - you could clip $2M for each of the two conditional compensations, and simply call the winner, if it happens to be someone like Nikolay Davydenko (instead of Federer, Nadal or Djokovic), the $6 million dollar man...I'm only half joking, by the way.

Also, they should put it at the same venue and leave it there for at least 10 years (and if they had a brain, would build a venue that they could keep it at forever). That way, the event and the venue would both benefit from the cachet of the other, and would help to perpetuate the other's viability. This business of chasing the money by changing the location every time someone shows up with a bigger check is the very reason that the women are now furtively begging to join the men at the O2. Although the venue is new, it has sufficient razamatazz to be an event in and of itself. The problem is that, at the moment, it's carrying the tennis. They should each do their own share of the heavy lifting and that's where the last component would come in.

Put the points to the champion on par with winning a major and make the final a 5-set match. Then the money and the points won't seem to have been capriciously handed out to someone who got hot for 8 sets. Making the final a 5-set match, and putting major-level points on the table would be final piece to the puzzle making this tournament everything it should be both inside and outside of tennis.

So, $10M to the winner, major-level points, a consistent venue and a 5-set final. Now who could ignore that?

Grunt Much?

2011-09-28T11:02:00.000-07:00

A lot's been made of the issue of grunting, so here's a little something I found humorous in that vain.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=161g-HYTalo&feature=related

Enjoy it.

The Hindrance Rule

2011-09-13T08:14:00.000-07:00

There's been a lot of discussion about the hindrance rule, and how it was applied in the US Open final Sunday, between Sam Stosur and Serena Williams. Here is the rule as it is written in the USTA rules of tennis which govern this match:

"Rule 26. HINDRANCE

If a player is hindered in playing the point by a deliberate act of the opponent(s), the player shall win the point.

However, the point shall be replayed if a player is hindered in playing the point by
either an unintentional act of the opponent(s), or something outside the player’s own
control (not including a permanent fixture)."

Now let's take a look at the point in question:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XGFBP22EMM

So, there are two parts of the hindrance rule: (1) was it a hindrance? and (2) was the act that caused the hindrance deliberate?

In this case it's fair to say that Serena called out before Stosur got her racquet on the ball, so it was a hindrance. The second question is whether the act that cause the hindrance was intentional, and since Serena fully intended to shout, "Come on!", both parts of the rule apply, and the point was duly awarded to Stosur.

All other discussion about it is pontification, because the rule is clear and so too are the conditions of this point. The umpire had no choice but to call a hindrance, and she did her job. It would have been easier to ignore it and hide behind the crowd and the moment, but she did her job properly and should be commended.

But this has happened to Serena before - with the same umpire. No, not the incident from 2009, that was a different umpire (a young blonde European umpire, yes, but not the same one). Take a look at this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YmblrB_Ftc&feature=player_embedded

Here too, Serena yells out, "Come on!" before the point is over, but the umpire calls a let. The same umpire! So what gives?

Well, first, we must read the rule that governs this match, which is the WTA year end championships, and is thus governed by the WTA rules. There, the hindrance rule is written slightly differently:

"H. HINDRANCE RULE
If a player hinders her opponent, it can be ruled as either involuntary or
deliberate.

1. Involuntary Hindrance

A let should be called the first time a player has created an involuntary
hindrance (e.g., ball falling out of pocket, hat falling off, etc.), and the
player should be told that any such hindrance thereafter will be ruled
deliberate.

2. Deliberate Hindrance

Any hindrance caused by a player that is ruled deliberate will result in
the loss of a point."

Here, the hindrance rule doesn't specify that the ACT causing the hindrance need be voluntary, but the hindrance itself. Unfortunately it cites an example two hindrances that are clear-cut involuntary. But clearly Serena did not intend for the shout to hinder Kuznetsova (even though the shout itself was intentional) and thus the hindrance is involuntary and merits a let.

I don't know why the WTA feels the need to have a different set of rules from the ITF - the USTA rules are exactly the same as the ITF with the exception of the 5th set tiebreak rule, but that's a different story.

Belief: The New Religion in Tennis

2011-09-12T11:45:00.001-07:00

Belief.

That's it. That is it! That's all you ever hear about these days when tennis analysts try to come up with a reason a player suddenly is able to get results that heretofore seemed beyond their grasp. Chris Fowler of ESPN is the patron saint of the belief religion in tennis - traveling the world espousing the kind of pseudo-psychological drivel that drives genuine students of the game mad. Sure it sounds succinct, and seems plausible - how do you win a match that you don't believe you're going to win? It's impossible, right?

Not really. In fact not at all. Of all the things you need to win a tennis match, at the very bottom of the list is belief. At the top of the list is technical capacity and tactical execution. From those two, you develop belief, yes, but by then, you already have everything you need to win a tennis match - any tennis match - and not a damn thing more.

Before I delve into how/why Sam Stosur beat the hell out of Serena Williams for the US Open title, I'd like go on a (very long) tangent on the case of Novak Djokovic, and in particular against Roger Federer. Anybody watching that match could see that Djokovic was not at his best in those first two sets - far from the player who has come to dominate the tour. And no player on tour has preached the value of belief more than Djokovic - it's all you ever hear him talking about, so it has to be true. To win a tennis match, you have to believe you're going to win.

I beg to differ.

Djokovic was down two sets to love, and playing poorly for reasons only known to him - in fact, I would venture to guess that he had no idea why he was losing. That gallic shrug that we see so often from our francophone favorites on tour, was omnipresent in Djokovic those first two sets. The "woe is me" plaintive gazes at the faceless crowd that never seem to be on his side, despite how hard he has worked at being likeable (all over again).

So what happened in the 3rd set? Well for starters, Djokovic stopped making unforced errors (12 in the first, and 8 in the second, versus 5 and 2 in the third and fourth) respectively. Now the false prophets of belief would have you believe that in the third set, Djokovic suddenly STARTED to believe he was going to win the match, even though he was down two sets to love and playing like a bag of dirt - as in, "I got this SOB right where I want him!" But that's laughable. The truth is that unbeknownst to the Chris Fowler's of the world, Djokovic's coach identified a major problem he had when matches got tight in the past, and worked (not so) innovatively to correct it. And the very things they worked on earned Djokovic his victory Saturday, and dare I say his overall improvement this year, and ascension to #1.

Martin Vajda, a coach who I have thought very little of given Djokovic's stagnation as a player since 2008, realized that Djokovic was making a very rudimentary technical error when the chips were down - something that most club players do without even thinking about it, and apparently so was Djokovic. The natural tendency when you're on the verge of winning is to try not to lose it - in other words, keep the ball in play, and don't give the match away with an unforced error - keep the ball in play. To do that, most players subconsciously rely on racquet head decceleration, and Djokovic was no different. So when the going got tough, he would make childish unforced errors.

Ironically, the only way to consistently control direction and spin is to accelerate the racquet head through the point of contact. Vajda decided that the only way to achieve this would be to practice forcing Djokovic to maintain racquet head speed - and the best way to do that is to practice hitting deep hard shots with pace and spin from the ball in hand - like you do with kids when they first learn to play. To hit a solid shot from a ball in hand (or a slow slice, or loopy deep topspin) you have to generate MORE racquet head speed than you do from normal play, because you have no pace to work with coming at you. And this forced racquet head acceleration translates very well in tight points, because your opponents is as likely as you are to take pace out of their shots to make sure they don't make errors. From that training, Djokovic developed a massive cross-court forehand that has a obliterated his opponents (especially Nadal, whose typical response is a slice backhand, which used to trip him up, but now sets him up to pummel with a crosscourt backhand or forehand up the line, both of which were already a great shots).

Against Federer, that shot, struck consistently for the first time with venom in the third set had the opposite effect on Federer's game - whereas Djokovic was able to reduce his unforced errors, Federer's error increased (9, 12, 12 and 13 in sets 2 through 5 respectively) because of the pressure he was under. Whereas in the past he has been able to hide behind a deep slice or rolled ground stroke, reducing his errors, and keeping him in the point, yesterday, he couldn't. And, unable to step in on Djokovic's crosscourt forehand or push it up the line to Djokovic's backhand and approach the net, he was left to try to duke it out from the back and mishit after mishit ensued. So Djokovic's increased power against Federer's off-pace offerings in the third and fourth sets had the added benefit of keeping Federer away from the net - advantage Djoker.

Finally, Djokovic's serve, the bane of his existence for the 18 months before the Australian Open this year, in the 3rd was at 54% first serves, but he won a whopping 92% of those points and 73% of second serves. He also had 80% first serves in the fourth set (90% and 54% first and second serve points won). Basically he was unbreakable. And as anyone will tell you, being unbreakable puts a hell of a lot of pressure on your opponent's serve, and guess what happened to Federer's serve in the 3rd and 4th sets? The first serve percentage and points won on first and second servers dropped dramatically, and he was broken 3 times in two sets - while he himself earned NO break points at all in those two sets.

So the two things that have made the biggest difference in Djokovic's game this year, the suddenly dominant and reliable cross-court forehand (even in the face of off-pace offerings), and a much better serve, finally appeared in the third set and carried him through to the fourth. This was at a time when he had to realize it was more likely that he would lose than win, so what does the religion of belief have to say about that?

Nothing. Because it's complete BS.

But it doesn't stop there - by the end of the fourth set, he had to believe he was going to win that match - anyone would, given they way he destroyed Federer in the third and fourth. So just when it seems that belief should be on his side, what happened - he got tight again and very nearly blew his chance at an historic comeback. In fact, he was down 2 match points. Now if you think he believed he would win the match down a break at 5-4, with Federer serving at 40-15, I've got some oceanfront property in Nebraska I'd like to sell you. In fact, last year, facing match point, similarly on his way out, he admitted he just closed his eyes and knocked the piss out of the ball. And a funny thing happens when you say to yourself, "F--- it; if I'm going to lose, I'm going down swining!"

You tend to take a pretty good cut at the ball - racquet head speed.

And surprise, surprise - after not getting a sniff of Federer's serve for the almost the entire 5th set, he belts a winner on the first match point return, to put huge pressure on Federer to close it out at 40-30, to which Federer promply got tight and hit the top of the tape on the next point.

And one last thing - for years there were a lot of questions about Djokovic's fitness - constantly retiring, and breathing heavy anytime the match went long and/or tight. And Bjorn Borg once said something about playing 5-set matches, "I never got tired in a tennis match, so I never panicked when I had to go to 5 sets." And what happens when you panic in a tennis match. You bail out of a point trying to hit a stupid winner, when you should live to hit another shot. And you abandon sensible tactics because you're tired, and don't think you can leg it out. I mean, we've all seen the Djoker scramble frantically chasing down shots in the past, but I always had the feeling that he was just trying to keep the ball in the play - now he only seems to scramble when he has to, otherwise, he's tactically aggressive and sound. And when he does scramble, he's almost as dangerous as he is when he's in control of the point.

Now, a lot of people would have you believe that Djokovic suddenly "believed" he was a better player this year, and that's why he's winning. But nothing could be further from the truth. He identified weaknesses in his games (his serve, his forehand and his tactical decisions), the causes of those weaknesses (a hitch in the stroke production, racquet head deceleration and poor fitness) rectified them (altered his serve motion, practiced with ball in hand, and improved his diet) and suddenly, the causes of his inconsistency were mitigated, a whole new set of tactical options are available to him, and he could execute UNDER DURESS.

I'm not saying Djokovic's belief hasn't increased during this run - to the contrary I know it has. But his belief has come AS A RESULT of addressing technical, tactical and physical problems with his game, getting results and having a blue-print for success. This belief DID NOT come from some idiotic pseudo-psychological exercise in hypnotizing yourself into believing that even though your game hasn't changed ONE LICK, you're suddenly going to win more consistently. That's doing the same thing over and over again and "believing" you'll get a different result - and that's just idiotic.

The belief comes from results, and the results come from making changes - technical changes. To every problem in tennis there is a technical solution, and if you can't execute technically, how on earth are you to "believe" you can win? Your mind follows what your body and game can and cannot do, NOT the other way around. And wasting your time wondering why you don't "believe" you can win, is likely to elicit a whole host of psychological issues, when the obvious solution is just to put in the hard yards and IMPROVE technically.

Rankings in tennis are like the opposite of the Richter scale - going from #2 to #1 is just one ranking, but the order of magnitude in improvements required are much bigger than going from #20 to #10, or #10 to #5, and of all the things that help you make those improvements, belief is less than the least of your problems - it is in fact a distraction.

There's only one kind of person that signs on to the new religion of belief in tennis - and that's the person who neither has the courage, nor the wherewithal to make actual technical and commensurate tactical changes to their game. You get comfortable at #3 or #10 or #20, and you figure, why risk losing your ranking by going out of our comfort zone when you can just "believe" you're going to win and do everything exactly the same way.

If you look at all the players who have stagnated and have made no headway into improving their results, you'll see they're all kool-aid drinking sheep in the belief congregation...and their results are equally distinctive.

The State of Women's Tennis

2011-06-28T07:35:00.000-07:00

At the quarterfinals at Wimbledon, the powers that be may have been delighted at the prostpect of a brand new blonde-haired, blue-eyed, girl next door champion of women's tennis - even if you'd have to be familiar the cyrillic alphabet to read her name on the mailbox. There were no less than four "ova's" in the quarterfinals, six Eastern Europeans, and suprisingly there was just one Russian amongst them, and ironically she happens to be about as Russian as she is a damn monkey, but who's counting. They're all European, and just one of them had a major title to her name, and that was three years ago in Australia, so statitically, we had an 87.5% chance of a new champion. That normally incites a lot of rumination about the state of the game, and I, of course, have my opinion.

First, the return of the Williams sisters at Wimbledon brought so much energy and anticipation - all the more reason it's so disappointing that Venus will have to take a hiatus from the game. It has obviously been a tumultuous 9-12 months for both of them, never more revealed than through the tears of Serena after her first round victory over Aravane Rezai at Wimbledon and the shocking withdrawal of Venus at the US Open. Who could blame them, after facing death and retirement so recently. And for some, the air may have gone out of the Championships when the siblings succumbed to the Slavic invasion (well, Bartoli is french, but I couldn't resist the alliteration). But John McEnroe could have hit the nail on the head when he contended that it's actually good for women's tennis that they didn't come back and win Wimbledon after being away from the game for so long. As good as Federer, Nadal and Djokovic are, I can't imagine them leaving the game for 6 months and winning a major, let alone 12. The same could be said for Stosur's victory at the US Open - unwittingly, she just may have salvaged the reputation of women's tennis.

Having said that, I couldn't help but wonder what happened to all the good will towards Serena at Wimbledon. I mean, on ESPN it was an aboslute love fest, with piano ballads in the background, and black and white slow motion clips of her wiping her brow, and every commentator remarking on how "emotional" it was for her. It was a bit like the film "Quiz Show", hearing one Senator after another commending Charles van Doren for his "soul-searching" testimony - if they hadn't all fallen over themselves to praise her simultaneously, I might have found it more genuine. She promptly let the air out of that balloon by doing two things - (1) making the women's game look like it hasn't evolved one iota, with her domination of the US Open series (and very nearly the US Open itself) and (2) her sense of entitlement and bad demeanor on court in the final, but more on that later.

But even at Wimbledon, when she was getting pounded by Marion Bartoli in their 4th round match, Dick Enberg was forced to admit that the English audience were squarely behind the quirky frenchwoman. In other words, they were rooting against a woman who was just returned from death's door 6 months ago. I think it suprised both Enberg and Mary Joe Fernandez, although only she was willing to confront it. Enberg, rather transparently, tried to attribute it to Bartoli being the underdog. But there was something else about it...something more practical, maybe. Perhaps they too felt it would have made a mockery of the game if yet another opponent failed to beat a woefully out of practice Serena. For, who could take the game seriously if the best player turned out to be someone who hadn't played in a year?

But I digress.

Speaking of Bartoli - has there ever been a player on tour who more epitomizes everything that sticks in the craw of old school tennis? To begin with, her father successfully circumvented the French tennis federation, which in and of itself is not such a bad thing (after all, the Williams sisters circumvented the USTA, and look how that turned out). But Bartholi's game is so bizarre that those of us who enjoy the aesthetics of a well produced one-handed backhand, face the dark epiphany that maybe, just maybe, our concept of the game is well and truly passe. Everything about Bartholi's game smacks of gimmicks; from hitting with two hands on both wings, to the extra long racquet, to the irritating dress rehearal between points. The coup de grace for those of us who long for brave and solitary combattants who rely on their own intrinsic committment and determination, is this irritating habit of looking at her box and shouting "Allez!" after every...single...point. I mean, give me a break, already.

There's something about the "team" concept in tennis that is just plain irritating. Is it the obvious exploitation and suckling at the teet of talent by the entourage? And what of this concept of coaching? If coaching were so crucial and so critical, you would expect something other than the monotonous big babe ball bashing we see sullying our beautiful game with all the subtelty of a cream pie in the face. Instead, every coach seems to give the same awful advice, "Hit it hard and cross-court, don't change the pace, direction, or spin, don't take any chances and whatever you do, don't EVER come to net." That, and the, "Just play YOUR game," speech is about as helpful as handing them an anvil to carry with them on the court. They'd all be better off coachless - at least they'd have more money to take home. I mean, at the very least, you'd think one of these coaches, who are obviously way over-paid, would bother to teach one of these ladies to serve properly.

But I digress.

Unfortunately for Bartoli she represents all of this to those of us who consider ourselves, or would be considered by others to be, old school. And so perhaps there is a kind of sick satisfaction with her ultimate demise - if only it were at the hands of a player who wasn't merely less irritating, but no less monolithic than Sabine Lisicki. At the end of the day, women's tennis today is a game that is beset by worthless hangers on, including parents and coaches who do worse than prey on the insecurities of these young women - they in fact encourage them - the better to make onself indispensible.

And thus the team concept in tennis lives on.

I feel this is an issue that needs to be addressed, and commentators blithely glossing over this phenomenon does not help. Unfortunately many of the commentators are current and former coaches, and as such would be very brave to strike so near to their own livelihoods. Most of these coaches should do the honorable thing and fall on their swords (quit) when they have so woefully under performed in their stewardly duties. Frankly, I'm surprised that the greats of tennis' past have been silent on this issue, but they're so busy promoting the game to its own detriment, they either haven't noticed, or haven't the fortitude.

I firmly believe that women's tennis would be better off if players couldn't play professionally until they were at least 18 years old; that would give them more time to develop complete games, and they wouldn't start playing professionally until they were in the burgeoning stages of their own adulthoods, rather than the throes of a their parents' mid-life crises, dreams and aspirations. This would give them the independence to drop some of their entourage if they sought genuine improvement, including parents or coaches. As it is now, they are children when they turn professional, they develop the habit of dependence on their "teams" that continues long into adulthood, and this doesn't do anyone any good.

But then we get to the case of Sam Stosur...ah, Sam Stosur. Those of us who observed her new physique and viciously produced forehand, following her 2 year hiatus recovering from lyme disease, wondered if we were witnessing the advent of a brand new kind of women's tennis. One more akin to the men's game (which is developing it's own brand of monotony, by the way - but that's for another post). Her movement can be graceful, particularly when setting up the inside-out forehand. And her serve is a real novelty - above average consistency AND above average power - and spin that's simply off the charts. I thought her breakthrough was there for the taking at Roland Garros last year, where she beat Justine, Serena and Jankovic...but then that pluckly little Italian threw a monkey wrench in that plan. And it seems she had some trouble coping with that loss. (Speaking of Schiavone, what a breath of fresh air she is as well - but that too is for another post).

But she slowly and surely progressed this year. Her results were awful - failing to reach the quarterfinal in any tournament for the first six months of the year (with the exception of Dubai). But, she was adding a little more net play and a slice to her game that she hadn't really mastered until the US Open. That slice won her the final. She'd played Serena in Toronto and hadn't really mastered it. And her forehand, played too far behind the baseline, sat up right into Serena's wheelhouse, and boy did she ever make it look ordinary. Fred Stolle commented at the Hopman Cup in January that he felt her backhand was her albatross, and in that assessment I believe he was correct, but he offered no advice on what to do about it. It is a painfully manufactured stroke, much like her forehand, but lacks the bite, disguise or consistency.

But in the US Open final, rather than coming over her backhand, she consistently sliced, forcing Serena to hit up on both her forehand and her backhand, which she promptly dumped in the net time after time due to her lack of topsin. To compensate, Serena started taking pace off those shots, and left the ball short and in the middle of the court, which Stosur promptly belted inside-out and inside-in on the forehand side. So adding an effective slice to her backhand repetoire actually helped her forehand. And as anyone who's played against someone who mixes slice with topspin can tell you, it's very hard to maintain your rhythm and play your best.

Hmm...a slice backhand with a purpose - what a novel idea.

I've always wondered why it is nobody tries to do anything different against Serena - and after reviewing the players at the "top" of the game, the reason is obvious - nobody can. They all play the exact same way, all have the exact same problems, and all of their weaknesses play right into Serena's strengths. No variety, nothing to throw her off her rhythm, and no serve; so, it's no surprise that she has had no problem dealing with them one by one. And all this idiotic talk about being intimidated by her - what do they think? That she's going to reach across the net and beat them up? What are they so afraid of? Losing? They're doing it every week anyway, so what difference does it make if they lose to Serena? You may as well try something different against her - that is, if you have something different to try - which of course none of them do.

And I don't feel sorry for Caroline Wozniacki (Who? oh, yeah - the #1 player in the world). She's made almost no effort to go beyond being a backboard, and until she does, she will not only not win a major, but she'll continue to symbolize much of that's wrong with the WTA. Take a look at this clip of a match between Martina Navratilova and Hana Mandlikova in 1985 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMqaJz510E4&feature=related). The athleticism and shot-making was phenomenal, and I suspect a relic in the history of the game that we'll only come across when sifting through the archives, like archaeologists discovering a new method of firing pottery in the stone age. Fascinating, but never more.

I sure hope I'm wrong.

Finally, I have never been particularly impressed with Serena's attitude on court - some excuse it by saying it's her personality and that gives her her edge. I think that's nonsense - plenty of women were just as determined and committed (if not more so) and exhibited very little of the entitlement and paranoia, that always seems to eek out at the most inopportuned times with Serena. In her defense, I believe her general behavior throughout the tournament was excellent - better than most of her contemporaries. No tantrums, no crying on court, and no desperate yelps of tension masquerading as the side-effects of exertion (i.e. no 3-note grunts). She was all business and I loved it - until...

The littany of bad-behavior all elicited by a correctly applied hindrance rule was almost as comical as it was ugly. First, she demonstrated her ignorance of the rule. That's not so bad - I'm sure most players on tour barely know the hindrance rule. Not that it would have made a difference - she didn't shout, "Come on!" before the point ended because she thought she'd get a let!

But then she proceeded to accuse the umpire of being the same one who screwed her over in 2009 against Clijsters (she was not) or (as McEnroe suggested) in 2004 against Capriati (wrong again), and thus concluded that the umpire had it in for her. When she was properly assessed a code violation warning for verbal abuse, she then went on a tirade telling the umpire to walk the other way if she sees her in the locker room, which could be constured as threatening, that she truly despised her, and that she's ugly...on the inside. Because after insulting her, and calling her a cheat, the last thing you want to do is tell her she ugly too - at least on the outside.

Just like in 2009, the umpire was just doing her job (and doing it correctly, by the way). I don't think Serena deserves a ban for her behavior, it was just ugly - at least she learned not to let loose with the kind of foul language and physical threats that got her in trouble the last time around.

At the end of the day, Sam Stosur did women's tennis a big favor by winning that match the way she did. If Serena had won, after unjustly lambasting the umpire, it's all anyone would have discussed, and the victory would have been hollow to all but her most ardent supporters. Never mind the fact that there wouldn't/couldn't have been more salient evidence that the women's game hasn't evolved at all in 12 months, and that doesn't do anybody any good. If Stosur can sustain her level of performance, it may force some of her contemporaries to do more than close their eyes and hit it as hard as they can.

Well, at least we may see one or two more slice backhands.

A STAR IS (NOT QUITE YET) BORN

2009-09-28T09:15:00.000-07:00

He had a lot of opportunities to pack it in on that Monday evening in Queens – down a break in the second and receiving to stay in the set, or up a break in the 4th and giving it back before serving to stay in the set.

But he didn’t.

Because Juan Martin del Potro is, if nothing else, tough as nails and supremely determined. The fact that he won two of his sets in tie-breaks is an indication that the mental resolve to stay in the moment and struggle for a result is reminiscent of the very pantheon of men he seeks to join and maybe even take for his own one day…maybe.

For all his technical prowess, hitting his strokes with massive power and direction on both sides, with consistency and steely resolve, one thing missing from his game that makes me wonder how long he’ll be able to continue generating the results he had in the 2009 US Open, is the plan B.

For some players a plan B is critical to any chance they have of winning on the ATP tour – Fabrice Santoro comes to mind. The man has about 100 different ways of winning a tennis match, and that’s because he has to – because his plan A isn’t quite good enough to take a majority of players on tour. There are others who demonstrate a plan B – Federer and Nadal are supremely adept at identifying what it is their opponents do worst and exploiting it mercilessly for the remainder of the match. It’s one of the (many) reasons both of them win so often.

But if you look at the final he played in Queens, I didn’t see much of a plan B from del Potro – in fact I saw more of plan A. That can come in handy at times – when the going got tough he doubled down and went for it, and it’s been a long time since anyone witnessed the level of power and direction on strokes in a grand slam final he displayed. Basically he knocked the cover off the ball when he had to, and it got him out of a lot of trouble, and put so much pressure on the great champion across the net, that he wilted in the 5th with the prospect of del Potro’s level staying where it was and his own Plan B not getting the job done.

But there have been other occasions where this strategy hasn’t worked very well for del Potro, and it is this element that appears to be missing from his game that makes me wonder how many more times we’ll see him bludgeoning his way to victory in a grand slam in the future. Injury questions aside, his rather disappointing failure to deliver a second point for Argentina in the Davis Cup Final of 2008 is an indication of what concerns me. There he wasn't playing his best tennis for the entire match, and while his injury certainly played a role, he did not appear to be in control of the match when it occurred and that failure probably cost Argentina the Cup. I have not doubt that Nalbandian would have taken care of business in a 5th rubber against Feliciano Lopez.

Often in tennis, longevity of success is mistaken for maintaining a very high level of play for a very long time – not so. The great ones don’t play well all the time, just often enough to win titles – in between moments of brilliance, the greats muddle their way through games and sets by doing whatever it takes to win – change the pace, come to net, find angles and serve their way out of trouble. Federer tried and failed, mostly because del Potro didn’t let him, but partly also because his serve lost his way in the sets that it counted. But you can probably count the number of times on one hand that's happened at that stage of a grand slam - usually by then Federer's plan B has taken the sting out of his opponents and eliminated any hope of their victory (Wimbledon 2007 and 2009 being the glaring exceptions).

Tennis is a game of individuals, and stars make the game what it is – so it’s normal that we should wonder aloud every time someone comes along and dethrones a great champion, if a star has just been born. But that is a question that cannot be answered until the end of next year. The case of Novak Djokovic is a good example of how the march towards greatness is fraught with changes of direction, pace and belief in the ultimate achievement of an objective.

By the final of the Australian Open in 2008, it looked like he had conquered the two men who had come to dominate the game so pervasively for the last 5 years. He won in Miami beating Nadal on the way in the quarterfinal, but in Montreal he beat them both, a feat that only Nalbandian and del Potro have able to repeat (the former did it twice in 2007 in Madrid and Paris, and the latter did it for the first time at a slam at the US Open - both Argentines I might add). His level was very high and he seemed to be playing consistently at a level that allowed him to challenge for all the grand slams.

But something happened to him along the way – the pressure he put on himself to perform, coupled with his own inability to consistently win when not playing well (as he did in defeating Federer in both Miami and Rome this year) cost him any chance of winning grand slams. He retired against a resurgent Roddick in Australia, and absolutely bagged it in Paris against a very good clay court player in Phillip Kohlschreiber. At Wimbledon he lost rather tamely to a Tommy Haas who was in the form of his life at the time and at the US Open, couldn’t muster up the twists and turns needed to derail Federer’s march to the final. Unable to hit him off the court like del Potro, Djokovic tried everything in his book to compete and did so far more impressively in 2009 than he had in 2008, despite actually winning a set last year. You never had the feeling that he could win that match, but in 2009 he had his chances and just couldn’t take them.

My concern for del Potro is that I don’t really see anything in his game beyond playing his socks off that would elicit a similar result in a slam, as long as two men named Federer and Nadal are still in form - and to me that is a recipe for a sophomore slump in the mold of Djokovic in 2009. That’s not to take anything away from his success, but I’ll need to see him find other ways to win matches, develop a plan B – because no matter how good his plan A is, there will always be days like his first round loss to Lleyton Hewitt at Wimbledon this year, where it’s not enough to get him through.

Unfortunately this does force me to reserve judgment on whether the game of men’s professional tennis has quite yet seen the birth of a new star or already witnessed the moment of his greatest brilliance.

BLAME IT ON STEFFI

2009-09-08T08:58:00.001-07:00

There’s been a great deal of discussion at this year's US Open about the problems that top WTA players have serving today. Almost as curious is the paucity of good analysis as to source of their problems. If all of a sudden women on tour are having problems properly serving, and all at once, it makes sense to compare the serves of women say 20 years ago, to modern players and analyze the difference.

I am a firm believer in the philosophy that all problems in tennis are essentially technical – even the ones that appear to be mental, and nothing has made that more apparent to me than the serving issue. In the past, weilding unforgiving 85 square inch 15 ounce wood racquets, a player couldn't get away with bad technique on the serve - today they have oversized composites to help them hide the fact that their technique is sorely lacking.

I had a soccer coach years ago who used to hammer us on technique – the way he did this was to get our fitness training in first. Running hills, sprints, push-ups, sit-ups, etc.: he really ran us through the wringer before we ever touched a ball. By the time we got around to ball work, our legs were like jelly and our lungs were on fire. The result: when you’re that tired, and wondering just what on your body is about to fail you next, the only thing you have rely on, the only thing you have left, is your technique, because at that point, it's the only thing that makes you kick straight.

I think it’s exactly the same with tennis.

Tennis is a game that demands constant adjustment to many factors to perform at a high level. There are a lot of factors that can affect your ability to hit the ball properly: your opponent's play, your level of fatigue, your movement – these are all physical factors. Ironically, of all the factors that can affect your play, pressure, whilst existing only in the mind of the player that allows it to is the only factor that is completely intangible. That doesn’t mean, however, that it doesn’t have a physical impact. In fact the variation created by all the physical factors are mimicked by pressure. You hesitate slightly and the ball isn’t where you’re accustomed to hitting it. You’re tentative and you don’t move into the position you should. You try to just keep the ball in bounds, and you lose racquet head speed, even though that’s the fastest way to lose control of your strokes.

So while pressure is an intangible factor, it has a physical consequence, and as such, the only thing that will allow a player to manage pressure, and all its consequences, is the same thing that will allow a player to manage all the other actual physical variables that affect her ability to hit a proper stroke: that thing is technique.

The best serves in the history of tennis have one and only one characteristic in common: the point of contact on the stroke is at the optimal point of racquet head velocity. That’s it. Everything else is imagined and totally overrated. In short, if you can hit the ball when your racquet head is travelling the fastest, the speed and consistency of your serve will improve. If you can improve racquet head acceleration and speed it will improve your power and accuracy, but at the end of the day everyone has their limit and generally the limit of women is lower than the limit of men the key is to hit your optimal point of contact every time, so the question is how to do this and the answer is as simple as it is obvious.

The toss.

Take a look at the worst serves on the women’s tour and they all have 1 common characteristic – the toss if awful. The placement of the toss is all over the place and as such, it’s anyone’s guess how often (if ever) they’re going to reach their optimal point of contact. If the toss isn’t out in front, you don’t transfer your weight forward, and you lose racquet head acceleration and speed. The ball on the toss travels slowest just before and after the apex, so if the apex of the toss goes beyond the point of contact, when it finally returns to the point of contact, it travels through it too quickly to consistently hit the optimal point of contact. If the sun is in your eyes, the point of contact on a high toss is obscured even more, and if it’s windy out?

Fegheddabouddit…

So without naming any names, you’ll note that the most inconsistent and least powerful serves in the game (men’s or women’s) are always the ones with the highest ball toss. It sounds simple, and in truth it is, but the problem is that once a player gets into a comfort zone with all the mechanics of their serve, it is very difficult to tinker with the toss with immeidate success – if the movement of the feet and the shoulder rotation all depend on the timing of a toss that soars 3-4 feet above the point of contact, you basically have to re-engineer the entire serve in order to accommodate the new toss – the very toss that’s causing all of their problems in the first place.
That’s a daunting task for a player who will undoubtedly watch their ranking plummet in the process, and because so much money is riding on the ranking, it’s almost impossible for a coach who is largely judged by a player’s ranking to be willing to tell a player the following:

“We need to re-engineer your serve – you’re going to lose a lot of matches while we go through this process, and your ranking will fall, but a year from now you’ll have a better serve and all the points you’ve lost you’ll gain back and then some.” In fact, how do you tell that to someone who’s already in the top 10?

So who is to blame for all of this? Typically in tennis the prominence of one player who appears dominates the game causes millions of players to try to emulate their game in the hopes of re-creating their success. In the case of women and their serves, that player is one Stefanie Marie Graf.

For all her qualities as a tennis player, there’s probably never been a player with more aberrations from sound fundamental technique, that’s had more success in the game. Although this article concerns the serve, as an appetizer I give the Graf forehand – powerful and dominant as it was, it was singularly the most consistent cause for the few losses she incurred. Rarely did Graf lose a match because her backhand went off the boil, and in the worst case scenario her slice and movement would win her 8 out of 10 matches and the forehand was the difference in the ninth and/or 10th.

Why?

Because the point of contact on Graf’s forehand was at a point of contact perpendicular to the flight of the ball – in other words it was very late. It was so late, that the only way for her to keep the ball in the court was to have massive racquet head acceleration and it was that massive racquet head acceleration that gave her all that power. But if the timing on that stroke was slightly off, Graf suddenly became human - rarely, the timing was off because she wasn't feeling at her best, and certain players like Seles or Sabatini would find ways to disrupt that timing, hence their success against her. But generally speaking, if she got the timing right, the racquet head speed she had to generate on her forehand made it the most powerful stroke in women's tennis.

That condition was exactly the same for her serve.

Graf’s serve toss was, at the time one of the highest in the game – with the apex of the toss consistently reaching 3-4 feet above the optimal point of contact. When the ball descended through her point of contact, she needed tremendous racquet head acceleration to meet the ball in the optimal point of contact range, and it was this racquet head speed that gave her all her power and direction on the serve.

Fast forward to 2009 – every idiot and her sister on the WTA mimics the toss on Graf’s serve, but none of the racquet head acceleration and speed, and as a result their point of contact is rarely in the optimal range and the result is the comedic tragedy of faults, double faults and just flat out terrible serves you see on the women’s tour.

So what was the difference with Graf? Why was she able to be so technically aberrant, but successful?

Well, let me tell you a couple things about Steffi Graf – if she hadn’t been a tennis player she could have been an Olympic decathalete, or volleyball player, or a champion in just about any other damn sport she wanted. Once clocked at a 23 second 200m dash, Graf was easily one of the most gifted natural athletes in the world, not just tennis, but she complemented her gifts with a tremendous focus and work ethic that allowed her to maximize her special abilities into her own brand of tennis technique. Her technique is so unique that some players may be able to emulate one or two things about it, but nobody can put together the whole package like she did.

Does anyone think Ana Ivanovic could run 200 meters in total, let alone 200 meters in 23 seconds? Not likely – and the paucity of physical gifts as compared to her idol doesn’t stop there – she also has terrible timing on the serve, but rather than recognizing accepting this limitation and adjusting her ball toss on the serve, she, and oh-so-many other tennis players on the WTA have inherited much of Graf’s technique and unfortunately very little of her inate ability, and hence almost none of her success.

Even Venus Williams, who once was caught smiling at her own meaningless 130mph serve, has one of the worst 2nd serve’s in women’s tennis, and her toss is just as inconsistent as the serve itself. When she has a serve in reserve (i.e. she's hitting a first serve), she has the freedom to go after that ridiculous toss and every once in a while serves huge. But put the pressure of a second serve on her mind, and suddenly the racquet travels just that little bit slower and the bad technique on her toss is revealed when the physical effects of pressure put stress on her very poor technique.

For all the time, money, and commitment that women on the WTA show their coaches, they have been shamelessly rooked in quality of coaching – in my opinion it’s nothing short of highway robbery. When they’re juniors and nobody can serve anyway, a stupid toss on the serve doesn’t reveal itself as a weakness until the bright lights come on and someone stands on the other side of the net that will have a Thanksgiving feast on the results of bad technique.

Well, in the big leagues, there’s nowhere to hide. So maybe, instead of showing-off during changeovers or grimmacing on camera every chance they get, these coaches should earn their money and teach their pupils how to properly toss the ball on the serve, and by doing so, end their woes.

THE PRIVILEGE OF PRESSURE

2009-07-07T07:39:00.000-07:00

Billie Jean King once said that pressure is a privilege.

Aside from reading like a catchy psychological reversal, intended to make players embrace pressure, rather than wilt under it, there may be a whole lot more truth to this.

In light of the fact that Roger Federer has, in the span of two weeks accomplished everything in 2009 that seemed so far from his grasp in 2008, the question becomes two questions: will he play the remainder of his career without pressure, and more importantly, is that necessarily a good thing?

When he won his maiden French Open, Federer was quoted as saying that he could play the remainder of his career pressure free because nobody would be able to say that he never won the French Open. I had my doubts – I thought he could play the French Open pressure free…maybe...but until he reached that magical number 15, the one that ends his obligation to anyone who was withholding his place in tennis history, I felt there would always be huge pressure on him to go 7 and 0 over a fornight just one more time. The plot thickened when his nemesis, exited stage left before the curtain raised – after all, if Darth Federer couldn’t dominate the tennis galaxy when his personal Luke Skywalker was off in the Dagova system, then when would he? Pressure indeed.

But what happens to a great champion when the pressure is off – when the peaks have been scaled, the quiet questions answered loudly, and his face on Mt. Rush-the-net-More sculpted. On this question, history is a dark and murky water way of let downs.

When Pete Sampras won his 13th grand slam at Wimbledon in 2000, he appeared to collapse emotionally under the weight of expectations and the knowledge of the struggle and sacrifice his success required. For the first time that I can remember until then, Sampras cried at the victory ceremony. For a man who scarcely showed his emotions (and when he did, seemed to do so begrudgingly) it seemed the last finger in the dyke just couldn’t resist, and when it broke there was no turning back. It would be another 2 years before Sampras won his 14th – along the way he showed some flashes of his former self – that 2001 US Open quarterfinal with Agassi comes to mind, only to then lose rather tamely to Lleyton Hewitt in the final. When he finally got to number 14, there had been questions for 2 years of whether he still had the game, but more tellingly, it had to be asked whether he still had the heart. He had both, apparently, because he won – so what was the difference?

That damn record, that’s what.

With his white whale slaughtered, Ahab ceased to exist as he had. Sampras made no secret of his love for the history of the game, and never shied away from number 13. Having achieved it, he seemed less than enthusiastic about the daily slog that is the ATP tour, and with a wife and baby on the way, who could blame him. But most importantly – every question had been answered, and but for one moment of defiance when the press began to target his wife with their cynicism, Sampras had little to prove, and very little pressure and his results showed it. Interestingly, 2002 was the first year that the US Open went to 32 seeds, and as a result the 17th ranked player in the world happened to be Pete Sampras. Had seeds been capped at their traditional 16, he may have faced Lleyton Hewitt in the first round, rather than Albert Portas. Maybe he would have won anyway, but it's interesting to ponder.

McEnroe went 74-2 in 1984. He reached 3 grand slam finals, including his only final in Paris, obliterated Connors at Wimbledon, and then ran through the field at the US Open. With the exception of a late night semi-final, also against Connors, that ended Sunday morning, his path to the final was fraught with potentials for Herculean collapses. In the end, he returned, promptly dispatched Ivan Lendl in the final, the only player who had beaten him that year, who himself had struggled to a 5-set win over Pat Cash on the last truly Super Saturday, and was in worse shape than McEnroe. He held the #1 ranking for another year until he lost the US Open final in 1985 (also to Lendl, starting a string of 3 victories in a row at Flushing) but that would be his last grand slam final – afterwards family put the pressure of a tennis match in its proper perspective and lo and behold, McEnroe was never the same mentally. He didn’t turn 30 until 1989, and his run in the Australian Open in 1990 made it clear that he was still capable of brilliance, but when the pressure of expectation disappeared, so too did his results.

Mats Wilander reached the #1 ranking in 1988 by winning 3 out of 4 slams that year – the only crown missing from his cabinet was Wimbledon – an irony probably not lost on him given that he won 2 Australian Opens on grass. But after reaching the end of the rainbow that year, with his beacon obscured by the haze of success, his accomplishments did more than dwindle – he never won another tournament, let alone a slam, and only briefly ever moonlighted in the top 10.

There is a huge psychological component to tennis – and players talk a lot about dealing with the pressure. It’s fascinating because of all the factors involved in a tennis match, pressure is the only one that it totally intangible, and as such, only exists in the mind if the player allows it to. What’s even more fascinating is that pressure appears to be an essential element to keeping a player sufficiently sharp and motivated to succeed, and yet, it is most often cited as a reason a player fails.

In the Wimbledon final this year, it was clear that in a couple of key moments in the match Andy Roddick succumbed to the pressure – namely that backhand volley that floated wide at set point in the 2nd set tie-break. Both players would have been forgiven for feeling the pressure at the moment, and apparently Federer handled it better. It would seem to follow logically that a player playing without pressure would play more freely and presumably achieve more success.

But ask yourself this – when you’re playing tennis are you sharper and more accurate when you’re just hitting, or when you start keeping score? Sure you'll hit a couple of bombs that you wouldn't hit in a match, but you're probably just that little bit more precise when it counts - and it only counts in your head unless you're a pro, so imagine what they're feeling.

I certainly hope that Federer will prove me wrong – perhaps he will prove the anomaly that the absence of pressure makes a great champion even greater, but somehow it doesn’t seem intuitive to me. Now that he has his 15th grand slam, he will be without the privilege of pressure, but will he succeed?

It seems BJK, in this and many other ways, is onto something.

WHY IS EVERYONE SO AFRAID OF GOATS?

2009-06-17T13:10:00.000-07:00

It seems to me there’s been a awful lot of fear of the GOAT debate running around, and for the life of me, I can't understand why. After all, this is sports, and we do keep records: who won a match, who won a tournament and who won a slam. All of these elements are important to fans because it is this very context that gives meaning to sports that separates it from the arts. I may love dancing as much as the man standing next to me, but aside from a few technical arguments on the proper form of this step or that, we really have no context for discussing which particular dancer is better than another.

But that’s not the case with sports.

In sports, and in particular in tennis, it is precisely the context of determining who is the better player in a point, game, set, match, tournament, year and era, that makes it compelling for those who follow the game. After all, you can prefer the tenacity of Nadal over the artistry of Federer, over the pure power of Djokovic; but at the end of the day all those elements are merely means to an end of determining who is the better player by something that is indisputable – results.

Yet somehow results have become the least important element in the GOAT debate, and it appears to have become fashionable to invent new and improved ways to look past the obvious (i.e. results) to something else that is the truest measure of greatness. But in my opinion, and as they say in the south, this is a bit like reaching around your ass to scratch your elbow. Today, the GOAT debate, and more importantly, the fear thereof, has been rekindled by the exploits of one Roger Federer.

As often as the fearful argue against the concept of the GOAT, detractors today typically argue more specifically against Federer as the GOAT. Mostly, they don’t debate his results, although some try to (rather convolutedly I might add), but rather offer variations on the problems with the GOAT argument itself. There are so many variations on arguments against his results as the truest measure of greatness that it is difficult to address them all in a single post, but here are some of the more common ones that are currently a la mode.

THE GAME HAS CHANGED

The argument goes like this: tennis is played very differently in 2009 than it was in say 1929 or 1959 or even 1989, and as such it is not reasonable to compare a player in 2009 to a player from 1929 to determine who was the better player. I suppose if you’re asking if say, Bill Tilden went into a time warp and played Rafa Nadal today, who would win, I think the answer is obviously Nadal. After all, Tilden couldn’t hit 100+ mph winners from behind the baseline, or 140mph serves up the T. Enveloped in this argument is that equipment has changed the game fundamentally – and this is very true. Tilden’s shots probably spun, at that most, 500 times a minute, whereas Nadal’s do so at 3200 per minute. And these changes certainly would make it difficult for Tilden to beat Nadal.

But what about the alternate argument: what if Nadal were transported to 1929 without his modern equipment? I would argue that Rafa would at the very least have to completely regenerate his game to play in full pants on grass (almost all the time) with a racquet half the size, twice as heavy and with strings that impart almost no unnatural spin on the ball at all. I'm sure in time he would figure out a way to beat Tilden...or would he? What about Tilden? If you transported him from say, 1925, and gave him modern equipment, nutrition and accoutrements for 5 years, I'm sure he'd still never figure out a way to beat Nadal...or would he?

The point - this is what makes this argument entirely moot - because who would beat whom is not the question the GOAT debate is trying to answer.

The GOAT debate is trying to determine, given their circumstances who more often emerged as the best player at the most important competitions in their respective careers. In that context, if (God forbid) Rafa’s career ended tomorrow you could hardly say his was better than Tilden’s – after all the pinnacle of both their eras was winning slams and 10 slams is more the 6. But then again, we don’t know what will happen tomorrow and for all we know we have either already witnessed Rafa’s last slam, or the 6th of 20 to come, which in either case, the case would be closed.

So what matters is not whether Rafa could use a slice forehand effectively, or if Tilden ever came over his backhand. It doesn’t matter that Rafa takes 35 seconds between points, but Tilden only played 50 times a year. What matters is that when it mattered the most (namely at the slams) Tilden emerged the best player more often than Rafa, although I am pretty confident that in 5 years, that will no longer be the case. It is, in fact, a macrocosm of determining a tournament champion – we don’t care that my first round was easier than yours, or that I played with wind on one day while you played under the roof. What we care about is who won – and we would no sooner name Ivo Karlovic the Wimbledon champion because I hit more aces than Nadal, than we would consider Rafa the greater champion because he harder than Tilden.

At the end of the day, what the players do either in technique or in results, is merely a means to an end - which is to win the most coveted titles, and it is that measure that makes it perfectly comparable regardless of the fact that the manner in which they achieved that aim has changed.

WEAK COMPETITION

This one is most often cited when comparing Sampras to Federer – the argument is that Sampras' era was full of grand slam winners, and as such, he had more of them to overcome than Federer did, and as such, while they have the same number of slams, Sampras’ slams were harder, and thus he was the greater champion. On the face of it, this seems to be the most damning argument against Federer. After all, very few of his contemporaries have won slams so it seems to make sense that his era was weaker – of course there is a very big problem with this logic.

First, the measure you’re using is not abstract – tennis is a zero sum game – someone wins and someone loses ever single unit of competition in the game – there are absolutely no ties in tennis every point, game, set and match has a winner and a loser. And when it comes to the measure that most use, the number of slams won, it is even moreso a zero sum game (if that's logically possible) – in other words one person wins a slam, and 127 other players who contended lose. And of course there are only 4 slams a year, so if you win 3 of them, your competition necessarily appears weaker because you’ve won more of them.

But does this really speak to the quality of the contemporaries or that of the one who won more often?

Is Federer less of a champion because he won more (and ergo his competitors necessarily won less often and thus qualify only as weaker competition)? I would ask you this – which do you think Sampras would have preferred – to win 3 slams a year 3 times or 2 slams a year 4 times – I’m quite certain he’d prefer the former. Why? Not to sound condescending, but because in sports more winning is better. In the latter he'd have 8 slams, whereas in the former he'd have 9 - but his competition would be considered stronger in the latter because he, in fact, won less often. Doesn't add up and anyone who's played the game at any competitive level would agree.

There’s also another problem – using slams as the measuring stick for the competition of a dominant player, but setting aside that same measure of winning slams for the dominant player himself, creates two separate systems of valuation that are inconsistent, not to mention contrary to the idea of sports and competition. Furthermore, it assigns more value to a player for something that he didn’t do – in other words Sampras gets credit for Agassi winning more slams when he was a contemporary of Sampras. But isn’t there something Sampras could have done that he didn’t that Federer did, that would have made this argument moot? Of course there is; Sampras could have won the very slams that Agassi did; then he’d have more slams overall and Federer wouldn’t even be in the conversation.

At the end of the day, the competition is as strong as you let it be – never mind that Sampras never beat Edberg in a slam or Davis Cup, Edberg is still used to prop up the strength of Sampras’ competition. Another variation of this argument is that although Federer beat Agassi in slams, Agassi was older and weaker when Federer beat him than when Sampras beat him. So by this logic, was Edberg in 1995 better than Edberg in 1992 or 1990 for that matter? Was Becker in his prime in 1995 or in 1989? So why does Sampras’ competition get better as they age than Federer’s? For that you’ll have to ask those who support this argument - because I have no idea...well, I have an idea.

Ultimately there are all kinds of variables on the competition even within a tournament – the Soderling that beat Nadal at Roland Garros was obviously not the same as the one who lost to Federer – but I give two arguments to the contrary – did Federer have anything to do with the quality of Soderling’s play in the final? Of course he did. And can anyone tell me honestly they think Acasuso, Haas or del Potro could have done in their first grand slam final what they did in the 3rd round, quarterfinal and semi-final? Probably not.

Wrapped up in this weak era argument is a microcosm thereof – Federer’s draws have been easier than his contemporaries. Because Federer always seems to wind up playing someone he’s beaten 10 times, you start to think that his draws are easy. But the rebuttal of this is so obvious that it’s easy to miss – if Federer’s draw is easy because he’s playing someone he’s beaten 10 times, doesn’t that speak to Federer’s greatness because he’s beaten so many players 10 times? Is it a sensical criticism that you win too often to be considered that good? Or that it looks too easy? Isn’t it more logical to say his draw is easy because he’s made it look easy, by beating his opponents over and over again?

At the end of the day, the draw is as easy as you make it look. Nobody thought Soderling would put up much of a defense against Nadal in Paris this year because Nadal had just beaten him in Rome 6-1, 6-0, and had lost to him 3 times. But suddenly his draw was harder in Paris – why? Because he lost. So in the aggregate, by winning more, your draw looks easier, and thus you’re not as good as you appear? But does that make sense - doesn't winning more often make you a better player?

The range of variation from stroke to stroke versus from era to era is immeasurable. What remains the same is this – whoever Sampras played in his grand slam final victories, whether it was Andre Agassi or Cedric Pioline, they won 6 matches in a row, but couldn’t win the 7th. And whoever Federer played in his grand slam finals, whether it was Marcos Baghdatis or Rafael Nadal, they won 6 matches in a row, but couldn’t win the 7th. After all, isn’t 7 wins in a row what everyone was trying to do all along? Does the rest of it really matter?

THE #1 RANK

There is no doubt that earning the #1 ranking is a measure of consistency over the period of time the rankings are calculated. Therefore, how many years you’ve finished #1 seems to be a good measure of greatness. I wouldn’t disagree with that. But give any great player a choice between being #1 or winning slams and they’ll all choose slams. That’s because there are so many variations from one tournament to the next, in terms of effort, tours, commitment, etc., that the #1 ranking has a lot of holes in it in terms of determining greatness. Slams, on the other hand, are the only pure competitive pursuits in the game of tennis - everyone covets them equally, and every comes to play. But there are other problems with the #1 ranking as compared to slams.

First off all, you can be ranked #1 without winning a slam – the list of players who have been ranked #1 without winning a slam is short, but damning nonetheless - Ivan Lendl in 1983, Carlos Moya in 1997, Marcelo Rios in 1998. Lendl and Moya eventually justified their ranking, but have the rankings alwasy reflected accurately the relative value placed on various titles? If so, then how could the non-slam winning #1 be possible? At best, even though it often convenes with winning slams, the #1 ranking is a calculated reflection that has only existed since 1973. Before then, rankings were arbitrarily determined by various individuals based on a myriad of calculations and conclusions that included foremost the number of the most important tournaments won but also included factors that changed as the game changed - namely before the game was unified under the single umbrella of the ATP organized tour in 1990.

Even so, there have been cases of players who have won fewer slams than their nearest rival, but still somehow finished the year ranked #1: Jimmy Connors in 1978 won the US Open – it was his only slam that year – Bjorn Borg, on the other hand won Wimbledon and the French Open – guess who finished the year ranked #1.

And on January 3rd, 1983 John McEnroe, who hadn’t won any slams for more than 12 months, somehow usurped Jimmy Connors to the #1 ranking despite Connors having won both Wimbledon and the US Open in 1982. Nobody considers the anomalies as problematic because the second best player at the time and since retained considerable gravitas – but the rankings made little sense then and as such, are not a reliable measure of greatness in the aggregate, because the ranking system has been so clearly flawed and more importantly inconsistent.

HEAD TO HEAD AGAINST HIS GREATEST RIVALS

At the end of his career, Sampras had winning records against all of his major contemporaries, whereas Federer appears to have a losing record to all of his major contemporaries – so how can you be the greatest of all time when you’re not even the greatest of your own era.

To this I give two names – Richard Krajicek and Michael Stich. Both players had winning records against Sampras and both played him often enough for those records to “matter” in the abstract (10 and 7 times respectively). So who was the better player Sampras or Krajicek? Sampras or Stich? Nobody in their right mind would argue the latter in either case and the reason is because they both won 13 fewer slams than Sampras did. In other words, when it comes to Krajicek and Stick, although their head to heads against Sampras were considerably better, clearly the measure of greatness was slams. But when it comes to Federer, somehow the measure of greatness turns to head to head versus Nadal, and Murray (of all people) – one who has no slams to his name and one who has 8 fewer. So why use slam totals to propel Sampras past those whom he lost to more often than he beat, and not do the same for Federer?

In the case of Murray there is no good explanation. In the case of Nadal there is only one good one – Nadal will eventually surpass Federer. Well, then when Nadal surpasses Federer, he will necessarily be the GOAT – until then SPECIFICALLY AS COMPARED TO CAREER OF FEDERER he’s just like Krajicek and Stich to Sampras, but with a few more slams to his name.

The funny thing is – the one player who loses out in this discussion despite years of dominance that exceeds just about any other player in history, is Pancho Gonzales – whereas slam totals is the basis for Sampras’ and Federer’s GOAT candidacy, it is entirely head to head competition that is the basis of Pancho Gonzales’. But that doesn’t do anything for Sampras, who is most often cited as a more worthy claimant to being the GOAT than Gonzales. In fact you won’t get any argument from me if you suggest that Gonzales was greater than Federer – but you will if you say Sampras was – for now they are even, and if Federer gets #15, that’s one more than Sampras and in my view that makes him 1 slam a greater champion.

THEY DIDN'T ALL GET TO PLAY ALL THE SLAMS

It is historically ironic that the championship of the country that has produced more great champions in the history of the game than probably any other (with the exception of the United States) was for so long considered the red-headed step-sister of the other slams. There are a lot of reasons for this that are not germane to the GOAT question, so I'll leave that to another post. What is germane is whether this matters to the GOAT argument.

Basically it goes like this - if all the greats always played the Australian Open, they would have won more slams and thus would look better historically.

Ironically, one of the other legitimate GOAT candidates, Laver, player every Australian Open he could, so that argument is not 100% accurate. But what about Connors, Borg and McEnroe - since they won so many slams on grass, they would surely have won the Australian Open more often, right?

Well, if that's the case, then Sampras and Federer should have won 5 Australian Opens, since they've both won 5 US Opens - oops...they've only won 2 and 3 respectively. In fact, Connors won 3 slams in 1974, and then proceeded to reach the final in 1975 of each slam he won in 1974 - the result - he lost all 3 finals all to players that he had easily beaten the year before, and generaly bettered in his career.

The point, there are no guarantees in tennis, so you can't argue that a player who won Wimbledon 5 times would have won the Australian 5 times, just because the surface was the same - why did Laver go 4, 3 and 2 in Wimbledons, Aussie's and US Opens? They were all on the same surface when he played, so he should have gone 4, 4 and 4 for that argument to hold.

There's another side to this argument - all the slams that were not available to professionals would have added to their career totals. The example given is usually Laver, who finished with 11 slams. Had he been able to play majors after he turned profesional, he certainly would have added to his total. But there's a problem - if Laver had been able to play majors after turning professional, so too would Hoad, Rosewall, Gonzales, Trabert, etc, thus they would all have been in a position to add their totals as well, and more importantly prevent Laver from winning more. At the very least, we must discount his total of 11 by the 6 he won as an amateur and start from there. He may very well have won 10 more majors, but it would have to be added to the 5 he won as a professional, rather than the 11 people normally use as the jumping point to arrive at his hypothetical total.

Thus, it could be argued that the total he arrived at were about right for his career had all professionals been allowed to play majors.

CONCLUSION

We measure who is the best player on a surface by how often they win the biggest titles on that surface. Vilas may have a better record on clay, but few consider him greater than Borg because of their starkly contrasting records at the French Open. We measure who is the best player in a year by how often they win the biggest titles in a year – Connors may have amassed more arbitrarily assigned points in 1978 than Borg, but would anyone say he was the better player that year? No. Why, because of Borg’s results in slams – 2 wins and a final, versus 1 win and 1 final. We measure who is the best player in an era by how often they’ve won the biggest tournaments in their career – so nobody considers Connors a better player than Borg even though he won 30 more titles – why? Because many of those titles were rinky-dink titles contested by rinky-dink opponents. But when every equally pursued the same title, Borg won more – namely 3 more.

So the question is – why are so many afraid to anoint the player who wins the most slams ever as the greatest player ever? One thing is for certain – it has nothing to do with results. And isn’t that more than mildly ironic when it comes to sports?

TO (NOT) PRESERVE THE UNION

2009-02-16T21:27:00.000-08:00

A lot's been said about the UAE denying Shahar Pe'er a visa to play in the WTA event in Dubai, and more importantly, the inaction, acquiescence and disunity exhibited by the WTA and its players. I would love to see the "leaders" of the WTA (and by leaders, I mean its most prominent players) boycott the event. If they were really a player's association (of course it isn't) they would, but it isn't, so they won't, and what a shame that is. Long lost are the days when this was viewed as a players union.

When was the last time anyone in tennis took a stand in support of a player who'd been screwed? Guillermo Vilas was suspended for 12 months for taking an appearance fee in March of 1983 at the Rotterdam tournament - the very same tournament that Andy Murray just won this weekend. While many spoke out in support of him, not a single player on tour protested by boycotting anything in support of Vilas, even though they were all doing the same thing.

This is right about the time when money in tennis began to explode, with players easily eclipsing six-digits in prize money for the most lucrative titles.

The last time anybody on the ATP put up a fight on anyone's behalf was 1973 when Niki Pilic (former German Davis Cup captain and an early coach of Novak Djokovic) was banned from Wimbledon after his refusing to play Davis Cup for Yugoslavia. 81 of the top 128 players in the world boycotted Wimbledon that year, including the defending champion Stan Smith, who's probably about the nicest guy ever to play tennis (maybe him and Barry McKay) and who probably cost himself a second Wimbledon title. Some pretty good players joined him, including Arthur Ashe, Rod Laver, Ken Rosewall, John Newcombe and Roy Emerson just to name a few. It could be argued that they did it for selfish reasons as well - I mean if Yugoslavia could do it to Pilic, who's to say Tennis Australia or the USTA couldn't have done it to them as well? But somehow, after all those years playing professionally, or playing for daily allowances, I doubt their reasons were entirely ego-centric - not 81 players anyway.

Now that was a union.

And there were some ignominious absentees from the band of brothers who apparently didn't see it the way the aforementioned stalwarts did. Ilie Nastase, who probably needed the money for current or future alimony, an 18-year old Bjorn Borg who probably didn't give a hoot, and a 21-year Jimmy Connors, who definitely didn't give a hoot, all played that year - and perhaps poetically all lost. In any case, aside from Emerson, there's probably never been a player who has been so lowly regarded for winning Wimbledon as Jan Kodeš. A good player who never won another Slam in his career, Kodes, it's worth pointing out, probably couldn't have boycotted if he wanted; just 5 years removed from Russian tanks rolling through Prague and an oppressive regime tapping their phone lines and harassing them for their prize-money (and by harassing, I mean threatening their family members).

Irony of ironies: Vijay Armitraj, one of the most successful Indian tennis players in history, played Wimbledon that year. He was just 20 years old, was an up-and-coming player, and lost in the quarterfinal to the eventual champion Kodeš, who was seeded 2nd - his highest ever seeding.

A year later, in 1974, as India was on the verge of its first and only Davis Cup final victory, against South Africa, their tennis federation forfeited the final in protest against apartheid. It remains the only time in the history of the cup that the final has been forfeited.

Armitraj was so upset with the federation that he threatened to quit Davis Cup altogether. He didn't, and had to wait another 13 years before he participated in another Davis Cup final. By then, long past his prime, he lost 1 live rubber to Anders Jarryd and one dead rubber to Mats Wilander. Karma? Who knows...

By 1988 Armitraj had refused several opportunities to play exhibitions in South Africa for political reasons, so it just goes to show you that sometimes, even a man with every reason to take a stand, who has to be dragged kicking and screaming to do so, can eventually come around. So while it may be stupefyingly naive of me to wish that tennis millionaires today would be willing to do the right thing and boycott Dubai, it is not without precedent.

Apparently the wealthy athletes of today, like many wealthy people in society, have no interest in preserving any union.

NEW MONEY, SAME OLD PROBLEM

2009-02-11T09:02:00.001-08:00

Recently Jelena Jankovic hit back at stinging criticism from Roger Federer on the state of rankings at the WTA. In essence, he repeated what most have said about Jankovic’s stint as the #1 player in the world – that it made no sense.

Jankovic was none too pleased, but a quick look at the distribution of points across categories of tournaments on both the WTA and the ATP tours demonstrates some very strange possibilities. Federer would do well to consider this the next time he chats with the ATP President, as he himself could wind up in the unenviable position of looking a bit silly for his ranking as well.

There are nine 1000 Series events, excluding the year end championships, on the ATP Tour, each of which is worth 1000 points to the winner. Each grand slam is worth 2000 points – 9000 vs. 8000 points – which means that a player could win the calendar slam, another could win every 1000 series event, and the winner of the calendar slam would have to find another 1000 points (all other things equal) to obtain the #1 ranking?

Huh?

That’s right – a guy could win 28 grand slam matches in a row, and still come out the wrong end of the rankings. What a nightmare that would be. Fair enough, the 1000 series sweep is an altogether less likely scenario than the calendar slam, but it reveals that the rankings are weighted towards the events that the ATP controls, and as such if the stars so aligned, we could see such a ridiculous scenario played out. You could argue that a player who wins all 9 MS events deserves to be #1, but would you feel that way if another player won the calendar slam?

Well, that's an unlikely scenario, so let's take it piece by piece – imagine a player wins two slams – 4000 points looks pretty good – but to overcome that (again all other things equal) you'd just have to win 3 1000 series titles (one more than did Djokovic and Murray last year) and two 500 series events (say Rotterdam and Indianapolis) and you'd have the exact same number of points as a winner of Wimbledon AND the US Open in the same year.

Now which record would you want for your favorite player?

You see, the tennis gods look favorably on the calendar slam – even half of it. Why? Because there’s continuity of purpose in the slams, and as such, you can gauge a player against the greats of the game a hell of a lot easier with slam results than a mish-mash of tournaments, the collection of which seems to change with the each year. The top 8 players don’t even play the same number of matches as the rest of the field in 1000 or 500 series tournaments, and although you’ve got more time to rest in between matches at slams, anyone who’s played a 5 set match will tell you that it’s always harder to come back from that than your average 3-setter.

Consider this other possibility – a player winning four 500 series tournaments (say, Rotterdam, Doha, Indianapolis and Barcelona) is adjudged the equal of the champion at Wimbledon – in ATP points that is. Any player with his head not on backwards would choose Wimbledon over the other events, so why don't the rankings reflect that.

Now let’s look at the women’s side.

The Wimbledon champion on the women’s side would earn fewer points than another player winning 3 non-mandatory Premier 5 tournaments (2000 vs. 2400 points) say, Beijing, Stuttgart and Moscow. So you don’t even have to win any tournaments where all the best players are required to participate, and you can earn the same number of points as one of the Williams sisters.

This is probably the area where Federer has a good point. It is altogether unlikely that a player who is capable of winning more than three 1000 series shields in a season doesn’t win at least on slam, but win 2 of them, and you’re on par with the US Open champion. That doesn’t make a lot of sense, but it has only happened because the slam winners tend to win 1000 series tournaments along the way. That’s a convenient coincidence, but a glaring anomaly in the making nonetheless.

Ivan Lendl was ranked #1 in 1983; he only reached two grand slam finals but racked up enough victories in tennis hotbeds like North Conway, New Hampshire and Naples, Italy to hold the top spot come Christmas. In his favor that year was that 4 different men won grand slams (Noah at the French, McEnroe at Wimbledon, Connors at the US Open and Wilander at the Australian). So the argument then with Lendl was the same as it is today with Jankovic; how can a guy/gal who can’t win a slam to save his/her life, be considered the best player in the world? It didn’t help that in 1983 he lost 4 out of 5 to McEnroe, 2 out of 4 to Wilander, 2 out of 4 to Connors and his one and only match to Noah - a collective 5 of 14 against the slam champions.

Fast forward, nip and tuck to the women's side, and we have our example in Jelena (Lendlova) Jankovic – last year she won Rome, Beijing, Stuttgart and Moscow (sound familiar?), had consistently (barely) above average results everywhere else, and so was ranked #1. But nobody – not even Jankovic, I suspect – sincerely believed she was the best player in the world – maybe the most consistent, but certainly not the best. Well, thankfully Serena has put that question off for a bit.

Jankovic won more points for any 3 of those tournaments than Sharapova did for winning in Melbourne, Ivanovic did for conquering Paris, Venus did for winning her fifth at the All England Club, and Serena Williams did for exorcising her small town blues at Flushing. Jankovic lost her only match to "I'm So Pretty", went 1-2 against Verdasco's ex-girlfriend, split 1-1 with the Fly Trap, and 1-2 to Serena, for a whopping 3 for 8 against the slam winners - ironically she lost in 3 of the 4 slams to the eventual champion, but still topped the table at the end of the season - this after losing in the semi-final of the year end championships.

The point distributions do not represent the historical or even current significance of tournaments. In order to encourage high profile players to play events that are essentially money-makers for the tour, they have to put a point value on them that will draw marquee players. But as soon as they do this the advantage goes to those who play more often, but not necessarily better, and that’s when the rankings begin to make little to no sense at all. So why do they want to draw players to these events? – I told you, that’s where the money is; new sponsors, new venues and a whole lot of NEW MONEY (in Beijing and Moscow, anyway).

The only solution is for the ATP and the WTA to admit that tradition counts in tennis and the only thing that everyone cares about equally is the slams. They could eat into the gravitas of the slams by keeping a more consistent year to year schedule and attaching some historical value to smaller events, but as long as money changes hands globally, new venues have cash to burn, and players have entourages to support, there’s little hope for a calendar or ranking system that make sense on both sides of the aisle any time soon.

Well, at least Jelena can always take Roger for a ride in the Porsche she won in Stuttgart – you can’t drive a ranking anyway.

A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS

2009-02-02T06:31:00.000-08:00

There can no longer be any doubt - he is the best player in the world today, he has been for the last 12 months, and it's likely that he will remain the best player in the world for the remainder of 2009. With his maiden victory at the Australian Open, Rafael Nadal has shown that he may very well be chasing history of his own this year, with a calendar year Grand Slam - and it is likely to overshadaow that which has now become something of a distraction to that, which is Federer's pursuit of Pete Sampras' record 14 grand slams. For my money, it's now time to put aside the scrutiny and speculation on that.

In winning the Australian Open for the first time in his career, Nadal has now won 3 out of 4 slams, with only the US Open lacking in his cabinet. He also happens to have won 3 out of the last 4 grand slams, and bettered his initial results from 2009 by one better than his likely closest competitor. In the past, this part of the season for Nadal has focused on preparation for the clay court season, and a defense of (seemingly eternal) French Open crown, with a brief interlude for the two events at Indian Wells and Miami, which make absolutely no sense at all, but to which all players are obliged to make an appearance. Recall that last year he nearly won Miami, losing a strangely lobsided final against Davydenko, while the week previous lost a semi-final to Djokovic, who curiously is the only man to have beaten Nadal twice in 2008 (he did it again in Cincinnati before losing the final the Andy Murray).

This year, he'll be the favorite in those tournaments because of his results in Melbourne, but frankly, Nadal seems to have built the right to be considered the favorite in every match he plays because there are no longer any weaknesses or any holes in his game that anyone can find. What strikes the most about his victory in Australia is the manner in which it was won. Initially, he appeared to be having his way with a sub-par level of opponents, right up until the quarterfinal with Gonzalez, but even when facing the best losing performance of the tournament - a 95-winner slamfest from compatriot Verdasco, Nadal showed that his indominatable spirit would not be denied, as he put in a superior performance and most importantly with fewer errors and fewer aces to pad his numbers.

The final appeared to only be as close as it was because of the fatigue he must have felt from the 5-hour epic in the previous round. Even as his legs became wobbly, Nadal simply dug deeper than anyone else in the world could have, and went for broke. The fact is that when he had the chance to mentally check out, with a ready made excuse for losing, he chose to pull his socks up and go for broke over and over again. Whereas Federer, with ample opportunities to close out the first set, and the third, wilted under the pressure in a way we're more accustomed to seeing his opponents do against him.

But this is no ordinary opponent.

In the end, it was the most correct result possible, for if Nadal had lost the final, there would be an asterisk next to the loss due to the incredibly disproportionate scheduling that saw him play 24 hours after a 5 hour match. Thankfully that didn't happen, and clearly the best man won.

Although he will evade the question until the US Open, as he has craftily avoided the question of favorites and scheduling and everything else that could have derailed him today, it is not too early to begin to ask ourselves if this is the year that Nadal wins the calendar year Grand Slam. Defending his title in France will not be easy, but the unusually long break between the Australian Open and the French gives him plenty of time to rest and prepare for that one month between June and July that will determine if he enters the US Open with the chance to become the first man in 40 years and only third man in history to win this coveted prize.

Based on his performance today, and indeed over the last 12 months, only a fool would bet against him. And if he wins the calendar year grand slam and adds 3 more slams to his career total of 6, he'd be at 9 - one shy of Bill Tilden, 2 shy of Laver and Borg, and 3 shy of Emerson, 4 of Federer and 5 short of the great Pete Sampras.

A year ago, a blogger on another site posed the question of whether in Nadal, in 2008, we were were witnessing the birth of the GOAT, and many, including this author, scoffed at the notion. But based on his technique, his physical power, his tactical acumen and his sheer dominance of will, I won't be making that mistake again. It is entirely possible, and at this point appears likely that Rafael Nadal will become the greatest player in the history of the game. He will win the US Open eventually, he will win more French Opens, and Wimbledons and since he's only 22, with absolutely no sign of satisfying his appetite, it appears is well on his way to eclipsing Sampras within the next 3-4 years.

I wonder if the bookies have odds on that?

VOX POPULI, VOX DEI?

2008-12-29T06:12:00.000-08:00

The ATP came out with a new look and feel to their website (http://www.atpworldtour.com/1/en/home/default.asp), and one of standard features, a link to head to head player comparisons, defaulted to one between Nadal and Federer. In the last incarnation of the old site a poll asked fans who would finish 2009 as #1 - guess who won?

Apparently, a few Nadal fans took umbrage at the poll itself, but more likely with the result: a majority of fans who answered the poll expect Federer to return to #1. This is an amazing conclusion given a few facts – in their 18 meetings, Nadal has won twice as often as he has lost, he's youngerr than Federer, his game appears to be continuing to improve and his 2008 season was one of the best in the history of the game.

So where’s the love?

A quick look at some statistics of their rivalry reveal something that may (sub-collective-consciously) contribute to why so many feel so confident that Federer will overturn last year’s results. First, of their 18 meetings, 10 have been on clay, of which Federer has won only one. To be fair, that’s about the same winning percentage on clay against Nadal as the rest of the tour combined, but nevertheless it shows one thing – those who would suggest their head to head is lobsided, without considering that more than half their encounters occurred on clay are ignoring the obvious question – what would the head-to-head look like if the encounters were evenly dispersed on multiple surfaces?

If we remove the clay court encounters between the two, we are left with 8 matches, and in these matches, Federer is up 5-3. On grass he’s 2-1 and on hard courts he’s 3-2. So if we extrapolate this out to have their encounters split evenly between 3 surfaces (clay, grass and hard courts) the record might look something like 1-5 on clay, 4-2 on hard courts and 5-1 on grass, in which case the overall head-to-head would be 10-8 in favor of Federer.

Fair enough, the number of grass encounteres would, in reality, be minimal, but even if we give Federer the same results on grass as hard courts they're an even 9-9. But given Fed's dominance on grass, the 10-8 record probably represents what most feel is the relative difference in quality between the two. So it seems the collective wisdom of ATP fans favors Federer, and the record seems to support it.

Of course tennis doesn’t work that way – it’s about results, and Nadal’s against Federer are better, but let’s compare another pair of titans and see how their results may have differed had their results been skewed towards one clearly favorable surface.

Borg and McEnroe played 14 times in 4 years, and split their results. Grass 1-1, Carpet 5-3 in favor of Borg, leaving their hard court results at 3-1 in favor of McEnroe – but fascinatingly conspicuous in its absence are results on clay. 15 years BN (that’s Before Nadal) Borg was universally considered the greatest clay court tennis player in the history of the game. In 9 years he lost twice at the French Open (to the same player) and skipped the tournament entirely in 1977. His career record on clay was 245 to 39: he lost as many on that surface as any of the others (except grass) but also played on it more than any other – in fact he won twice as many matches on clay as any other surface.

So, does anyone really think McEnroe would have split their encounters on clay?

Fair enough, McEnroe is underrated on clay because he never won the French, and it wasn’t his best surface, but not so underrated that he’d split his encounters with Borg. In fact I’d say that if they’d played half their matches on clay (as have Federer and Nadal), and the rest on others, nobody would be comparing the Borg/McEnroe rivalry with any of the other historically great ones – the results would be too heavily in favor of Borg.

At the end of the day, it turns out that even head to head rivalries are a weak comparison of players because an anomaly like the number of times played (or not played) on one players’ obviously favorite surface, can skew the results.

Taken in a broader context, aside from his victory at Wimbledon and the Olympics this year – comparable to another hard court MS shield – Nadal’s results this year are comparable to his results in the previous 4. Federer, on the other hand has had a very unusual season – he failed to win a Masters Series shield for the first time since 2001 and failed to win more than one major for the first time since 2003. Even so, he still reached 3 out of 4 grand slam finals, and remains, albeit precariously, #2 in the rankings. (I say "precariously" because I haven’t included Djokovic in this analysis. No disrespect is intended - this column was inspired by the head-to-head between Federer and Nadal - but on a side-bar, The Djoker would have to repeat his victory in Australia to stay on Federer’s heels for #2, whereas Federer would need only reach the semi-finals in Melbourne to “defend his points”.)

Nadal on the other hand, has won just 3 of his career 12 Masters Series events on anything other than clay, with one each in 2005, 2007 and 2008, and would have to come up with a second Wimbledon and an additional non-clay MS victory (to match is Olympics victory) to defend his points in 2009 – a tall order for any man, including the best player in the world.

Perhaps in comparing the likelihood of each man repeating his performance of 2008 in 2009 the collective wisdom of ATP fans have concluded that Nadal has a harder road, whereas Federer would need to win at least 1 MS series tournament and reclaim an additional GS in 2009. Apparently, the fans believe the former is less likely than the latter.

Vox populi, Vox dei?

We shall see…

WHERE TENNIS WENT WRONG

2008-12-05T07:21:00.000-08:00

At the start of the open era, in 1968, tennis had an opportunity to do what was done in baseball when technology threatened to destroy the integrity of the game with radical changes in equipment composition resulting in even more radical changes in the game itself. Had the game been organized under a single sensible umbrella of administrators who cared about the game more than they did the size of their own coffers they would have done something that may very well have changed the game for the better:

Forced all professional players to use wood racquets and standardized their composition.

Now before you yell at your screen at the thought, consider this: ironically the racquets are about the only piece of equipment in tennis that goes largely unregulated in the professional game. Players are restricted on what kinds of shoes they may wear on different surfaces, the balls are standardized (they are loosely so in soccer), the court dimensions are standardized (they are loosley so in baseball), and even the surfaces are highly regulated.

Does it make any sense that the one piece of equipment that may have turned tennis in to the wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am young man's game it is today, is the one piece of equipment that's unregulated?

One of the reasons why so many great players of yore were serve and volleyers was most major tournaments were played on grass, and everyone used a wood racquet. To use a wood racquet is akin to a professional baseball player using a wooden bat - only the most skillful, ahtletic and learned players in the world can wield this weapon with proficiency, and only the least skillfull, athletic and learned players used composites...or so it was.

If you compare the overall playing ability of players who learned the game with wood racquets, with the last generation, most born after 1978, the breadth of skills has most certainly suffered the consequences of equipment making it possible for any idiot with a big serve and mindlessly wielded forehand, to make a living playing professional tennis. Gone are the days when various spins, angles, court coverage and the lost art of serve and volley, were prerequisites to success at the highest levels of tennis. You can probably blame this on two players who ultimately changed the game for the worse, despite their undeniable tennis talent and performance: Jimmy Connors and Bjorn Borg.

Up until these two you fast and devilishly monotonous baseliners came along, most players had the ability to do many things with a tennis racquet. Both of these players had plenty of variation in their strokes, but they were the first two to master the art of dominating from the backcourt, albeit in very different ways. And it's no irony that both initiated changes in racquet technology that ultimately morphed the game into something that would be scarcely recognizeable to them in their heydey.

Connors mastered the Wilson T-2000 steel frame - a frame so heavy, fidgety and with such a small sweet spot, that he was the only player in the world (that's the world, not just professional tennis) still using it long after it went out of production. The frame was heavier than a wood racquet, which made it hard to maintain racquet head acceleration through the stroke, but Connors with his excellent vision and fully rotating body through the point contact, was able to make violently beautiful music out of an instrument that most would have a hard time carrying a tune.

The frame was also very maleable through the stroke and at the point of contact, creating a whipping effect that increased acceleration of the racquet head and imparted huge force on the ball that was unseen to that point. Nobody in the world had seen a player hitting outright winners from the baseline as Connors did with regularity. Faciliated by hitting a two-handed backhand, and rotating through his forehand in a manner that is common place today, Connors beat back both of these disadvantages and turned them into weapons of mass destruction that lay waste to his opponents for 5 years as he remained the dominant figure and #1 ranked player in men's tennis from 1974 to 1977.

Both the changes in stroke production and the introduction of his two-handed backhand heralded a new era in tennis, due not the least of which to his choice of racquet composition.

Bjorn Borg retired using a wood racquet, but he too violently thrust his arm and body at the ball in a way not seen in tennis to that point, only he used that force to impart more topspin on the ball than any player in history. Accompanied by his supreme athleticism and speed, Borg became (and in my opinion remains today) the greatest clay court player in the history of the game. The combination of spin, force, and court coverage was dastardly, and resulted in him losing just 2 out of the 9 years he played at Roland Garros (both losses, in 1973 and 1976 were to the Italian Adriano Panatta - he didn't enter the field in 1977).

The secret to the spin Borg created was the obscenely tight racquet string tension he used. Rumored to be somewhere in the 85 - 90 psi range, his racquest often broke from the force of the string tension in unforgiving atmospheric conditions (for example at high altitude tournaments, or in airplanes). The reason for the tight tension on the strings lies in the need to impart spin on the ball consistently - to do this, the racquet must first crush, then rotate the ball at the point of contact in a way the trampoline effect of a lower tension stringing cannot - imagine the difference between running into the net and bouncing straight back the way you came, and running into a concrete wall of the same height - you'd be crushed and probably flip over it - as does the ball - although the flipping effect, is more accuratley embodied by by the rotation of the ball and hence the spin.

Now most players seeking to compete with Connors and Borg's power and spin respectively, had no chance - first both players used a western grip to close the racquet head face at the point of contact, while most used a continental grip keeping it open to maximize the trampoline effect, but minimizing the crushing of the ball required to get the spin to keep the ball in court. So to compensate, racquet manufactures realized they could do two things - stiffen up the frame to create less vibration and maintain racquet head control, loosen the tension to create the trampoline effect, alter the composition of the strings themselves to assist with the creation of spin, and finally lighten the frame with a composite to increase racquet head acceleration.

The problem, of course with increasing racquet head acceleration is that unless you are a player of the highest level of talent, it is difficult to hit the sweet spot of the racquet with the frames that were in use in those days, and any bigger frame on a wood racquet made it heavier and more proned to vibrations, diminishing control. To faciliate the ability to compete of players around the world who paled in comparison to the talent of these two titans, racquet manufactures increased the typical racquet head face size from 85 to 100+ sq. in. Once that happened, everyone and his brother became capable of hitting the ball like a ton of bricks, and staying in the back court just like Connors and Borg. Serve and volleyers also benefitted, but the big benefit came in the form of oh-so many Bolletieri academy dead-heads who were taught to hit the ball hard with these new fangled composite racquets, and if that didn't work, hit it harder.
Don't bother coming to net Aaron Krickstein, don't bother learning how to hit an effective backhand Jimmy Arias, and never, under any circumstances, ever serve and volley Andre. Now, Agassi may very well have been capable of developing a more rounded game than his now-no-name Bolletieri predecessors, but why bother - with eyesight and hand eye coordination similar to Connors, he never had to, and the effects of these tools in his hands were exponentially beneficial to a man of his level of talent - much moreso than it would have been to say, someone like David Wheaton, who beyond a big serve and big forehand, was about as useless on a tennis court as tits on a bull.

Had tennis had the foresight to restrict racquet equipment the way bat equipment was restricted in baseball, we may very well still be watching the likes of Pete Sampras competing with the half-witted skill-challenged dolts who masquerade as professionals in the modern game. Have you ever seen James Blake execute a volley in a singles match? He looks like a club player. And Roddick looks more like someone with a death wish with his kamikaze forays to the net. Never has a player so committed to coming to net been passed so often.

In fact, even Federer, with all his talent and ability, has to force himself to come to net, and when he does, if he has to hit more than one volley, he's more likely than not to get passed. I can only think of two true serve and volleyers to day in the top 50, Feliciano Lopez and Radek Stepanek, and they can hardly be considered the more talented players on the tour. They win matches against top opponents because they're able to put pressure by approaching consistently and with intelligence, and if they had any talent, may even find themseves in the top 10. Unfortunately for both of them, their talent sorely lags behind their skill set, and as a result they are destined to fall short at the feet of more bashers who just close their eyes and swing as hard as they can.

Not only would we see top players compete longer, but we'd also see a different class of top player, if they were restricted to wood racquets, because when your strategy is to hit is as hard as you can, and doing so delivers hardly enough power to win points from the backcourt, they'd have to find other ways, more resourceful ways, to win points. This resourcefulness, or more accurately the lack there of, is why there is so little difference between the players in the top 50, but as a result, those who do have a brain have a huge advantage over even the secod-best players in the world today. There would always be exceptions to the rules - just as Borg and Connors found ways to turn an era of serve-and volleyers into an era of baseline bashers, I'm certain that Nadal would have figured out a way to bang and spin with relatively equal venom as he does today. But how about Fernando Gonzalez? Or James Blake? Or even Lleyton Hewitt?

Do you honestly believe that these players would have careers as they do now if they when they laid the wood to the ball it was actual...wood.

Tennis lost a golden opportunity to preserve itself in 1968, when open tennis began. As long as they were changing the rules on eligibility, they could have done the same on equipment. But here's what might be very interesting - when players join the senior circuit, let's turn the clock all the way back and make them use wood racquets. Maybe Sampras, 12 years the junior of McEnroe, would still beat him black and blue, but I'm not so sure, and I for one would love to see that.

DAVI(D')S CUP ACCORDING TO BODO

2008-11-25T06:56:00.000-08:00

Peter Bodo has been covering tennis for about 30 years, and for this I commend him…but as far as this post is concerned, that’s about the last good thing I have to say about him at the moment.

I was absolutely gobsmacked by the following post at ESPN.com
(http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/blog/index?entryID=3723372&name=bodo_peter)

in which Bodo places the entire blame for Argentina’s loss in the Davis Cup final to Spain, on the shoulders of one person. That one person isn’t Juan Martin del Potro who came into the tie with little energy, no plan B, and went out with barely a hint of struggle. It isn’t Chucho Acasuso, who again was unable to come up with the goods to win in a must win situation for his country. It wasn’t any one of a number of professionals from Argentina (Canas, Chela, Monaco, Calleri, etc.) that have been so weak as individuals that none of them was preferred to a half injured or half-hearted second option. And it wasn’t Alberto Mancini, who did little more than hand out towels and nervy energy for 3 days…the person he chose to condemn was David Nalbandian.

What?

This is the same David Nalbandian who has won 17 singles rubbers and 10 doubles rubbers for his country. This is the same David Nalbandian who has enthusiastically played for his country without hesitation for 6 years straight. And this is the same David Nalbandian gave Argentina the perfect start to what should have been their coronation, by winning his opening singles rubber in straight sets.

What?

Here we have a player who has never shied away from representing his country – who genuinely believes there is honor in the competition, and hopes to be appreciated for it. What a rare trait! Federer and Nadal have both flipped the bird to Davis Cup over the years, and we fall all over ourselves to congratulate them when they take the time out of their busy exhibition calendars and play for honor. But when Nalbandian gives his heart and soul to the cause, he’s accused of somehow turning a team competition, in which one represents their country, into an exercise in personal vainglory. Somehow, now, it’s a bad thing that Nalbo loves his country and wants to win a Davis Cup for them.

What?

I also find it shockingly, and patently transparent, that he has gone out of his way to heap accolades on Roddick for being a “team leader”, which is nothing more than an attempt to give him praise for something…anything…in the absence of winning a major for the last 5 years. I don’t criticize Roddick – he deserves his praise, but the insinuation here that somehow Roddick’s commitment to the USA, trumps Nalbo’s commitment to Argentina is, as the English say, just bollocks.

What exactly is this "team leader" non-sense anyway? Americans have invented this crown for Roddick because try as we may, there’s really nothing much else we can say about his game that’s been positive over the last 5 years. He was supposed to be the savior of American tennis and he’s failed miserably, and rather than accepting this like other countries do for their underachieving players, we concoct new and different ways of putting him right up there with the greats of the game that have, dare I say it, actually won majors.

But this is absolute non-sense.

Roddick has nothing to do with Blake or the Bryans winning or losing their matches. Try as we may to relate the two, Blake is as inconsistent in Davis Cup as he is in everything else. And the Bryans win all the time, not just when they’re standing next to Roddick.

Speaking of whom, if anyone has turned Davis Cup into his own personal glorification, it’s Roddick, but Bodo has nothing but kind words for him. I’m not suggesting Roddick should be criticized – I happen to admire his commitment to Davis Cup – but why then has Bodo chosen to criticize Nalbo for the same virtue? Apparently he admits he has an axe to grind when it comes to Argentine tennis players, but fails to mitigate his bias and proceeds to lambast Nalbo. The strange thing is Bodo should know better – he should know that all this talk of team spirit, and togetherness is bull – tennis, even when played in a team context, is still about one man trying to destroy the other.

And at the end of the day, one man, only that man can either will his way to win, or find a way to lose. That’s why it’s so important, in Davis Cup, that you have a team of men who are fit enough, good enough and courageous enough to do like the Raiders and, “Just win, baby”. Spain did and Argentina didn’t – how is this Nalbo’s fault?

Davis Cup is what it is, an imperfect test of the best tennis playing nation in the world. It’s a team competition and the team is the tennis playing nation, not 2 or 3 players, as the Americans success in 2007 would have you believe. Frankly, I think the Americans were damn lucky they didn’t have a similar situation – had Roddick come up lame before any of his Davis Cup matches, we’d all be lamenting that there are no others to hold aloft the mantle of “team leader”. But that didn’t seem to bother the Spaniards.

Here we have everyone and his brother bemoaning the misfortune of the Argentines that their flavor of the month, del Potro, was injured and couldn’t do the job on Friday. Excuse me, but has anyone ever heard of a player who was completely absent from the Spanish squad named Rafa Nadal. He was probably on a boat somewhere not contributing one iota, and if Spain had lost, we’d all be asking how different it would have been had he played. In fact they were without Nico Almagro and Tommy Robredo, two players ranked higher than Verdasco, but they still found a way to win. Instead, in hindsight, we’ve all got 20/20 vision, and now, going to Argentina without the best player in the world was an advantage to Spain.

Oh, it gets stupider…

Then, this business of Nalbo criticizing his teammates and trying to finagle the location of the final to be somewhere close to Cordoba – what in the hell difference does it make where they play if you can’t keep the ball in between the lines? Did Nalbandian make Chucho aim for the fences (and often hit them) time and time again, giving away countless points to Verdasco, who gladly kept the ball in play waiting for him to self-destruct? Did Nalbo make Lopez play the match of his life? And if del Potro was not motivated, this Nalbo's fault? What's the source of Nalbo's motivation? According to Bodo, he wants to make up for all his personal underachieving by making the Davis Cup the David's Cup. But this assumes he feels somehow he should be ashamed of his career. Maybe Bodo feels he's underachieved, but that has nothing to do with Nalbo's self perception, and thus, his cynical assumptions of Nalbo's motivation (while ignoring the absence of del Potro's) is beyond absurd – it is in fact sinister.

The fact of the matter is Argentina lost because they lacked depth. The Spaniards have a lot of options, even when the best player in the world is on vacation. The same could not be said for Argentina. Their best hope was to win 3 singles matches, even though they put in a hell of an effort in doubles, but fell short. Nalbo did his part, but when he looked over his shoulder to see who else was going again into the breach, he saw a 19 year old kid with no plan B, and a guy who 2 years ago, looked like he was on the verge of depression after losing a deciding rubber in Moscow, and about 6 other players so out of form or shape, they didn’t even bother to suit up for the battle.

And it is this lone warrior, who has given his heart to the cause, that Bodo chooses to isolate for blame.

Shame on you Peter Bodo – after all these years you really should know better.

THE FLEAS COME WITH THE DOG

2008-10-16T13:54:00.000-07:00

Well, with egg on my face, I must admit, I got it all wrong with regards to the ATP Rankings, and the ATP Race. Basically, I jumped the gun on my assumptions about the reasons for the differences, and have come to the conclusion that, in the words of Congressman Dick Dodge from
The Distinguished Gentleman, “Son, the system ain’t perfect; but the fleas come with the dog.”

First, to explain the differences between the two points systems, and why each, in some form, is necessary to maintain legitimacy and sense in professional tennis.

THE SYSTEMS

As I write, the #1 ranked player in the world is Rafael Nadal. This ranking is based on the system of the official name “Entry Ranking System”. To be honest, I still haven’t quite figured out what is the meaning behind this name, but basically it is a rolling 52-week backward facing accumulation of points, giving a 1-year snapshot of the relative ranking of all professionals. It is used to determine which players are eligible to enter the various events, and the seeding thereof.
The points are allocated across 7 categories of tournaments:

[1] Grand Slams
[2] The Masters Cup (Year End Championships)
[3] Masters Series
[4] International Gold
[5] International
[6] Challenger
[7] Futures

The ATP Race serves two purposes: first, it determines the year end #1 player for the season, and it also determines which eight players will play in the TMC. The genesis of the ATP Race was the perception that the #1 ranking was not intuitive, and observers not intimately involved in tennis had a hard time keeping track of who was the #1 player.

The categories of the ATP Race differ from the ranking points in that only the first 4 categories of the ranking points transfers to the ATP Race – challenger and futures events are excluded from the ATP race. The points allocated to the yearly points is also smaller by a factor of 5, but proportionally the same. The only remaining difference between the two is that the Olympics are not included in the ATP race points, and as such have no bearing on the year end #1 ranking, or the TMC invitations.

The structure of the ATP Race is that all players begin the year with 0 points, and begin to accrue points in various categories of competitions throughout the year. This differs from the entry rankings in that players maintain points accrued from the previous year, into the current year. The players earn points at the grand slams, all the masters series events, and the best five results from the two international series in both systems.

If the ATP had their druthers, they would do away with the entry ranking system, since it is not a palatably marketable tool to promote the casual fan tracking the progress of the season, but the problem comes with the seeding at tournaments. If there were not carryover from the previous year, players could only be seeded either by the tournaments themselves, in a haphazard way, or based on the ATP race points, and players who either manage their schedule or suffer injuries would suffer unjustly.

For example, Mikael Youzhny, and Michael LLorda would have been the top two seeds at the Australian Open, while Federer and Nadal, could possibly have wound up facing each other in the earlier rounds, and nobody wants to see that. Furthermore, if for some reason one of them were injured early in the season, they would see their ranking suffer terribly, and have a very big hill to climb for the remainder of the year.

TWO SYSTEMS, ONE #1 (FOR THE MOST PART)

For these reasons the dual system exists, and on the face of it, makes perfectly good sense. That there are two points systems in play at any one time would seem to make it very confusing for anyone outside of tennis trying to follow who’s doing what during the season, and would over emphasize the value/quality of a hot player, versus one who consistently demonstrates superiority over the field over the course of a year.

Of course, it doesn’t help that the points go back a year in terms of the confusion, and because in Olympic years there are proportionately more points available for seeding than there is to determine the year end #1, it makes for the possibility that depending on the results, a player could wind up with a higher ranking, but still lose out on the year end #1. It would require an extremely coincidental and convoluted series of results to expose such an oddity, and fortunately, because tennis is sport that tends to be dominated by a consistent small group of players, particularly the top 5, we haven’t seen a lot of peculiarities due to this asynchronous allocation of points.

IDEALLY....

Ideally there should be one system that everyone refers to, and the entry ranking system could be renamed the entry seeding system, to alleviate confusion. After all, David Nalbandian is ranked #7, but given that he was the highest ranked player at Stockholm, he was the #1 seed, but nobody is going to confuse him for the best player in the world. Even the casual observer could look at the ATP race and see that he must be seeded so high because nobody else with a better ranking (or in the new system, seeding) is playing in the tournament.

It turns out that there is really no problem at all with the entry ranking system per se – the real problem is with the #1 ranking. It has taken on a significance all its own, independent of the results in the slams, some kind of badge of honor that (for them most part) only the best players in the history of the game have been able to attain. Each time we get a Marcelo Rios or a Jelena Jankovic reaching #1 in the world without winning a grand slam, it feels wrong because we know the prestige in the game is related to results in the crowned jewels of the game, and as such, the #1 ranking is an artificial accolade, created by the ATP many years ago in order to standardize seedings and create a holy grail towards which their sponsored/controlled events are geared, giving them more gravitas than they would otherwise have on their own.

THE SOLUTION

Maybe we should do away with the #1 ranking. It would take a genius to figure out that the #1 ranked player in the world can’t really be determined until the end of the year, and leading the ATP Race, wouldn’t hold much value until the TMC came around. But there’s something about being able to rank players from one event to the next, and have a ranking commensurate to the marketing of an event that makes tennis special. In college sports, there is an excitement around #1 versus #2 that tennis benefits from because of its ranking, but that system is fraught with problems as well.

I don’t know if it would matter to anyone if the abstract #1 ranking disappeared. It’s only been around for 35 years and would, in history, be treated as an aberration owing to the evolving structure of professional tennis that was eventually rectified by the consolidation of power in the ATP and the introduction of the ATP Race as a proper vehicle to determine who the best player in tennis was in a year.

It would also eliminate, or at least mitigate the embarrassing historical asterisk of the Marcelo Rios’ of tennis.

ODE TO JUSTINE

2008-05-15T13:14:00.000-07:00

Here are some new lyrics to the song, "Yesterday" by McCarthy and Lennon, written as an ode to Justine Henin, the last all-court player in women's tennis who has chosen to retire from the game:

Yesterday,

I just used to love the way you play
Now it seems that there’s another way
To play, but not like yesterday

Suddenly,

Sharapova’s not so cute to me
I wouldn’t watch Serena play for free
Big babe tennis came suddenly.

Why she,
Had to shriek I don't know, she wouldn't say.
I said,
Close your mouth and play the way they used to plaaaaayy…

Yesterday,
Tennis was a lovely game to play
Now I need a juice and tanqueray
To watch the way they play today

Why she
Had to quit I don't know, she wouldn't say.

I said,
Nothing’s wrong, with the games of yesterdaaaay.

Yesterday,
Big babe tennis was so strange to say
Now it seems as though it's here to stay,
Oh how I long for yesterday

Mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmmmm....

THE WORLD ACCORDING TO ANDY...MURRAY THAT IS

2008-05-08T11:20:00.000-07:00

Here’s what I can’t stand about Andy Murray – it’s not his ridiculous haircut, or his insufferable demeanor, nor the absurdity of his ever-growing entourage of trainers, mothers, masseuses and coaches. What I can’t stand about Andy Murray is his sense of entitlement.

Anyone who follows tennis knows just how selfish and self-centered this boy is, and to be fair to him, it’s hard to expect more of someone who’s been showered with more undeserving praise than anyone in professional tennis. The British media, renowned for their willful collaboration with sporting authorities to create the unmerited illusion of competitiveness in sports they once dominated (take your pick: rugby, football, tennis, cricket…) have taken this to a new level with the inexplicable obsession with Andy Murray. It’s true that he’s beaten Roger Federer a couple of times (so has Willy Canas, but you don’t see the Argentine press fawning over him) and he’s the highest ranking British tennis player in the world (which is not saying much since they haven’t had a decent crop of players since Rusedski and Henman), but the effect of this has created a monster that is neither pleasant to behold, nor easy to contemplate.

Recently Murray indicated, to the horror of British tennis fanatics around the world, that if he couldn’t compete in the top 10 he’d retire from tennis. I don't believe I've been so keen to see a player drop out of the 10 ten in 30 years of watching tennis. There was, of course, no mention of what he’d do if he weren’t playing tennis – but when you’re spoiled and think the commonwealth is your oyster, you tend not to consider these things on the odd occasion that you contemplate something other than your next paycheck.

This week, Murray had a first round match in Italy against Juan Martin del Potro – a spindly 6’5” Argentine who hits like a ton of bricks, but generally whose accuracy is inversely proportional to his power. While his results have improved dramatically over the last two years, very few people outside of tennis have any idea who he is, and until he gets some decent results, Monday’s farcical exchange with an equally narrow Andy Murray, will probably be what he is best known for.

In this match, Murray, in all his tactical genius decided at 4-4 in the second set, to serve and volley. This of course involves volleying which, despite his grossly exaggerated reputation as an all-court player, Murray is not particularly good at. The serve was laughably weak, and del Potro promptly pummeled it at his feet, to which Murray replied with a weak looping volley that dropped just beyond the service line to his right. For a player in del Potro’s position, this situation is tricky – if he tries to pass up the line, he has to get his shot up and down where the net is almost 6 inches higher than its lowest point in the middle, and as such can lead to either an error long, or a ball in the net. Try to push it up the line, and Murray get's a cheap shot at another volley. The other option is to rope it cross court, but because a player with even a modicum of tactical sense knows this is the higher percentage play, and will typically cheat in that direction, hoping to poach an volley to the open court for a winner, there is risk of losing a point you should win in this tactic too.

On this particular play, which you can see in the first point of this clip:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=q6psmRAm4tM

Murray actually begins to cheat to his left, but then suddenly stays where he is. Del Potro, recognizing the situation rightly hit it as hard as he could right down the gut – in fact it was a little to Murray’s right, and may even have ventured long had Murray not gotten his racquet on the shot. What ensued is almost as comical as it is revealing:

For some reason, unbeknownst to either del Potro, the chair umpire, or the 3-4 unbiased onlookers who stuck around to see the conclusion of this (mercilessly) rain-delayed match, Murray expected an apology from del Potro, and even kept his forehand extended pose long enough for JuanMa to see if he bothered to look back at Murray. He didn’t, and he didn’t, and apparently Murray took exception to this.

Now we all know that Murray is accustomed to being watched intently and playing in front of large audiences, so the empty stadium likely did nothing to garner his attention, and understandably he may have needed a lift to take the match a little more seriously. But rather than digging deep and slapping himself in the cheek (either literally – which would have suited me just fine – or figuratively) he chose to use this curiously inferred slight as his cue to get pumped.

Only Murray didn’t bother to play better or even more adventurously – he simply began cheering del Potro’s errors. And Judy Murray being Judy Murray, joined in the festivities. Del Potro may be a qualifier, but any self-respecting player would take exception – there’s nothing more annoying than an opponent (and his mother) patting him/themselves on the back as reward for points given to him/them on errors. But Murray being Murray, expected an apology for the non-drilling (which he didn’t deserve, and didn’t get) and later had the temerity to make allusions to it on the change-over. He went so far as to extend his rather giraffe-ish neck around the umpire’s chair to reiterate his expectation of an apology for his opponent hitting his shot 3-4 feet to his right on a crap volley.

Then came this adorable exchange:

Murray: You try and hit a ball at me and you think it's fine.
del Potro: You are always the same hey? You never change.
Murray: You yeah.
Umpire: OK boys, I'll handle it now.
del Potro: And your mother, she's the same always.
Umpire: Just save it 'till later.
Murray: Do you want to speak about my Mum again? Huh?
Umpire: Andy...
Murray: No, no, no... that's unacceptable.
Umpire: That's what I'm just about to say, let me handle it...
Murray: This guy hits it straight at me...
Umpire: Well, he can do that!
Murray: Then I can say something when he's hitting off the frame too!
Umpire: It's only going to get worse if you get involved, trust me, just let me handle it...Juan, that's enough okay?

So his complaints began with the expectation of deference to his oh-so-beautiful face (i.e. “How dare you have the nerve to hit a ball within 10 feet of my million-pound-sterling smile”), and migrated to the exception he took to del Potro righteous indignation.

We still haven’t come within a whisper of either the scud-missile Murray claimed was aimed at his head, or the insult for which he was so ready to take on del Potro, that he nearly bought himself an on-court ass-whipping had the umpire not graciously stepped in to stop the rot. I’m quite certain that if del Potro had chosen to continue referring to Judy Murray – which, to his credit he did not – Murray wouldn’t have done a damn thing about it, because between a privileged British school boy and an Argentine who’s probably had to fight tooth and nail for everything he's never gotten from tennis, I’d pick the boy from Buenos Aires.

So what exactly is that got Murray so hot and bothered? That’s right – not getting an apology for not hitting the passing shot within 5 feet of him.

Now this is, in my opinion, the epitome of an undeserved sense of entitlement. Murray doesn’t get any special dispensation because the British play him up to be the next best thing, and his mother doesn’t get any special protection because her son thinks she’s the nicest lady in the world – what spoiled brat doesn’t think the same of his own mother.

If she’s going to be antagonizing her son’s opponents by sticking it in their craw every time they hit the ball off the frame, then she’s going to come into some criticism, and Sir Quit-A-Lot shouldn’t bother coming to her defense. If she doesn’t want to be criticized, she can keep quiet and watch the match in anonymity like every other sane mother on tour. And if Murray doesn’t want to risk getting hit by the ball when he’s at the net, then one of his 16 coaches can teach him to volley properly.

Let's not gloss over the fact that Murray patently lied about the entire incident when asked about it in his press conference (http://msn.foxsports.com/tennis/story/8109422/Murray-claims-Del-Potro-insulted-his-mother?CMP=OTC-K9B140813162&ATT=199). Now, why anyone bothers to attend these circus shows is beyond me, but in response to a question about the exchange Murray claimed, according to the AP, that del Potro went head-hunting on the pass, and then insulted his mother. The video above refutes both charges, where it is clear that not only did del Potro not hit at him (although it is his right to do so), but he also didn't just spontaneously spout off an insult to his mother. He was in fact, antagonized by Murray (which was conveniently not reported), and responded, I would say, rather mildly to it.

Murray revealed himself to be a liar, an instigator and a self-absorbed prig in one brief moment of lunacy - therapist's chairs have seen less revealing sessions. In fact, I don't know how much of a revelation this was - more like a confirmation.

At the end of the day, it is the prince of the other most unbearable family in tennis, the Djerk-ovic’s that may have said it best:

"In the UK a lot of kids are a little bit spoiled. If you have perfect conditions and everything you want, you don't know the real meaning of tennis and you don't work as hard as you are supposed to. You do not have hunger for success because everything is on a plate."

Rather than berating him for the piercing nature of his comments, the British press would do well to heed his observations and consider their own role in creating the Enfant Terrible that is Andy Murray and every other British tennis player that shows some promise. Stop the hype, and wait until the kid earns some of the praise you just can’t wait to heap on him, and maybe, just maybe, you’ll find someone on the island that can play tennis, and...dare I say it...win one for the Queen.

RETURN OF THE A-ROD?

2008-03-09T12:25:00.000-07:00

Following a seemingly meaningless victory in San Jose, and having just lost to journeyman Robin Soderling (probably more famous for his antagonizing antics against Nadal at Wimbledon in 2007 than for his own game) in Memphis, Andy Roddick appears to have found his mojo.

With two convincing straight set victories over Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic in succession, marking the first time in his career he has beaten the #’s 2 and #3 players in the same tournament, Roddick’s supporters are awash with optimism that seems destined to resemble so many other false hopes that he might regain what many view as his rightful place in the acropolis of the tennis. And with hordes of tenniserati questioning his insistence on getting in a tournament in Tennessee before flying off to Dubai, it seems he knows something more about his own preparation than outside observers.

In a star-studded draw that included 8 of the top 10 players on tour, and despite being on the other side of the draw from his usual nemesis, Roger Federer, few would have put their money on the boy from Omaha coming through to the final. Fewer still would have bet on him winning in any case, since Federer’s path to his own redemption appeared ready made with the exception of an intriguing first round match up against that other frustrating Andy - Andy Murray. Murray took care of that bogey for him, and then promptly bottled his quarterfinal with Davydenko – another of Federer’s favorite whipping boys who stood in the way of what would have been a fascinating final.

This week, Roddick announced his separation from his current guide and mentor, Jimmy Connors. When the partnership began, it was hard for me to imagine it lasting very long. Never known to think of much more than himself, the manifestation of Connors helping Roddick break through the glass menagerie would have likely led to a conflict of credit for the success, and not a strengthening of the marriage, as it would most coach/player relationships. When Roddick reached the US Open final in 2006, it seemed their union was all the rage in tennis. Even Connors couldn’t resist the temptation to suggest that some of what made him “great” could rub off on Roddick, and with that the die was cast for this terrible idea to take hold.

A year later, at the 2008 Australian Open, Roddick openly complained about the paucity of quality time with his sen-sai, and although he never mentioned it, few would blame him for resenting the suggestion that Connors greatest asset, his unending selfishness masqueraded as competitiveness, would be the key facet of this gem of a pairing. As if Roddick’s problem was that he wasn’t competitive enough. Nobody on tour shows how much he hates losing, as much as Roddick – maybe Federer in his own way – but certainly not with the unbridled petulance, presented as a fiery belly, that Roddick always seems to display, even when he plays well and loses (as he did in the 2007 US Open).

To be fair, the biggest problem in Roddicks’ game is, and always has been, one of technique. With the heaviest serve in the history of tennis, Roddick’s arsenal looked more like that of an aircraft carrier – plenty of power for collateral damage, but when the mission required the precision of an attack submarine, a girlish backhand, and a suddenly spinny forehand too often abandoned ship on their captain and the results were almost too painful to bear, even for those with little love for former SNL host. If you watch slow-motion video of Roddick hitting his forehand, there are so many technical problems with it (delayed racquet head acceleration, a point of contact parallel to his body, and a tendency to watch the result of the shot before he’s hit it) and compare it to any of his main rivals, you’ll see why the basics of his game so often abandon him.

But this week, something strange happened to Andy Roddick. Despite all his technical weaknesses, and inability to maximize his game vis a vis those of his best contemporairies, he won. He didn’t just win - he competed ferociously in the first set and handed out real beat downs in the second in both of his star-studded quarter-final and semi-final match-ups.

More than the results, I was impressed with the extent of his disbelief at winning both matches. You could almost see a trail of monkey feces running down his back as he shook hands as the victor, first with Nadal, then with Djokovic. Never shy of displaying his emotions, you couldn’t help but be mildly surprised, even for all his hall of fame pedigree of winning the US Open, winning the Davis Cup, and having been ranked (albeit many moons ago) #1 in the world, at the obvious impact all the talk of shrinking to the occasion has had on his psyche.

Apparently Federer wasn’t the only one cloaked in the dark cloth of mystique, and when the last ball was struck against his swarthy opponent from Mallorca, the genuine smile, absent from his game for so long, reappeared like that of a natural beauty we all knew in high school who finally put her make-up on again. Who knows what would have happened had he met Federer in the final, instead of Feliciano Lopez, but on the strength of his recent form, and Roger’s, it’s not hard to imagine that this could have been his moment against him too.

There’s a lot of talk about Andy losing 15 in a row to Federer, when in fact, that streak was interrupted briefly in 2007 at Kooyong. Cynics would tell you that Federer was experimenting, or that it was just an exhibition, but Federer did reach the final, and nobody likes to hold aloft a lovely crystal plate, when there’s a brilliant gold cup being handed to your opponent, so my guess is the result was legitimate.

But Roddick’s problem never really was lack of belief. As a matter of fact, belief in his pedigree seemed to deepen his frustration at underachieving when it counted – even when it didn’t (such as in the last round-robin match of the YEC in Shanghai). At the end of the day, A-Rod seemed to put too much pressure on himself to get results, and the technical failings in the rest of his game couldn’t match up to the technical perfection of his serve.

At Wimbledon he gave away a 2-set lead to Richard Gasquet, and as anyone who knows the French will tell you, they are not known for their iron-will. That gallic shrug that is so familiar to francophones the world over is as much a metaphor for their perspective on life, which makes them well-rounded people, but generally underachieving athletes. Throughout their titanic encounter, it was on full display that day, even as the French version of Roddick was engineering his historic comeback, so something was going wrong for him in that match, and it wasn’t his will to win.

With Roddick there is this an ever-present tension that seems to belie an underlying knowledge that the limitations of his game mean his best bet to win anything important is to get on a wave, usually started by his serve, and ride it until the white foam comes crashing down on match point. The restlessness so evident in his demeanor seems to stem, in my view, from the knowledge that at any moment, the curtain will be drawn on the Emperor’s changing room, and we all (that includes his opponent) will realize that aside from a big serve, he comes onto that court as naked as the day he was born.

The look on his face when Gasquet or Federer or Djokovic so easily handle his serve reminds me of the look on Agassi’s face when he would realize that Sampras’ serve was on, and the rest of his game didn’t have too many holes in it.

That was a look we never saw this week, because Roddick wasn’t broken a single time in the entire tournament.

So for those who think they’ve just seen the return of the A-Rod of 2003 – the trash talking, big serving, forehand drilling phenom turned dominator that ran through the US Open like the wind – think again. It just takes one bad day on his serve to return Roddick to his under-achieving worst, and fortunately for him, he didn’t have one this week. But I have a feeling that if he meets up with either of the two he demolished this week, they’ll be focused on one thing and one thing only.

That would be getting a beat on his serve.

With most players you’d say that just getting the return back in play gives them about 25% chance of winning the point, but with Roddick that number’s probably well above 50%. And as Agassi opined in Roddick's match against Federer last year at Flushing Meadow, each successive stroke Roddick hits seems to reduce the likelihood that he’ll win the point. The biggest bang for the buck is just getting the return in play because with him, it’s more than half the battle.

I didn’t see enough out of his game this week to tell me that he was ready to return to the pinnacle of tennis, even if it’s just for a 2-week period. He’ll have to serve like he did for 4 matches for 7 if he wants to be in with any chance of winning Wimbledon or the US Open this year – let’s not even mention the French. Frankly, I don’t see that happening when everyone is as geared up as he obviously was for this tournament.

The best sign this week is the removal of Jimmy Connors from his camp. Connors was an aggressive baseliner, and some would put Roddick in the same category, only armed with a Howitzer serve – but then why is it that he hasn’t won anything worth winning (aside from the Davis Cup) in 5 years?

Connors, for alls his prowess from behind the baseline, spent very little time there. He wasn’t a serve and volleyer, but even in those days, he wasn’t dumb enough to think he could beat everyone exclusively with his ground strokes. An unnatural volleyer who actually used a western grip on the forehand side even at the net, Connors was sufficiently serviceable inside the service line to cut points off against bigger, stronger and harder-hitting opponents well into the period in his career when he suddenly became everyone’s favorite guy to root for. He made his living pounding from the baseline, but he won his titles at the net.

It was in this area that Roddick seemed to be taking his cues from Connors, and it was in this area that the paucity of his overall tennis ability was revealed. In convincing Roddick that he had to make his life easier by approaching the net and finishing off the points, he failed to translate that strategy into the tactics of how and when to approach. Instead, an unyielding barrage of kamikaze forays into the net against some of the more precise players on tour – precisely the type of players who still understand the art of the passing shot – probably cost Roddick a shot at winning on his own terms or at all, for that matter.

No matter how badly we want to credit coaches (the Henin Rodriguez partnership comes to mind) at the end of the day, the player has to have the innate sense of when to attack, when to defend, and when to throw the kitchen sink. Let me be clear: I’m 100% against on court coaching. But even a purist like me has to admit that you could tell a baboon to reach Chaucer, and he’d probably eat the text instead.

The truth is there’s no substitute for knowing what you’re doing, and clearly, in Connors playing philosophy he did, and Andy doesn’t. I’ve never seen someone get passed so often who tried so hard to come to net. I applaud his openness to the tactic, but that doesn’t mean he can execute. Basically it looked to me like Andy was trying to employ the tactics that Connors did, rather than discussing a strategic objective and figuring out ways to execute his own tactics to achieve it. It seems Roddick found a way to employ the strategy of putting pressure on your opponent, but he is not (as Connors often did) doing it by approaching the net. A-Rod in 2003 rarely did, and this week it was more of the same. In that sense, Andy seems to have found himself gain. It remains to be seen if his self is enogh for a victory. I’d flatten out the forehand, take off a little bit of pace, and approach only on short balls, or well struck shots in the rally.

This week it appeared he didn’t do too much of that, and it’s a good news/bad news sort of deal:

The good news is Andy Roddick is doing it his way.
The bad news is it hasn’t worked in 5 years.

Call me a cynic, but I still think it’s way too early to be heralding the return of the A-Rod just yet.

NICO ALMAGRO - THE BEST PLAYER YOU'VE NEVER SEEN

2008-03-04T07:41:00.000-08:00

The attention of the tennis world will certainly be on Dubai this week. With so many top 10 players in this tournament, Andy Murray (ranked 11th) couldn’t get so much as a seed, and as such had to win his first match against none other than world champion Roger Federer. But I have to say I watched a wonderful little event in Acapulco, Mexico on ESPN Deportes this week and discovered a player who has really impressed me with his game.

You may have heard of Nicolas Almagro, one of many Spanish players playing second fiddle to Rafael Nadal, but if you haven’t seen him play (and it's likely that you haven't), and you get a chance, particularly during the clay-court season, I would recommend you tune in.

Almagro is a swashbuckler – no doubt about it. That racquet looks more like a sword in his hand, and even on clay he’s not afraid to unload off of both sides – and boy can he ever unload. Add to this a curiosity amongst Spanish players – a killer serve – and suddenly you’ve got a player who, if he can perform consistently, clearly has the game to do well on larger stages.

In his titanic semi-final encounter with Chu-Cho Acasuso of Argentina, Almagro so entertained the Mexican crowd that they honored him with one of the rarest displays of collective public affection in sports. As he stood in the center of the court, sending kisses to his contingent of supporters, Almagro was showered with seat cushions thrown onto the court. It's an interesting cross between honoring an undersized winner in sumo wrestling, and exhalting a matador in bullfighting. I suppose there's a little bit of both in Almagro.

I’m sure his opponents are not impressed with some of his histrionics – two years ago, in a match he won against Marat Safin in Valencia, although Safin had spent many of his formative years in that very region of Spain, it was the man from Murcia who garnered the crowd’s affection with a dazzling display of shot-making, defense, and pure guile. In response, Safin walked off the court and actively refused to shake hands with the victor who had spent more than a generous amount of time after match point gesticulating while laying supine on the rust colored surface.

One of the most appealing aspects of his game is his backhand. For an average sized player technique is his savior, and the consistency and power he generates off his single-handed reverse stroke is impressive. Typically he runs around it to finish off points, and his forehand is definitely his better side - but if it's a weakness, we should all be so lucky to have one like his. There will be more than one opponent who will wonder just how he managed to smoke so many shots up the line, while also finding magically acute angles on his cross-court shots on the same side.

Ultimately, in the final against Nalbandian, the telling factor was his serve. It got him out of trouble on more than one occasion, and in the first set put so much pressure on Nalbandian to produce on the second-serve that he often over-hit and gifted Almagro points that he really needed to win. Compact and cultured by overwhelming spin, Almagro shows us that there is no substitute for form and follow through on all strokes including the serve. At the end of the day, most of the motion prior to the point of contact is ironically a waste, whereas the strike zone and the follow through seem to fuel his mammoth stroke production.

We’re still about 3 months away from the French Open, and Almagro has disappointed at Roland Garros in the past. After playing well in the 2006 European clay court season, he lost in the first round in Paris. There’s a distinct possibility, as is always the case in tennis, that his performance in Mexico, on top of his win in Brazil two weeks earlier, will put pressure on him that his emotive and loose-limbed game cannot bear. For players who rely more on touch, feel and technique than brute force, the mental approach to the game is paramount to their success in a way that makes high expectations their kryptonite.

However there is a possibility that at age 22 – around about the age that both Federer and Sampras emerged from two years of faltering under the weight of expectation – this could be his time. In the blogosphere you often hear complaints that tennis had become too predictable and boring. I have never been one to hold it against a player because he is dominant – it’s not his responsibility to make it easier for his opponents to beat him – but I have always found it curious of Federer’s detractors (who are almost as often Nadal’s fanatics) that the dominance they deride when displayed by Federer on most surfaces is somehow more appreciated when displayed by Nadal on clay. You would think that if boredom with the game is the source of their crusade against Federer they’d be equally antagonistic towards Nadal (and his opponents, for that matter) on clay. Typically they are not.

Here, we just may have someone with the game and the attitude to do in Paris what Djokovic did in Melbourne – show the tennis world (especially Federer's detractors) that the beauty of tennis is that on any given day, anyone can beat anyone. In doing so, Djokovic should have reminded them of just how good Federer has been over the last 3-4 years, in avoiding defeat so often. If Almagro can do the unthinkable and win on clay in Paris, perhaps they'll appreciate Nadal’s dominance on that surface, as lustily as they laud the end of Federer’s dominance on ever other.

WHAT A DISGRACE!

2008-02-13T11:25:00.000-08:00

I'm quite certain I'm not the only one who feels this way, but Novak Djokervic's retirement from a Davis Cup tie for Serbia against Russia, has to be the most disgraceful thing I've ever seen in tennis. This event is nothing if it is not honorable, and if its participants are not going to take it seriously, then why should anybody else.

To be fair, this isn't the first time he's run from a fight, and I'm guessing it won't be the last, but in the past the impact has only been to himself. Now, a country newly proud of their tennis pedigree (and rightfully so) has to live with the shame of its prodigal son returning to the colors of their flag, and turning them bright yellow.

I know there are few top players who take Davis Cup seriously. Federer, Nadal, and now Djokervic, have all thrown in the towel when it comes to this hallowed competition, which seems more important now to tennis nation minnows, than it does to the players who earn (for everyone) the big bucks. But with the exception of the Americans, who are so committed to playing for their country that they've had the same line-up for almsot 2 years straight, no tennis country can seem to muster up the best players with any consistency, and those of us who revere Davis Cup for what it stands for, and what it can be if we put some mustard on it, are quite fed up.

But here, with the Djoker, there's one glaring difference. This jerk actually quit in the middle of a match. In a show of either petulance, or feigned immediacy, Djokervic walked off the court without bothering to even collect his belongings. I'm sure one or two Russians had more than a mild chuckle at the sight of a Serbian turning tail and running from a fight on Russian soil. I'm sure they're wondering how they ever lost the Soviet empire. And the ghosts of Serbians past, who most certainly can't stand Russians, are probably rolling in their graves at the sight of this slinking weasel, scuttering off the court in shame.

With his mother, shaking her head all along for the cameras, pretending that he's doing something that isn't to be expected of him (i.e. take off his skirt and finish a match for his country if it kills him) is just a side-show to the continuing parade of disgraceful images and actions with which this man, and his family, have sullied beautiful game of tennis.

At least Jimmy Connors didn't bother to play Davis Cup for 14 years rather than disgracing himself on this stage. Fair enough - he was going through some family issues in 1984, and didn't give his best when he bagged it against Sweden in the final that should have been ours, but at least the man had enough self-respect to finish the match.

In my opinion, there's only one way to finish a Davis Cup match, and it is as the Romans told their soldiers before coming back from a fight:

With your shield or on it.

NO MATTER HOW YOU CUT IT, THE ERA HAS ENDED

2008-01-25T07:04:00.000-08:00

That's right - the best player in the world, 12-time grand slam champion Roger Federer, choked away the first set, and his best chance to retain the Australian Open title he has held for the last 2 years.

It happens.

That is not to take away from the outstanding performance of Novak Djokovic, who's play throughout the tournament has been nearly flawless, didn't choke, and was able to come up with the goods when it counted. There are a lot of people who couldn't believe it would happen until the moment it did, and even held out hope during the 3rd set tie-break you had the feeling that if Federer could have mustered a way to win it, he would have found a way to make a stunning comeback.

But at the end of the day, when Fed had to be at his best he wasn't, and when Djokovic had to be at his best he was. No matter how you cut it, this is indicative of a change in men's tennis. For 4 years, we have come to expect nothing but the best from Federer, particularly at later stages in the tournament, and it hasn't been since the same tournament in 2005 that Federer has exited in the penultimate round of the tournament. But with this victory, Djokovic has shown that not only is Federer beatable on a surface other than clay, but that he is beatable at a stage when he is normally unflappable.

This is the second victory for Djokovic over Federer, and many observing the US Open final of 2007 felt that today's result is one that could have occurred at Flushing Meadow had Djokovic held his nerve. As it were, it took another six months for the Serbian with confidence and personality was finally able to over come the fear of standing face to face with the world's #1, and come out the victor.

It will be interesting to see how Federer responds to this, given that he has no coach, and certainly had designs on winning the grand slam in 2008. Now he will have to wait until Roland Garros to restore his pedigree, and in the mean time will need to find answers to some questions that have been raised by his failure in Australia.

First, his consistency. Looking at the statistics, Federer had only slightly less than twice the number of errors as winners, and his serve seemed to be a telling factor. In truth, his serve saved him at Wimbledon against Nadal, where his 30 aces seemed to come at the most opportuned time. But in Australia, unable to come up with the serves to hold when he needed to, the rest of his game was left to bear the burden of the moment, and it was not up to the task.

Tactically, Federer's game has always been one that is based on control of the points from the baseline, with a willful search for opportunities to approach. And where he had trouble in 2007 was against players who were able to take control of the points from the back, pin him behind the baseline, and assert their own designs on the rallies. In this context, Federer, like any other player, struggled to win critical points from the baseline. The winners coming from his heavily targeted backhand were few and far between. And his forehand, once the most dominating weapon in men's tennis, was too often astray at crucial moments.

At the end of 2007 in Shanghai, it seemed Federer had made an important tactical adjustment that allowed him to romp to his second straight YEC. Following his surprising defeat to Fernando Gonzalez, he began taking every opportunity presented to him to approach the net. Federer attacked his oppponents, and mitigated his inability to control the points from the back court. Rather than try to find a way to step inside the baseline and dictate, he rushed the net to devastating effect, and his path the final left the remaining top 8 players in the world in his wake.

In Australia, the speed of the court prevented him from rushing as early and opportunistically as in Shanghai, and as such, puts a big question mark next to his chances of winning the French Open. Until somebody goes out and beats Nadal for the first time at Roland Garros, he will remain the favorite to win that title, but what of the other grand slams? Wimbledon would seem to present him with the best chance to return to the formula that won him Shanghai, but Nadal is fast improving at this venue, and Djokovic will have taken heart from his victory in Australia.
And when the hard court season begins in summer, will these problems resurface?

For sure, Federer lost to the better player today - Djokovic has yet to lose a set, and unless Tsonga turns in a similar performance to his demolition of Nadal in the other semi-final, it's hard to imagine any image other than that of Djokovic raising the Australian trophy. To be fair, although Djokovic is the younger player, Tsonga has less experience on these grand occassions and recent history does not look favorably on upstart finalists in this situation.

But either way, somebody other than Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal will lift a grand slam trophy for first time since January of 2005 - nearly 3 years, and as such, it certainly is the end of an era.

WHAT TO TAKE FROM TIPSY

2008-01-21T08:26:00.001-08:00

The biggest thing to take a way from Tipsarevic's near upset of Federer is not that you have to play your best to beat him, but that you only have to play better than him on the day. You see, one of the advantages of being the best in the world for 4 years is that your opponents tend to feel they have to beat your legacy, and to do that, unless you've got a legacy of your own, you've have to "play your best."

Truth is, Roger committed 64 unforced errors in 5 sets, which is a pretty high number of errors, and as such, a good player with a pedigree like Berdych or Blake probably doesn't have to play his absolute best to beat him on a day like that. In fact, if you just play solid tennis, and put him under some pressure by attacking the net, flattening your strokes, and pinning him behind the baseline, you may get an even better result than Tipsarevic.

But take a look at a couple of quotes from James Blake, AFTER Fed's encounter with Tipsy:

"Every time I've stepped out on the court with him I've felt IF I PLAY MY BEST, I give myself A SHOT with anyone in the world."

"Just Janko taking him to 10-8 in the fifth shows that it doesn't matter who you are, YOU CAN PLAY YOUR BEST AND TAKE HIM TO THE LIMIT. You know, a couple breaks here and there, that obviously could have been Janko's match."

Now, here are Tipsy's comments:

"...he's not giving too many chances in the match...and if you don't have this complete positive attitude that you've earned this chance and then you're going to take it, there's a huge percentage that you're going to choke or [over-hit]".

"...with him, and with Rafa, I felt that the game is really point after point."

"Tactially I was prepared, talked Novak before the match and with my coach, had an idea, had a game plan..."

Nothing in that quote about having to play your best, and having "a shot". Furthermore, Tipsarevic had a game plan, which means he had an idea of how he was going to win the match beyond, playing his best, which nobody can ever guarantee.

The idea here is that:

You have to have an idea of how you're going to win beyond just playing your socks off
Your game plan has to include a way to bring out the worst in your opponent, no matter who he is
You have to stick to the game plan if it works and/or change it if doesn't

We all know what happens when Blake thinks he has to play his best - he overhits and panicks. All Blake has to do is play better than Federer ON THE DAY. If he starts playing Fed's pedigree instead of the match, I think it's lights out for Blakey...again.

GOOD-BYE TO THE BLOGOSPHERE

2007-12-10T12:39:00.000-08:00

I'm tempted to say good-bye to the tennis blogosphere. Take a look at this post at "All Court Game Tennis Forum":

http://www.allcourtgame.com/comments.php?DiscussionID=1489&page=1#Item_6

At issue here is whether Federer is genuinely a nice guy, or whether he's just being nice to these ball kids in case he has to play them one day.

That's right - he's looking for an edge his game doesn't give him by being (fake) nice to ball-boys.

It's hard to take this medium seriously when you see comments like this, but this is merely the tip of the iceberg. I can take it if someone doesn't like Federer - a lot of champions have been considered to be contrived or pre-meditated in their antics, and it's not out of the realm of possibility that Federer's antics, while cloaked in niceties, is in part intended to make him everybody's the nice guy on tour.

My point: big deal.

The last time I checked, you don't get points for personality in sports, unless we're talking about figure skating. There's a Nancy Kerrigan-esque phenomenon at play here, because a lot of athletes paint themselves to be more "every-man" than they really are.

But you still have to hit straight. You still have to have game. And you can't fake it for 4 years. You can get a few victories here and there, but you can't dominate one of the most competitive sports in the world by cheating/cajoling/faking your way to 12 grand slam titles. It just doesn't happen. Eventually, somebody better than you, who just doesn't give a rat's ass about your image, just comes along and beats you.

I think the most interesting thing going on here is the common traits of all the Fed-haters out there:

Invariably their favorite player is either Sampras, Agassi or Roddick, and they are motivated either by a disdain for the quickness with which their idol has been replaced in the tennis world as best/favorite player on tour or the iron grip Federer has over their preferred combattant.

Invariably they seek to point out all of Federer's supposed faults - that he's arrogant, selfish, manipulative, etc., in order to (continue to) convince themselves that someone else is a more worthy champion. As if the above three "other" favorites were angels.

This is the kicker: if you don't agree with them whole-heartedly, then you're a sap who's been played by the tennis media and the Federer PR machine - they are, in fact, the only keepers of the truth!

I don't think it's an exaggeration to suggest, particuarly based on item # 3 above, that this is really a cult. The idea, that only they know the truth, and that anyone who doesn't agree with you is either a gullible sap, or a part of the conspiracy. It's like, thinking that your local minister is Jesus Christ, and anyone trying to convince you otherwise is trying to destroy you and your faith, or are yet to bask in the glorious truth of your knowledge. Mass suicides have been committed this way.

It's hard to imagine that these people are little more than mentally imbalanced losers, who have nothing better to do than to commisserate with like-minded losers. But then again, I was in the blogosphere myself, and I don't consider myself a loser. Maybe I am.

But I know enough to know that no matter how you cut it, no matter what excuse you come up with, Federer is an extraordinary tennis player, and has been for 4 years. I've always wondered why athletes are always saying, "...they can't take that away from me." Now I know - when you win something, the only thing they can't say about you is that you didn't win - but they can say a hell of a lot more. Good and bad. If you get to caught up in the good, one day, the bad will replace it, and in a sense they've "taken away" the good things they used to say about you.

But if you win, you win, and they can't take that away from you no matter how hard they try. But boy are they trying hard to take it away from Federer.

I like Roger Federer as a tennis player - I learn a lot from watching him play, from his shot making to his shot selection to his movement and versatility. I think he's a great player. And for saying this, I'm castigated in the lunatic fringe of the anti-Federer blogosphere because to appreciate these qualities in Federer is to have been duped by the Federer religion.

I came to the blogosphere to see if I could find intelligent discussion on tennis topics, but it turns out that you have to look carefully, because sometimes what you'll find, in the dark recesses of the internet, where most dare not go, a collection of anti-Federer enthusiasts, with misplaced energy, and a pathetic dedication to revelling in their own sorry, and deranged view of the tennis world.

I, for one, am done with them.

WHY NOT COUNT DAVIS CUP IN THE RANKINGS?

2007-12-03T07:51:00.000-08:00

Despite my joy at the US victory in the Davis Cup, I have to admit it doesn't mean what it used to. There's too much money in tennis, and that money is distributed based on ranking and star power. Too often, the best players in the world avoid Davis Cup, because playing would be at the expense of their own careers. Basically, if they have to choose between their country or their own careers, they choose their own careers.

The fact is that fewer and fewer of the top players have played Davis Cup in the last 25-30 years. The reason most often cited is schedule and the need for rest, yet players continue to play exhibitions for money, so clearly this is not a complete answer. Furthermore, since Davis Cup has no bearing on points, a player is forced to choose between on the one hand

Earning a better living
Saving themselves for tournaments that count towards ranking
Playing Davis Cup.

Often Davis Cup loses out. Davis Cup is still a compelling competition, but has been diluted over the years as a result. I think it's a shame that the abstract concept of playing for one's country isn't so important to many of the top players, but I think the competition could be improved if there was a way to get players to consider Davis Cup as a chance to do both - represent your country and earn some ATP tour points.

For this reason I suggest counting Davis Cup results in the ranking system - just like they consider results in the "official" head to head records. It's not like taking points for something arbitrary - these are tennis matches played in earnest by professional players.

The intent is to ensure more participation in Davis Cup from top players, by eliminating the need to sacrifice of tour points by playing Davis Cup. I would do so by awarding tour points for victories in a Davis Cup tie. The problem is that players not able to play Davis Cup cannot access those points, and thus would be at a ATP tour race disadvantage to those who can/do play Davis Cup.

To rectify that, I suggest tournaments ATP sanctioned events set up on Davis Cup weekends, for players who cannot play in Davis Cup (either because they haven't been selected, or because their countries don't/aren't participating). Because in Davis Cup a player might lose one match and still earn points in another - not possible in elimination touranment play - I suggest a round robin format giving players not playing Davis Cup the same opportunity to lose one match but still have a chance at tour points.

So in the end you have the following:

Points awarded for victories in Davis Cup
Additional points for winning a match in a Davis Cup tie away from home (mitigating the home court advantage)
Points awarded in round robin competitions outside of Davis Cup
These competitions are scheduled on Davis Cup weekends (no scheduling advantage)
Any player (Davis Cup player, or not) can earn points on that weekend (no ATP points disadvantage)
Players can skip those tournaments and rest, but sacrifice the points (just as they would any tournament they skip)

Thoughts?

THE GREAT SAMPRAS/FEDERER DEBATE

2007-11-20T14:08:00.000-08:00

A strange thing is happening in the tennis blogosphere that I'm sure has never happened before, but there is a brewing war in tennis heaven between the supporters of Federer and Sampras over who is the fairest champion of them all. The debate goes like this:

Sampras is the king of tennis history with more grand slams than any other male player in history, but even if Federer surpasses his record, Sampras will still be the greatest because he did it against better players, for longer, and he did it quietly without the paparazzi or IMG.

Fedheads counter that, Sampras may have more, but 1) not for long and 2) he's so much better than the competition he's doing it even better than Sampras did.

Along the way there are a few silly arguments about whether their single matchup in 2001 is an indicator of who was the better player, but I beg to differ. One match does not really give a basis for who was the better player. Sampr-assers will aruge that Pete was not in his prime, but Fedheads will counter that neither was Roger. Both points have merit, the only time head to head comes into play as a tie-breaker is when the two players played in the same era, against the same pool of opponents with similar results. At that point we can start to ask how they fared against each other, but until then there are far more representative measures of superiority.

For me the most important is the number of grand slams they've won. Sampras has 14 and Federer has 12 - as far as I'm concerned the argument ends there. Of course, if Federer scores another trifecta in 2008, I can't say the debate doesn't reopen - and why shouldn't it? Years at #1 are a factor, but to me, less so than grand slams because even Marcelo Rios was ranked #1 at some point and he never won anything even remotely important. For that matter Nadal is, for me a better player historically, and he's never been ranked #1.

So if Federer can overhaul Sampras, I'd give him the edge.

Interestingly, the debate is almost as much about how they've gone about amassing their grand slams as how many they have. A lot of people have referred to Sampras' battles, and the pedigree of players he overcame to win his titles, like Chang, Courier, Agassi, Becker, Kafelnikov, Kuerten, etc. For me, this is a strange argument - because in a round about way it sounds a little bit like this:

Federer wins all the time, so he's the best, but it's not that impressive because he wins all the time.

Implicit in this is a couple of things that call into question Federer's pedigree against that of Sampras:

It's harder to win close matches than it is not to drop a set for 2 weeks
It shows more character to win in the fifth, than it does to win in straight sets

On the face of it, it seems to make sense - if a boxer never got punched hard by anyone and retired undefeated, would we say he was better than a guy who got pounded, got up off the canvas several times and still never lost a fight? Probably not. We'd be more impressed with the latter, because that's obviously harder. And it's true that while Sampras lost a few grand slam finals in Australia and at the US Open, along the way, Federer's losses have only come at the French Open (a final Sampras never reached), and has only been pushed to 5 sets once in all those finals he's won.

This strikes me as something of a cynical argument, however, because in order for Federer to be adjudged the equal of Sampras, he'd actually have to do worse against his contemporaries than he has (thus showing their collective pedigree). So in order to be considered the greatest, he has to have lost to some of his contemporaries along the way. That sounds counter intuitive to me, and as such I cannot endorse it as a good measure of Sampras' surperiority - I think Sampras' record is enough for that, and if you throw in the number of years he's been #1, and his longevity, (the time between his first and last grand slam was 12 years) a good case can be made that he's the greatest, even if Roger gets to 15 or 16 in 2008.

Another knock against the both of them is that they've never won the French. Of the two, I think Roger has the best chance because he's been in 2 finals already, and many have questioned his tactics at the French. Perhaps if he can employ a more attacking version of his game on clay, he just may find the way to break his duck at Roland Garros.

Ultimately these questions are primarily aesthetic. Whether you prefer the one or the other, it's pretty clear that objectively Sampras is the greater champion...for now.

PLEASE GO AWAY, MS. SHARAPOVA

2007-09-27T10:51:00.000-07:00

First of all, don't call me a hater - not only do I hate being called a hater, but I think it's the stupidest term on the planet. Some kind of rogue-english amalgamation of a verb and an adjective to describe someone consumed by the green-eyed monster of envy.

That Maria Sharapova is the most annoying person in tennis is debatable (Lleyton Hewitt is still playing - albeit less boisterously - and I believe Marcelo Rios still plays on the Champions tour), but I'm pretty sure if you took a poll at any tennis court in Moscow, you'd find her name at the top of the list. There are so many reasons to be fed up with this woman, it's hard to choose just one. But let's just delve into this Fed Cup debacle for a moment, and you'll see what I mean.

But first some background.

She may have a russian name, and she may have been born in Siberia, of all places, but she's about as Russian as she is a damn monkey. Her unbearable father, Yuri, is Belarussian, and moved from Homel to Siberia following the nearby Chernobyl nuclear accident. At age 7, her father moved her (without her mother) to train at the Bolletieri academy in Bradenton, Florida...big surprise there. For some reason, unbeknownst to me, she has retained her passport, but that, and some american accented Russian, is about the run of it.

So what about this Fed Cup business? Well she was scheduled to play against Spain in April, but had a shoulder injury. Then she was supposed to play against the US in July, but this mysterious shoulder injury recurred, and she skipped out again. Finally, she indicated that the shoulder was still giving her problems after the US open, and pulled out of the Fed Cup final in September, but somehow managed to offer herself as a practice partner and supporter of the team.

So imagine how it felt for Anna Chakvatadze and Svetlana Kuznetzova to bust their humps selflessly, after longer and more arduous efforts than Maria's at the US Open, to win the Fed Cup for Russia, only to have this woman steal their limelight without even lifting a racquet. Not only did she have the temerity to galavant around the court in a lap of honor normally reserved for those who actually won the Fed Cup, but she has added to this a blatant, and rather hollow attempt to disguise her desire to play in the Olympics.

Keep in mind that she's never played Fed Cup for Russia - she's probably the only Russian woman in the top 100 who hasn't. It's amazing because you would think someone with this grand desire to play in the Olympics would want to represent their country in other competitions, like, oh...I don't know...say, the Fed Cup! But that assumes Sharapova has any interest in anything other than herself. Why she wants to play in the Olympics is probably a two-pronged motivation. There's more money in it for her if she wins, assuming there's someone out there that has not already been bombarded with her unbearable image plastered everywhere the sun shines (and some places it doesn't), but it's clear there's nothing patriotic about her. And because IOC deferrs to the ITF so that they'll pressure top professionals to play in the Olympics, rules stipulate that if you want to be considered for an Olympic tournament, you have to have made yourself available for Fed Cup. Sharapova being Sharapova, has done no such thing. Thus the soulless publicity stunt flurry of showing up at the final, and running around waving the Russian flag, etc. If she loves Russia so much then why hasn't she played Fed Cup - ever?

And why the Olympics?

Well, the thing abouit tennis is that the Olympics is the one place where a tennis player can engage in the illusion of patriotism while still playing and winning for him/her self a gold medal. Nothing would make her happier than being able to say she's won a gold medal, because the value of that financially is tremendous, and it only comes along every four years - and who knows if she'll still be playing when the Olympics go to London in 2012. If she does win the gold, then every time the Olympics roll around, for the rest of her life, someone will be there to hand her a load of cash to take a picture with her medal and some loser product that would otherwise be sold at a steep discount at WalMart.

I suppose it's also possible that through some rather free flowing osmosis, because her father is Belarussian, he has infused in her an admiration for the Olympics and a desire to win gold. Nobody loves the Olympics more than Russians. Needless to say, the shameless Chinese, and the insatiable commerical appetite of the IOC are likely all in favor of her "...so pretty..." face doubling billboard advertising rates all across Beijing in 2008. This is the perfect storm for another in a long line of so many galling acts of self mutilation the WTA and professional tennis promoters have conducted in deference to Ms. Sharapova (e.g. the absurd experiment with on-court coaching in the US Open Series following Yuri and Maria's mime homage to Marcel Marceau at Flushing in 2006.)

Think I'm exaggerating? Take a look at these comments from the ITF:

"Her presence in Moscow certainly didn't hurt. She was injured and couldn't play, but by being here she clearly demonstrated her commitment to the Fed Cup and that will certainly enhance her chances (of playing at next year's Olympics). It's a big plus for her."

I can just hear the accounting calculator buzzing away in the coffers of oh so many unnammed charlatans at the IOC and in Beijing. Just follow the money.

I hate to be a cynic, but everything about her little act stinks to high heaven, and the comments of her "teammates", if you consider her a member of the "team", clearly concur.

World number two Svetlana Kuznetsova said: "Personally, I don't know why she came; I mean, she said she wanted to be our practise partner but if you can't play how then can you practice?"

Good point. And Chakvetadze had this to say:

"If you haven't played Fed Cup all year, it wouldn't be fair to just show up for the final. It's not fair to all the other girls who committed themselves to the team's cause."

You think?

Clearly they resented her presence, and weren't shy about saying it - one thing these Russian girls are good for, besides abnormally loud grunts and 4-foot pony tails, is catty comments about each other. They don't pull punches when it comes to other Russian girls, and certainly not when it comes to the most unbearable woman in tennis today.

I'm sure they'd join me in asking for the granting of a single wish: that Miss Sharapova would just go away. But as long as lap dogs buy the crap she's selling, there'll be no end of her, or her atrocious father, in sight.

DJO-KER-VIC ENTOURAGE

2007-09-12T08:35:00.000-07:00

Personally, I have just about enough of Novak Djokovic's cheering section and shamless pandering to the media. I know that he's trying to make a career for himself, and the US media is so predictably hungry for a "star" to replace is wayward obsession with Andy Roddick, who is clearly not the real deal, that it's easy to see why he and his "team" have been so successful.

At the US Open it began with their incessant camera-hogging gesticulations each and every time their little boy did something right on the court. They're well aware that US television cannot resist the opportunity to invent the drama of on-looking family and friends, and have taken it to a new level. With the father leaning against the "ropes" screaming like he's winning the points himself, and the mother, biting her nails to a knub (wouldn't surprise me if she were wearing flavored nail-polish to make the charade more tolerable) and a gushing Dick Enberg going on an on about the family, is it any surprise that they got almost as much air-time during the tournament as his opponents?

Then the disgraceful Serbian flag color stunt they pulled in the semi-final. Such shameless pandering, just so everyone knows they come from a war-torn country and had to dodge US bombs to fulfill their sons dreams, etc. But for me, the topper was their uniform in the final. All wearing Djo-ker-vic's Adidas costume, like over-zealous parents at an 8-year old's youth soccer tournament. Add on top of that the shameless shit-stirring stunt of "inviting" Sharapova to his box (which she eagerly obliged, just to keep up interest in her following her own dismal performance) and the invitation of De Niro and his tennis-loving wife. That was truly the coup de grace, and disappointed as I was that he accepted the invitation, I can't help but chuckle at the equally conspicuous absence of the actor at the conclusion of the match. I'm glad he chose to get out of there before the circus left town, but the damage had already been done.

I like Djokovic as a player - he's one of the few that I enjoy watching these days. He's got a good range of shots, has a lot of power, is mobile and has a good serve. He also displays good touch and feel with is drop shots and volley's although his power volleys could probably use some improvement...well, nobody's perfect. At the end of the day, I think he's as good as his results show, and it wouldn't surprise me to find him on the winning end of the Australian Open final in 2008, but I wouldn't mind if the camera spent more time on him and his opponents than it did on his possee.

LABOR DAY IS PAST, BUT NO CLASS AT FLUSHING MEADOW

2007-09-06T09:32:00.000-07:00

It's hard to put into words the disappointment at the atrocious behavior of Serena Williams at her post-match press conference on Tuesday night after being handled rather easily by world #1 Justine Henin. The Williams sisters are very popular among younger sports fans, particularly those recently interested in tennis, but within the tennis world, there is little support for these two, particularly when they show little to no grace or respect towards their opponents when they lose.

It's one thing to be competitive and confident, and it's another to insult your opponent by suggesting that she made lucky shots and that this, and every match, for that matter, is yours to either win or lose. You may have this mentality before the match to put yourself in the right mindset, but what's done is done, and once you've been served like yesterday's lunch, the right thing to do is take a big bite of humble pie and live to fight another day.

Years ago I used to fully support Richard Williams in his complaint that Americans didn't seem to take to the Williams sisters they way they did to other American tennis players, particularly cute little blonde ones - in fact, it wouldn't have been a stretch to say that even cute blonde Russian players were more popular with Americans than the Williams sisters. Underlying this statement is, and always has been, the question of race - i.e. are American sports fans ready to go ga-ga for a couple of black tennis stars? But the thing is, it turns out that this lukewarm reception to the sisters from Compton may have less to do with their race, than with their attitude.

It's all well and good to stand on your tippy-toes and wave kisses to the crowd, like Mary Lou Retton at the '84 Olympics, when you win. And since kids don't seem to watch press conferences, or read interview transcripts (or much of anything these days, for that matter) they don't see the other side of Serena that has everyone who actually follows tennis so up in arms.

Does she honestly believe that Justine Henin was making "lucky" shots Tuesday night? Were these the same lucky shots she made at the French Open and Wimbledon, where she also handily beat Serena? And by the way, what's all this talk about luck? Are we talking about some journeyman who was given a wildcard into the main draw, or the deservedly #1 ranked tennis player in the world? Perhaps what really has Serena up in arms today is that there is no excuse for her failure this time around.

She can't claim Henin cheated (as she did at the French Open 4 years ago)

She can't claim she was injured (as she did at Wimbledon)

She can't claim it's not her best surface (as she does at the French Open)

She can't claim lack of preparation (since she won the Australian with a similar run-up)

The bottom line is this: she lost to a better player. Maybe not always a better player, but definitely Tuesday night. And that's all anyone expects her to say when she loses to a better player. Not that she lost due to her own mistakes, when in fact she was clearly outclassed. And not that her opponent made lucky shots, when in fact Henin raised her game, and Serena couldn't.

There is one thing tennis players hate, and that's when big name players think they're entitled to victories and titles because they have a good pedigree. Years ago, Pat Rafter got into it with Pete Sampras because each time he won something big, or beat Sampras, Sampras had some injury excuse. Sampras went so far as to say that it was "annoying" to see Rafter lift the US Open trophy in 1997, because he felt it was rightfully his.

Excuse me?

It's hard to give a great champion like Sampras a hard time, because he generally had a lot of class, and perhaps the comment was taken out of context. (BTW if you want to see the context of Serena's comments, here they are: http://www.tennis-x.com/story/2007-09-05/h.php). But in sports, nothing rightfully belongs to anyone - the reason we play the game is to determine who deserves to win, otherwise we can hand out the trophy and prize money at the same time as they do the draw.

And even if injuries are a factor, we don't know what the winning player is experiencing, and anyone who's played highly competitive sports will tell you that they're always carrying some kind of knock or discomfort or injury that presents a challenge. That's part of sports, and not an excuse for losing. If you're fit enough to be on the court, then you're fit enough to win. End of story.

Serena should take a lesson from Sharapova in this regard - even though we know that this woman is completely in love with herself, she at least has the good sense to FEIGN humility when she loses, and even when she wins. Yes, I get tired of her phony, "all this for little 'ol me?" routine, but to be fair when she loses, she doesn't sound off like a spoiled child who thinks they deserve to win every match regardless of how well their opponent plays. She congratulates her opponent and moves on.

And one last thing...she should not, as some have suggested, have skipped the press conference. She should have just been a little more gracious and honest, because that's what is expected of anyone in any disappointing situation, and not just big tennis stars.

Good riddance to, young lady. Come back next year when you've learned some manners.