CAN THE DJOKER CARRY TENNIS?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mark this space...

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

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

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

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

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

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

So why can't he carry tennis?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

MARIA SHARAPOVA'S DOPING GAFFE: THE LOW HANGING FRUIT?

The timing of Maria Sharapova's positive drug test couldn't be worse.  In the midst of a maelstorm concerning match fixing allegations (which as yet have not been bolstered by any evidence) the authorities in the game are now faced with another challenge not only to the integrity of the sport, but more specifically their commitment to administer it in the best sporting interests.  I don't envy their predicament:  on the one hand, a decision to ban Maria Sharapova for breaking the rules for 25 days would send a message to the sponsors that have become predominant in the game, that the sporting integrity is in tact, and tennis has a zero tolerance policy on anything that calls into question the authenticity of its results.  On the other hand, the absence of one of the biggest stars of the game, who has been a boon to the financial participation of sponsors in the game, would be of benefit to almost nobody involved.

I think it's important to start with the purpose of anti-doping controls:  is it to catch people who don’t follow the rules, or people who are trying to cheat? I think it’s obviously the latter, and I think it’s just as obvious that Sharapova does not fall in that category.  After all, if she knew it was banned and was trying to cheat, would she admit to taking it for 10 years?  That's hardly a defense for someone who’s implied that she wasn’t cheating.

But there is a brewing temptation in the blogosphere, and I suspect/fear in the the halls of tennis authority, to ignore rational analysis and jump on this as an opportunity to insist that anti-doping in tennis is “working”. In fact, this proves the exact opposite: far from catching cheaters who are intentionally taking substances they know are illegal to gain a competitive advantage, this is at its core a technicality.  That’s not an excuse to escape a sanction or citation, but to me anyone insisting that she should be banned for a lengthy period is falling for an illusion about anti-doping in tennis hook, line and sinker.

I've never been convinced that tennis is serious about anti-doping, and based on this case, I think it should continue to be maligned.  It is extraordinarily inefficient at catching cheaters, but fantastically adept at catching people who simply fall-foul of the regulations.   Unfortunately for anyone who appreciates the difference between the letter of the law and the intent, those two are not mutually inclusive.  And this Sharapova farce, and others like it, are a perfect opportunity for tennis authorities to give the false impression that tennis is tough on doping and there is no actual doping going on in tennis. 

Baying for their pound of flesh, there are some who have deluded themselves into believing that they are taking the principled view:  but only if the principle is that the letter of the rules are more important than the intent. That’s a principle, but not one that makes the sport cleaner or makes a lot of sense.  The doping controls are not in place to catch people failing to comply with the controls, they are in place to catch cheaters. 

If Sharapova is not a cheat in the same sense that Lance Armstrong, Ben Johnson, or Marion Jones were, then her punishment should reflect that.  This would be the case even if Sharapova were taking this substance for a performance enhancement prior to January 1st of this year.  After all, prior to this year, she was within her rights to do so, and was breaking no rules, so again, whether she sought a performance enhancement during that period is irrelevant to the question of whether she was cheating in January.

The thing that concerns me about this is the speed with which her sponsors have abandoned her.  Nike is clearly hoping that the whole thing will be forgotten soon enough for her brand to continue to be a cash machine for them by only suspending their sponsorship, which could be said of Porsche's position on the matter.  Only TAG Heuer have taken the, in my opinion, rash decision to cut ties with her altogether.  But the way they're hurriedly backing away from the table, leads one to believe that tennis authorities, the IOC (who have bent over backwards in the past to get her into the Olympics), may have to calculate the cost of their retreat as the nascent rumblings of a stampede of money away from the game.  

I hope tennis bites the bullet, makes the right decision here and suspends Sharapova for 6 months.  There will be the Jennifer Capriati's of the world who will come up with some easy and equally illogical reason why an unfair exception has been made, but that would have no bearing on the facts of the case, which call for a reduced penalty.  But the tea leaves of tennis are shaped like dollar bills, and I fear that if you follow the money away from tennis, Sharapova could wind up with her hands and feet nailed to a racquet shaped cross.

ROTHENBERG'S GIFT TO SERENA (ET AL)

Recently, a New York Times article made a lot of people very upset for asking a very simple question - if Serena Williams' physique is key to her success, why don't others emulate her?  If one can ignore the chorus of the lunatic fringe, who censure the obvious (and coincidentally irrelevant) "-isms" of every comment about her that is anything less than superlative, you might notice that the question is actually a fair one - check that - it's a good question.

But just asking it has landed Ben Rothenberg in hot water with a striation of the blogosphere who conflate any perceived denigration of any individually great woman, with the denigration of all women.  As such, this reasonable question, asked with what I assume are good intentions (also coincidentally irrelevant) becomes a sideshow to the deluge of righteous indignation and dubious offense taken by many who wouldn't know an '-ism' if it slapped them in the face.  But this "-ism", the "-ism" of low expectations, where the pursuit of knowledge beyond the perfunctory is prohibited by a self-appointed moral police, is  counterproductive.  They are so obsessed with coming to the defense of those suffering from any "-ism", they won't even allow the pursuit of understanding to exit the womb.  This is the worst kind of "-ism" because it robs us of even the opportunity for analysis that might actually lead to eliminating the source of the offense it seeks to kill in the crib.

Take, for example, this parody of the above article, which replaces the female tennis players in the original, with American footballers, ostensibly to elucidate the absurdity of Rothenberg's piece, and the quotes therein.  Unfortunately, lost in translation is the irony of all ironies - the most absurd comments in the original article come, not from men, but from other women.  The culprit in the presumed disrespect the piece supposedly visits on Serena, comes not from the author, or some sniveling dark hand behind it all, but her fellow professionals.  Which begs the question - by eschewing a rational competition with her athletic prowess, for an irrational competition for aesthetic appeal, who really loses out on the former, and who is responsible for the subjugation resulting from the latter?  In my view, Serena is laughing all the way to the bank, and her contemporaries, if they are to be believed, have only themselves to blame.

Speaking of which, that is actually one contention in the piece with which I would take issue, not because it is offensive, but because I believe it to be the following false premise:  if other women in the game wanted to achieve a clearly advantageous (from a sporting perspective) physique, they could.  But the paucity of like-minded and like-bodied contemporaries is merely a matter of choice, rather than a limitation of their genetics. Now, discussing genetics runs the risk of bleeding into questions of race.  This has been the case ever since Jimmy "the Greek" Snyder contended back in 1988 that black Americans were "bred" by slave owners to have superior innate physical abilities.  In this context, black athletes (and their unsolicited defenders) are particularly sensitive about the discussion of genetics factoring into the prevailing success of black athletes as a group.

Despite the fact that many blacks make the same assumptions about their athletic prowess that others do, the offense comes from the presumption that, given their genetic head start, a black athlete who achieves athletic success is simply doing what they're supposed to do, and thus less deserving of praise.  After all, would you congratulate a male sprinter for defeating a female sprinter, given his predisposed advantage?  Conversely, any white athlete who is even remotely competitive, is lauded as a modern-day David holding at bay the innate advantages of an army of black Goliaths.

While these assumptions are offensive to many, resisting them of the sake of black athletes as a group, does not exclude recognizing individual black athletes whose athletic abilities are well beyond the sixth sigma.  Not all blacks are athletically gifted, nor are all black athletes relatively gifted to athletes of other races - and those that happen to be don't succeed exclusively due to their individually innate capacity with which they were born - it could just as easily result from hard work and training - which happens to be the case with Serena (and Venus for that matter) whose father compelled them to do push ups and sit ups nightly from a very young age, learn to throw a football, and other unique muscle building exercises...for women, anyway.

Therefore, citing Serena's physique as a factor in her success does not necessarily negate the other qualities that make her the champion that she is.  Conversely, try as we may, (with the best of intentions) we can bury our heads in the sand and refuse to acknowledge those gifts.  But this omission will not necessarily elevate her other qualities, as the key to her individual success.  The answer is clearly somewhere in the combination of the two, but when we approach a great athlete from the perspective that there are only certain qualities we are allowed to discuss, we do ourselves the disservice of not fully analyzing all factors that contribute to success.  As such, we diminish our capacity to identify and nurture the same in others, whom we would seek to help achieve their maximum results.  That proverbial head we bury in the sand is metaphorically cut off.

I should also point out that Serena Williams is not the only black tennis player on the WTA tour.  Therefore, discussing Serena's achievements is an individual assessment, and the true racism lies not in honestly analyzing all the factors in her success, but in the assumption that any of those qualities are due to her race.  The failure of other black tennis players to achieve any success on par with hers (including her sister who shares a gene pool) plainly dispels that uncomfortable myth.  So whether one comes to her defense as a black woman playing tennis, or one launches an attack on her that is actually or just perceived to be, racially based, the results are equally pernicious, because both ascribe too much significance to her race.

Serena is a great tennis player, with an extraordinary physique, deep skills in her tool kit, and a competitiveness that has brought her to the pantheon of great players in the history of the game.  These are facts that are undeniable, and that she happens to be black is entirely irrelevant to that.  This is one of the most important things to take away, not only from Rothenberg's piece, but from her career on the whole.  Rothenberg does not ascribe her success to her race, but to her individual physical qualities - and of that ascription, would it were any other player of any other race, in all likelihood it would not be met with such vehement resentment.  It is only in the context of racial bias, or a desire to mitigate racial bias, that it does.  By this measure, the article and the question posed by it, can lead to the mitigation of racial bias, but only if it is allowed to be asked, which the lunatic fringe of Serena's supporters, by the fervency with which they attack the piece, ironically wind up preventing.  And the one who suffers that unintended consequence is...Serena.

The question of her femininity is almost entirely irrelevant to her record as a champion.  The author didn't even call that into question, either in intent or practice.  That can be blamed entirely on the answers of her contemporaries to the question of why others don't emulate her physicality - as if to be, or not to be, as strong, fast, flexible and resilient as she is is a boolean choice available to all her contemporaries.  But I would beg to differ.  There are certainly players on tour who might have the natural genetic template to build a similar physique if they chose to pursue it.  But I would argue that such a choice is not available to most players, and to assume that it is eschewed by competitors simply as a matter of aesthetics, even if players insist that is the case, constitutes a false premise that is neither probative nor informative.  The real question is why they don't bother to try?  Isn't it some failing of their commitment to compete?

In fact, the responses of her contemporaries bear some analysis of the irrational competitiveness of women on the WTA tour:  is their objective to succeed on the tennis court or in some ethereal realm of aesthetic appreciation - either within the game or in their personal lives?  One could argue that it is doubly irrational to be concerned with the latter, because it would translate into financial benefits, if (and only if) there is commensurate success on the field of play.  There are a lot of beautiful tennis players ranked 100 to 1,000 that most have never heard of - this is as it should be.  One can argue further, (and pointlessly, in my opinion) that Maria Sharapova is more beautiful than Serena because hers is a physique that is more in line with tennis fans, and not that of an elite athlete.  But this too is largely a matter of taste and largely irrelevant to their place in the competitive record of the sport.  Isn't this all that truly should matter?  So while the road is paved with good intentions, insisting that Serena be appreciated for her aesthetic appeal, as well as the functional qualities of her physique, leads, in fact, to a continuation of the problem of an irrational competition.

Furthermore, eschewing a competitive advantage that might result from a less aesthetic, but more effective physique, entails a misplaced priority on something that the tennis world ought to be the last place one might find it.  That speaks to the irrational competitiveness of the women on the WTA tour, and not viewers that may or may not find personally attractive, a certain body type.  Does anyone care if any women find the physique of JJ Watts aesthetically appealing?  Of course not, precisely because his physique is functional, and it is the function for which he is lauded.  The paucity of similarly superficial emphases on aesthetic appeal on the ATP tour is not the result of some insidious conspiracy to subjugate women to the demands of male-driven interest.

It is the result of a proper priority placed on functional qualities by the players themselves, who would grow an elbow straight out of their forehead, if they thought it would give them a competitive edge.  Collectively or individually, they would never in a million years indicate a preference to remain less muscular or less fit because it is more appealing in the abstraction of their chosen field of endeavor.  The men are almost monolithically committed to success on the court, and many would take any opportunity to achieve that success (up to and including illicit means - a subject for another post) regardless of the consequences, because the priority is on success, and not appeal.

I mean, can you imagine if Rafael Nadal's ATP profile photo looked like this:

Instead of like this:

He would be laughed right out of the locker room, not because the first photo lacks aesthetic appeal - to the contrary one could argue its only appeal is aesthetic - but that would be precisely the problem.  So what of the collective self-perception of his female colleagues? 
The website wtatennis.com has rightfully moved away from profile photos that look more like this:

...which I applaud, not because they are not beautiful, but because they have nothing to do with why we even know who they are.  As such, does it make sense to point the finger at Rothenberg for asking a question about athletic qualities, and getting answers that are right in line with the absurdity of photos like these?  I believe the WTA is coming to their senses and realize that because they are responsible for the impression the world has of women's tennis, they must lead from the front, and avoid the celebration of an entirely irrelevant point of judgement.

Count me among the supporters of the game who is hoping that the players will follow the WTA's lead.  Women who view the world of professional sports as unduly focused on the pulchritude of its female participants, at the expense of an appreciation of their athleticism, do themselves no favors by castigating articles like Rothenberg's - after all, his only crime was posing a question about functional body sculpting.  That the answers he got back were dripping with commentary perceived to be sexist or racist (neither of which can be assumed unless one attaches Serena's the individual qualities to all women - an absurd proposition), is damning of her contemporaries, and not their messenger - but boy have some tried to kill the messenger on this one.  

The truth is, somewhere in this conversation, in deep dark places, where we only talk about things at parties, the irrational competitiveness of these women, aspiring to intangible and ethereal qualities at the expense of the rational competition of their sport, must surely constitute a more salient question than the author's motives.  We should all be asking why in the world would a professional athlete care whether she is perceived as beautiful to the extent that she limits her athletic potential?  Rather than insisting that Serena Williams be perceived as beautiful because she's a great athlete, and thus feeding into this misplaced priority, would it not make more sense to address the irrational desire to be beautiful in a completely inappropriate context?  Either her own desire (with which she has, according to the article, come to terms - and hence the article should be celebrated) or her millions of female supporters who tangentially, vicariously and desperately hang on her every success and/or perceived appreciation thereof?

It is no more progressive to insist that Serena be universally embraced on questions of aesthetic appeal, based on her unquestionable pedigree in an athletic assessment, than it is to insist that a female athlete should be as interested in being beautiful as they are interested in being successful in their chosen field of endeavor.  Both are absurd, and both feed the absurdity of her colleagues body image.  I contend that for some, Serena Williams is a beautiful woman who happens to play tennis magnificently.  I contend also that for others, Maria Sharapova is the beautiful woman who also happens to play tennis - not as well as Serena, but pretty well.  

But the former part of each of those contentions, is a matter of personal opinion which we can no more morally oblige anyone to hold, than we could deny the latter parts thereof.  Insisting on anything else would side-step a rather obvious conclusion, alluded to by Rothenberg and universally ignored by all those who would (with either the best or worst of intentions) step into the "sexier" but largely irrelevant debate, rather than the reason we actually bother with sports.  For this is Rothenberg's gift to Serena and anyone reading the piece, if they'd actually read it with genuine curiosity, rather than prejudiced derision:

The records have leave no room for personal opinion - you either did or you didn't.  And it is the very freedom afforded by this underlying principle of sports, that we are judged by what we do and not how we look doing it, that could actually liberate those of us under the real, or perceived, yolk of one "-ism" or another.

Would it were so in all of life.

YOU SHOULD KNOW BETTER, ANA

By all accounts, Ana Ivanovic is having something of a revival this year - she won Aukland, defeating Venus Williams (for just the second time in her career) in the final.  She made the quarterfinal in Melbourne, losing to Genie Bouchard in a tough 3-set match.  After some mixed results in the premier spring hard court events of Indian Wells and Miami, she won Monterrey with a semi-final victory over Caroline Wozniacki.  She followed this up with arguably her best performance of the year at Stuttgart, despite losing the final.

It was the first time in 5 years that she made consecutive finals - not too shabby.  Along the way, she defeated Julia Goerges (meh...) Svetlana Kuznetsova (2-time major winner and winner at the Citi Open last week) and her personal nemesis Jelena Jankovic, who always puts up a good fight - particularly against her.  In the end, she succumbed to the best clay-courter on the WTA tour, Maria Sharapova (7 of her last 8 titles have been on clay, BTW) in the final.  She capped off the highlights of this season so far with an impressive victory at the Aegon classic at Birmingham, where she never lost more than 5 games in a match and won the only grass court title of her career.

But a strange thing happened after that - she lost a match in the 3rd round at Wimbledon over Sabine Liscki after winning the first set on Saturday, and appearing to have the match in hand before the match was suspended due to poor light.  Because Wimbledon doesn't play the middle Sunday, the match didn't resume until Monday, but she was still up a break in the second at 5-2, when the match was suspended again due to rain. This proved to be a tipping point, because upon resumption she proceed to lose 7 of the next 9 games, and the match, showing once again that in tennis it is just as easy to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

Following that capitulation, in the context of the previous 7 months that saw her most successful season since 2008, she took the curious decision of splitting with the coach whose tenure coincided with those results, Serbian Nemanja Kontic.  In and of itself, that is not unusual - players split with coaches for a variety of reasons and often do it when they appear to be really well and/or making great progress. At the end of the day, the player is the employer and they have the prerogative to make changes whenever they like.

What's strange is the reasons she gave for the change:

"You want someone who's going to be there to support you no matter what...to make you motivated, to make you hungry for success.  I really wanted to get higher in the rankings...I definitely look for someone in that manner rather than someone who's going to be technical."

That's my emphasis precisely because I can't believe what I'm reading.

First, she emphasizes that she really wanted to move up in the rankings, and ironically, that is precisely what she did in 2014.  In fact, she not only moved into the top 10 for the first time since 2008, but she also won 3 titles (where she had no titles the previous two years).  You could hardly blame Kontic for scratching his head on this one, if winning titles and moving up in the rankings was truly the objective - in that case he did his job quite well.

She then goes out of her way to imply that Kontic wasn't giving her "unconditional love" so to speak, didn't motivate her, or keep her hungry for success.  Now this is pretty damning for any coach hoping to get a job with the multitude of female professionals who seek a coach that will provide these exact same things for them.  In that regard, Miss Ivanovic did him no favors here - in fact, if I didn't know any better, that really comes across as the last throes of a woman scorned.

But I digress.

The real question is, why in the world does she need someone else to motivate her?  Isn't that something that is really her responsibility to herself?  If she isn't self-motivated, isn't that problem hers and hers alone?  Maybe she should look at the reasons she isn't motivated - too much money, too many matches, too many people around her putting pressure on her to earn their living?  None of those have to do with the coach, because at the end of the day she is the final arbiter of her career decisions, including all of the above.

But the most incredible sentence is the last - that she's less interested in the technical than the motivational and psychological - I just can't believe or understand that.  I mean, after all, this is a sport - a physical activity.  Striking a tennis ball is not like moving pieces on a chess board - it does matter how you do what you do, so it behooves anyone who wants to do what they do better, to find someone who can help with that pesky "doing" bit..i.e. the technical.  Furthermore, even if you work off the assumption that the body follows the mind (despite ample evidence to the contrary) the body still has to follow - in other words, even a mental edge has to translate into a technical edge, so why not cut out the middle man and work on the technical?

The mental game is by far the most overrated aspect of tennis - for a variety of reasons people attribute way too much importance to it, and because this attribution is so pervasive, a lot of people who should know better lap it up like a stray cat over a saucer of milk.

But Ana Ivanovic, you really should know better.

PLEASE STEP ASIDE MISS SHARAPOVA

Since he won the reinvented ATP 500 event in Acapulco just a couple weeks ago, there's been a lot of talk about Grigor Dimitrov and whether he is in pole position to usurp the four horsemen of the tennis world.  And while there is a lot to like about this kid with seemingly unlimited potential, the next match of his beloved Maria Sharapova may elicit an altogether a more interesting question:  what does the future hold in the game on the other side of the gender gap?  The stark contrast between the stroke production of the ambassador of "Big Babe" tennis, and that of her precocious and spindly opponent in the third round of the BNP Parisbas at Indian Wells, brings that question into relief.

I first saw Camila Giorgi play two years ago at Wimbledon 2012, as she confronted another proponent of the ball bashing brigade, Nadia Petrova.  And while Petrova stood 2-4 inches taller than her (the gentleman in me will not reveal their weight difference), it was this sinewy little Argentine (moonlighting as an Italian) Giorgi who bludgeoned her way not only to victory, but to the beginning of a voyage that has brought her to the cusp of a regular seat at the table of the privileged.  She fell at the subsequent hurdle against the wily Aga Radwanska, on her way to the final, but for me it was Giorgi who really impressed.

And this has been the pattern in Giorgi's career since.  Later that summer, after justifying her wildcard into Cincinnati by defeating her aging compatriot, Francesca Schiavone in two blistering sets, she succumbed to Sloane Stephens in the next round.  The next year, after muscling her way through the qualifying draw at the Family Circle Cup in Charleston, South Carolina, and handling Luxembourg's Mandy Minella in straight sets, she lost tamely to Serena Williams. She then stunned the tennis world with a straight sets, first round victory over Marion Bartoli at Strasbourg, just two months before the French courtesan's victory at Wimbledon, before losing desperately in straight sets to Genie Bouchard.  And that loss included a bagel in the second set!  At Wimbledon, after blowing out the 22nd seeded Sorana Cirstea (another little babe with a big game, and inversely proportional tactics) she fell to Bartoli at Wimbledon in the 4th round.

But her career seemed to take a turn for the better at the US Open.  There she defeated Caroline Wozniacki in three brutal, bone-crushing sets under the lights in Arthur Ashe, endearing herself to the commentators and fans alike with the win.  In this match Wozniacki's exceptional defense allowed Giorgi to display the full force of her modern forehand, with technique which distinguishes her from the vast majority of women in the WTA.  She showed a compact and explosive forehand where you can always see her racquet head, a refusal to conceded the baseline, and the refreshing willingness to come forward, despite a shaky net game.  With footwork reminiscent of Steffi Graf, and a forehand punch more penetrating than Justine Henin v2.0, Giorgi appeared to have found her sweet spot technically and tactically at just the right time.

Then it all came apart at the first sign of "difficoltà".  

In the next round she faced another wily compatriot, Roberta Vinci, who exposed her limited tactical acumen by feeding her a steady diet of short slice backhands and deep topspin forehands pushing her forwards, backwards, left and right, and straight into a humiliating straight sets loss. The variation was enough to disrupt the momentum she had gained in the previous round.  Two steps forward, one step back, was the order for her still burgeoning career.  

But something happened in the Fed Cup this year.  Once again facing a clone from the big babe mold, Madison Keys, she befuddled her with a steady diet of flat power and wrong-footing, hitting aggressively to conservatives spots for one incredible hour.  The result:  she so comprehensively overwhelmed her more celebrated (for all the wrong reasons) adversary, that Captain Mary Jo Fernandez removed Keys from the line-up the next day, in a desperate attempt to salvage the tie.  In this match Giorgi demonstrated the same relentless first strike tennis that poses the biggest threat to the hegemony of the bodacious bruisers of women's tennis.  It's a style of play that has turned the women's game into an uninspiring monotony of essentially pared down versions of the Williams sisters...but Giorgi's style may just be the tonic.

In Dubai she dismantled Marta Domachowska (the not-so-curious recipient of a wild card) in the first round of qualifying, then demolished Andrea "Petkorazzi" Petkovic in the first of two victories this year over her popular German opponent.  The second came here at Indian Wells - this one a determined come back from a set down.  But the interesting thing about this match up is that it pits two players who've broken through the phalanx of brainless ball bashing, with modern technique and aggressive point control from the baseline.  That's a style more reminiscent of the men's game and diametrically opposed to the cast-iron replicas of...well, everyone else.  And as long as they're still around, nobody will never do that better than the Williams sisters.

Foremost of that mold is Maria Sharapova - a less mobile, less powerful, less resourceful version of the Queens of tennis.  And her steady diet of flat pace should be the perfect pilot light to ignite the full throttle, first strike repertoire that is the not so obvious answer to doldrums of the big game.  Sharapova's record against Serena Williams over the last 10 years, and the entirely invented rivalry the media have been begging for, demonstrates the fallacy of fighting fire with fire.

If ever there were a time for Camila Giorgi to make a move in her career and possibly shake up the women's game, it's today against Miss Sharapova.  If she does, she (and not one of these other big babe clones) may accidentally become the new "it" girl for which the WTA is always on the lookout.

PLEASE GO AWAY, MS. SHARAPOVA

First of all, don't call me a hater - not only do I hate being called a hater, but also I think it's the stupidest term on the planet. Some kind of rogue amalgamation of a verb and an adjective to describe someone consumed by the green-eyed monster of envy.

That Maria Sharapova is the most annoying person in tennis is debatable (Lleyton Hewitt is still playing - albeit less boisterously - and I believe Marcelo Rios still plays on the Champions tour), but I'm pretty sure if you took a poll at any tennis court in Moscow, you'd find her name at the top of the list. There are so many reasons to be fed up with this woman, it's hard to choose just one. But let's just delve into this Fed Cup debacle for a moment, and you'll see what I mean.

But first some background.

She may have a russian name, and she may have been born in Siberia, of all places, but she's about as Russian as she is a damn monkey. Her unbearable father, Yuri, is Belarussian, and moved from Homel to Siberia following the nearby Chernobyl nuclear accident. At age 7, her father moved her (without her mother) to train at the Bollettieri academy in Bradenton, Florida...big surprise there. For some reason, unbeknownst to me, she has retained her passport, but that, and some american accented Russian, is about the run of it.

So what about this Fed Cup business? Well she was scheduled to play against Spain in April, but had a shoulder injury. Then she was supposed to play against the US in July, but this mysterious shoulder injury recurred, and she skipped out again. Finally, she indicated that the shoulder was still giving her problems after the US open, and pulled out of the Fed Cup final in September, but somehow managed to offer herself as a practice partner and supporter of the team.

So imagine how it felt for Anna Chakvatadze and Svetlana Kuznetzova to bust their humps selflessly, after longer and more arduous efforts than Maria's at the US Open, to win the Fed Cup for Russia, only to have this woman steal their limelight without even lifting a racquet. Not only did she have the temerity to galavant around the court in a lap of honor normally reserved for those who actually won the Fed Cup, but she has added to this a blatant, and rather hollow attempt to disguise her desire to play in the Olympics.

Keep in mind that she's never played Fed Cup for Russia - she's probably the only Russian woman in the top 100 who hasn't. It's amazing because you would think someone with this grand desire to play in the Olympics would want to represent their country in other competitions, like, oh...I don't know...say, the Fed Cup! But that assumes Sharapova has any interest in anything other than herself. Why she wants to play in the Olympics is probably a two-pronged motivation. 

First, there's a lot of money in it for her if she wins, assuming there's someone out there that has not already been bombarded with her unbearable image plastered everywhere the sun shines (and some places it doesn't). And because the IOC defers to the ITF, just so the ITF will pressure top professionals to play in the Olympics, rules stipulate that if you want to be considered for an Olympic tournament, you have to have made yourself available for Fed Cup. Sharapova being Sharapova, has done no such thing. Thus the soulless publicity stunt flurry of showing up at the final, and running around waving the Russian flag, etc. If she loves Russia so much then why hasn't she played Fed Cup - ever?

And why the Olympics?

Well, that's the other:  you see, in tennis the Olympics is the one place where a tennis player can engage in the illusion of patriotism while still playing and winning for him/her self a gold medal. Nothing would make her happier than being able to say she's won a gold medal, because the value of that financially is tremendous, and it only comes along every four years - and who knows if she'll still be playing when the Olympics go to London in 2012. If she does win the gold, then every time the Olympics roll around, for the rest of her life, someone will be there to hand her a load of cash to take a picture with her medal and some loser product that would otherwise be sold at a steep discount at WalMart.

I suppose it's also possible that through some rather free flowing osmosis, because her father is Belarusian, he has infused in her an admiration for the Olympics. Nobody loves the Olympics more than Russians. Needless to say, the shameless Chinese, and the insatiable commercial appetite of the IOC are likely all in favor of her "so pretty" face doubling billboard advertising rates all across Beijing in 2008. This is the perfect storm for another in a long line of so many galling acts of self mutilation the WTA and professional tennis promoters have conducted in deference to Ms. Sharapova (e.g. the absurd experiment with on-court coaching in the US Open Series following Yuri and Maria's 2-week homage to Marcel Marceau at Flushing Meadow in 2006.)

Think I'm exaggerating? Take a look at these comments from the ITF:

"Her presence in Moscow certainly didn't hurt. She was injured and couldn't play, but by being here she clearly demonstrated her commitment to the Fed Cup and that will certainly enhance her chances (of playing at next year's Olympics). It's a big plus for her."

I can just hear the accounting calculator buzzing away in the coffers of oh so many unnamed charlatans at the IOC and in Beijing. What was it that Mark Felt told Woodward and Bernstein? (or was it just Woodward?)

"Follow the money."

I hate to be a cynic, but everything about her little act stinks to high heaven, and the comments of her "teammates", if you consider her a member of the "team", clearly concur. World number two Svetlana Kuznetsova said:

"Personally, I don't know why she came; I mean, she said she wanted to be our practice partner but if you can't play how then can you practice?"

Good point. And Chakvetadze had this to say:

"If you haven't played Fed Cup all year, it wouldn't be fair to just show up for the final. It's not fair to all the other girls who committed themselves to the team's cause."

You think?

Clearly they resented her presence, and weren't shy about saying it - one thing these Russian girls are good for, besides abnormally loud grunts and 4-foot pony tails, is catty comments about each other. They don't pull punches when it comes to other Russians, and certainly not when it comes to the most unbearable (sort-of) Russian in tennis today.

I'm sure they'd join me in asking for the granting of a single wish: that Miss Sharapova would just go away. But as long as lap dogs buy the crap she's selling, there'll be no end of her, or her atrocious father, in sight.

DJO-KER-VIC ENTOURAGE

Personally, I have had just about enough of Novak Djokovic's cheering section and shamless pandering to the media. I know that he's trying to make a career for himself, and the US media is so predictably hungry for a "star" to replace its wayward obsession with Andy Roddick, who is clearly not the real deal, that it's easy to see why he and his "team" have been so successful in capturing the (absence of) imagination.

At the US Open it began with their incessant camera-begging gesticulations each and every time their little boy did something right on court. They're well aware that US television cannot resist the opportunity to invent the drama of on-looking family and friends, and with this crew, have taken it to a whole new level (I'm not going to say if it's high or low....let's just leave it at a whole new level). With the father leaning against the "ropes" screaming like he's winning the points himself, and the mother, biting her nails to a nub (wouldn't surprise me if her nail-polish were flavored, just to make the charade more tolerable) and a gushing Dick Enberg going on and on about the family, is it any surprise that they got almost as much air-time during the tournament as his opponents?

Then the disgraceful Serbian flag color stunt they pulled in the semi-final. Such shameless pandering, just so everyone knows they come from a war-torn country and had to dodge US bombs to fulfill their sons dreams, etc. But for me, the topper was their uniform in the final. All wearing Djo-ker-vic's Adidas costume, like over-zealous parents at an 8-year old's youth soccer tournament. Add on top of that the shameless shit-stirring stunt of "inviting" Sharapova to his box (which she eagerly obliged...I wonder why...) and the invitation of De Niro and his tennis-loving wife. That was truly the coup de grace, and disappointed as I was that he accepted the invitation, I can't help but chuckle at the equally conspicuous absence of the actor at the conclusion of the match. I'm glad he chose to get out of Dodge before the circus left town. Of course by then the damage had already been done.

I like Djokovic as a player - he's one of the few that I enjoy watching these days. He's got a good range of shots, has a lot of power, is mobile and has a good serve. He also displays good touch and feel with is drop shots and volleys although his power volleys could probably use some improvement...well, nobody's perfect. At the end of the day, I think he's as good as his results show, and it wouldn't surprise me to find him on the winning end of the Australian Open final in 2008.

But frankly I wouldn't mind if the camera spent more time on him and his opponents than it did on his posse.