The year was 1987, and it marked the rebirth of the Sovran Bank Tennis Classic as a special event on the ATP tour. Gone were the temporary bleachers, the tents and stagnant water and the har-tru strewn throughout the facilities, to be replaced by one of the most beautiful stadium courts in the country, a world class player facility, paved walkways as pristine as they were efficacious, and deco-turf II - the exact same surface used at the US Open. The american version of the classic European rustic surface had been a fixture since 1969, which convened nicely with the change of surface at the US Open to the the green dusty stuff in 1975. But when the last major of the year converted to a surface more conducive to American players in 1978, the har-tru continued to attract a subset of European and South American professionals. The pedigree of the game's luminaries like Guillermo Vilas, Jose Luis Clerc, Andres Gomez and Yannick Noah, was undeniable, but juxtaposed against the clay surface, seemed to give them an opportunity to artificially pad their ranking and seeding at Flushing Meadows. Unfortunately, the prestige of the event suffered as a result.
But all that would change almost overnight in 1987, when everything about the tournament screamed alignment and preparation for the toughest test in tennis, and the commensurate improvement in the field of players who came to our beloved little event, was testament to its new place in the pantheon of great dates on the calendar. This year, the best player in the world, by a long way, was Ivan Lendl, who hadn't returned to Washington DC since took the money and the title in 1982, not to return until the event, more befitting his stature and world famous preparation for the US Open, was worth the detour. He had won Roland Garros for the third and last time (second year running), but then lost the Wimbledon final to Pat Cash, the irascible Australian who's joy at defeating Lendl was rivaled only by the one and only major of his career. Undeterred, Lendl came to DC as the top dog not only in the draw, but in the world rankings, and it would mark the middle of his best professional season, making three of 4 major finals, and winning two of them.
Following him to the nation's capital for the first and last time in his career, was none other than Das Wunderkind from Liemen, Boris "Boom Boom" Becker. He had been scheduled to play in 1985, in all likelihood assuming he wouldn't have gone as far in the draw as he did at Wimbledon. The tournament was still on clay at the time, part of an anachronistic US summer clay circuit that included Indianapolis and Forest Hills. As such, requently Europeans and South Americans came to pad their results before seedings were calculated for the US Open, so the Sovran Bank Tennis Classic would have been an excellent opportunity for him to do just that. Of course the need to do so disappeared when he shocked the world by winning Wimbledon. After that, he won two singles victories over the United States in a Davis Cup World Group play-off in 1985, over Aaron Krickstein (that other teen sensation who had by then lost some of the luster on his marquee due already to some knee issues and the results of some very talented European contemporaries - i.e. Becker and Edberg) and Elliot Teltscher. His return in 1987, as the penultimate seed, laid the groundwork for a hugely anticipated #1 vs #2 final.
Unfortunately for Becker, 1987 was an annus horribilus. He had defeated Tim Mayotte and John McEnroe in a Davis Cup tie in St. Louis, coming back from 2 sets to 1 down in both matches to do so. In his first match against McEnroe, a 5 hour 22 minute back breaker for players and spectators alike, he wore down his cantankerous opponent in a match that reminded us all why McEnroe was both a blessing and a curse to the Davis Cup. Becker, had held his nerve, despite McEnroe telling Germany's captain, Niki Pilic, to "shut the hell up", telling a black linesman whom he felt wasn't patriotic enough that he "...didn't know there were any black germans" and the entire American crowd to stand up and repeatedly interrupt Becker's first and second serves.
In the end, this was largely the highlight of Becker's year - he lost in the 4th round of the Australian Open to a player that his former manager and mentor, Ion Tiriac, had (sort of) abandoned him to manage, one Slobodan Zivojinovic. Zivojinovic was a rare contemporary of Becker's who's claim to fame was that he was probably the only player on tour that made Becker look like the 19 year old manchild that he, in fact, truly was. At 6'4" and 220 pounds, he also had a serve that made perfect sense for a man of that stature - frequently hit above 130mph, which did him a world of good at Kooyong. Becker then lost the semi-final at Roland Garros, a good result for most players, but not for a player who had grown up on clay, and actually enjoyed the opportunity to display the full breadth of his ground game. There he lost tamely in 3 straight sets to true clay master (and fellow 17-year old grand slam champion - his a Roland Garros in 1982) Mats Wilander.
But it was a Wimbledon that Becker's star truly began to fall - losing in the 2nd round as the 2-time defending champion to a player, Peter Doohan, who'd enjoyed most of the success in his career at the NCAA level - where he won a national title in doubles (presaging his 5 professional doubles titles). Becker scratched and clawed, and fought every minute of that match, but unlike previous years where his stature seemed to grow as the match got tight, in 1987, Becker waited for Doohan to come back down to his expected level...only Doohan never did, and after 2 and half hours of near perfect serve and volley tennis, dethroned the boy king from Bavaria for what remains one of the biggest upsets in the history of professional tennis.
So under that shadow of disappointment, Boom-Boom sonic-boomed his way to Washington DC with the full expectation that he could restore some measure of lost gravitas by bludgeoning his way to the title, scooping up the scalps of several Americans in his half of the draw, and the most valuable one of all, in Ivan Lendl's. The problem was that nobody bothered to tell one Brad Gilbert of Oakland California. After defeating 3 Americans along the way (including current USTA coach Jay Berger), Becker ran into the Talkinator Gilbert on the 2-year upswing of the zenith of his career in 1989. As if his year wasn't bad enough by his already lofty standards, Boris Becker would lose to Brad Gilbert for the first of 3 consecutive losses in 1987 in DC. The match was a study in what Gilbert would later describe mercilessly as "winning ugly".
The first set had Becker forcing the play with his powerful serve, which Gilbert, almost by rote, initially tried to return with depth and pace, to which Becker responded with easy 1-2 combinations and power volleys. But in the second, Gilbert changed his strategy to focus on doing the exact opposite of what Becker wanted - where Becker wanted pace, Gilbert hit with a soft short slice, with the desired effect of pulling the German to the net before he wanted to go there, which Becker frequently obliged. Never known for his footwork, Becker's was particularly poor when lumbering to net, which he made up for with great reach and dexterity on his volleys, particularly for a man of his endomorph physique - but he rarely made it to net after the first set, such was the frequency of his errors on approach. That was due in no small part to Gilbert's expert neutralization of the pace and spin coming to him.
Where Becker wanted short replies from the forehand, Gilbert frequently hit with high and deep questions into Becker's backhand, forcing him to generate pace and spin while moving backwards, a difficult task for even the best of players, and more so for one having a bad year. Becker had a unique ability to hit his backhand from behind him, likely due to the strength of his shoulders and forearm, but that capability usually followed an approach shot with pace - Gilbert gave him none to work with. And Gilbert, rather than serving and volleying, would hit kick serves to Becker's backhand in the ad court, respond to Becker's returns with short flat forehands in the deuce court, then long slice back to the ad court - the yo-yo on the string was Becker at this point, and the madness that it elicited not only resulted in an unexpected loss, but an embarrassing final set obliteration - a rare bagel of the uber-competitive strawberry blonde Bavarian who, at 19 years old, was already, and rightfully, viewed as one of the fiercest competitors in tennis.
The irony of Gilbert's victory was that, in assigning the name "Winning Ugly" to this style of play that lead him to overachieving in the game based on his talent, it leaves one with the unfortunate impression that his game was entirely lacking in pulchritude - to the contrary, Gilbert's tactical acumen was one of the more beautiful things to behold on a tennis court. Realizing that the vast majority of points are won with forced errors, Gilbert understood that frequently the most effective method of overwhelming one's opponent is to allow him to self-destruct. And nothing presses that button like taking away a strength and forcing a better player to win with his weakness. Frequently when a new great player emerges, the only ones who figure out how to beat them consistently are the ones who understand this incredibly essential characteristic of tennis - you can only play as well as your opponent lets you. And if your opponents tries to beat you at your game, he is merely giving you the sword which you will gleefully plunge in his heart. But turn the handle around, and the aggressor frequently falls on his sword, and nobody did that better than Brad Gilbert.
Except perhaps Ivan Lendl.
Lendl's performance in the final was a carbon copy of Gilbert's in the semi-final. He had played a low quality, but highly effective, match against Jimmy Connors, where he fed him a steady diet short slice to Connors' forehand - a tactic that, 12 years after it was first effectively employed by John Newcombe at the Australian Open, and then Arthur Ashe at Wimbledon, Connors still hadn't figured out how to handle. Lendl had a reputation for snatching defeat from the jaws of victory in several major finals before finally breaking his duck at Roland Garros in 1984 on the one characteristic of his game that he would eventually become famous for: his fitness. After becoming stronger than anyone on tour, he discovered that his ability to play the same shot over and over again became a tool as effective as Chinese water torture - nothing dynamic, but eminently effective.
Against Gilbert, he realized early on that Gilbert was nervous, having lost to him 12 times in a row, and making the final of the first important title of the summer US hard court circuit, in a brand new beautiful stadium, was more than he could handle. The enormity of the occasion, and the intransigence of his opponent, one of the few men on tour who could claim to be fitter, and more resolute in his tactical commitment, melted all of Gilbert's tactical expertise away, leaving only his innate natural talent to hit a tennis ball, to bear the burden of the competition. Ironically, Lendl, never known as the most talented player in the world, was probably more talented than Gilbert, and on this, the 12th of 16 occasions that they met on the ATP tour, Lendl's superiority would prevail - in fact he never lost to Gilbert in his career.
I, myself, was fascinated with Gilbert's game - it seemed so simple, and so effective, I could never figure out how he did it. How did he always seem to find a way to defeat players who were, in terms of their pedigree, far superior to him. He rarely struck the ball hard, and even his serve, which was accurate and consistent, was not what one would expect of an athletic 6'2" inch American raised on football and baseball. The secret to his success was something more feminine, something more simple: he took his opponent's greatest strength, and reduced its influence on the match, which would in turn forced a better player to beat him with their weakness. Under those circumstances, the match could be played on his terms.
In truth, tactically Gilbert was the Chris Evert of the men's tour, with less talent, and worse results of course - but strategically and tactically, they were mirror images. Evert never appeared to have physical superiority, or even technical superiority - most of her opponents had more tools in the kit - but Evert's true special talent was the depth of the skills she did possess and her ability to make shallow the skills of her opponents. The modern game suffers from a kind of fatal narcissism, where players all think the key to their success is their own game. They assume that because tennis is an individual sport, the last thing they have to worry about is the other guy on the court. Fed by the paucity of quality coaching, where the "mental game", and its ugly offspring "belief", seem to be the focus, lost from the modern game is the art of strategy and tactical execution - in short, there are no more Brad Gilbert's in the men's game, and very few in the women's game.
I recall 3 years later watching Gilbert obliterate a young Michael Stich in DC, a year before Stich's solitary victory at a major at Wimbledon in 1991 (over none other then Boris Becker, I might add). The amazing thing about this match was that Stich, consistently serving in the 125+ range throughout that match, gained absolutely no advantage from the serve, because Stich made error after error trying to do just that. Throughout the match, Gilbert brilliantly returned soft and deep, thus negating the advantage of a heavy serve, but in his mind Stich felt compelled to take advantage of his huge serves, even though that advantage didn't exist. Thus he went for ill-advised setup and kill shots over and over again - destroying himself and probably wondering along the way, how he could possibly be losing to a player who was hitting so few winners and taking so few chances. Add to that the heat, and the relatively quiet audience, watching in bewilderment how this praying mantis of a player, with a gargantuan but easily produced serve, managed to get broken 4 times in just 10 service games.
Winning ugly is a misnomer, because there is something very beautiful about tactical acumen played out so mercilessly in a tennis match. Nothing says, "I know this game better than you do," like beating someone you have no business beating, over and over again.
For that lesson from Brad Gilbert and Ivan Lendl, I say, thank you Citi Open.
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Showing posts with label Ivan Lendl. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ivan Lendl. Show all posts
Sunday, July 26, 2015
Monday, June 8, 2015
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.
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.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
NEW MONEY, SAME OLD PROBLEM
Recently Jelena Jankovic hit back at stinging criticism from Roger Federer on the state of rankings at the WTA. In essence, he repeated what most have said about Jankovic’s stint as the #1 player in the world – that it made no sense.
Jankovic was none too pleased, but a quick look at the distribution of points across categories of tournaments on both the WTA and the ATP tours demonstrates some very strange possibilities. Federer would do well to consider this the next time he chats with the ATP President, as he himself could wind up in the unenviable position of looking a bit silly for his ranking as well.
There are nine 1000 Series events, excluding the year end championships, on the ATP Tour, each of which is worth 1000 points to the winner. Each grand slam is worth 2000 points – 9000 vs. 8000 points – which means that a player could win the calendar slam, another could win every 1000 series event, and the winner of the calendar slam would have to find another 1000 points (all other things equal) to obtain the #1 ranking?
Huh?
That’s right – a guy could win 28 grand slam matches in a row, and still come out the wrong end of the rankings. What a nightmare that would be. Fair enough, the 1000 series sweep is an altogether less likely scenario than the calendar slam, but it reveals that the rankings are weighted towards the events that the ATP controls, and as such if the stars so aligned, we could see such a ridiculous scenario played out. You could argue that a player who wins all 9 MS events deserves to be #1, but would you feel that way if another player won the calendar slam?
Well, that's an unlikely scenario, so let's take it piece by piece – imagine a player wins two slams – 4000 points looks pretty good – but to overcome that (again all other things equal) you'd just have to win 3 1000 series titles (one more than did Djokovic and Murray last year) and two 500 series events (say Rotterdam and Indianapolis) and you'd have the exact same number of points as a winner of Wimbledon AND the US Open in the same year.
Now which record would you want for your favorite player?
You see, the tennis gods look favorably on the calendar slam – even half of it. Why? Because there’s continuity of purpose in the slams, and as such, you can gauge a player against the greats of the game a hell of a lot easier with slam results than a mish-mash of tournaments, the collection of which seems to change with the each year. The top 8 players don’t even play the same number of matches as the rest of the field in 1000 or 500 series tournaments, and although you’ve got more time to rest in between matches at slams, anyone who’s played a 5 set match will tell you that it’s always harder to come back from that than your average 3-setter.
Consider this other possibility – a player winning four 500 series tournaments (say, Rotterdam, Doha, Indianapolis and Barcelona) is adjudged the equal of the champion at Wimbledon – in ATP points that is. Any player with his head not on backwards would choose Wimbledon over the other events, so why don't the rankings reflect that.
Now let’s look at the women’s side.
The Wimbledon champion on the women’s side would earn fewer points than another player winning 3 non-mandatory Premier 5 tournaments (2000 vs. 2400 points) say, Beijing, Stuttgart and Moscow. So you don’t even have to win any tournaments where all the best players are required to participate, and you can earn the same number of points as one of the Williams sisters.
This is probably the area where Federer has a good point. It is altogether unlikely that a player who is capable of winning more than three 1000 series shields in a season doesn’t win at least on slam, but win 2 of them, and you’re on par with the US Open champion. That doesn’t make a lot of sense, but it has only happened because the slam winners tend to win 1000 series tournaments along the way. That’s a convenient coincidence, but a glaring anomaly in the making nonetheless.
Ivan Lendl was ranked #1 in 1983; he only reached two grand slam finals but racked up enough victories in tennis hotbeds like North Conway, New Hampshire and Naples, Italy to hold the top spot come Christmas. In his favor that year was that 4 different men won grand slams (Noah at the French, McEnroe at Wimbledon, Connors at the US Open and Wilander at the Australian). So the argument then with Lendl was the same as it is today with Jankovic; how can a guy/gal who can’t win a slam to save his/her life, be considered the best player in the world? It didn’t help that in 1983 he lost 4 out of 5 to McEnroe, 2 out of 4 to Wilander, 2 out of 4 to Connors and his one and only match to Noah - a collective 5 of 14 against the slam champions.
Fast forward, nip and tuck to the women's side, and we have our example in Jelena (Lendlova) Jankovic – last year she won Rome, Beijing, Stuttgart and Moscow (sound familiar?), had consistently (barely) above average results everywhere else, and so was ranked #1. But nobody – not even Jankovic, I suspect – sincerely believed she was the best player in the world – maybe the most consistent, but certainly not the best. Well, thankfully Serena has put that question off for a bit.
Jankovic won more points for any 3 of those tournaments than Sharapova did for winning in Melbourne, Ivanovic did for conquering Paris, Venus did for winning her fifth at the All England Club, and Serena Williams did for exorcising her small town blues at Flushing. Jankovic lost her only match to "I'm So Pretty", went 1-2 against Verdasco's ex-girlfriend, split 1-1 with the Fly Trap, and 1-2 to Serena, for a whopping 3 for 8 against the slam winners - ironically she lost in 3 of the 4 slams to the eventual champion, but still topped the table at the end of the season - this after losing in the semi-final of the year end championships.
The point distributions do not represent the historical or even current significance of tournaments. In order to encourage high profile players to play events that are essentially money-makers for the tour, they have to put a point value on them that will draw marquee players. But as soon as they do this the advantage goes to those who play more often, but not necessarily better, and that’s when the rankings begin to make little to no sense at all. So why do they want to draw players to these events? – I told you, that’s where the money is; new sponsors, new venues and a whole lot of NEW MONEY (in Beijing and Moscow, anyway).
The only solution is for the ATP and the WTA to admit that tradition counts in tennis and the only thing that everyone cares about equally is the slams. They could eat into the gravitas of the slams by keeping a more consistent year to year schedule and attaching some historical value to smaller events, but as long as money changes hands globally, new venues have cash to burn, and players have entourages to support, there’s little hope for a calendar or ranking system that make sense on both sides of the aisle any time soon.
Well, at least Jelena can always take Roger for a ride in the Porsche she won in Stuttgart – you can’t drive a ranking anyway.
Jankovic was none too pleased, but a quick look at the distribution of points across categories of tournaments on both the WTA and the ATP tours demonstrates some very strange possibilities. Federer would do well to consider this the next time he chats with the ATP President, as he himself could wind up in the unenviable position of looking a bit silly for his ranking as well.
There are nine 1000 Series events, excluding the year end championships, on the ATP Tour, each of which is worth 1000 points to the winner. Each grand slam is worth 2000 points – 9000 vs. 8000 points – which means that a player could win the calendar slam, another could win every 1000 series event, and the winner of the calendar slam would have to find another 1000 points (all other things equal) to obtain the #1 ranking?
Huh?
That’s right – a guy could win 28 grand slam matches in a row, and still come out the wrong end of the rankings. What a nightmare that would be. Fair enough, the 1000 series sweep is an altogether less likely scenario than the calendar slam, but it reveals that the rankings are weighted towards the events that the ATP controls, and as such if the stars so aligned, we could see such a ridiculous scenario played out. You could argue that a player who wins all 9 MS events deserves to be #1, but would you feel that way if another player won the calendar slam?
Well, that's an unlikely scenario, so let's take it piece by piece – imagine a player wins two slams – 4000 points looks pretty good – but to overcome that (again all other things equal) you'd just have to win 3 1000 series titles (one more than did Djokovic and Murray last year) and two 500 series events (say Rotterdam and Indianapolis) and you'd have the exact same number of points as a winner of Wimbledon AND the US Open in the same year.
Now which record would you want for your favorite player?
You see, the tennis gods look favorably on the calendar slam – even half of it. Why? Because there’s continuity of purpose in the slams, and as such, you can gauge a player against the greats of the game a hell of a lot easier with slam results than a mish-mash of tournaments, the collection of which seems to change with the each year. The top 8 players don’t even play the same number of matches as the rest of the field in 1000 or 500 series tournaments, and although you’ve got more time to rest in between matches at slams, anyone who’s played a 5 set match will tell you that it’s always harder to come back from that than your average 3-setter.
Consider this other possibility – a player winning four 500 series tournaments (say, Rotterdam, Doha, Indianapolis and Barcelona) is adjudged the equal of the champion at Wimbledon – in ATP points that is. Any player with his head not on backwards would choose Wimbledon over the other events, so why don't the rankings reflect that.
Now let’s look at the women’s side.
The Wimbledon champion on the women’s side would earn fewer points than another player winning 3 non-mandatory Premier 5 tournaments (2000 vs. 2400 points) say, Beijing, Stuttgart and Moscow. So you don’t even have to win any tournaments where all the best players are required to participate, and you can earn the same number of points as one of the Williams sisters.
This is probably the area where Federer has a good point. It is altogether unlikely that a player who is capable of winning more than three 1000 series shields in a season doesn’t win at least on slam, but win 2 of them, and you’re on par with the US Open champion. That doesn’t make a lot of sense, but it has only happened because the slam winners tend to win 1000 series tournaments along the way. That’s a convenient coincidence, but a glaring anomaly in the making nonetheless.
Ivan Lendl was ranked #1 in 1983; he only reached two grand slam finals but racked up enough victories in tennis hotbeds like North Conway, New Hampshire and Naples, Italy to hold the top spot come Christmas. In his favor that year was that 4 different men won grand slams (Noah at the French, McEnroe at Wimbledon, Connors at the US Open and Wilander at the Australian). So the argument then with Lendl was the same as it is today with Jankovic; how can a guy/gal who can’t win a slam to save his/her life, be considered the best player in the world? It didn’t help that in 1983 he lost 4 out of 5 to McEnroe, 2 out of 4 to Wilander, 2 out of 4 to Connors and his one and only match to Noah - a collective 5 of 14 against the slam champions.
Fast forward, nip and tuck to the women's side, and we have our example in Jelena (Lendlova) Jankovic – last year she won Rome, Beijing, Stuttgart and Moscow (sound familiar?), had consistently (barely) above average results everywhere else, and so was ranked #1. But nobody – not even Jankovic, I suspect – sincerely believed she was the best player in the world – maybe the most consistent, but certainly not the best. Well, thankfully Serena has put that question off for a bit.
Jankovic won more points for any 3 of those tournaments than Sharapova did for winning in Melbourne, Ivanovic did for conquering Paris, Venus did for winning her fifth at the All England Club, and Serena Williams did for exorcising her small town blues at Flushing. Jankovic lost her only match to "I'm So Pretty", went 1-2 against Verdasco's ex-girlfriend, split 1-1 with the Fly Trap, and 1-2 to Serena, for a whopping 3 for 8 against the slam winners - ironically she lost in 3 of the 4 slams to the eventual champion, but still topped the table at the end of the season - this after losing in the semi-final of the year end championships.
The point distributions do not represent the historical or even current significance of tournaments. In order to encourage high profile players to play events that are essentially money-makers for the tour, they have to put a point value on them that will draw marquee players. But as soon as they do this the advantage goes to those who play more often, but not necessarily better, and that’s when the rankings begin to make little to no sense at all. So why do they want to draw players to these events? – I told you, that’s where the money is; new sponsors, new venues and a whole lot of NEW MONEY (in Beijing and Moscow, anyway).
The only solution is for the ATP and the WTA to admit that tradition counts in tennis and the only thing that everyone cares about equally is the slams. They could eat into the gravitas of the slams by keeping a more consistent year to year schedule and attaching some historical value to smaller events, but as long as money changes hands globally, new venues have cash to burn, and players have entourages to support, there’s little hope for a calendar or ranking system that make sense on both sides of the aisle any time soon.
Well, at least Jelena can always take Roger for a ride in the Porsche she won in Stuttgart – you can’t drive a ranking anyway.
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