2016 CITI OPEN FINAL THOUGHTS: LIKE IT OR NOT...IVO KARLOVIC JUST KEEPS COMING

3 years Ivo Karlovic nearly died.  

He woke up one morning with numbness in his arm, that began to spread throughout his body.  A professional athlete, aged 34, he was accustomed to waking up with the creaky quality of a locomotive that takes a few strokes of the pistons to get up to speed.  But you just keep on moving and you get over it.  After all, there comes a time when, after years on tour, a player begins to wonder when is going to be the day that they wake up and the little engine just can't.  Agassi, in his excellent memoir Open, talked about the skittish assurance of moving one limb at a time, hoping the capacity to compete would come to him in stages, towards the end of his career.  The anxiety never goes away, but a player grows accustomed to the uncertainty, both of which are resolved despite the uncomfortable feeling of one's body working through its nightly torpor.

But this was different.  The numbness persisted.  And his speech was slurred.  

A house call from the paramedics brought relief that didn't last long, which is probably a good thing, because that would have sounded the alarm bells of doctors who didn't know if this professional athlete was having a stroke, or had an undetected brain tumor that wouldn't reveal itself.  Unlike the case of Leander Paes' diagnosis of neurocysticercosis (a parasitic infection that causes brain abscesses that can look like tumors) they would have hoped for a best case scenario - strange to contemplate under the conditions - of a bacterial infection that could be treated by ever increasingly powerful and specific antibiotics.  

But that too failed to resolve what had befallen Karlovic.  His wife Alisi and his (still to this day) coach Petar Popović by his side as he went in and out of consciousness, it wasn't at all clear that he would recover at all, or well enough to regain normal functions - to say nothing of the very real possibility that the least negative of all outcomes would be the end of his career.  Eventually the case was diagnosed as viral meningoencephalitis and after 10 days of treatment a few days of monitoring he was released from that hospital in Miami that nearly became the first stop the way to his final resting place.

But like that thunderbolt raining serve of his, Karlovic just keeps coming.  He's 37 years old, has wins over some of the best players in the history of the game (Federer, Hewitt), and one has the feeling that if his serve carries on like this he could play until he was 47.  He bristles at the notion, but Karlovic's game is not the equal of his contemporaries...not by a long shot.  We all know this, his opponents know this, we all try to avoid saying this and he himself will look you dead in the eye and deny this.

But that doesn't make it any less certain.  So how has he managed?

Well, over the course of his career, he has maintained a 92% 1st serve point win percentage, and if he keeps his 1st serve percentage above 55% (which he has, by a long shot) he is more or less guaranteed to at least take the set to a tie-break against the vast majority of his opponents.  In fact, Karlovic has played and won half of his sets this week with tie-breaks.  He hasn't dropped a set, and he hasn't been broken...not once.  I'm guessing he hasn't even experienced a mini-break in those tie-breaks.  So if he is to win his final over Gael Monfils today, it won't be because he's got great hands, or moves well, or even overwhelming power from the backcourt.  But that shouldn't diminish the admiration for the one quality that characterizes his personality, his serve, his career and his run at the 2016 Citi Open.

Like it or not, Ivo Karlovic...just...keeps...on...coming.

2016 CITI OPEN: DRAWING US IN

The draw for the Citi Open of 2016 is out, and the match ups that will initiate the gentleman's hand to hand combat in this "jeu de paume" are an inspiring mixture of intrigue, sporting curiosity and personal drama.  Having moved the date of the tournament up on the calendar to accommodate the many players who will go to the Rio Olympics, the tournament has already suffered the consequences of a glut of competitions that have had to be adjusted for the quadrennial event.  Juan Martin del Potro and the Bryan Brothers have already withdrawn, and the effects on the American duo of John Isner and Jack Sock, who suffered a shock defeat at the hands of the Croatians, remains to be seen.

Top seed John Isner (mercifully) benefits from a definite 1st round bye, and likely preferable scheduling, before taking on the winner of a match up of scrappers who will vie for the opportunity to dethrone the presumptive king.  James Duckworth, the Australian grinder who unceremoniously dismissed a fatigued Ryan Harrison last year, will have another American to deal with, the altogether (overly) generous Tim Smycek, who famously offered to replay a critical point in Australia against Rafael Nadal, for no (good) reason.  Smycek has excellent hands, moves like a lynx, and is (typically for an American) uber-competitive.  If he can find his way past Duckworth, he will have Kei Nishikori's model of victory in last year's final to emulate, if he is to do the unthinkable and advance to the 3rd round.

Everybody's favorite Cypriot, 15th seed Marcos Baghdatis, will also have a first round bye, with a chance to face John Millman or (the current version of Paul Goldstein - a really local favorite), Denis Kudla, who hails from across the river in Arlington, and as a junior made the daily Holden Caufield subway trek to the Junior Tennis Champions Center in College Park, Maryland, on his way to place at the table of professional tennis.  Although not as fantastical as that of Leon Vessels, Kudla's journey to the Citi Open is no less inspiring.  He immigrated from the Ukraine as a baby and was featured in a 2010 Documentary Who's Next.  In it, it was revealed the extent of his obsession with tennis.  As an 11-year old, with arguable assistance from his from his architect father, designed his very own tennis center.  Kudla's parents spoke no English when they escaped the the dissolution of the USSR on Denis' first birthday in 1993 - quite an enduring gift.

If Ryan Harrison can conjure up the same grit and firepower that saw him through the qualifiers into the main draw last year, he will have his hands full with Stephan Robert, a Frenchman known more for his prowess in doubles than singles.  Harrison doesn't suffer fools when it comes to competitiveness, and whereas in the past he has succumbed to both the light and dark sides of that trait, but he is still (relatively) young, still has a missile launcher for a right arm, and has quite a good head to head record against many of the players in the draw.  The past is not necessarily prologue, and Harrison will both take solace and caution in that truism, for if he is to become the player so many have hoped and expected him to be, there is no time better than the present.  My guess is Robert will have his hands full.  Either one of them will have a grinder of the first order awaiting them in the second round, in Victor Troicki.  If he has recovered his vocal cords following his unseemly (albeit "technically" justified) diatribe against Damiano Torella (for which he was duly fined $10,000 for unsporting conduct), he will want to save his breath for Harrison who is unlikely to go quietly himself, into the night.

In one of the most fascinating first round encounters, one of this author's favorite players on tour, (the Emperor H)Adrian Mannarino will take his well educated hands, and nimble footwork, into battle against one of the most powerful young guns in world, Francis Tiafoe.  Another DC native who also plied his trade at the JTCC, Tiafoe's opportunity came from his own immigrant father who worked there as a maintenance man. He debuted here in 2014, where he lost to Evgeny Donskoy, but anyone watching that match would have been left in no doubt as to the potential of this human power unit, who burned 100mph+ forehands so frequently that the feat began to lose its luster by the end of the match.  

Assuming he has addressed his serve, some dubious shot selection and his footwork, there is hope in the nation's capital that this is the beginning of a beautiful relationship with the game.  The winner of this match, mercilessly faces Steve Johnson, an American gaining such a reputation as a bare-knuckle brawling competitor, that he is seeded 5th, and my darkhorse to make his first ATP final in his homeland.  He is coming off his first ATP title, an unexpected, but not inexplicable victory on the plushy grass courts of the English midlands (Birmingham) over Pablo Cuevas, a 2nd round loser here last year.

With any luck, the Real Bernard Tomic will appear to make good on his opportunity lost here last year, as he smiled and joked his way to a 3rd round loss to the aforementioned (Trojan) dark horse.  You never know what you're going to get in the way of competitiveness and drive from Tomic, such is the burden placed on a (still very) young man from a country with a (still very) deep tradition of tennis nobility.  But I would recommend setting a reminder on your calendar to witness for yourself some of the best hands in tennis, his second round match up against the winner of the yankee doodle duel between Donald Young and 20-year old Ernesto Escobedo.  Rumor has it, Escobedo's two-handed backhand is every bit as deadly as the left-handed swing of his (no relation...probably because that Ernesto Escobedo was a figment of Tom Clancy's imagination) namesake in "Clear and Present Danger".  Having come through the crucible of expectations for American teenagers in the dog-eat-anything world of professional tennis, I'm sure Donald will have some wise words of advice for his opponent...after the match, that is.

(Dr.) Ivo Karlovic, the esteemed professor in the art of "making it rain", fresh off his draining victory of Gilles Mueller in Newport, will get a first round bye, no doubt sharpening the blade of his sword as he awaits the winner of the Mesomorph, Sam Groth, and the drumbeat of (Mr.) Brian Baker.  Groth's mammoth recorded 163mph delivery, will serve him well, even if he winds up on the recently repainted Court 1 where last year, he hit a serve that hit the tape...and was still record at 156mph.  The fencing is kind of old, so I would not recommend standing behind Baker as he attempts to return that howitzer of a serve.  Having said that, Baker's return of serve is one of the strength's of his game, and gives him a fighting chance to blunt the path of one behemoth to another.  Baker's most enduring and endearing quality to a tennis amateur (in the classical sense of the word) is his resourcefulness, his tennis IQ and his hands.  The combination of the three make him just the kind of player others would prefer to avoid, but I'm not going to miss that encounter.

Grigor Dimitrov is seeded and will receive a bye into the second round, although he's been hard at work here on his game, including a one-hour practice session Friday against a possible second round opponent in Daniel Evans.  That would be a treat for those who just can't get enough of the 1-handed backhand, and spontaneous injections of pace into otherwise cagey rallies.  Of course, Evans would have to make it past Benjamin Becker, the last man to defeat Andre Agassi on the ATP tour, himself a cagey veteran who made his way through the qualifiers, and replaces Tommy Haas who, for years, was typically the oldest German(/American) in the draw.  If Dimitrov can navigate his way through to the 3rd round, he may encounter a dejected Jack Sock, who will have to summon reserves of competitiveness to atone for his Davis Cup debacle against Borna Coric.  Fresh and fit, Sock would have been a co-dark horse with Johnson, but as it is now, I would credit him with a herculean effort if he were to simply justify his seed.

 

Alexander (the Great) Zverev, who sports a hellenic flock of sea gulls under (and over) what comes across as a wreath (but is actually just a head band) is a good bet to go deep in this tournament.  I'm always suspicious of last minute entrants, but he too has been here since at least Friday, practicing on that day on the stadium court with Monfils, and seems motivated to do well.  Zverev would face the winner of a 1st round tete-a-tete between Dudi Sela and Taylor Fritz.  While I enjoy the (altogether necessary for his survival) ingenuity and improvisation of Sela's game, I would relish a chance to see these young starlets compete for a place in the 3rd round.  Fritz could overpower Sela, but would find it difficult to do the same in the next round.  My money would be on Zverev who seems to have Fritz's number dating back to their junior careers.

Another potential match up, that might qualify for the circus or an NBA game, is between Kevin Anderson, the man who nearly did last year at Wimbledon, what Sam Querrey managed to do this year, and the winner of the match between Reilly Opelka and Malik Jaiziri.  Assuming Opelka is able to bludgeon his way through the wily Tunisian (who had never trained with weights until this year - a testament to his immense talent, which has hopefully not been wasted in its entirety) the 2nd round encounter might be the tallest in the history of the Citi Open.  Opelka, who is listed at 7'0" (which is frankly just ridiculous) won the Wimbledon Junior title last year (which was very nearly a part of an American grand slam), would actually tower over Anderson, who at 6'8" would make the total height on display 164 inches.  That's a hell of a lot of leverage.

Luxembourg hero Gilles Mueller, smarting from his loss to Karlovic in the Newport Final, is rewarded for his renewal with a seeding and a bye to the 2nd round, where he will face the winner of Nishioka Yoshihito and Ivan Dodig, the doe-eyed doubles specialist who initiated the stunning reversal of fortune in the Davis Cup tie against the US in Portland, by partnering Cilic in the defeat of the Bryan Brothers.  Mueller, a purveyor of one of the best lefty slice serves, which curiously appears to be most effective when placed up the "T", was the guy who stole Roddick's mojo in 2005.  That same year, he also defeated Rafa Nadal in the 2nd round at Wimbledon.  This should have come as no surprise to Citi Open historians, who would note that he defeated Agassi in the semi final in 2004, before ruining the marquee match up with Lleyton Hewitt in the final (who prevailed in straight sets for his one and only Citi Open title).

Benoit Paire awaits the winner of Jared Donaldson and his compatriot Vincent Millot, who may very well have the most extreme forehand grip in the world, one that would make Alberto Berasategui proud.  It's so far over on the grip, one wonders if he'd be better off rotating the racquet in the same direction for both the forehand and the backhand...it'd be a shorter trip.  Donaldson, yet another American teenager in the draw, has not received the kind of attention that Fritz has, but in the long run, I like his fundamentals more.  His footwork is reminiscent of Steffi Graf, his backhand is compact and effective, if not aesthetically appealing, and while I would recommend a smaller take back on the forehand, and a diminished reliance on the reverse forehand from the center of the court, the way he throws his body into that stroke reminds me of Jimmy Connors at his ball-busting best.  He appears to be on the verge of throwing his racquet across the net with every desperate lunge into that stroke.  Having impressed many with his entertaining (for all the right reasons) encounter against Monfils at the US Open in 2014, Donaldson is yet another reason that the light at the end of the American tennis tunnel, could indeed be an approaching train of supplicants to the throne.

The aforementioned Djokovic slayer, Sam Querrey, calmly awaits another American, the result of the curious (if not unfortunate) pairing of Alex Kuznetsov and Bjorn Fratangelo.  Although he is not related to Mike Fratangelo (the form coach of the Atlanta Hawks), Bjorn is only slight taller, which has made it difficult for him to make good on the potential he showed by beating Dominic Thiem for the Junior title at Roland Garros in 2011.  Fortunately for him, his opponent, Kuznetsov, equally vertically challenged, may very well be even more spindly.  I may pop over to see that second round match with Querrey, if nothing else, to see if Querrey could drop 10 aces in a row all over again.

  

(The other) Alexander (the Great) Dolgopolov awaits the winner of Victor Estrella Bourgos and Jordan Thompson.  The latter is an Australian who bravely stood in the canon's mouth for 4 & 1/2 hours attempting to return the serve of Ivo Karlovic at Roland Garros this year - making the most of a wildcard earned mostly on the back of his best year to date that included his first tour level ATP match win and a Challenger title in China.  He lost to Karlovic 12-10 in the fifth, but the effort was both brave and impressive - the only inches he gave to his gargantuan opponent that day were the 10 inches in height.  His opponent, is a crafty Dominican who typically brings a large contingent of supporters with him, and has one of the bigger forehands on tour.  However, like Ken Rosewall before him, Burgos has never seen a backhand that he didn't want to slice, and may need to figure out a way to come over one or two if he is to improve on his second round loss to the towering inferno of John Isner's flame throwing serve.

Dolgopolov, the 2012 champion (the last Olympic year) took full advantage of that depleted field, and won the biggest title of his career over a resurgent Tommy Haas (who is sadly no longer with us...at this tournament that is, he's still alive!).  I've always enjoyed the sheer maniacal physicality of Dolgopolov's game, and since I don't think the long-term prospects of being able to do what he does are good (if you've seen his serve and forehand, you'll know what I mean) it's good to see him bounding about the grounds here like a Roe-Deer in the Ukraine.

Borna Coric will impress me very much if he can recover from an emotional weekend in Oregon, and justify his seeding by overcoming the winner of Sugita Yuichi and Vasek Pospisil.  Pospisil was the 2014 finalist here, this despite being less known for his singles exploits than his illustrious doubles partner.  2016 has not been kind to this kind Canadian who glides about the baseline as easily as a man his size can, and this would be a nice way to start a recovery of the remainder of his season.  But he'll have to get through an exceptionally competitive Yuichi, who's coming off a grass court victory over Taylor Fritz, to do it, and the popular teen ager from Croatia who will have no American fans (old enough to drink) on his side, given what he heroically did in Oregon to one Mr. Sock.

The final places in the draw go to Gael Monfils, the flamboyant Frenchman left off the Davis Cup team that went to the Czech Republic and kept the dream alive of another night in Lyon, seeded 2nd and shorn of his infamous ungainly mane of locks.  With any luck, he will also be shorn of any desire to entertain at the expense of competing, and hopefully he will also do his on court interviews in English.  He awaits the winner of Randy Liu, who won a Challenger title on grass in England before Wimbledon this year, is probably the 3rd most famous player in the draw to beat Andy Roddick at a major (Wimbledon in 2010), and is in all likelihood the most famous athlete outside of Chinese Taipei from Chinese Taipei, and yet another American, Austin Krajicek.  It may surprise you that he plays for the Stars and Stripes, given that he is a distant cousin of 1996 Wimbledon Champion Richard Krajicek and an even more distant cousin of Michaella Krajicek (Richard's half-sister).  My money's on Lu in the first round, and Monfils in the second...an inspired pick, I know.

Well, that's probably everything you'd want to know (and then some) about the Men's Draw at the Citi Open this year!

YOU KNOW THE TENNIS WORLD HAS LOST ITS MIND WHEN...

...Henri Leconte is the bearer of advice and counsel on professionalism, among other kibbles and bits of wisdom.  This is apropos of nothing, but in case you missed it, in this clip, Leconte appears to put the squeeze on the current crop of underachieving French tennis professionals in their quest to right the wrongs of 2014 and win the Davis Cup that they seemed poised to do against the Swiss...on clay...in France.

Ironically, he was somewhat goaded into doing so by Gasquet (one of the said fruits of French tennis' labor) who tells Leconte, who was at first reticent to name names, to do just that.  I think it was an attempt to get him to shut up, but instead, Leconte being Leconte, he wound up goading him into calling out Monfils!  I mean with friends like that, who needs enemies?

This is also ironic on another level - Leconte was also considered to be way too talented not to win a major in his day, and wasn't exactly the fittest or most committed player in history.  Nobody got more out of their talent in the history of tennis than Leconte, because it sure serbert didn't come from time spent running the Swiss hills (where it seems so many french tennis players choose to live, but I digress).  But his insane performance in Lyon in 1991, defeating Sampras, then winning the doubles with Forget (giving France a 2-1 lead) has essentially washed away his "sins" at Roland Garros.

Of course, for some fans of his (myself included), there was Henri and...well everyone else....

He was even given a heroe's sending off at Roland Garros after having sustained one of the most humiliating losses of his career in the final there in 1988, where he famously hoped the French public now "understand, a bit, my game," which of course they did not and excoriated him (immediately) for entreating them to.  The tennis world, like the world in its entirety, is round, and it seems we've come all the way around to treating Leconte like a wiseman, rather than the "genius from the elbow down" he used to be.

  

So now he espouses the value of hard work and commitment in the Davis Cup context, when he himself was no gym rat.  Let's face it - in his best physical form, he still had saggy breasts pecs and legs that looked more like they belonged under an accountant's desk, than on a tennis court.  

Well, I mean, I shouldn't judge...bean counters play tennis too!  It's a mad mad world indeed...

CAN THE DJOKER CARRY TENNIS?

"Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.", 

- Henry IV, Part 2 by William Shakespeare (Act III, Scene I)

First, it was the big story that wasn't - Serena Williams, poised to win her record tying 22nd major and the calendar slam, suffered a collosal case of nerves and lost a match that nobody thought she could.  ESPN did their best to turn the 2015 US Open into the Serena Show, but somebody forgot to tell Roberta Vinci, and instead of her coronation, we got a whole lot of very disappointed celebrities.

Then the Australian Open came with an attachment:  a story on BuzzFeed about the continuing problem of match-fixing and the (intentionally) dormant effort on the part of tennis authorities to address it.  There was no specific evidence, other than ill-defined, poorly explained statistical analysis that points to the likelihood of match-fixing, or compromised betting patterns.  But the stain is not easily removed, and in many ways, we're all still waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Next Serena Williams lost the Australian Open final, and the Indian Wells finals - two tournaments that you probably couldn't have placed a bet on her losing if you wanted to.  One title lost to Angelique Kerber, who has since collapsed under the weight of expectation, and the other to Victoria Azarenka, who seems to have shed some of the excess baggage she'd picked up since winning the Australian Open in 2013.  Suddenly Serena doesn't seem so invincible, and the running story that isn't a story, makes another appearance at Roland Garros before genuine questions will start to be asked, which at the moment, everyone is too afraid to ask:  what's wrong with Serena?

Then Maria Sharapova, the most marketable female athlete in the world, a woman who is reviled and admired the world over, in equal measures, for looking like a prom queen who happens to play tennis, failed a drugs test?  There had been, for years, unjustified suspicion of Serena Williams, because...well..she looks like Serena Williams.  After all, it was Andy Roddick who joked that she was benching small dump trucks at age 11, so it shouldn't really come as any surprise that she looks like this today.  That's why it was all the more shocking that of these two racquet toting divas, the one snared in a drugs fiasco was Her Siberianess.  What the penalty will be for her failed drugs test, which she has neither disputed, nor satisfactorily explained to any and all, is as yet unknown.  But that has been a story that is just waiting in the wings to come back and haunt the game.  

Mark this space...

Rafa Nadal continues to struggle, despite making some progress in Indian Wells before losing tamely to his nemesis.  He has no titles in 2016, his last title was on clay in Hamburg after Wimbledon, and his spring clay court career victory lap around South America has elicited no silverware to bite, and little confidence on the part of his admirers around the world.  Most assume that his best bet to win his last another major will be at Roland Garros this year, but few would count on that given that somebody out there appears to be the best player in the world on the surface, and incredibly he is not from Spain.  If you're holding your breath for Nadal to add to his tally of 14 of the crowned jewels in the kingdom of tennis heaven, I would suggest you grab a canister of oxygen until you can find someone else to support.

Andy Murray and Stan Wawrinka are still in the mix; two-time winners at the two majors that the other has not won (together they make an "other slam"...as in someone other than the real big 3).  But neither of them has exactly been burning down the house lately.  To be fair to Wawrinka, he is still the holder of the title at Roland Garros, but we see how heavy was the crown in Australia last year when the third installment of his Aussie trilogy went the way of God's chosen one.  Does anyone get the feeling that Wawrinka's best chance to win a major is to surprise everyone - not the least of whom, himself - lest he crumble under the immeasurable pressure to prove himself anew to the history of the game?  Don't look now, but Murray hasn't won a major in almost 3 years - it doesn't sound like much, until you remember that the likes of John McEnroe, Mats Wilander didn't win any majors after the calendar ticked off it's 365th day from their last.  Lendl and Edberg, by far greater champions than His Irascibleness, didn't go more than 2 years before adding to their major tallies, once they'd figured out how to win a big one...any big one.

Finally, after doing his best Serbian disappearing act 4 times on the trot, Roger Federer, who hasn't won a major in 4 years (that's four years), just had...wait for it...surgery on his knee (cue the melodramatic gasp and clutching of the chest).  Now that doesn't seem like much to shake a stick at, but I can tell you that one of the reasons the tennis world has continued to delude itself into believing that what passes itself off as a rivalry still walks like a duck, is that we are yet to be convinced that what we're witnessing is anything other than the dominance of one at the expense of the other.  We've done so because the unique combination of Federer's athletic prowess appears to persist, but for one glaring exception.  Not so much anymore, following a surgery that for a younger man would be difficult to recover from - let alone a man old enough to be his drunk uncle who just doesn't know when to quit.

When Ray Moore fell on his sword (in more ways than one) I was of the opinion that his comment was not directed at women playing professional tennis, so much as it was a diatribe against the leadership (or the lack thereof) at the WTA.  And when he said that the women ought to be down on their knees thanking God that "Fedal" are still making a nuisance of themselves, I tended to agree with him, or at least accept the proposition as a disconcerting one.  But something just occurred to me that ought to be way more disconcerting for the whole game of tennis, let alone the WTA:  exactly who will be minding the store when the Roger & Rafa show takes a permanent hiatus?

That's where the really scary question comes:  can Novak Djokovic carry tennis?  

It's not a scary proposition because of anything he has done...well, not exactly.  But it's not as if the man isn't playing tennis at the highest level it's ever been played.  He has, after all, contested 5 major finals in a row, won 4 of them - actually he has gone around the world and basically won everything he's entered since January of 2015.  He still makes jokes, he's still the nicest guy you could ever hope to meet, the kind of guy that would help you change a tire in the snow...literally.  He'll do any talk show you can think of, in any language you can imagine, including a couple that you can't.  He's a young, handsome 28 year old newlywed father, his parents (with fleeting exceptions) have largely removed the target from his back, his coach has shockingly done a job that I didn't think he had in him, and there are even jokes being made about the inevitability of his victories on that bloody 36 by 72 foot rectangle with the funny lines?

So why can't he carry tennis?

Is it a conspiracy against him?  Are the grey men of tennis looking down their noses at him, like the jury on Krypton, passing judgment on General Zod?  Has the (not yet) dominant PR machine of Roger Federer, Tony Godsick and Team8 laid the groundwork for his denial from the kingdom of Mount Rush(the net)more?  Does his messianic father still get under people's skin with one idiotic proclamation after another - causing even his own son to distance himself from the craziest of the crazy things he says?  Does he himself put his foot in his mouth, when a more nuanced, more diplomatic, more neutral and...dare I say...more Swiss approach would serve him better? 

My theory is this:  no single star can carry tennis.  It has never been the case that one single player can carry the game of tennis to greater heights, nor bear the weight of the tennis world on his shoulders like a racquet wielding Atlas.  

Big Bill Tilden had little Bill Johnston, Budge had von Cramm, Gonzales had Hoad, Laver had Rosewall, Billie Jean had Margaret Court, Chrissie had Martina, Connors had Borg, Borg had McEnroe, Becker had Edberg, Agassi had Sampras, Federer had Nadal.

But who gapes for the crown of Novak Djokovic?  Competitively, he has in the past been the chaser, and he has had rivalries that are currently diluted where an unjust escape and one competitive set in two played constitutes a good week, but can he alone carry the sport as it appears he may have to?  There is a myth out there that pencil pushers, marketing mavens and sporting bureaucrats can steward the game to success.  That there's some magic formula out there of sex, jokes, celebrity friends and fireworks that can make the game something that it isn't in spite of what it is.  But I have my doubts...I'm beginning to wonder if it isn't a little like the way the real star of the Star Trek franchise isn't James T. Kirk, or Jean-Luc Picard, or Kathryn Janeway...the real star is the Starship Enterprise.  

It survived years of going where no man has gone before, several captains, battles with Klingons and the Borg, and everything in between, and even in another space/time continuum, it survives.  And the guys Ray Moore and the rest of us are looking for to steer the ship are a bit like the passengers on the Enterprise - they may know where all the buttons are, but their fate is really in her hands.

Well, the rivalries, not the players, are the enterprise.  Try as we may to heap all the credit and responsibility on those at the head of the table, it's the ones at the foot of the table that make the ship sail.  And as it stands today, Novak Djokovic is alone at the top of the pyramid competitively, and may also find himself alone figuratively as well.  The throne is an enchantress for the boy who would be king, but as the saying goes:  be careful what you wish for.  There is an old Czech joke about an old man chasing a beautiful and seductive young woman being like a dog chasing a mail truck - even if he catches it, he doesn't have the first damn clue how to drive.  

And with Djokovic's missteps at Indian Wells taking over the news cycle, and subsequent apology and brief PR campaign tour to make up for it, there have to be more than a few people in the halls of tennis' bureaucracy that are wondering if Ray Moore's comments about the WTA could just as well apply to the ATP?  The truth is, they are no more responsible for the success of the game than he is, but the welcome perception, and indeed the unjust expectation, that Novak Djokovic will be, now that he is by far the best player on the planet (male or female), could prove a crown too heavy for his head.

STAN WAWRINKA HAS LIBERATED US

There's something liberating about the destruction of myths in tennis - the blogosphere is replete with them, and to a person who plays as often as I do, it can be disheartening to read what others just take as the gospel, even if it makes absolutely no sense at all.  That's why I felt a sense of liberation from Stan Wawrinka's victory over Novak Djokovic in the French Open final yesterday.  Not that I was imprisoned by being his fan - I'm not - nor that I relished in the interruption of what everyone seemed to agree was Novak's procession to the only major he's never won.

The John McEnroe's of the world so personally identify with the pressures of being #1,  that he frequently seems to forget that there are two players involved in a match with the top dog.  To hear him commentate, the match (and his attention) are entirely dependent on the guy who's supposed to win.  And I just can't get over the obvious prepared side-bars (and often incoherent ramblings) of Mary Carillo who has replaced Dick Enberg as the greatest producer of broadcast cheese in the tennis world.  She's never short of a story of some grandmother or teacher in 3rd grade or friend who spent time in a Turkish prison - there's always some damn thing.  So it's all the more disappointing that a former player, who did actually win a mixed doubles major (with John McEnroe, no less) provides so little in the way of technical or tactical analysis.

But they are the purveyors of tennis mythology - it is their inane and endlessly narcissistic pseudo-analysis that drones on and on about any number of mythological hurdles to navigate, that convinces the tennis world that that the myths are fact.  The more they say it, the more it's repeated, and the more it's taken as truth.  They begin to suffocate us with their dogma, leaving no room for the possibility that something unexpected could happen...until, of course, it happens.

That's why Stan's victory at Roland Garros should liberate us all - particularly those who play tennis, but as well those who watch it.  Too often we've heard these myths, and if you listen to them often enough, it's hard to come to any conclusion other than the game of tennis (and all of it's many myths) decides for you what can and cannot be done, rather you determining for yourself, your own destiny.

So here, for the record, and for which we should all be very grateful, are some of the myths from which Stan has liberated us all:

The Insurmountable Head to Head Match Up

It is the most common statistic shown in tennis - the head to head matchup.  It appears to give you some insight into the match that's about to occur, and is as often cited as a hurdle that has to be overcome as anything technical.  But there's something very wrong with using the head-to-head match up as a harbinger:  first, the matches often go back many more years than is relevant to the match at hand.  For two players like say, Federer and Haas, that history could go back 14 years.  To me, that's as insightful as looking at results in the juniors. If you think about it, the head-to-head match up is only as informative as the overall games of the players involved have not evolved...and how exactly are you going to measure that?  Well, that requires technical analysis, and there's just no time for that on television, so it's much easier to cite the head-to-head record - because nothing else says so little, while appearing to say so much.  After all, a player could (theoretically) change his game in a month in such a way that the previous ten years of results are completely irrelevant.

Even so, the head-to-head record begins to take on such an undeserved importance that people no longer view it as a historical coincidence or happenstance, but rather as a hurdle that must be overcome in order to win the upcoming match. But the truth is that what happened 10 years ago has no more impact on the next match than what happened 10 minutes ago - the past is not prologue unless the conditions characterizing the past are the same.  And that being the case, the only thing you have to do to nullify years of futility in a head-to-head match up is...change.  Something, anything, sometimes it almost doesn't matter what, but change - and not something mental, because in the best case scenario, a mental change elicits a technical change, and as such, mental changes are really reaching around your ass to scratch your elbow.  You're much better off making technical changes, and the mental changes (by now irrelevant) will follow.

The One-Handed Backhand Disadvantage

This is the myth that the one-handed backhand is dead as a viable technique in modern tennis - the game has changed so much that no player with a one-handed backhanded could possibly ever beat [enter player here] or win [enter tournament here], under any circumstances.  Once again, leave it to John McEnroe, a player with a one-handed backhand, to self-inflicted this wound to his own legacy, who proclaimed confidently this year at the Italian Open (that's what I'm calling it, I don't care what it's actually called) that, "No player with a one-handed backhand will ever beat Rafael Nadal on clay".  And the tennis gods promptly melted the wax in his wings when Stan the Man canned Rafa in Rome in straight sets.  I guess McEnroe forgot that Nico Almagro, during one of the least productive seasons of his career, did the same in Barcelona the year before.  So how did he come to this conclusion in the first place?

Well, there is an underlying myth out there concerning the technical omnipotence of professional tennis players - the line goes like this:  these guys are the best players in the world, and as such, they must have every shot in the book at their disposal, therefore, if they can't find a solution to a problem, the problem must be mental, not technical, because they're technically omnipotent.  If you read carefully, and know anything about logic, you can see that you simply cannot use the same point in your premise as your conclusion - that's circular, and proves nothing.  But that's precisely what this theory does.  And worse than that, despite evidence to the contrary, that these players are not technically omnipotent, because some players are so technically superior to others - they use that in defense of the circular logic by the following:  Roger Federer is the most talented and complete player in tennis, so if he can't do something technical, nobody can - so if he can't beat Nadal on clay because of his one-handed backhand, nobody on earth could possibly have a better one that could.

Bloody dead wrong.

The truth is that Roger may indeed be more talented and resourceful than Stan, but Stan hits the ball harder than Roger - a lot harder - and that gives him opportunities against players that Roger does not have.  In fact, one could argue that Roger's game, which has evolved to compel him to stay on top of the baseline, puts him at a disadvantage because it is more difficult to hit with pace, which is the only way to consistently pressure Djokovic and Nadal, who defend exceptionally well.  Because Stan can hit so hard, he doesn't have to stand on top of the baseline to take his opponent's time away - he can do it from 6 feet further back.  And six feet further behind the baseline means Stan can more frequently hit the backhand in optimal comfort zone, making him even more likely to push his opponent back on clay, in a way that Roger cannot.

Of course the difference yesterday was not Stan's backhand (which has always been a fantastic shot) but his forehand, which suddenly is as powerful as any shot in tennis, but that's not to ignore the obvious - Stan's backhand is better than Roger's therefore Roger is not technically omnipotent, and most importantly Roger's technical limitations do not apply to everyone on earth who plays a similar game.

Myth blown.

The Tennis Career Archetype

If you don't win a major by your 23rd birthday, you never will.  That's the theory because all the major champions in the open era, won their first before their 23rd birthday.  So, try as they may, the Tomas Berdych's and David Ferrer's and Feliciano Lopez's of the world should really just retire, because their window has come and gone.

But hang on a minute - wasn't Stan 28 when he won the Oz Open last year and almost 30 when he won Roland Garros just now?  Are there other major champions that old?  Of course Federer and Nadal come to mind, and even Agassi and Sampras won majors long after their "best" years had gone by, but they had already won one, so they already had the "belief" right?  Well, let's put aside the stupidity of the "belief" argument for a second, and examine whether other first time major winners have been this old...ever?

Jan Kodes and Ivan Lendl were both 24 when they won their first majors.  Marin Cilic was 25...hmm those are well within the margin of credulity, since the vast majority of other major champions have done it long before then, like all the 80's major champions.  But what about Cilic's coach, Goran Ivanisevic?  Well, he was 30 when he won Wimbledon - but I think everyone in tennis viewed that as a fluke, ironically since he should have won it 2-3 other times he found himself in the final.  But how about Andy Murray?  He was 25 when he won the US Open, and 26 when he finally won Wimbledon.  No, this is looking more like the exception.

But here Stan Wawrinka - who in terms of professional tennis, may as well be a septuagenarian, winning, not one, but two majors since his 28th birthday.  How has he bucked the trend?  Well basically he did it the old fashioned way - he lost weight, changed racquets and improved his forehand.  It doesn't sound like much, but that was enough for him, which tells you how close he was all along.  Of course the results weren't there, they suggested nothing of the kind from him, and if you look at his 2011 victory in the Australian Open of Andy Roddick, that looked like an upset, when now, in retrospect, looks like the right result.  But clearly he was better than we thought back then...

...and so are a lot of guys floating around right now.

Somewhere out there is a guy who is about to turn 30 with all the tools in his kit to force his way into the conversation.  But if your myopia is restricted to the players that should win (as is always the case with say...John McEnroe, who couldn't resist alluding to Federer during his interview with Wawrinka)  you will miss those who gape to be their heirs.  So who are the diamonds in the rough?  Well that's for another post.

The point of this post is to say that there are a lot of myths about professional tennis that make us think we know what to expect, and seeps its way into every aspect of our experience with tennis, including the matches that we play.  But nothing could be more damaging to the game of an aspiring professional, or an aspiring weekend hacker (like me), than to insist on remaining chained to these pillars of absolute nothingness and meaninglessness that masquerades as tennis dogma that is in fact about as insightful and informative as the Iliad.

Let us all take a moment and thank Stan Wawrinka for liberating us from the shackles of our misguided, unproven and utterly useless tennis dogma.