HEY JO: WHERE YOU GONNA RUN TO NOW?

Wasn't there a time when Jo-Wilfried Tsonga had Novak Djokovic's number?  Does anybody remember that?  I sure as hell do.  In fact, because he appeared to freeze in the headlights in Australia in 2008, the subsequent ease with which he dispensed with his two years' junior rival in 5 of the next 6 encounters over the next two years, left me with the sneaking suspicion that the result in Melbourne had in fact been a fluke.  That may sound absurd given the extent of Djokovic's lead in development, performance, fitness and results since 2011, and particularly during his ascent to the pinnacle of the game in 2015, but not so between 2008 and 2010.  Brad Gilbert proclaimed, prior to their encounter at the Australian Open in 2010, that Tsonga had Djokovic's number - and Djokovic did little to dispel that.

Most assumed that his victory in Bangkok was a form of muted revenge:  that Djokovic capitulated in straight sets, suggested that neither his heart nor the rest of his body were really committed to a victory that by all rights should have been his.  His victory in Paris could be set aside because of the overwhelming support from the audience that surely propelled the prodigal son's return to sit upon his throne at Bercy.  But it was the feckless capitulation of his Serbian rival in Shanghai that really brought to mind the possibility that Tsonga could be a player to challenge for major titles - at least if he had to play Djokovic for them.  Djokovic had already qualified for the semi-finals by virtue of his victories over del Potro and Davydenko, while Tsonga, having lost to those same two opponents, had no chance to progress.  Effectively this match was his final, his only chance to save face, in the very Chinese sense, and in Djokovic he faced his most daunting opponent.  

Yet, despite the cards he was dealt, Tsonga turned in a performance superior to those who sought the title that was lost to him.  Djokovic having started quickly, Tsonga dug deep and won 7-5 in the second, only to then obliterate his rival with the same score in the 3rd, that he had lost with in the first.  And it wasn't just the victory, but the beauty with which it was achieved - that languid gate, the deceptively easy racquet head acceleration, a glorious overhead that never seems to have to be hit twice, and a howitzer of a serve...man what a serve he has.  Up to then, Andy Roddick was the only man that didn't darken the room when he stood up from his chair, capable of producing that kind of accurate and consistent power in the serve.

To this day, there aren't too many players on tour who can produce 135 motherf---ers more than once a game, so you kind of wonder how he hasn't done more with it when it counts.  But as the great Pancho Gonzales always said, "You're only as good as your second serve," and therein lies the rub.  Tsonga doesn't so much hit the second serve with his racquet as he does with his ass...if you'll indulge me.  

Because his toss on the second serve is frequently too far to the left and behind his head, he lands heavily on his left leg and as a result, to maintain his balance and keep his momentum going forward, he adjusts by shifting his body weight (and by body weight, I mean his butt) so far to his right, that when serving to the ad court he often finishes the stroke landing both feet, in recovery in the deuce court.  It's ungainly, hit with excessive spin, and frequently lands short, in the net, or so softly, I could come over it with my backhand.

So, despite having a much better all around game than most of the players with comparable serves, like his similarly second serve challenged Spanish rival, Nico Almagro, Tsonga doesn't so much rely on his first serve, as abuse it.  Hit with the kind of ferocity that would make a novice flinch, there's little left in the tank when he has to go to the second serve...psychologically that is.  Yes, yes, I know...I don't believe in belief in tennis...but this is different.  When you miss your first serve too often, you can't afford to miss your second at all, and when you can't miss your second at all, like the smart kids on prom night, you tend to pull out a little early.  In fact, the two of them, with their suffering second serves together, is quite a sight...you'll never see two players with bigger deltas in quality between the first and second serves than these two, and the results are as exhilarating as they are unpredictable.

And something else happened to Tsonga over the next 13 matches with the Djoker - aside from losing 12 of them.  Like Andy Roddick famously panned in 2005, he seemed to lose that "je ne sais quoi" from his game, his allure...his twinkle, if you will...

Tsonga lost his mojo.

He's gotten some good results here and there, but only ever made it as far as the semi-finals 5 times in the last 32 majors since his maiden final.  He's won 2 masters shields in his career:  the aforementioned emotional victory in Paris in 2008 and a curiously gritty victory over Federer in Toronto two years ago (one of five over the Swiss GOAT).  Now all of this would be considered a good career for a slightly above average player, but Tsonga...Tsonga deigned to be so much more.  With a personality as big as his serve, he had all the tools for not just super stardom in the tennis, but probably the world of sports in general.  And being the doppelganger of a young Cassius Clay wouldn't have hurt at all, would it?

Well, it didn't help him.  His career bobbed and weaved, but never really landed a good punch.  Yes, he's one of only 3 players to have beaten all of the so-called "big 4" at least once at a major (Murray & Nadal AO2008, Djokovic AO2010, Federer Wimby 2011), he's never beaten more than one of them at once (with the exception of his maiden final in 2008, long before there was a big four, where he beat Andy Murray in the first round, and famously obliterated Nadal in the semi-final, and lost to the Djoker in the final).  And in this era of this rather tight-fisted quartet, if you want to win a major, chances are you're going to have to go through at least two, maybe three of them...unless of course, you're one of them!

Meanwhile the armies of his supporters around the world, who don't seem to mind the profligacy of this enormously talented and enormously popular player, persists.  This includes the famously fickle French who have forgiven him his Parisian trespasses (at Roland Garros, anyway), unlike his equally talented, and higher highest ranked compatriot Henri Leconte.  Him, the french mercilessly derided "a genius from the elbow down", according the late Great Bud Collins, and they never seemed to forgive him for simply losing at Roland Garros to the "wrong" guy.

My view on Jo-Wilfried Tsonga is that he is the biggest disappointment of my adult tennis watching life.  I love his game, I love his athleticism (he's one of the few players in tennis I'm quite certain would be world class in at least one other sport), and I really wish he had won a major at some point in his career.  Everything in his game is well above average, but everything seems to be missing just that little something.  The forehand, powerful as it can be, is produced rather convolutedly, and in my opinion breaks down when it absolutely can't.  His first serve, flamethrower that it is, usually only leaves enough left in the tank for the second serve to light a cigarette...or a joint.  And his backhand, varied and beautiful as it can be, has to be hit so far behind the baseline, because of his forehand, it is too easily isolated and picked on, like the one kid on the sandlot baseball team that you just know has to play right field.  Why?  Because.

And ultimately, Tsonga's biggest problem is that he's just too damn...well, how can I say this...French!  Not that there's anything inherently wrong with being French - my new favorite player is french, my old favorite player (the aforementioned Henri Leconte) is French, my favorite female player was French Belgian, my favorite backhand in tennis is Swiss French and my inspiration in tennis is French.

Hell, I even speak French.

But there's something our Gallic cousins across the pond have that produces as many good players as it destroys:

A love of beauty.

Take the Australians - please! ; they love sports, and as such they love Australians who are good at sports.  I mean these guys are going to run out of stadiums to name after their great tennis players if the real Bernard Tomic, or Nick "the Prick" ever get their collective heads out of their collective arses.  But I guarantee nobody on the other side of the planet will give a rat's if the next best's game is only as aesthetically appealing as an anus protruding from a forehead.  That's because all is forgiven...and I mean all is forgiven...in Australia, when you win, including very, very poor taste.

But above all, the French love beauty, and it is because they love beauty that they love tennis.  They don't like players who take themselves too seriously, but despite this they absolutely loved watching John McEnroe precisely because his game was so beautiful to behold.  I mean who else would make or watch a documentary about his most beautiful loss to Ivan "the Terrible" Lendl, in the 4th round in 1988 at Roland Garros?  They don't want to see some lumbering behemoth bludgeon his way from one indistinct victory after another (or 63 of them, for that matter).

They want to see something so beautiful that they're inspired.  They want the jeu de paumes to be a game of hands again.  They love Roger Federer because he's not Nadal - he is, in fact, the antithesis of Nadal.  His game isn't beautifully effective: it's effective because it's beautiful.  And isn't that, after all, the point?  Nobody goes to a bullfight to see who will win - they go to see the bloody, gory spectacle of courage and skill.  In this way, the French too, want to be entertained, and exhilarated, and the truth is that they don't care who does it, as long as they do it beautifully...preferably with a beautiful smile along the way.  But to the french, the words of Keats' "Ode On a Grecian Urn" are as true in tennis, as they are in life:

'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.'

Well, I have the feeling that Tsonga's concept of the game is just a little too beautiful.  He floats and stings, but neither can overwhelm the more pedantic, and imminently more effective games of his contemporaries, or the Swiss Mister to whom he would be supplicant.  In one point, his backhand volley drops lovingly 24 inches into his opponent's court, and in the next, it lands 24 inches short of his own net.  The exuberance with which we celebrate the former is followed by the exasperation with which we decry the latter: such is the metaphor of his game.  How else can you explain the inexplicable experiment with the occasional one-handed backhand, other than the undeniable aesthetic appeal of that particular shot?  And I've always been left with the impression that Tsonga hasn't honed in on one or two ways to reliably slog through all of the matches he should win.  Not because he cannot learn or acquire the skills to do so, but because he doesn't have the sensibility for it.

There is something impressive about someone who won't sacrifice the beauty in their chosen field of endeavor at the altar of efficacy, but there is also something tragic.  A little bit like a Hollywood starlet, well past her due date, that won't go out of the house without her make-up.  Admirable...but also a little pathetic.  I have to admit that I have a lot of sympathy for Tsonga, and a lot of patience for all the little things he does to entertain, but no more time for the all the more things he doesn't do to fulfill his capacity.

He should have been a contender, he should have been the next savior of French tennis.  Maybe he'll make the French fall in love with him all over again by winning the Davis Cup this year, with that other French hero as captain.  But I don't think Jo-Wilfried Tsonga will ever win a major.  No matter how beautiful his game or his smile, it just isn't good enough.  That may indeed say more about the game than his, but it is often the most beautifully sad paintings that truly speak to us.

The truth, when unsheathed like a bare bodkin, cuts like one too.

Tsonga and his little doppelganger...MMT Jr.

ADDENDUM: The following is a clip from Tsonga's match with Nishikori at the Australian Open this week - I swear I didn't watch this before writing this post, but much of what I discuss in this blog can be seen in this court level view.

Nishikori vs Tsonga Oz Open 2016 

A LITTLE PERSPECTIVE ON NICK KYRGIOS...PLEASE

Okay, I'll take the bait - I am a tennis fan after all, and even the silly stuff gets my ears perked up like a German Shepherd.  And if you're reading this, you've heard of the comment Kyrgios made on court last night during his injury driven victory over Stan Wawrinka.  If you missed it, here's a link to as much of the story as you can handle - believe me.  It's not the worst thing I've ever heard in the heat of a sporting battle, but as far as tennis goes, he may as well have hurled the n-word.

Don't get me wrong - he's been a right pain in the arse for a while now, and deserves the derision he's on the wrong end of, but this idea that he should be punished for a stupid locker room dig at Wawrkina (and Vekic, for that matter) strikes me as being more than a bit over the top.  And this got me thinking:  what is the worst thing I've ever heard on a tennis court?  Depends on your definition of "the worst", I suppose.  I've been watching tennis for 30+ years, and I've seen a lot - and that may be one of the cattiest things I've heard from player to player - but is it the worst?  I don't know.  

You be the judge...

Davis Cup 1987 - John McEnroe to a Linesman

This one may surprise you, because we've all heard the worst of the worst at Wimbledon and the US Open where McEnroe has told umpires and linesman everything from:

"You guys are the absolute pits of the world, you know that?" 

to

"...this guy's an incompetent fool..." 

to 

"What do you want, Mr....whatever your name is...Mr. Incompetent?"

to

"You're a disgrace, and everyone here is a disgrace..." 

to 

"You're pathetic, you know that?  You're the worst umpire I've ever seen in my life!  You're never going to work another match if I have anything to say about it!" 

to 

"Answer my question!  The question, jerk!"

...and that's just what I can post without deleting expletives(--rimshot--)!  

But honestly that was peanuts compared to what he said to a linesman in Davis Cup match with Boris Becker in Hartford, Connecticut in 1987.  

Earlier in Becker's career, in 1985, McEnroe had ironically been in the position of chastising a young player who had the temerity to argue line calls - just let that sink in for a second - McEnroe giving it to Becker for arguing with the officials.  That day, he told Becker to "...try winning something before you start complaining."  Three months later Becker won Wimbledon - McEnroe's Wimbledon to be specific, as he was at that time the two-time defending champion - so the relationship had a rough start to begin with.

On a side-bar, that probably wasn't the worst thing Becker would hear in his career - that could go to what Pat Cash said to him during their 1988 Wimbledon quarterfinal.  As the two last winners of Wimbledon (Becker in 1985/1986, Cash in 1987) the match was tense from start to finish - except for one moment of levity where Cash, chasing down a drop shot, fell face forward over the net, and Becker - in jest - did the same a second later.  Cash was having none of it, and as they each returned to their respective sides of the net, he muttered, loud enough for Becker to hear, "You're a fucking smart-arse Kraut."  Becker paused, momentarily as if he contemplated physically assaulting him, but settled for blowing him off the court in straight sets instead.

But what McEnroe said, not to Becker, but to a linesman, that day in Hartford, during his first match against Becker, a 5 hour 22 minute back breaker for players and spectators alike, was far worse.  He had already said to Germany's captain, Niki Pilic, "You shut up, Niki!  God damn it!  Shut up!", when the tension of the match really got the better of him...yet again.  Feeling that the (largely American) line judges had been unacceptably objective in their calls, McEnroe told a black linesman who'd called a Becker ball good, "I didn't know they had black germans."  The linesman had at once been insulted for his race, and had his patriotism questioned - all for doing what we Americans would say was his job that day - to dispassionately call the lines.  He responded by lowering his head in anger and admirably finishing his shift.

McEnroe's said some pretty mean spirited things on a tennis court, most of which, if you asked him about it now, I'm sure he'd double down on it...assuming he remembers saying it.  Bill Scanlon (who had for years been a thorn in McEnroe's side - his own personal Brad Gilbert, so to speak) claims that McEnroe, in the middle of a match in 1981 in San Francisco attempted, in a perfectly calm and rational way, to explain to Scanlon that not only did he not deserve to be on the same court as him, but that he should do everyone there a favor and lose the match because nobody wanted him to win.  If it weren't so crazy, I wouldn't believe it, but believe it I do.  And I'm sure that, to this day, McEnroe would double down on the sentiment.  After all, who the hell was Bill Scanlon (but an NCAA champion who won six career titles and beat McEnroe at the 1983 US Open when he was the #1 player in the world, Wimbledon champion and had won the title for the third year on the trot two years two year earlier...but I digress)

But this comment to an American, I'm certain he would recant...well, maybe he would, maybe he wouldn't...but it was pretty bad.

2001 US Open, Lleyton Hewitt

For me, the greatest irony of the whole hullabaloo about this Kyrgios kid is that, of all people on the planet, the one he's turned to for guidance and mentoring is Lleyton Hewitt.  

Huh?

I know it's 2015 and he's retiring this year, but has it really been that long since Hewitt was cited for doing almost exactly the same things as has drawn so much derision for his young compatriot?  The list of transgressions is too long to cite every incident, so there is certainly enough fill this column with plenty to refer to "His Irascibleness".  How did Hewitt irritate the tennis world? 

Oh, let me count the ways:

There was his favorite expression to abuse linesman, whom he felt were, "...weak as piss..", his defamation suit against the ATP in 2003, in which he sought $1.5M in damages for being accused of (and fined for) skipping an interview.  In 2005 he once drew the ire of tennis' significant gay community by calling an umpire he disagreed with, "...a poof."  That was in addition to the myriad of his opponents whom he referred to as, "...arseholes...", or specifically the two Argentines whom he 1) shoulder bumped on a changeover (David Nalbandian 2005 Australian Open) and 2) whom he told to "fuck off" (Guillermo Coria) after he directed an overhead smash at Hewitt in a Davis Cup match in 2005.  The Argentine Davis Cup supporters, known for their contextual xenophobia, then coined (and joyfully chanted) this cute little soccer stadium style song:

"Y que paso, 
Y que paso, 
Que Lleyton Hewitt se cagoooo!" 

(translation: "And what happened?  And what happened?  Llyeton Hewitt shit himself!"

But, I would say the worst thing Hewitt ever said on a tennis court was this little delight in the second round of the US Open in 2001, where in a match against James Blake, he demanded the removal of a black linesman whom he insisted was making calls against him, and in favor of his black opponent, out of racial bias:

"Change him, change him immediately!  I've only been foot faulted at one end!  Look at 'im, look at 'I'm mate, and you tell me what the similarity is?"

Let's set aside the idiocy of Hewitt removing a black linesman because he was playing a black player.  I mean, how would it work out if every black player wanted every white linesman removed every time he felt he was getting rooked?  Let's also set aside the stupidity of actually vocalizing terrible thoughts that, if we're honest, go through everyone's head at the worst of times.  You can't help what you think, but you can certainly think twice before expressing the worst of your thoughts.  Is this what he'll be mentoring Kyrgios about?

I would say that the best thing that Hewitt could mentor Kyrgios about is how to apologize for one incident after another...that is, if Hewitt had ever apologized for anything...except to actual spastics after he called an umpire one in 2006.  In fact, in that incident with Blake he simply feigned ignorance, and flatly denied having said anything racial - after trying to sell that mess to the press, he may as well have tried to sell them some oceanfront property in Nebraska.  Maybe he sold it to Kyrgios, because for the life of me, I can't understand the logic behind being mentored by someone who was hated more than you.

Maybe Hopefully the mentoring is entirely technical, in which case I say, "Good on ye' mate!"  Nobody squeezed better results out of their natural-born abilities than ol' Rusty.

Serena Williams, US Open 2009

I'm not going to lie - I wanted to love Serena Williams, I really did...honest.  And if I had a shorter memory, I might have been able to get past the litany of things she's done and said that has placed her right at the top (or bottom, depending on your perspective) of my list of least favorite players on the WTA.  

When she insulted Martina Hingis for a lack of formal education, I found it more than mildly ironic for someone who has a degree in nothing. When she made that hullabaloo over "The Hand", I sided with Henin, because I thought if Serena saw the hand up, she shouldn't have served, and therefore she got what she deserved:  a second serve.  When, after having an overhead smash rightfully directed at her feet, she glared at Maria Sharapova in their Australian Open final of 2007 and muttered "bitch", unlike the Rod Laver Arena audience, I didn't think it was funny. 

But when she threatened to shove a ball down a lineswoman's throat at the 2009 US Open semi-final with Kim Clijsters and was defaulted only for a third code of conduct violation, that really took the cake.  Actually I thought she got off easy, because she should have been immediately defaulted from the entire tournament, including the doubles final, which she played and won with Venus.  But to me, almost as infuriating as the arrogance of her comment to the lineswoman, was the shameless attempt by her supporters to couch her outburst as simply swearing, then call the media and the USTA to task for having a double standard when men do the same - as if the issue was swearing.  There's nothing I hate more than comparing two unlike things, bemoaning the unlike reactions to them, and then claiming some "ism" as a result - mostly because it distracts from actual "isms"...but I digress.

I also thought it was an act of pandering when the USTA chose to give her only a suspended fine and suspension, which actually didn't expire until the week after her 2011 US Open final, where she was again cited for code of conduct violations.  The "sentence" still wasn't enforced, and I wasn't surprised that she didn't cite being black, or a woman, or the player to beat, for that bit of leniency, even though I suspect all of those contributed to it.  I thought it was absurd that she had the audacity to do to Jelena Jankovic the exact same thing Justine did to her, both at the Family Circle Cup in 2013, and again in Dubai last year.  It was just another in a long list of examples of entitlement that she has, in her view, "earned".

Oh well, nobody's perfect, but I've not heard anything worse on the women's side in a long time...6 years, to be exact.

Jimmy Connors, 1991 US Open

For some people, it was the greatest thing that happened to the US Open - in fact to a lot of people it still is.  Just ask anyone who's made it through an interminable rain delay in Flushing Meadows, watching that match again and again, until the image of Connors hilariously neon yellow racquet is burned into your retina.  This despite the likelihood that the most impressive performance was his encounter with Patrick McEnroe, who will unfortunately be remembered best (as a player, that is) for that memorable collapse, and his ATP final against older brother John in Chicago, that same year.  At this time I could point out that Patrick McEnroe should be remembered for winning French Open doubles in 1989, and making the semi-final of the Australian Open in singles in 1991...but I'd digress.

Connors had been away from the game for almost the entirety of 1990, due to a wrist injury that just wouldn't go away.  There were many who were prepared to write his professional obituary, and despite the fact that Connors had developed a certain cult following (with a certain late night crowd at the US Open) generally he had never really been fully appreciated in the tennis world as he is almost universally now.  In the beginning of his career, Connors irritated a lot of people simply by virtue of who he was beating so mercilessly on his way to winning 3 of 4 majors in 1974.  The beloved Ken Rosewall, at age 39, had never won Wimbledon, and Connors did more to cement his reputation as a ruthless competitor, by obliterating the sentimental favorite in the last throes of his career.  Rosewall, for his part, was emotionally trying to etch his name on the wall, 21 years after he lost his first final there to none other than Lew Hoad.  

When he did it again to Rosewall at Forest Hills, what few fans he had at the time, Connors squandered by deigning to do what anyone in his position would have - win big.  The manner of the defeat was the coup de grace from which his popularity wouldn't fully recover until that fateful fortnight in 1991.  It didn't help that, having been raised by women to compete with men, he had something of a chip on his shoulder, which also had him grabbing his crotch, and telling himself to take his skirt off when he felt he wasn't hitting the ball well.

Connors had made no friends by saying about those contemporaries that were less than enamored with him, "Most of these guys are windbags; if any of them wants to start some shit, I'll be ready..." back in his heyday.  He once sued the fledgling ATP (having refused to join it or its boycott of Wimbledon in 1973), and its president Arthur Ashe in 1975, for the part they played in him getting banned from the 1974 French Open, which most assumed he would have won along with the calendar slam that year, had he not insisted on playing World Team Tennis.  Curiously, the same fate had befallen Bjorn Borg in 1977, but somehow the derision readily directed towards Connors, was restrained when it came to his fair haired nemesis.  Speaking of Borg, Connors once told an interviewer, whilst in the midst of a desperate 10 match losing streak to Borg, "I'll follow that son a bitch to the ends of the earth until I beat him again."

In 1984, while getting his ass handed to him by John McEnroe at the semi-finals at Roland Garros, Connors famously wagged his finger in McEnroe's face and told him his 8-year old son behaved better than he did, and that he should grow up and shut up.  Mildly ironic to those who remembered him telling McEnroe to, "...keep your mouth shut when you're out here," in their 1980 Wimbledon semi-final.  Furthermore, he endeared himself to nobody at the US Open in 1977, when he ran over to the other side of the clay court in his 4th round encounter with Corrado Berazzuti to wipe out a mark the Italian was in the process of questioning. He would go on to lose that final to Guillermo Vilas, poetically on an equally dubious call which was overturned based on a mark in the clay.  Vilas is still waiting for his handshake from that match.

But 1991 was his moment, and while the world were enamored of his memorable run to the semi-final of the US Open, losing to Jim Courier, the tournament reached a kind of anti-climax when the heir apparent to his competitiveness (if not his behavior) put him out of his sweet misery before losing to Edberg in the final.  Connors had played Aaron Krickstein in 4th round in Louis Armstrong stadium, where his young "friend" suffered the ignominy of being the most memorable of 5 losers to Connors that year in his run.  And it was during that match, Connors uttered one of the more memorably disgraceful things ever said on a tennis court to umpire David Littlefield.  To start, he took issue with an overrule that Krickstein had suborned, saying:

"Get your ass out of the chair, you're a bum - you're a bum!  I'm out here playing my ass off, 39 years old, and you're doing that?  Very clear, my butt, my butt, very clear!  You wouldn't 'a said anything if Krickstein had gone over!"

Later, after another ball had been called long, which he didn't overrule, perhaps out of fear of getting involved unecessarily, Connors had this to say:

"Get the fuck out of here, god-damn it - you are abortion...you are an abortion!  Do you know that?"

To me, that takes the cake - the worst thing a good catholic kid from St. Louis could say to an umpire, and he said it twice.  Littlefield, to his credit, behaved entirely professionally, and didn't respond in kind, although it was his right to do so.  He didn't even cite him for a code violation, which in my opinion was a mistake, but who would have had the courage to do so under the circumstances?

For my money, I've never heard anything worse on a tennis court.

AT THE END OF THE DAY

I think a lot worse things have been said on a tennis court than somebody slept with your girlfriend a year ago, who may or may not have been your girlfriend at the time.  It's a daggy thing to say at any time...but under your breath, facing the other way, 90 feet away, I hardly think Kyrgios was saying it for Wawrinka to hear.  In the worst case scenario, it was a stupid thing to say, and may get him "Penn 1" tattooed on his chest the next time he faces Wawrinka, but hardly the equal of some of the more unsavory things cited above.

A little perspective never hurts...

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.

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.