THE KEY TO WIMBLEDON? NEWSFLASH: IT'S NOT THE SERVE

Is there a key success factor on grass, and if so, what is it?  I say everyone's serve is better on grass, so that's not the key success factor - that's a myth.

It's the return.

Recently Rafael Nadal opined that "If your serve is good, you can win on grass even without playing your best."  The missing context is that he was clearly explaining how he had won his first tournament on grass without much preparation and without much of a good run of form to speak of leading into the tournament.  But not surprisingly it kicked off an extended debate in the blogosphere about the validity of results on grass, because of the influence of the serve.

I think what Nadal implied (without really meaning to) is that you can lose a match - any match - on grass to a player who serves exceptionally well on the day, and he's right.  That's one of the reasons why Wimbledon is so hard to win:  because you can so easily lose any single match if you have a bad day and your opponent (no matter who he is) serves his socks off.  But unlike what was immediately interpreted as a dig at grass court tennis (something that Nadal, who has always professed his love of Wimbledon and grass court tennis, would never do), you really can't win Wimbledon with just a big serve.

That is just a myth.

The universe of players who have won Wimbledon is much smaller than other majors, and it does not necessarily reflect players with the biggest serve. Serving well (and not necessarily big) like Federer and Sampras helps a great deal, but you have to serve well, not just big.  In fact, I think the reason why Federer and Sampras have won so many Wimbledons, and why the universe of champions at Wimbledon is smaller than the other majors, is precisely because the serve is not the deciding factor in whether you can win it.  Take the following statistics:

# of different FO champions in the open era = 26
# of different Wimbledon champions in the open era = 20

# of different FO champions in the last 20 years = 12
# of different Wimbledon champions in the last 20 years = 8

I don't mean to denigrate Roland Garros, but just as the universe of players who have won 250's is greater than those who have won 500's which is greater than those who have won 1000's which is greater than those who have won majors, the derived conclusion is that the harder it is to win the tournament, the smaller the universe of players who actually do it.  So, by this logic, that the universe of players who have won the FO is greater than the universe of players who have won Wimbledon would suggest that Wimbledon is harder to win.  If you doubt this conclusion, you must accept the opposite:  that the 250's are the hardest to win, and that just doesn't fly.

The reason the 500s are harder than 250s is that the field is typically stronger, because there are more points at stake, and they are more coveted. That is precisely the point of the comparison, and transitively the comparison carries through to each level of more and more coveted titles, including comparing the majors.  Again, no denigration of the the tournaments that lose out in the comparison, but merely a logical conclusion from the evidence of the universe of players who've won the title.

Now, because Federer and Sampras have such great serves, the assumption is that the better your serve, the more likely you are to win Wimbledon.  As such, when sizing up a player's chances, or predicting the result of a particular match, the serves are frequently compared to determine who has the advantage.  But I am of the opinion that comparing serves is actually off the mark.  You are mixing and matching two things - one doesn't compare serves - that is irrelevant because only one player at a time serves. One compares the serve of one to the return of the other. A player with a big serve can escape losses to other players with big serves if they return well.  It is rare that players with really big serves return well, and also why players with just big serves (and little else to their game) rarely win Wimbledon.

Goran Ivanisevic is a perfect example - that man had the biggest and best serve in the history of tennis, but he won Wimbledon exactly once almost by accident.  In his best chance (on paper anyway), in 1992 he lost to Andre Agassi, a player with a relatively weak serve but a relatively oustanding return (who happened to beat Boris Becker and John McEnroe along the way - not exactly slouches in the serve department).  Ivanisevic's other Wimbledon final losses were to another player with a great serve - Pete Sampras.  So what distinguished the two?

The return - Sampras' was a better (as well as the rest of his game - but I digress).

So a big serve gets you a chance to win a match or two here or there - but if you want to win Wimbledon, you need more than a big serve. You need the whole package including a good serve.  But only the best of the best have the whole package, and as such, relatively few players have won Wimbledon as compared to say, the French Open, where a lot of players that did not have the full package, have won relatively more titles than have done so at a Wimbledon.

The logic and the stats on the universe of players who have won Wimbledon versus Roland Garros is very underrated, but it is not a matter of opinion.  As for the effect of the serve on grass, it is inversely overrated - Nadal has 2 Wimbledons, Djokovic 2, Murray 1, even Federer at 7 titles...not one of them could be said to have one of the biggest serves on tour, earning a lot of "cheap" points. Roddick had a huge serve, but consistently lost to players who returned better than him (after all, so few serve better than him they must have had better returns). Ivanisevic had the biggest serve ever and he won once, each time he lost to a player, not with a better serve, but a better return.

To win at Wimbledon you need a good serve among many things, but it is not the deciding factor - the return is.  Of course, even a good return (alone) isn't enough - you need the full package. You have to be able to attack and defend, you need decent volleys, but most importantly you need a good serve, because everybody gets a little help on the serve on grass. That the serve is the deciding factor to winning Wimbledon is a myth of grass court tennis that has persisted for years since the late 40's when serve and volley tennis became a full time tactical approach. There have been a lot of players with great serves who have not won Wimbledon, but almost none with bad returns, and certainly no multiple champions with a poor return of serve.

An example of this is Ivan Lendl - his biggest problem on grass wasn't his serve (which was excellent) it was his return, which he was never able to master on grass, despite years of trying. Lendl just wasn't that talented, and as a result he needed time and a certain bounce to return well, which he would get on clay or hard courts, and won many majors on those surfaces - what foiled him on grass was the return.  Lendl's talent limited his return against the best players with the best serves - this is not an on/off proposition as in "either you're talented enough or not" - it does depend on the guy across the net. He had as good a serve as the players he lost to, with perhaps the exception of Becker, but he lost to a lot more players than Becker, his problem against those players he lost to was that he couldn't make any headway in his returns.  His own serve was excellent.  Just because your return isn't good enough against Edberg, Becker and Pat Cash, doesn't mean it won't be good enough against Jeff Tarango or Brad Gilbert.

Go down the list of players with the biggest serves on tour over the last 40 years and remove those players with good returns (Colin Dibley, Ivan Ljubicic, Steven Denton, Mark Phillipousis, Kevin Curren, Bobo Zivojinovic, Greg Rusedski, Ivo Karlovic, Roscoe Tanner, Andy Roddick) and you'll have a very long list of players with big serves who have never won Wimbledon.  Now, do the reverse - list the players with the best returns in the game, remove those with great serves and you'll still have a list of players who have won Wimbledon (Agassi, Borg, Connors, Nadal, Murray, Djokovic, etc.).  That's just good analysis that dispels the myth that the deciding factor in winning Wimbledon is the serve.  Remember that on grass everybody's serve is a little more effective because of the surface, therefore getting an edge over the field would necessarily come from being able to neutralize that phenomenon, not from benefitting from it, which everyone does and which does not give you an edge.

Whether the return is harder to master or acquire is not relevant - it is whether having an outstanding return or an outstanding serve is the deciding factor in whether you will win Wimbledon.  Nadal, Murray, Djokovic, even Federer to some extent, rarely lead the ATP in aces, 1st percentage won or even service games won - and if they do, it isn't because they get a lot of free points on the serves like the Karlovic's, Isners, Lopez's, Tsonga's, Almagro's and Raonics of the world. They may use their serve better than this lot, but that's because they're better tennis players that are able to do more with less (on the serve). What they all do better than that lot is return of serve, and they've all won Wimbledon in the last 10 years - 3 of them more than once.

Counter-intuitive, I know, but true.

In fact, I'll go you one better - I don't even think it's even critical to have a great serve, to win Wimbledon, because there a lot of players who had just good serves and still won - therefore the serve cannot be the deciding factor in whether you will win Wimbledon.  What Nadal referred to with the big serves is really a reference to the risk a great player runs of being dumped out of the tournament by a guy serving his socks off for one day, but without much of an overall game. That kind of player can be a spoiler, and there are a lot of spoilers at Wimbledon, and from that I conclude (along with the universe of players argument) that that's one big reason why Wimbledon is harder to win than the other majors.  Particularly on grass, where everyone's serve is helped by the surface, there is a greater risk that a spoiler that can serve you off the court in one match.

That doesn't happen as often on other surfaces because the serve doesn't have as big effect - and that is the reason why at Wimbledon a great return is more important than a great serve.  Because if you can't efficiently take advantage of the few opportunities you get to break serve (attack second serves, attack poorly placed first serves, or just get your racquet on the ball a lot), you will eventually run into someone who serves you off the court. The truly great players (among other things) have great returns, so they survive the serving mine field that is grass court tennis better than the other (numerous) players with great serves, but a minimal/weak return game - hence the cream really rises to the top at Wimbledon.

Sampras rarely served above 125mph, even at his best - there were always players on tour with bigger serves, but none with better serves - he used his to great effect. And it helps to use a great serve to great effect if you have the game to back it up, which Rusedski, Roddick, Ljubicic, Phillipousis, Ivanisevic and oh so many other big serving contemporaries did not have - and a big part of that overall game to back up whatever serve you may possess (good to great) is the return of serve.  Federer also rarely serves big (130+), but his placement is outstanding, and nobody uses the serve to set up their game better than Federer - of course it helps that his game is outstanding, but the point is that it's not all down to the serve.

Riddle me this - why is it that Federer was so frequently able to out ace Roddick at Wimbledon when they played?  Because his return was better, not because his serve was.  And if I'm not mistaken, McEnroe never hit a serve over 120mph in his career, not so of the Roscoe Tanners and Kevin Curren's of his era - their serves were huge even by modern standards. But his overall game (including the return) was superior to both of those players, and as such he had more success at Wimbledon.

In fact, two of the biggest modern servers gave us an example in 2010 that put this distinction in relief:  that absurd farce of a match between John Isner and Nicolas Mahut where the 5th set had 138 games in it, where it took Isner 69 games to break Mahut's serves.

Does anyone think that any of the players who've won Wimbledon in the last 10 years would take 69 games to break anyone's serve, let alone Nicolas Mahut's? Neither Isner nor Mahut have much of a return game to speak of, and not coincidentally neither has ever done anything significant at Wimbledon other than that match. They may win matches and/or smaller tournaments with depleted fields, but when the best of the best are all there, they just can't serve their way to glory - eventually their inability to return well catches up to them. That's not the case with the best players in the world. That's why only the best players in history win Wimbledon. And that's why Wimbledon is the hardest tournament to win.

And what of poor old Andy Roddick - the argument is that had it not been for Federer, he would have won 4 Wimbledons, right?  I'm not so sure about that - after all, he lost to a lot more players at Wimbledon than just Roger Federer, and that Federer is a better player is a general statement which provides no insight - the better player doesn't always win (if that were the case, the trophy could be handed out at the draw).  On grass, Federer bested Roddick as frequently as he did because he neutralized his serve with a great return of serve, which Roddick could never do.  That was the deciding factor between them, not either of their serves which were both outstanding.


That's not to say that Federer's serve isn't really good - just not the equal of Roddick's - better game, obviously (especially the return) - but not the serve.  But let's set that debatable example aside...can the serve possibly explain his losses to Murray (2006), Gasquet (2007), Randy Lu (2010), Tipsarevic (2008), Lopez (2011), Ferrer (2012)?  Maybe Ivanisevic (2001), but that entire tournament was the outlier - he also lost to Rusedski in 2002, but in both matches to equally dominant serving players, the telling factor was the return - Rusedski broke Roddick 3 times 2002 and Ivanisevic twice in 2001...but he never broke either of them. And equally telling of Rusedski - he lost in the very next round....to Xavier Malisse. Now I can tell you that there were about 25 things Malisse did better than Rusedski, but the serve wasn't one of them - and if there were every a place where Rusedski should have put his serve to use against Malisse (if it were key) it would have been at Wimbledon.  But surprise, surprise, Malisse broke Rusedski 3 times to 2.

To be honest, I watched Roddick play tennis for 10 years, and I can't ever remember him serving poorly - he may have, but it would have been exceedingly rare.  It was the one part of his game that never broke down.  But I have seen a lot of guys get a beat on his serve in one game and the rest of his game fell apart.  He himself rarely broke serve on grass, precisely because it is so hard to do.

I should also point out something that is a logical extension of the "it's the return, stupid" argument:  the better players have better returns of serve precisely because it requires more talent to consistently respond well to the easiest shot in the game to produce - i.e. the serve. For a good return you need particularly good hand-eye coordination, anticipation, consistent strike zone, balance, quickness, footwork, etc.). So a relative donkey, like Lukas Rosol can beat a great player from his serve, here and there, but win the tournament, no chance - not without a great return. There are a lot more players out there with great serves than players with great returns of serve - and it's no coincidence that they tend to do most of the winning. That's because it's harder to do than serve well, and as such it is a more telling factor in who wins the tournament - particularly on grass where the serve is helped so much by the surface, and everyone looks like a world beater with their serve - by the same token, only the best of the best appear to have even decent returns on grass.

My point here is that I'm trying to dispel the myth that the serve is the key/critical/deciding success factor on grass - it's not at all, it's the return. Some would limit their agreement if (and only if ) the serves are equal, but the serves are rarely equal and frequently the player with the better serve loses to the player with the better return. Therefore, it's pretty clear that the return is the key success factor and not the serve - of course your return has to be pretty good to beat a player with a great serve, especially on grass...but that's more to my point of why so few players have what it takes to win Wimbledon.

We've all fallen prey to the blurring of the lines defining the quality of the serve - if there is such a thing as a good serve, there must logically be great serves and below average serves - let's not lump everyone into sufficient/good/great serving category, cite Wimbledon champions (none of whom have a poor serve) and then claim that the key factor is something that they share in common with 90% of professional tennis players.

A key success factor is something that distinguishes players who've had success from those who have not. To point to the serve, which a large portion of players who have not won Wimbledon, and likely will never win, isn't informative. The return, however, is very probative. I happen to think that while the serve is the easiest stroke in tennis, because it's ball in hand, the return might be the hardest (because you must use a broad range of skills to respond to the easiest stroke in the game to hit at you), and by this logic, I am of the belief that the return, particularly at Wimbledon, where even the worst serves in tennis get a lot of help, is the most important stroke to winning the tournament.

WHAT KILLED THE ONE-HANDED BACKHAND?

Stan the Man showed us all that the 1-handed backhand still can...beat a 2-hander that is. Every time somebody new with a one-handed backhand succeeds in the modern game, it always seems to inspire a rush of questions about just what killed the 1-handed backhand anyway.  To this day, the history of tennis is replete with players with one-handed backhands who have won far more majors than players with 2-handed backhands. As a matter of fact, even if you restrict your research to major winners since the first great 2-handed champions emerged from the primordial ooze of modern professional tennis (Jimmy Connors and Bjorn Borg in 1974) one could argue that the two-handed backhand is nothing more than an historical anomaly that will be blown apart and scattered to the winds of history, when the game gets its collective head out of its collective arse.

Let the record show that of the four majors, 2-handers have won more than 1-handers only at Roland Garros.  This is a little ironic since the place you tend to see the most 1-handed backhands is on slow red clay, where even the smallest and weakest of tennis ingenues can hone this stroke through the imposed patience of the rustic surface.  At 26 to 14 titles, 2-handed backhands have had considerably more success in the last 40 years than 1-handers in Paris, but in Australia, the trend is reversed at 23 to 18, 24 to 16 at the US Open, and the trend is most lopsided at Wimbledon where the record is 27 to 13.  In total, 1-handers have it over 2-handers at the majors 88 to 73.

And just taking a look at the draw for Rotterdam next week I was curious to see how many of the 32 players in a rich field of players, for this 40 year old ATP 500, had let go of the second hand and, despite the presumed death sentence to their careers, have managed to make it in the game.  Of the 32 players in the draw, fully 11 or almost 1/3rd of the draw play with a 1-handed backhand.  Of course, 40 years ago, you'd expect the reverse, but not so today, and this begs the question:  why?

Well, in truth, we all start out with a 2-handed backhand, particularly those of us who got an early start in the game, and the biggest problem a child faces on the tennis court, besides seeing over the net, is the challenge of maintaining racquet head stability.  In the abstract, any good tennis pro will tell you that no matter how weak/strong you are, the best solution to this problem is the quality of your technique - if you do everything right technically before, during and after your stroke, you'll never need that second arm on either side.  But there's the rub: you can't make any mistakes technically - not in your footwork, court positioning, your stroke production or your follow through, because if you do it's nearly impossible to hit a 1-handed backhand properly.  The same cannot be said for the 2-hander.

The second hand gives the added racquet head stability you need when you haven't quite hit your mark in court positioning or footwork.  It allows for that smooth delivery of strings to ball that is essential for a shot even rarer in tennis than the 1-handed  backhand - a flat ground stroke. Freed from the need to sacrifice power for control, a 2-handed backhand is more likely to be delivered flat and straight as an arrow - just the sort of thing a modern player approaching the net could take advantage of, but hardly anyone consistently rushes the net anyway, so this advantage is lost on this generation.

So what killed the 1-handed backhand anyway?  Was it Bjorn Borg and his Viking-God flowing blonde locks and purple and green pin stripes?  Was it Andre Agassi and his rock and roll, gut-busting, gate-crashing brand of Bollitieri bash-ball?  Perhaps Jimmy Connors and his crotch grabbing, every-cuss-in-the-book uttering, "this is what they want" extolling, histrionics laden game?  No, it was none of these things.

It was the money.

Because there's so much money in the game, and so much of it is committed earlier and earlier in a player's career, the puppeteers have less patience with their marionettes developing the necessary technique to master a stroke as precise, and potentially fruitful, as the 1-handed backhand.  If the money's there, just do the minimum technically with a 2-handed backhand, and you'll be up and running in no time. Why bother taking the time (and eschewing the money) to develop a 1-hander?

As such, typically that stroke is reserved for only the most talented of tennis players who are able to make up for what they lack in technique, with pure god-given hand/eye coordination, until that technique is where it needs to be to cease being a liability.  That's not to say that the only talented tennis players are those with 1-handed backhands - to the contrary some of the nicest 1-handed backhands I've ever seen have come from players who hit a 2-hander by trade, either in training or in between points, or on the rare occasion where it is technically preferable to do so.

But when entire families hang on every result, and armies of masseuses, and physios, and cooks, and coaches, and fathers and WAGS (and whoever else can successfully impose themselves on the career of a promising young professional) amplify the risk of missing out on the big early paycheck, the future begins to look dark as dusk if you can't fight above your weight class. Thus the 1-handed backhand goes the way of the stick-shift:  impressive when you see it, aesthetically far more enjoyable if you can do it, but an unnecessary risk when it's so much easier and safer to simply put it in gear and press "go".

But I have a feeling that this may not be a permanent thing. I think the future of tennis will not change nearly as much as we think.  There certainly seems to be a lot of gentle giants out there, that we all predicted would dominate the game, but ironically the optimal size for a tennis champion has remained for the better part of 100 years between 5'11" and 6'3" with very rare exception.  

Why?  

Because the court is still 27 x 78 feet, you still have to break serve to win sets, and you can't play the game from inside your head or the sofa in your living room.  And because of all of these things, I don't think conditions will persist such that a premium on racquet head stability from a very early age forces the game to continue to evolve towards the 2-handed backhand. And when everyone is doing the same thing and hoping for a different result, something's gotta give.

If the ball goes faster and with more spin on it, then the quality of the athlete will have to improve, and as that happens, the physical side of tennis will require tennis players to be in it for the long-haul, rather than the quick buck (because whether they play with one or two hands, no 17-year old in the world will have what it takes physically to win in what is increasingly becoming a man's game). Therefore results at at 13 and 14 should become less important than results at 18 and 19, and by then physically most will have had enough time to develop their ultimate game, rather than the most expedient one.

One way or another, I believe the game will once again belong to the ancient masters of the 1-handed backhand.

THE ONLY DOPE IS THE ANTI-DOPING BELIEVER

The extraordinary hullabaloo surrounding the sanctions handed down to Lance Armstrong, a man who never once in his career failed a drugs test, brings to mind the question of doping in tennis.  Yannick Noah and James Blake appear to be the only people in the game willing to concede what is painfully obvious to anyone following what passes as anti-doping controls in tennis: that we're all being duped.

One can criticize the manner in which Noah has focused his energies and commentary on Spanish tennis players, which can only be characterized as groundless and absent of any intelligence or evidence.  Or we can look to Blake's more blanket and simultaneously tempered approach, which casts doubt on the entire field.  But both men essentially allude to the absurdity of the existing doping controls in tennis, and how brilliantly inept it has proven itself to be in doing anything coming close to controlling doping in the game.

First and foremost, tests for doping need to catch those players not only who may have some controlled/banned substances in their system, but more importantly those players who have done so with the intent to gain a competitive advantage.  A brief look at the history of players caught up in the ridiculous web of drugs testing in tennis reveals that a very blunt instrument is being wielded, and the players that have suffered the consequences thereof, are clearly not the philosophical target of the controls - assuming of course the intent of the controls is sincere.

That being the case - what is the point of doping controls?  We'll get back to that later, but here is a list and brief analysis of those players caught up in this wicked farce.

Kristina Antoniychuk
Alex Bogomolov, Jr.
Juan Ignacio Chela
Guillermo Cañas
Guillermo Coria
Antony Dupuis
Mariano Hood

The common link among this list of players is that they tested positive for banned substances that the ITF ultimately concluded was the result of medicine prescribed by a doctor for a verified condition, and as such, none of these players could be adjudged to have sought a performance enhancement.

Antoniychuk tested positive for furosemide (banned as a masking agent for PEDs).  It was prescribed by doctors for a condition that was undisclosed, but a brief look at the conditions for which it is typically prescribed does not reveal an obvious treatment for an athlete. Normally that should raise some eyebrows, but incredibly while the ITF accepted her explanation, they still banned her for fourteen (14) months!

Why? After all, if it was a legitimate use, and not for performance enhancement, did it make sense to punish a player so severely for not knowing the contents of a prescribed medicine?  Wouldn't a probationary period make more sense for this kind of offense?

Bogomolov and Dupuis tested positive for salbutamol, which they admitted, and the ITF accepted, were ingested through inhalers to treat asthma. Incredibly, if either had filed for, and received, a Therapeutic Use Exemption (TUE), they wouldn't have been banned or forced to return their earnings. So, here we have two cases of merely a negligence to do some paperwork resulting in a ban and loss of earnings for two players who everyone agrees in no way attempted to gain a performance enhancement and could have legally taken the substance anyway!

Is this the objective of the anti-doping? To punish athletes for failing to file? Doesn't this sort of thing merit a warning?

Canas tested positive for hydrochlorothiazide (another banned masking agent) which was present in a substance provided to him by tournament officials (not prescribed medicine by a doctor) to treat cold symptoms - in other words, the tournament was responsible for putting the substance in the player, and then the ITF and the ATP Tour banned him for taking it. There was no trace of any PED in Canas' sample, and his samples were clean of the masking agent when he was tested at Roland Garros three months later.  But in their brilliance, after a year of wrangling, the ITF reduced his ban from two years to 15 months.  All this does nothing to eliminate the absurdity of banning a player for taking substances provided by the tournament (and thus by association the very authorities that sought to ban him).

Coria, a player nobody would suspect of taking PEDs, tested positive for nandrolone, but his ban was reduced from 2 years to 7 months, after his family independently tested the multivitamin which he showed a doctor had given him (not prescribed, however), that contained the steroid.  Nandrolone was a high profile substance for which many athletes at the time, in many sports, tested positive - and sympathy was in short supply for those who did.  But Coria sued the manufacturer of the multivitamin he took and won an out of court settlement, ostensibly because even if he had done his due diligence to check the ingredients of the multivitamin, he wouldn't have known it contained nandrolone. So why hold him responsible for not taking measures that, even if he had taken them, he wouldn't have known about the presence of a banned substance anyway?

But by far, the most absurd case was that of Mariano Hood, who was banned after testing positive for finasteride, which was prescribed in the treatment of male pattern baldness - so here a guy who is desperately trying to cover the fact that he is balding, is outed by a process that is supposedly looking for PEDs.  The interesting thing is that he had been taking the drug for years, but never tested positive for it...because the drug was only added to the banned list the year he tested positive for it! Now one can argue that it's his responsibility to know what's on the list, but if he were truly seeking a performance enhancement, would he provide evidence that he had been taking it for years - essentially admitting to doping for years?  That's not exactly the defense of someone who is hoping to conceal the taking of a performance enhancing drug! Obviously, Mariano Hood is not the philosophical target of anti-doping controls...or is he?

All this is a kind of madness that only sporting bureaucrats could possibly comprehend. How could players possibly know more than doctors, sometimes doctors designated by the tour, by the way, about the possibility of banned substances in medicine they've ingested? This is clearly another case of the ITF wanting to look tough at the wrong time, at the expense of a player that has a low profile, so the reputation of the sport remains in tact.  Is it really fair for the reputation (and livelihood) of these journeymen to be sacrificed at the altar of this charade?

In all likelihood, the ITF wants to have their cake and eat it too, in that they either 1) don't buy these players' explanations, but don't want to admit that doping is rampant in tennis or 2) they do buy these players' explanations, but want to look tough on doping by banning an unknown player that won't cost the game any money or prestige. And since the doping control authorities and the tour accepted that there was no attempt to enhance performance, isn't the whole affair an enormous waste of time? Because it is artificial performance enhancements that we are trying to identify. Speaking of which, the next list hardly fall in that category, even for the substances found in their tests.

Andre Agassi (methamphetamine)
Lourdes Domínguez Lino (cocaine)
Richard Gasquet (cocaine)
Martina Hingis (cocaine)

Now, I'm not in favor of players taking cocaine or crystal meth, etc., but at the end of the day, what they do in on their own, is none of my business and most importantly, in the case of these particular drugs, doesn't enhance performance, which is supposed to be the point of drugs testing. To prevent players getting "artificial" performance enhancements, and not to legislate personal/private behavior.

Robert Kendrick

The case of Robert Kendrick is a strange one - he was banned after testing positive for methylhexaneamine, a substance banned as a stimulant, readily accessible in many over the counter products, but is considered no more potent than a strong cup of tea.  It is often used as a nasal decongestant because of its properties of increasing blood pressure and blood flow, but Kendrick admitted using it to combat jet lag - in other words, he admitted using it as a stimulant, which is precisely why it is banned!

Now we can argue whether it really ought to be on the banned list, or if it's just there for show, but it is on the list, and even though he admitted using it for the exact reason for which it was banned, and derived a performance enhancement from it (as opposed to other players also suffering from jet lag that didn't use it or other banned stimulants), the ITF decision included a reference to him being able to use the medicine in which the substance was delivered, under a Therapeutic Use Exemption (TUE).  But why would that have been the case if he was using it as a stimulant, and not as a nasal decongestant? It's almost as if they're giving him, and any other player for that matter, a blue-print for how to game the system.

And then there are the cases of Yannina Wickmayer and Xavier Malisse (who both happen to be Belgian) who were banned, not for testing positive, but for failing to report their whereabouts 3 times in a calendar year - presumably giving them the opportunity to avoid drugs testing on those three days.  But could those three days where they went dark honestly give them an opportunity to avoid positive tests if they had, in fact, doped? I understand this rule is intended to prevent players avoiding testing, but couldn't they simply test them on the next day and see if any drugs were in their system? Then their intent to skirt the test would be more likely or more clear?

At the end of the day, the one glaring example missing from this charade that the ITF expects us to accept, is the case of Wayne Odesnik.  Here is a guy who was caught with enough human growth hormone on his person to turn a mouse into a bull, and what was his penalty? A self imposed hiatus from the game and "cooperation" with the authorities that presumably would assist them in catching others doing the same thing as Odesnik.

To date, no such information has resulted in any such identification.  And he's back on tour again, by the way.  Not getting nearly the results he was getting before he was "banned", before I forget.

So although Noah and Blake don't have any positive specifics of players they know are doping and weren't caught, the evidence of the players who have been "caught" is so weak as to suggest that the one thing the anti-doping program doesn't do is...well, catch dopers.

So isn't this all much ado about nothing?  And isn't that Noah and  Blake's point?

THE PRIVILEGE OF PRESSURE

Billie Jean King once said that, "Pressure is a privilege."

Aside from reading like catchy reverse psychology, intended to make players embrace pressure, rather than wilt under it, there may actually 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: 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 fortnight just one more time. The plot thickened when his nemesis exited stage left before the curtain was 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?  What happens when the peaks have been scaled, the quiet questions answered loudly, and his face on Mt. Rush-the-net-More has been sculpted? On this question, history is a murky water way of let downs.

When Pete Sampras won his 13th major 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.  And 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 could no longer 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, his inner Ahab died right along with it. Sampras made no secret of his love of 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 (which happened to be Pete Sampras) received a seeding at the US Open for the first time. 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.

In 1984 John McEnroe went 74-2. 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 the potential for a Herculean collapse. In the end, he returned and 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 out of 8 finals in a row at Flushing) but tellingly that would be McEnroe's 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.  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 best results.

Mats Wilander reached the #1 ranking in 1988 by winning 3 out of 4 slams that year – the only jewel missing from his crown 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 again in the top 10 after amassing a hefty tally of seven majors in the first 6 years of his professional career.

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 is totally intangible, and as such, only exists in the mind if the player allows it.  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?

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 the most, 500 times a minute, whereas Nadal’s do so at 3200 rpm on average, and peaks at 5000 rpm. 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 he hit more aces than Nadal, than we would consider Rafa the greater champion because he hits harder than Tilden.

At the end of the day, what the players do either in technique or in tactics, is a means to an end - to win as many of the most coveted titles they can, and it is that measure that makes different careers perfectly comparable by this measure, 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 (due to the competition), 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 every single unit of competition in the game – there are absolutely no ties in tennis. And when it comes to the measure that we use the most to evaluate players and their place in history, the number of slams won, it is even moreso a zero sum game (if that's logically possible) – because in this case one person wins a slam, and 127 other players who contended lose - hundreds more who didn't don't even show up on the books. 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?

His competitors necessarily won less often and by this logic 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.

That just doesn't add up.

There’s also another problem – using slams to measure the competition of a dominant player, but setting aside that same measure when evaluating 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.

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? 

It's more logical to say his draw is easy because he’s made it look easy, by beating his opponents over and over again in the past, and getting through the current one.  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 entirely disagree with that and would use that as a tie breaker between two players on equal terms in majors won.  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 determining greatness. Slams, on the other hand, are the only pure competitive pursuits in the game of tennis - everyone covets them equally, and everyone 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 always 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, and has always been heavily weighted in favor of ATP events - even to this day (you could win the calendar slam, but if another player wins 6 Masters 1000s and 4 500s, by the ATP ranking you're on equal terms - that doesn't make sense). 

Before the ATP rankings, rankings were arbitrarily determined by various individuals based on a myriad of considerations 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 Wimbledon and the US Open in the previous year. 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.  The same cannot be said of the majors.

HEAD TO HEAD AGAINST HIS GREATEST RIVALS

This one goes like this: 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 many 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 over the course of their careers, 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). 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 are only two good ones – first Nadal has 6 majors himself, and thus is considered an all-time great.  But Federer has 8 more majors than Nadal, and if he were the better player in this era, shouldn't he have more majors?  That brings us to the other argument:  that Nadal will eventually surpass Federer. Well, then when Nadal surpasses Federer, he will necessarily be the GOAT – until then SPECIFICALLY AS COMPARED TO THE CAREER OF FEDERER he’s just like Krajicek and Stich to Sampras - he just happens to have 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 greater...by 1 slam.

NOT EVERYBODY PLAYED 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 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, played every Australian Open he could, so that argument is not necessarily applicable to him (more on that later). 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.  This is mostly an argument to pad the accomplishments of those that suffered the most during the schism between amateur and professional tennis before the open era began.  The most common example given is usually Laver, who finished his career with 11 slams, but supposedly would have had a lot more if he had been able to play as a professional. But there's a problem with this argument - 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 to their totals as well, and more importantly prevent Laver from winning more. At the very least, we must discount Laver's total of 11 by the 6 he won as an amateur and start from there in this hypothetical slam total. 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 of 20+.

In fact even if he won half the majors from which he was banned from 1963 to 1967 he goes from 5 to 15. Speaking of which, Laver won 9 out of 15 of the 3 biggest professional tournaments he entered during that period (those tournaments considered the professional slams), which takes his total from 5 to 14.

So by this analysis, the best you could extrapolate from Laver's banishment is a total of 14 majors. Remember that the first US Open was in 1968 and the final was contested by 2 amateurs (Arthur Ashe and Tom Okker), even though professionals played that tournament (Laver lost in the round of 16), so there's no guarantee of how many he "would" have won had professionals played. But the best you can assume is that he is on par with Federer...for now.

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 for Connors. We measure who is the best player in an era by how often they’ve won the biggest tournaments in the game – so nobody considers Connors a better player than Borg even though he won 30 more titles – why? Because many of those were rinky-dink titles contested by rinky-dink opponents. But when everyone 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?

RETURN OF THE A-ROD?

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.