2016 FINAL THOUGHTS: A GAEL FORCE WIND AT HIS BACK...AND IN HIS FACE

History hates nothing more than a crown unworn, a throne unseated, a title unearned.  The history of Gael Monfils is no different.  In 2004, he shocked the French tennisocracy by winning first 3 of the 4 junior majors, and stood on the precipice of doing something that hadn't been done since Stefan Edberg won the very first junior calendar grand slam of the open era in 1983.  He was the pearl that French tennis had awaited for years.  Though other Gallic juniors like Jo-Wilfried Tsonga and Richard Gasquet had been more heavily touted, it was Monfils, formerly bespectacled, spindly and awkward, that emerged as the closest thing, to a sure thing, to end the French drought at the professional majors.  And though the strength of his game resembled the same qualities that characterize his professional exploits (the super hero speed and stretching, the fantastical trick shots, the unadulterated athleticism) there would have been those who still wondered if this weren't another mirage in the, then 20 year desert, of french men's tennis.

Those doubts, whispered by the most pessimistic, weren't doused by his quarterfinal loss of a match, and a shot at history, in the Boys Singles draw of the 2004 US Open:  in fact they were given a loud and undeniable voice.  His absence from the final, contested by Sergiy Stahkovsky and Andy Murray, a pair who would carry on a different kind of tete a tete this year following Indian Wells, was all but forgotten when he began a full time career on the ATP tour.  Launching himself into the top 50 with victories at 2 challengers and a full ATP event in Sopot, he was overshadowed only by the player that French tennistas have always truly believed to be the rightful heir to the legacy of Les Mousquetaires.  In fact Gasquet may have done him a favor by beating Roger Federer in Monte Carlo, putting the "bleu, blanc et rouge" bullseye at Roland Garros squarely on his back, where it didn't belong.  Monfils has actually had the most consistent results of all his contemporary countrymen at their home major, (if not the best, with Tsonga reaching one more semifinal).

But since that early promise, despite remaining one of, if not the most, athletic player(s) in the game today, and the evolution of the game making raw athleticism more and more of a common trait (if not distinguishing), Monfils has not translated that into commensurate success at the highest echelons of the game.  I have always suspected that while every other part of his body screams exceptional, the most critical tools in his tennis kit remain curiously ordinary:  his hands.  While Simon uses his to swash, Gasquet uses his to swashbuckle and Tsonga uses his to simply buckle, Monfils' hands, hardly the most sophisticated in the world, form the basis of little more than a human backboard.  No shot seems out of his reach, unless he decides otherwise, and it's a considerable reach.

But the hands have failed him from time to time:  the inability to handle the short slice, the tendency to receded further and further into the backcourt, and the almost psychological dependence on his athleticism to entertain (and not necessarily to win), have all belied the very profligacy of talent that coaches and the tennis punditry has bemoaned.  Darren Cahill once claimed that Monfils would, from time to time, skip a (second and) afternoon practice with his coach, Roger Rasheed, claiming he need a rest, only to find him later in his room hotel room hootin' and hollerin' while working up a sweat playing FIFA soccer on the playstation.  So perhaps something within him realized that there was a limit to how far he needed to develop himself physically (Rasheed's specialty), when the most critical tool available to him (his hands) remained unaddressed.

Maybe he knew something that we didn't?

This week, after having hired his Swedish coach Mikael Tillstrom in October of last year, worked on simplifying his game, and more specifically the technique on his serve, the Gael Monfils taking the court today in his second successive final (if 5 years after the first), has shorn his infamous locks, and some of the more elaborate machinations that have frustrated his least loyal fans.  The gale force wind at his back may be the new and improved serve, imperceptibly more rhythmic, but palpably more effective, has elicited only 2/3rd as many aces (42) as his infamous serving opponent (66).  He will need all the free points he can get to reduce his burden of proof that Karlovic might not get through a WTA field would it were not for that monstrosity of a first serve.

The jury is not out on either of their careers today, but the perceived quality of the final, will be largely dependent on the extent to which an entertainer can get down to business and mitigate the reputation (at least) of a 5-19 record in ATP finals.

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...

THANK YOU CITI OPEN - RICHARD GASQUET v MICHAEL LLODRA 2014

You know how the first thing you do when you walk on a tennis court is always the first thing you do when you walk on a tennis court - a ritual, a rite of passage, an homage to the faces on Mt. Rush(the net)More?  For some it's doing your laces a certain way, for others perhaps arranging the water bottle in some perfect alignment with an empty can of balls, that serves a purpose known only to your own imagination.  Well, I have a ritual every time I go to the Citi Open - the first thing I do after I cross the main entrance, and pass all the promotional modules is hang a hard left to visit the first 3 practice courts.  These days one of those courts is Grandstand 1, a beautifully seated stadium court, from which almost every seat has a perfect vantage point to view a match tennis - sufficiently distant to appreciate the angles, but close enough to feel the weight and pace of every shot.

But back in the day, Grandstand 1 used to be 3 practice courts where you could often watch 6 of the worlds best players at once, getting into the kind of groove that you rarely get to see in a match.  And it is as they train that you truly appreciate what it takes to be a professional tennis player.  The warmups begin with a slow exercise in simply increasing the blood flow and finding the range - they are hardly putting anything on the ball, and all the pace and spin are generated by rote.  This is where, if any conversation takes place, it will take place - I remember back in 1990 watching John Boytim, a top shelf junior from the great state of Texas, who had turned professional to ignominious results, telling his practice partner every sordid detail of a dinner and a movie he had been to the night before.  I was as fascinated by the day to day lives of these players, as their games...but I digress. Not so any more - with the pervasive presence of perma-coaches, these conversations are not as extensive or intimate or frequent.

Then the pace picks up slightly, with players putting a little more spin on the ball, making the flight path tighter and tighter over the net until it reaches an impossibly tight curl over the net and the ball lands somewhere in the middle of the no-man's land (that area just beyond the service line and before the baseline).  With modern poly-strings and composite racquets, the spin on shots landing that short push players at least 6 feet beyond the baseline at this point in the warm up.  By now, the sinews are stretched, the blood flows readily, and the players are ready for their full throated knock about - this is when it becomes truly amazing.

Because at this point, the players begin to strike the ball with true venom, full-bodied pace and spin, on a line tighter and tighter towards their partner, harder and harder, until one of them folds by dumping it in the net or long.  They're not moving themselves around, in fact that is considered a soft cop out, because the objective in this exercise is to hit the ball as hard as you can straight at your opponent, and they do the same, straight back at you, until somebody folds.  In this way, they're fighting a battle of attrition, and the loser is the guy with the ball on his side of the net.  This goes on until they have to wipe the sweat from their hands, or someone breaks a string.

They then move onto a long session of volleys, with the same principle, you're not trying to pass your partner, as much as you're trying to hit the ball through him, and he loses if he dumps a volley straight into the net or long.  They do this over and over again until the reactions are so quick and instinctive, you almost wonder how their minds are able to process all the variables and decision points to arrive at just the right point of contact.  After a few overheads, then a few serves and returns, a practice set is played.

The best set of tennis I saw last year won't show up on the AT P's head to head records.  That's because it was a practice set at, hideaway on practice court 2, between Richard Gasquet and Michael Llodra.  And after the initial pleasure of watching an extended 30 minute warmup, I then witnessed one of the best sets of tennis I've ever seen.  Not only because Gasquet has one of the most beautiful backhands in tennis, and Llodra is one of the last bona fide serve and volleyers left in the game.  The set was extraordinary because the spirit of these two players, their trades plied at opposite ends of the tactical spectrum, is exactly the same - swashbucklers.  Not that the term isn't overly used, particularly when it comes to french tennis players, but it very much applies to these two.  They do whatever they can, whatever it takes, whenever they can do it, to win the point, and entertain, and not necessarily in that order.  There is a quality of the spectacle which is as important to french players and french audiences, that must be met in order for the match to have been worth watching.  And boy was this one worth watching.

Gasquet started serving, wide serve in the deuce court, which is the right play against a lefty with a one-handed backhand, but because the pace was reduced to ensure placement, Llodra promptly replied with a drop shot return - I repeat, a drop shot return - to which Gasquet had no choice but to pump his desperate foray to net with a cross court angle which Llodra promptly hit around the net post for a winner.

That was the first point.

And it continue like this, shot after shot was hit with angles so acute the players were continually trying to avoid running into things - the net post, the side fence the back fence, the change over chairs, etc.  Some players shrink the court by forcing you to hit to the same spot over and over again, but the vision and improvisation of Gasquet and Llodra had them making the court every larger with each point.  Llodra once hit a kick serve to Gasquet's forehand in the deuce court on break point, which Gasquet replied with a chip forehand lob over Llodra's backhand side.  And as if that wasn't difficult enough to handle had he taken it conventionally, Llodra decided to hit a tweeter lob (also over the backhand), which Gasquet dispatched with a blind leap and incredible backhand smash - made all the more impressive when you recall the he stands 5'11 if he's got two pairs of socks on.

And there's something about the vantage point of watching from the side, as those practice courts force you to do - particularly when you watch from the net.  As a conventional tactic, topspin is usually associated with more margin over the net, but keeping the ball inside the baseline, but actually from this vantage point I could see the effects of Gasquet's reverse forehand (hit almost as frequently as Nadal's but his with a continental grip that also allows him to switch to or from a forehand slice) not only imparted enormous topspin, but used in conjunction with a very low net clearance, actually worked to keep the ball very low.  This is of particular use to a player who hits through the ball on the forehand side and is unaccustomed to having to generate either his own pace, or his own spin on the ball.

The set finished in a tie-break after each player broke once, then the other immediately broke right back.  The serves were not huge, but hugely effective, placed in all four corners, with slice, top and flat making for a beautiful array of 18 different kinds of serves from two players using the serve to set up very different things.  The shotmaking was fearless, which is nothing to shake a stick at when you consider the kind of impact losing would have on either players' reputation in their relatively large circle of compatriots (people talk about Spanish tennis, but really, it's the French that have the most players of consequence in the top 100 today).  But most importantly, although there were only 5 people watching that set, it was enough motivation to those two to entertain, curse each other out (in a playful way) and along the way play one hell of a practice set of tennis - indeed one of the best I've ever seen at the Citi Open.

So, for making the first thing I do, one of the best things I do, every time I go to Rock Creek in August, I say, "Thank you Citi Open".

WIMBLEDON 2015 - CLOSE BUT NO CIGAR

So, what did we learn from the final this year?  Not much, to be honest.  Actually, the result this year, is really the result we should have had last year, where Federer was down a break and (miraculously) found a way to tie the match at two sets a piece.  But this year there was no respite from either Djokovic's improved serve and his ever-present return, which neutralized his opponent's greatest strength yet again.  There's been a little talk this year in the blogosphere about what is the key to success on grass, and I've always been of the opinion that the return is far more important.

If you needed any more evidence of that, just take a look at the way Djokovic broke the serve of Federer as frequently as he needed to, and how much trouble Federer had doing the same.  Both of them have been strong in the serve throughout the tournament, Federer even longer, losing one service game out of the previous 96, before the final, and then proceeded to be broken 4 times today.  So while it may seem that the serve is the key success factor, it was clear that with all of the failed break point opportunities on one side, and the successful ones on the other, and who wound up winning the title, it's clear that the key was the return.

The interesting thing is that while Federer appears to continue to be the best player in the world on grass (with one glaring exception) it is Djokovic's viability that I begin to question - after all, how long can he expect to remain as nimble and pliable as he is now?  How long can we expect lightning quick responses with impeccable hand-eye coordination, the stretching out of points over and over again, and the impenetrable wall of defense that he's putting up these days?  With the exception of his outlier Wimbledon title in 2012, Federer hasn't really won a major for 5 years, and before that he held three at a time and had made the last 7 major finals in a row - that was after making 10 finals in a row before that.  Nadal was at the peak of his powers in 2010 and again in 2013, after taking 6 months off - since then, he's won a single major and hasn't made it past the quarterfinal round in his last 3.

So we come to Djokovic, and he appears to be at the peak of his powers, having made 14 major finals in the last 5 years, winning 8 of them, it would appear he is well on his way to the end of the rainbow, but it remains to be seen if there is a pot of gold, or leprechaun waiting for him.  The end comes quickly, for those who choose it, and those who do not, and it's hard to imagine him doing much better than he's doing now, but not hard to imagine him doing much, much worse.

On the women's side, Wimbledon has confirmed the one thing that we've all known - Serena Williams is far and away, the best player in the world, and it remains to be seen if she will anoint herself the greatest player in the history of the game.  But there is something that hasn't been brought to light, out of either deference or political correctness, that bears discussion:  is the state of the women's game the equal of the men's game?  And if not, does the palpable absence of reverence for her accomplishments result from one of the "isms" she is wont to claim, or simply an acknowledgement of the paucity of quality that surrounds her?

Gone are the great competitors, with games that had the capacity to challenge her on a regular basis (including her sister's) and left behind is a litany of weak clones with all the aesthetic appeal of her game, and absolutely none of her capacity.  I don't usually subscribe to the weak era argument, but watching one paltry substitute after another play exactly the same way, only much much worse, for the last 3 years, has begun to make me wonder.  In a quote often ascribed to Albert Einstein that, "...madness is defined as doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting a different result."  If so, women's professional tennis is a mad, mad world, indeed.

But on the men's side, the result of the final, was exactly what we should have expected from last year - with only the first and second set results reversed.  According to Chris Evert, Federer did what he did last year with a bad back, and as such, with his ruthless dismissal of Andy Murray, there was an expectation that he would be able to get a different result this year.  But as it turned out, the one who played better than last year was Djokovic, and the result was equally more in line with where they are in their match up.

Federer still depends heavily on the quality of his serve, and although it had been firing on all cylinders for the past 12 matches, in this one, the quality of Djokovic's return forced him just beyond his comfort zone, and whereas he was broken just once in 12 matches, he was broken 4 times in this one.  One can question whether it was the chicken or the egg (did his serve falter or was it caused to falter by the quality of the return), but these are largely academic questions.  As it stands, without his serve affording him 1-2 free points per game, the remainder of his arsenal is insufficient to trouble the best player in the world on his worst surface, where he now has 3 Wimbledon titles to his name, and has never lost a final.

This tournament had the potential to mean a lot of things to a lot of people - Nishikori petered out early with an injury, Dimitrov lost to an inspired Gasquet (with the loss looking better and better as he progressed through the draw), Raonic looked right at home on what should the best surface for his serve, and then promptly lost to the first person who could return it with any level of consistency.  Gasquet looked like he would finally fulfill the potential of his talents, lauded on the covers of French magazines since he was 9 years old, but he too ran into the juggernaut that his Djokovic and was largely ineffective.  His last victim, Stan Wawrinka, was on the verge of entering the pantheon of great players in world tennis, but he, perhaps prophetically, confirmed before the fact, that he is not at the level of those that precede him in prestige and success.

Murray was playing some of the best tennis of his career at Queens and then at Wimbledon, but even the totality of British support for him couldn't overturn the advantage that Federer has over him when it counts.  It wasn't to be for him, nor his conqueror.  And finally, Nick Kyrigos impressed us with the breadth of his personality, and the shallowness of his game, but in the end, he failed to leave much more of an impression than that of a petulant manchild with more bark than bite.  Only time will tell if he can become something more than an Australian Monfils, and finally deliver to that country the major champion it so desperately seeks.

Tangentially, the one area that did surprise me was the extent to which ESPN took advantage of the considerable knowledge and analytical skills of Jason Goodall, who along with Robbie Koenig, is part of the internet's most insightful analyst team in the game, and has been for the last 10 years.  But with the advent of hawkeye technology and statistics, to supplement his propensity to analyze the only thing that matters in tennis - the technical - Goodall put to shame the perfunctory pseudo-psychological drivel that normally passes for analysis in the studio.  All the talk about pressure and confidence and belief sounds more like the expression of their own perceptions of what they felt as players, but brings us no closer to the answers to the question that we all (should) want to know:  how the hell do they do it?  It could be that Goodall's long overdue inclusion at the table, and his clear prowess at it, was the only surprise this year.

So in the end, the Championships at Wimbledon 2015 had the potential to make an impression on the tennis world, but once again failed to do so, and as such we learned little from this tournament that we didn't already know.  Will the US Open do the same?

I have a feeling that just like the last 5 years of that tournament, the last major of the year will turn out the last surprise of the year as well - because this one sure didn't.