Articles by Steve Tignor

Reading the Readers: April 23

Wed, 23 Apr 2014 09:37:00 -0400

Play is already well underway in Stuttgart and Barcelona, but here's a little reader reading for your downtime. If you have a question or comment for this column, please email me at stignor@tennismagazine.com.

*****

Steve,

I’ve seen that golf is trying out a bigger hole size to make the game easier. I didn’t realize that the sport is losing so many players. It sounds like tennis. What do you think of making these sports easier for kids? Is there anything tennis can do about this?—Sandra

The photo in the New York Times last week of Sergio Garcia putting into a pizza-sized hole was an eye-catcher. I knew that golf’s popularity had peaked, but like you, I had no idea the situation was so desperate. According to the Times, the sport in the U.S has lost five of its 30 million players in recent years, and can expect to lose another five million soon.

As the paper reports, “People have really spurned the game, saying it takes too long to play, is too difficult to learn, and has too many tiresome rules.”

To which tennis players say: "Welcome to our world, what took you so long?" Tennis, as we know, has had its own long-term drop-off in participation in the U.S., though that has stabilized at the adult level recently—some of golf’s loss has been tennis’ gain. But as with golf, the trouble has been getting young people to stick with it. That led to the USTA’s controversial decision four years ago to mandate smaller courts and foam balls to make the game more appealing for kids ages 10 and under.

The experiment has its vicious detractors, and some kids really don’t need to ease into tennis. But judging by what I’ve seen at clubs and heard from pros in the New York area, I’d say the 10-and-under rules have been worth trying—it's the quality of the teaching after that which will determine whether young players reach their potential or not. At the elite level, with the aging of the pro game, there’s a little less pressure these days for top juniors to reach their developmental peak right away. Besides, anything that Fox’s Sean Hannity is violently against, I’m probably going to support. (For more on this subject, see this interesting piece from a league tennis player and NPR reporter.)

But games like tennis and golf can only get so dumb. Widening the hole in golf doesn’t make hitting off the tee, or out of the rough, or out of a sand trap, or anywhere on the course any easier. It also doesn’t save much time or make your clubs any less expensive. As for young tennis players, they’re going to have to graduate to the big court, and the bouncy balls, soon enough. In both cases, the sport is the sport, and both require time and patience. I’ve always thought tennis and golf should be proud of being difficult to master; they really are skills you never forget, and that you can use for the rest of your life. A lot of the adults who have returned to tennis are realizing that now.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to inspire many kids to look up from their smartphones these days. (Did I really just use “kids” and “these days” in the same sentence?) Whenever I hear about a sport dumbing itself down to attract the masses, I think of the mercifully forgotten “Tennis Sucks” campaign that Nike briefly tried to build around Andre Agassi in the 1990s. The phrase, which was printed on shirts and hats, was supposed to make that era's cynical followers of Kurt Cobain realize tennis was actually cool. Somehow, it didn’t work. When young people gravitate toward new, faster-paced, less labor-intensive 21st-century activities—whether that's video games or skateboarding or social media or something else—there's only so much a 19th-century sport like tennis or golf can do to bring them back.

It’s interesting that the person from the tennis world that the PGA has brought on as a consultant is Arlen Kantarian. As a former director of the U.S. Open, his job had nothing to do with increasing participation. But he was very successful at increasing the tournament’s, and the USTA’s, revenues.

*****

Steve,

I’m really fed up with tennis commentating these days. Everyone I ever talk to agrees that they should talk less, but no network ever gets the message. Can you write something about this?—Coco Belle

I also agree, and I’ve said it many times—the less chatter the better. That was once the British way; in the 70s and 80s, the BBC’s Dan Maskell would rouse himself to speak a couple of times a set, but he had a knack for doing it when it mattered. This, of course, has never been the American way. Bud Collins is a (deservedly) revered figure now, but back in the day he drove a lot of fans I knew bonkers with his motormouthed, nickname-slinging, “eyeball to eyeball” commentary style. And announcers have only grown more loquacious since. In a way, this is related to the “dumbing down” of the game discussed above. Television producers, not content to present a sport and let it speak for itself, want more action, more noise, more talk to go with it.

One problem for tennis fans is that, watching day after day and month after month, we can start to predict what every commentator, even those we may like, is going to say at any point in a match—by now, I've started to mutter "defense to offense" in my sleep. That's another reason to wish for less talk. In general, the Masters Series TV guys, who are British and South African, measure their words pretty well (though Jason Goodall has been known to run on). The commentator I’ve liked the most this spring has been the ATP’s Nick Lester. In the Maskell tradition, he doesn’t try to analyze every shot and tactical turn that goes on during a point—a former player, Lester probably realizes that sometimes a miss is just a miss and there’s no explanation needed for it. Instead, he hangs back a little and gives us the big picture. We can fill in the rest, right?

Speaking of tennis commentary, and about how less is more, what about trying one broadcaster in a booth? This week I’ve been watching my baseball team, the Phillies, play the Dodgers in L.A. The games have featured baseball’s longest-serving and most famous commentator, Vin Scully. Since the 1950s, when the Dodgers were still in Brooklyn, Scully has done his broadcasting alone. It can seem a little weird at first—I doubt any man in history has spent so much time talking to himself as Vin Scully. But he says he does it because he thinks it’s better and clearer for the viewers to have someone speak directly to us, rather than forcing us to listen to a conversation between two people. When you think of it that way, he has a point. Tennis fans might agree.

Dirt Bomb

Mon, 21 Apr 2014 10:15:00 -0400

Four days ago—was it really just four days ago?—I had a talk with my friend here at TENNIS.com, Richard Pagliaro, in which we searched in vain for a reason why Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic wouldn’t meet in the Monte Carlo final. The world’s two best players had split the last two title matches here, and they’d picked up their long-running rivalry earlier this month in Miami. Many of us assumed that their next battleground would be the European clay swing, starting with the three Masters tournaments and finishing, perhaps with a six-hour epic, at the French Open. You can understand why: Before Sunday, one of them, either Rafa or Nole, had reached the final of every (red) clay Masters event for the last eight years. And up until Friday, the two had appeared to be at the top of their games in Monte Carlo.

As we know now, trouble was on the way, and their streak of final-round appearances would be snapped. Yesterday Stanislas Wawrinka beat Roger Federer for his first career Masters title (see my Racquet Reaction here). In my conversation with Richard last week, I had offered up Stan as someone who might possibly have the confidence to knock off Nadal on the right day. Still, I wasn’t forecasting a final between the two Swiss men, and I haven’t heard of anyone else who was, either.

But it happened. Now the question is: What else happened in Monte Carlo? Was this a blip or a trend? Was it a pleasant diversion for the Swiss, before Nadal and Djokovic take over again, or will we look back in a couple of months and point to the Holy Weekend as the moment when this year's men’s clay season turned into an unholy mess?

I’ll start by getting the caveats and notes of caution out of the way. With Rafa, history says that one defeat during the run-up to the French Open isn’t a reason to panic—he has lost at this time of year and come back before. In 2013, Nadal went out to Djokovic in Monte Carlo, and then won every match except one through the U.S. Open. In 2011, he lost to Djokovic in Rome and Madrid, and still ended up holding the trophy in Paris.

Yet Nadal’s loss to David Ferrer on Friday was different. It wasn’t just that it had been a decade since Nadal (a) lost to Ferrer on clay, and (b) lost before the final in Monte Carlo. It was the way Rafa lost, and what he said it indicated about his psyche.

“I am not playing with the right intensity in my legs,” Nadal said. “When that happens, the unforced errors are there more often. Is true that I started the year great in Doha and during Australia. But, I don’t know, I don’t have to lie to nobody. After what happeded in Australia was a little bit harder for me to find again the intensity, the confidence, the inside power that I always have. Even if I won Rio, and played the final in Miami, you know, remains something in my mind and in my game. I going to try to fight to find that solution soon.”

Nadal, in other words, has found it hard to manufacture the elusive mix persistence and inspiration that has traditionally helped him come up with the great get or the brilliant shot at the right time—that little something extra, which he calls "inside power." This is more of a concern coming from him than it would be from another top player, because that inside power has defined his career. How many times have we seen Nadal find his way through a tricky set or defuse a hot-hitting opponent by setting aside his nerves or doubts just when they would be overwhelming most other players? How many times have we seen him look like he couldn’t possibly out-grind Ferrer, yet do it anyway? Through his uncle Toni, Nadal has decided that the key to his success is his willingness to endure, both mentally and physically, a little bit more than his opponent. Rafa will need to, as he says, “find that solution,” and find that little something extra again, if he’s going to be as successful as he has been.

Nadal, if the past is any indication, will find it sooner or later. But he might not find it in time to hold on to No. 1 in 2014. He has never finished in the top spot two straight years, so in a sense he was due for a letdown. What about Djokovic? The solution to his problem is simpler: His wrist, which flared with pain at the start of last week and grew worse at the end of it, must heal. On Saturday, things sounded ominous: After his defeat to Federer, Djokovic said he couldn't play tennis for a while. On Sunday, things sounded slightly less ominous, at least to my ears: He said he was going to rest completely for seven or eight days and see how his wrist felt. Djokovic has had injuries and issues to deal with in the spring before—an ankle problem and the death of his grandfather in the last two years—and has recovered well.

Yet even if the wrist does heal and let him compete in Madrid at full strength in early May, the injury came at an unfortunate time. Djokovic played some of the best tennis of his career to win Miami, he sounded upbeat yet realistic coming into the clay season, and he was virtually flawless in his early rounds in Monte Carlo. If Djokovic had defended his title there, he likely would vaulted to favorite status for the French Open. By Saturday, in the second set of his semifinal with Federer, Nole’s smiles had been replaced by winces as he trudged around the court, shaking his head at his bad luck.

Can we imagine a clay season without Nadal and Djokovic in the pole positions? It would be a land of opportunity for those who haven’t seen much of it on dirt in recent years. Two of those could be the men who did reach the Monte Carlo final, Federer and Wawrinka.

Federer came to Monaco in part to shore up his ranking in case he has to miss one of the other Masters, or the French Open, for the birth of his third child this spring. He ended up, possibly even to his own surprise, just a few points from winning the title for the first time. I liked the way Federer hung in to beat Jo-Wilfried Tsonga in three sets in the quarters. And he was at his free-flowing best at the end of the first set against Djokovic, before the match became academic in the second. But I didn’t like the way Federer went out in the third against Wawrinka. Much like in his loss to Kei Nishikori in Miami, when Stan began throwing the big punches, Federer couldn’t find a way to punch back. He didn’t look like he believed he could.

So what about Stan? He has now won his first major and first Masters in 2014, and he’s currently No. 1 in the race to London. As I asked yesterday, are we willing to entertain the idea that he could be the first man since Jim Courier in 1992 to win the Australian Open-French Open double? In March, the idea sounded like a joke. I had said then that I expected Wawrinka to slump in the States and return to something like his best form on European clay, but I didn’t expect him to do it so decisively.

From the first game of his first match in Monte Carlo, which would end up being a 6-0, 6-2 demolition of Marin Cilic, Wawrinka clubbed the ball with an authority that was completely missing in Indian Wells, Miami, and especially in the horrible doubles match he played in Davis Cup two weeks ago. But while Wawrinka may not look like a clay-courter, the surface gives him time to uncoil on his long ground strokes. He dictated most of the rallies he played in Monte Carlo; more important, against Ferrer and Federer, Stan played with the calm assurance of a guy who is now 6-0 against Top 10 players in 2014. As he said afterward, "I've proved I can beat anyone."

This weekend was not the end of Rafole; they’re still the favorites to reach the French final. And it wasn’t a sign of the imminent collapse of the Big 4; one of them was still in action on Sunday, as always. But where Monte Carlo has traditionally been the week when Nadal, and in recent years Djokovic, begin to slam the clay-season door shut on everyone else, this week the tournament cracked that door open just a little bit wider.

Monte Carlo: Wawrinka d. Federer

Sun, 20 Apr 2014 23:03:00 -0400

Stan Wawrinka vs. Roger Federer may be the closest thing the ATP has to the match-up between Serena and Venus Williams. The two friends and Swiss teammates practiced together and ate lunch together in Monte Carlo on Sunday, then went out and fought each other in the final. It was the first match between the two since Wawrinka passed Federer for the top ranking in Switzerland earlier this year. Could he also pass him at the finish line and win his first title in the Principality before Federer won his?

Like Serena and Venus, Wawrinka and Federer know each other’s plays, patterns, and predilections as well as they know their own. Today each of them tried to come out of the gate and break one of those patterns. Federer opened with some serve-and-volley surprises; he knew that Wawrinka typically chips his returns from both sides. It wasn’t a bad idea: Federer kept him off balance, and finished 26 of 36 at the net. At the same time, Stan began the match pulling the trigger early and firing his forehand from on top of the baseline; he knew he couldn’t let Federer, who had won 13 of their previous 14 matches, put him on the defensive. But Wawrinka pulled the trigger a little too early; after dropping a few bombs, he stared to misfire. Down break point at 2-2, he sent a backhand long. That was all Federer, who was pounding his approaches deep to Wawrinka’s one-handed backhand, needed to run out the first set, 6-4.

In the past, the second set might have been academic between these two. But Wawrinka, aside from winning his first Grand Slam title in Melbourne earlier this year, had taken Federer to three sets in their last two meetings. He immediately began to turn things around in this one by breaking serve to start the second. While he gave that break back, the two stayed on even terms through the rest of the set. In general, good was followed by bad from each man: Wawrinka, who would grow less erratic as the afternoon progressed, finished with 33 winners and 34 errors; Federer, who would grow more erratic, finished with 21 and 38. Again, much like an all-Williams match, there was little momentum generated, or positive emotional energy on display. A disgusted Wawrinka was given a warning for cursing; Federer screamed at the court after an ugly miss.

But it was Federer’s error count that grew the fastest as the match went on. His three most important mistakes came in the second-set tiebreaker. At 0-1, he shanked a backhand wide; at 1-2, he shanked a forehand long; at 3-5, still with a chance to win in two sets, he sent another forehand long. Wawrinka let out a wail of relief; two points later, he closed out the set with his own surprise serve-and-volley play.

The momentum was in Stan’s hands, and he didn’t let it go. He broke Federer to start the third with a good forehand approach, and broke again at 0-2 with a crosscourt forehand winner. With Wawrinka up 3-0 and in a groove, the result now really did seem academic, but in Stan's favor. This was partly due to Federer’s body language down the stretch. At 0-2, he had a game point that would have kept him in the set, but Wawrinka won it with a running backhand pass—Stan raised his fist as Federer hung his head on his way back to the baseline. Federer's next shot was a weak, conviction-less backhand drop shot that barely reached the net. In his defeats in Indian Wells and Miami in March, Federer lost belief in the face of strong third-set play from his opponents. The same was true today.

Wawrinka closed out the win, 4-6, 7-6 (5), 6-2, for his first Masters title. Perhaps most impressive, he’s now 6-0 against Top 10 opponents in 2014. Is it too early to mention that the last man to win the Australian Open and French Open in the same year was Jim Courier in 1992? If Stan can beat Rafa in a Slam final, and Roger in a Masters final, can he pull off one of the few feats that has eluded them?

Monte Carlo: Federer d. Tsonga

Fri, 18 Apr 2014 13:03:00 -0400

Some matches are defined by one key shot or rally. Roger Federer’s 2-6, 7-6 (6), 6-1 win over Jo-Wilfried Tsonga in Monte Carlo on Friday was defined by one key stat: Federer’s break-point conversion rate. He was two of 19.

Over the course of the first two sets, Tsonga always seemed to be serving; and every time you turned around, he was facing another break point. At one stage late in the second set, Jo had served 68 points, while Federer had served exactly half that many at 34. The pattern was the same throughout: Federer would come up with something brilliant—a topspin lob winner, a flick backhand pass, a strong forehand down the line—to reach break point, and then Tsonga would wipe it away.

Federer’s break points turned into a chess match, as Jo came up with different ways to survive them. He used his wide kick serve to draw short returns from Federer, and when that became predictable, he sent a surprise bomb down the T. Between them, the two players found a seemingly infinite variety of ways to keep Federer from breaking. Federer flipped a short backhand into the net. He shanked a backhand pass wide. He chose the wrong direction with an easy forehand pass. Jo knocked off a down-the-line forehand. He rifled a service winner. He wedged an inside-in forehand approach into the corner on one point, then wedged one inside-out on the next. Early in the second set, after Federer knifed a slow second-serve return into the bottom of the net, he shook his head and smiled sarcastically. Two games later, he bashed a ball out of the stadium and received a rare warning from the chair umpire.

The odd thing was that while Tsonga spent the match perpetually teetering on the brink, he very nearly won it in straight sets. Up 6-2, 3-2, Jo reached break point on Federer’s serve. But he backed up on a backhand and put it in the net. Twenty minutes later, after saving three more break points, Tsonga went up 0-30 on Federer’s serve at 5-6—two more points and it was over. At 0-30, Jo took a big cut at a forehand and landed it near the baseline, but Federer was there to reflex it back on the short hop; Tsonga’s next forehand went astray. At 15-30, Federer shanked a forehand that dropped inside the baseline, and clipped the net cord with another forehand, before winning the point, and eventually the game.

Finally, in the second-set tiebreaker, Tsonga saved three set points from 3-6 down, only to pull the trigger too early at 6-6 and fire a forehand into the net. When Federer won the next point, and the set, with a forehand volley, the crowd stood. Jo, understandably, slumped.

From there, it felt like it was only a matter of time before Federer broke through and Tsonga broke down. It happened quickly, in Jo’s second service game. He managed to save break points number 14 and 15, but not number 16—a forcing inside-out forehand approach from Federer made sure of that. Tsonga threw up a backhand lob that landed long. He might as well have been throwing up a white flag.

Aggressive but erratic, Federer hit 40 winners, made 45 errors, and was 21 of 28 at the net. His excellence in tiebreakers saved him from his dismal break-point percentage. He got angry, but he never went away. Persistence, rather than prettiness, pulled Federer through today.

Monte Carlo: Ferrer d. Nadal

Fri, 18 Apr 2014 09:56:00 -0400

Looking at it on paper, there hardly seemed to be a reason for Rafael Nadal and David Ferrer to bother playing their quarterfinal in Monte Carlo on Friday. The last time Nadal had lost to his countryman on clay was back in 2004, in the first of their 26 career meetings. And in that same span of time, Rafa had amassed a 50-2 record, and eight titles, at this, his favorite tournament. We knew it would be tough, we knew it would be a grind, we knew it would took some time, we knew Ferrer might even have a chance or two, but we knew that Nadal would end up the winner.

All of those things turned out to be true except the last one, as Ferrer improved his record on clay against Nadal to 2-17 with a surprising 7-6 (1), 6-4 win. In fact, if you hadn’t known anything about the two players, you might have thought that Ferrer was the favorite and Nadal was the one who couldn’t quite make himself believe that he could beat this opponent.

Rafa was uncharacteristically subdued throughout, and he saved his worst, least confident tennis for the most crucial 10 minutes of the match, the first-set tiebreaker. Hanging his head and playing tentatively, he virtually conceded the breaker after falling behind early. At 1-4, Nadal had a chance to take a rip at his favorite shot, an inside-out forehand, from on top of the baseline. Instead, he tried to thread a risky drop shot; too risky, it turned out, as the ball caught the tape and fell back. The shot selection, the execution, the demeanor: None of it was what we've come to expect from Rafa at these stages.

What we usually expect from a match between these two is an elemental battle of wills. Ferrer grinds, until you think no one could possibly have the mental endurance to stay with him—nobody except Nadal, that is. Rafa’s superior shotmaking always gives him the last word. Today, though, Nadal didn’t have those shots; he finished with 24 winners and 44 unforced errors, his backhand was short and often shanked, and at the moment in the first set when he appeared ready to come up with something special, he came up with something pedestrian instead.

Serving at 5-5, Ferrer went from being ahead 40-15 to down a break point. The two engaged in a long rally, and both ended up at the net. With an opening for a backhand pass, Rafa slid forward and...chipped the ball right to Ferrer, who volleyed it away for a winner and eventually held. The usual roles between these two had been reversed.

Beyond that moment, though, it didn’t seem that Nadal had the psychological endurance to grind with Ferrer today. Rafa mustered his share of fist-pumps and his cries of "Vamos!", but they tended to come after the crucial points had been lost, when he was just trying to hang on. This time, when Ferrer, who squandered an early break in the first set and a late break in the second, gave him an opening, Rafa didn't take it. Perhaps 10 years of wins over Ferrer on clay, and eight titles at Monte Carlo, had finally sapped a little of Nadal’s motivation. You can only keep a Little Beast at bay for so long, and Rafa has done it for a long time.

In the end, after a few wobbles, the beast came up big when it mattered. He attacked from the start, created the baseline patterns he wanted, won 13 of 18 points at the net, and kept Nadal off balance with his drop shot. After going down 0-1 in the tiebreaker, Ferrer, often shaky in breakers, played error-free tennis. And after blowing his first chance to serve out the match at 5-2 in the second set, he held his nerve and his serve at 5-4. He did more than that, in fact.

From 30-0 up, Ferrer made two backhand errors for 30-30. Would he blow yet another chance? Last year Nadal had come back from the dead against him in Madrid and won a 6-0 third set; visions of a repeat performance must have danced in both players’ heads for a few seconds. But Ferrer wasn’t going to let it happen today. At 30-30, he stepped in and drilled a forehand winner, maybe the gutsiest forehand winner of his career, to reach match point. Ten years is a long time to wait for a second win over a player on any surface; Ferrer couldn't wait any longer.

The Spanish No. 2 has come a long way in a few weeks. After losing to Kei Nishikori in Miami, Ferrer, 32, said he was feeling a little less spry these days. But he obviously wasn’t over the hill, because he climbed a tall one today.

The Rally: Mulling Monte Carlo

Thu, 17 Apr 2014 17:02:00 -0400

In our first clay-based edition of The Rally in 2014, Richard Pagliaro and I review and preview the action from Monaco.

*****

Richard,

Has anything in tennis over the last decade improved as much our access to the clay season in the States? Once upon a time, all we saw of Monte Carlo was a 10-second clip on SportsCenter of the winner spraying champagne. Now we can watch virtually every match.

Sometimes you can see a little too much, in fact. This morning I had the misfortune of catching a glimpse of the pink-and-blue...creation that David Ferrer was wearing as a shirt. To get that out of my mind, let me start this Rally with my non-fashionista's review of the players' latest spring styles. There have been some bold choices.

Monfils: He's out of the event, but I liked his orange and gray when it was here. A-

Federer: The two-tone sleeves are new, but this won't go down as a Nike classic. B

Nadal: Like the blue shirt, but not with the gray shorts. B

Cilic: Nice guy, not-so-nice green-and-yellow concoction. D

Raonic: Busy red and black is helping his game, but not my eyes. D+

Djokovic: The blue and white is an improvement on his all-gray from last month. B

Dimitrov: Baby Darth all-black worked. A-

Wawrinka: Stanimal turns bumblebee. B+

Berdych: The pink stripes, believe it or not, were growing on me. A-

Ferrer: All I can think is that he must be gunning for a Prevacid sponsorship. F

Two questions for you, Richard:

(1) How's your knowledge of Italian hand gestures? Fabio Fognini, who was booed off center court here for the second straight year—is that a record?—gave the crowd a thumb-and-pinky salute on his way out. That means "hang loose" to me, but maybe it means something slightly different over there.

(2) Who do you think is in the best form heading into the quarters? Hard to argue against Djokovic or Nadal.

*****

Steve,

I'm not sold on the Berdych Footlocker salesman striped shirt, or the melted jellybean concoction smearing Ferrer's top, but I thought Tsonga looked cool and colorful in yellow.

Based on the way Fognini bailed on that final set today, the hand gesture may have been his way of hailing a cab. My Italian is shakier than my second serve, but I'm fairly certain he wasn't saying "thanks for the support, see you next year."

Watching Fognini carve up Murray on the soggy Naples clay in the Davis Cup quarters was mesmerizing—the apprentice surprising the sorcerer with his touch—but after he failed to convert those break points in that 10-minute game in the second set vs. Tsonga, the inner angry clown hijacked his mind again. Interesting how Fognini calls for the referee today, then tugs on his arm, in a “sit down, I've got a lot on my mind” gesture, like he’s trying to turn complaining into psychotherapy.

Unsurprisingly, I think Djokovic and Nadal have looked sharpest so far. Despite a wrist issue, Djokovic is spreading the court, moving forward at the right times and force-feeding bagels. Nadal looked frustrated by his start against Gabashvili, but I like the way he's hitting through his backhand more, rather than chipping it, and he's punished some forehands down the line.

Steve, who’s the biggest threat you see to stopping a Rafa-Novak final, and who has surprised you most this week?

*****

Richard,

Just when I was starting to be OK with the Berdych look, you had to put "Foot Locker salesman" into my head. I'm not sure I'll ever be able to see the Birdman as anything else. Fortunately, he's out of the tournament.

It might be worth allowing coaching on the ATP side just to see what Fognini would make out of a sideline visit. We’d definitely need a hand-gesture translation from the booth.

Nadal and Djokovic have obviously looked good, at times close to perfect, so far. But there hasn't been a lot of early-round competition in general—Federer has also cruised, and Wawrinka has lost just two games after getting a walkover today. The biggest surprise has to be Guillermo Garcia-Lopez. Watching him fist-pump during his win over Dolgopolov yesterday, I tried to remember if I had ever seen GGL do that before. Then today, after he won the first game over Berdych, he fist-pumped again. And he played a determined match. At age 30, is he realizing that he better put some money away before it’s too late? I can't predict a GGL win over Djokovic tomorrow, though; Novak has won six straight sets over him dating back to 2007.

The wild card would seem to be Wawrinka. He plays Raonic next, and then, possibly, Nadal in the semis. Stan looked good in his opener. A rematch with Rafa would be one to watch.

How about Federer-Tsonga on Friday, Richard? Jo beat him in three at Roland Garros last year, but Federer returned the favor at the Aussie Open. Tsonga needs a faster start than his norm.

Also, what do you think of Rafa and his time violations? Does he have a point about umpire discretion, or not?

*****

Steve,

When Fognini was venting with the animation of a charades competitor, I was struck by two things:

(1) He's one of the most theatrical complainers in recent years. It would be interesting to see FF and JJ—Jelena Jankovic—play mixed doubles and engage in a joint meltdown in multiple languages.

(2) It would also be cool if the TennisTV crew could hire Nicola Pietrangeli, a mainstay at Monte Carlo and Rome, as official Fognini interpreter.

I thought Stan might suffer a lapse after 6-1 in the third-set losses to Kevin Anderson in Indian Wells and Alexandr Dolgopolov in Miami. He looked a little tired in Miami and is defending final points in Madrid and quarterfinals at Roland Garros, but he blasted Cilic, got a walkover, and should be rested for Raonic.

On the time violations, I believe if you're going to have a rule, you need to enforce it for all equally. On the other hand, when the crowd is amped up after a long point, or there is a delay in ball kids getting the balls from one end other, the chair umpire should use discretion. I think some of the gripes can be alleviated with the soft warning on a changeover first—some chair umpires even address it during the coin toss—and consistently calling it.

I favor Federer over Tsonga tomorrow, despite the Roland Garros loss last year. Federer has been more precise so far, he's defending better off the backhand side, and if he has the slider serve working, I think it will open the court up for him.

Djokovic is third on the ATP (behind Karlovic and Berdych) in service games held this year. Do you see any technical differences in his game during this winning streak? Or do you think it's more regaining the confidence that comes from stringing wins together?

*****

Richard,

It's interesting that you would bring up Djokovic's strong serving record so far this year, because I was just thinking about how good he has been recently in his service games. Basically, Nadal said that shot was the key to their Miami final; if Djokovic is serving and returning well, Rafa said it's difficult for him to catch up in the rallies. I haven't noticed anything technically different about Djokovic's game, but he has seemed to be clicking on the T serve in the deuce court, and thus has been going after it more.

Which makes me wonder: Could we be in for a big shift in the Becker-Djoker narrative, with Boris transformed from idiot to savant? Soon we may be hearing that he's the reason Novak is playing more assertively in his service games, and that he was the perfect choice after all. That would be an amusing turn of events.

Looking ahead, how important do you think this tournament is, Richard? It has always been a key to Nadal's psyche, a firewall of sorts against any early-season doubts or problems. Yet when he finally lost here last year, he went on to have what may have been the best run of his career, which lasted all the way to the U.S. Open. Looking back, I think the win put more pressure on Djokovic through the clay season, and took some off of Rafa. Either way, this event has had repercussions, and probably will again.

*****

Steve,

It's funny, because the conventional wisdom is that Becker should be able to help Djokovic with his transition game, something Novak has worked on in recent years, though in the latter years of Becker's career I often felt like he was too stubborn in staying back too much, a bit like how Tsonga, in my view, is too reticent about making the move forward. But Djokovic has worked court positioning to his advantage throughout this winning streak.

The other asset Djokovic has been bringing to his service games is making the first strike after the serve more meaningful. I think he's been effective stretching the space he creates off the serve with his first shot, which is obviously even more significant against Nadal, who conceded that he felt beaten by the Djokovic serve and return in Miami.

After beating Stepanek, Federer said the adjustment to clay from hard court is not as extreme as it once was because of similar surface speeds, though he pointed out, "On clay, when you have the upper hand from the baseline, it's kind of hard to get out of it." Djokovic has done a good job expanding the gap in hard-court rallies against Nadal, but Rafa remains the best in transitioning from defense to offense on clay, where Novak doesn't change direction quite as sharply.

I look at any Masters tournament as an important one, though since this the first clay-court Masters of the year, perhaps you can say it's not as vital as Madrid or Rome. But it’s certainly every bit as scenic. It's got to be one of the most beautiful center courts in tennis.

Monte Carlo also has rivalry significance if the Nadal-Djokovic final comes off. As an eight-time champion, Rafa has always been comfortable on this court. Novak, living there part time, looks enthusiastic and wants to keep his Masters winning streak going. If we view their rivalry as an ongoing rally, it's interesting to see what adjustments each will make should they meet in the final for the fourth time.

*****

Richard,

You're right, and I had forgotten, that Becker at a certain point decided that he wanted to prove he could win from the baseline as well as at the net. It would be a bit like Nadal deciding to turn himself into a serve-and-volleyer, just to show us he could. Boris was a true all-courter—there haven't been all that many that I've seen—and it's a little surprising that he didn't have more success on clay.

Federer said it's not as tough as it once was to make the transition from hard to clay, though he must be reaching pretty far back to recall a time when that wasn't true; I can remember the players comparing Miami's hard courts to clay in 2006. It's interesting that Djokovic began his rise right around that time. More so than Federer or Nadal, his game transitions smoothly from one surface to the other. But you're right, Rafa's movement is the most natural on dirt, and the surface gives him enough time to go from retrieving to attacking in one quick forehand strike.

There may be some question about who's going to win the tournament, but, as you say, Richard, there can't be any question about Monte Carlo as a location. One day one of us will get there, but even now the tournament marks the beginning of my favorite viewing season. For the next two months, and then on into the grass swing, those of us on the east coast of the U.S. get to wake up virtually every day with tennis on our televisions. That's not a bad view, either.

View to a Kill (Or Three)

Wed, 16 Apr 2014 17:14:00 -0400

Jealous that you can’t watch tennis at the Monte Carlo Country Club this week? I certainly am. So I do my best to pretend I’m there. With Tennis Channel’s broadcasts on my TV, a stream from another court on my computer, and various photos from the grounds on Adeline Auger’s Twitter feed, among others, I almost feel as if I’m...no, who am I kidding, I don’t almost feel as if I’m there. Not even close. I’m on my couch. When I look out my window, I see a concrete apartment building, not the Mediterranean.

But I do get to watch a lot of matches from here. Wednesday was the first fully loaded schedule of the tournament, with play from early morning to early afternoon here in the States. Now we just need some of it to be competitive; only one of nine seeded players in action, Alexandr Dolgopolov, came away a loser. Here are a few notes from a day when the big names mostly breezed on center court.

*****

Foggy Notions

Did I just say breezed? Fabio Fognini doesn’t do breezy. Where would the fun be in a straightforward win? More important, where would the agony be?

On paper, I thought that Fognini’s match with Roberto Bautista Agut had the makings of an upset. The Spaniard is having a career year, and you never what’s coming next from the Italian. But despite the 7-6(6), 6-4 score, Fognini was mostly in control of this one. Of course, that’s a relative term with the Fog Man. While winning in straights, he still managed to blast a ball out of the stadium, nearly rip his shirt off after an unforced error, win a point with a cracked frame, squander 5-3 and 6-5 leads in the first set, and slam his racquet to the court often enough that Bautista Agut butted in and complained to the chair umpire about it. Now, it seems, we have a better idea of why Ernests Gulbis can’t stand the guy.

It’s often said that Fognini must drive a coach crazy. It should also be said that he's type of player who can drive an opponent crazy. Most of the time he’s nonchalant, but he can turn it on when he's pressed and counterpunch brilliantly. Bautista Agut struggled when he tried to go on the attack.

Fognini got angry even when he was winning, but played well even when he was angry, so it all worked out in the end.

Next Up: Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, first on center court on Thursday. Jo leads 2-0 in their head to head.

*****

One and Done

Can a match be over after the first point? It looked that way today, when Roger Federer beat Radek Stepanek 6-1, 6-2. The Czech took a set from the Swiss earlier this year, and he began Wednesday’s match with a bold foray to the net. Fortune, it turns out, doesn’t always favor the bold—it mostly favors the good. Federer took Stepanek’s down-the-middle approach and smacked a backhand pass by him. The commentator described it as a “dismissive winner.” A "smack in the face" was just as accurate

Stepanek never recovered. I saw him play one good point each set. At 0-3 in the first, he finished a long rally with a forehand winner and went up 40-0; it seemed he might find a foothold in the match. Then he double-faulted three times and was broken. Early in the second set, Stepanek ambled back for a Federer lob and hit an amazing, roundhouse overhead while facing the back fence. It won him the point; here’s hoping that shot becomes the new tweener.

As for Federer, he found himself in one moment of possible danger, down break point at 3-2 in the second set. This is the stage where matches in which he starts well can get away from him. Today, though, he played two well-measured, attacking points and went on to hold.

Next Up: Lukas Rosol. Federer won their only meeting, 2 and 2, in Dubai earlier this year.

*****

Step 1: Acceptance

If you were watching when Rafael Nadal was down 1-3 and a break point to Teymuraz Gabashvili today, would you have predicted that it would be Gabashvili, not Nadal, who would win just two more games?

Yeah, you probably would have. And that’s how it went. The 28-year-old Georgian came out firing, and then, as often happens against Rafa, he started misfiring. Nadal began his turnaround with a volley winner to save break point at 1-3, and he played well after that, finishing with 25 winners, seven errors, and a first-serve percentage of 77.

Not everything went smoothly, though. Nadal was called for two time violations, the second of which meant he lost a first serve. When he went on to lose that point, Rafa wagged his finger at umpire Pascal Maria and later said that, while he knows he needs to be quicker, these violations weren’t deserved because they came after long rallies.

Rafa has reacted to time violations this way before. He says he accepts the fact that he needs to be faster, but he has a harder time accepting those occasions when the rule that’s designed to make him faster is actually enforced. I agree with Nadal that umpires should use their discretion. And, because there’s no clock on the court, I also agree that they should give the players a pre-warning. Through the first set, though, Nadal was averaging 27 seconds between points, so he had gone over the 25-second limit more than once or twice. In the other cases, Maria did use his discretion.

Nadal, who has sped up over the years, says he understands that he’s still too slow. Yet he can’t seem to live with the fact that, any time he goes over the limit, it’s possible that he’s going to get a warning or a violation. One of Nadal’s strengths is his ability to accept that adversity is inevitable on a tennis court. You never see him smash a racquet, and you rarely see him argue a call or throw his hands in the air when he gets a bad bounce, as if to say, “Why me?" or "It’s all so unfair.” If he wants to put the time violations behind him, the first step is for him to stop believing that the ones he gets are unfair.

Next Up: Andreas Seppi. Nadal leads their head-to-head 4-1.

*****

Baby Genius

What good is genius in tennis? By itself, it’s not enough to win a match. Federer tamed his early erratic genius and thrived. Andy Murray has always pretended his doesn’t exist. Dolgopolov lets his fly whenever he can. You can see by their careers which methods lead to the most success.

Grigor Dimitrov also has genius in him. It was there in his three-set comeback win over Albert Ramos today, when he lunged for a backhand volley and somehow reflexed it back crosscourt for a winner. It was there in a quick-flick backhand crosscourt pass. It was there in a running hook forehand pass down the line.

But it wasn’t why Dimitrov eventually won. He won with better serving, better consistency from the ground, and when he served it out at 5-4 in the third, he won with three ungettable power forehands and an ace.

Next Up: David Ferrer. Grigor has been climbing, Ferrer has been falling just a bit. Here’s hoping they collide in the middle tomorrow.

Reading the Readers: April 15

Tue, 15 Apr 2014 17:05:00 -0400

If there’s a downside to the Masters events, it’s that they take a while to get going. It's true again this week in Monte Carlo, where Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal make their debuts on Wednesday, and Novak Djokovic graced us with his presence for just 45 minutes on court in his winning effort today. So for now, here’s a little a little waiting-room reading, in the form of a mailbag.

If you have a question or comment for this column, please email me at stignor@tennismagazine.com

*****

Steve,

There’s a debate online about why Agnieszka Radwanska hasn’t won a Grand Slam yet. Some people say she has to work so hard winning multiple three-set matches that by the time she reaches the semifinals she’s exhausted. Other people say the second serve is her problem; it is too slow. I am worried Aga might end up like Jelena Jankovic or Caroline Wozniacki, two talented players who never broke through.—Orville Lloyd Douglas

No matter what all-around skills a player has, winning a Grand Slam is always going to be an uphill battle with a second serve that clocks in around the 70-M.P.H. mark. Power is the name of the game when it comes to the majors on the women’s side. Serena, Vika, Maria, Li: They’ve divvied up most of the Slams in recent years, and they all dictate play rather than retrieve, the way Aga does. Beyond that, if you look at the players that Radwanska has lost to in 2014—Cornet, Cibulkova twice, Pennetta twice, Halep, Mattek-Sands—it’s obvious that, despite the fact that she’s No. 3, she’s vulnerable to a lower-ranked opponent who’s having a good day.

Still, if Marion Bartoli can win Wimbledon, Radwanska can win a Slam. I don’t buy into the idea that Aga, who turned 25 last month, is too frail to make it all the way through a big event—in 2012, she won in Miami, and was one set from winning Wimbledon. In her last two semifinal appearances at Slams, Radwanska has claimed that she was tired from having to play too many three-setters at Wimbledon last year, and that she wasn’t ready to play two straight days in Australia this year. Those are fair complaints to a degree, but they're also issues that everyone who wins majors, or tries to win majors, must learn to deal with.

I thought both of those losses were due as much to the mental side of her game as they were the physical. Each time, Aga played her semifinal knowing that Serena was out of the tournament, and thus she had a rare opportunity for a breakthrough. Each time, she played someone ranked well below her. Each time, she came out with less than her best. It’s not a stretch to believe that the pressure of the situation had something to do with that.

You mention Wozniacki and Jankovic, both of whom spent time at No. 1 but have failed to win a Grand Slam. Radwanska is more skilled than they are, but she shares one important trait with them: The tendency to play too many events. Radwanska doesn’t build her schedule to peak for the majors, the way Serena and Maria and the top men do. I think this is partly because, until she joined the Top 5 two years ago, Radwanska didn’t believe a Grand Slam was within her reach. She should have more self-belief now, and her schedule should reflect it.

*****

Steve, don’t you think Nadal’s Monte Carlo record inflates his number of Masters titles? It’s not an official Masters event anymore.—Otto

Nadal is the current all-time leader in Masters titles, with 26. Federer has 21, and Djokovic has 18, though Nole, who has won the last four, is gaining on both of them at the moment.

You’re right that Monte Carlo, when it comes to the Masters Series, no longer goes the full monte. In 2009, looking to ease some of the burden on the top players, as well as the American men who don’t like spending two months in Europe, the ATP restructured the series. It dropped Hamburg to a 500, moved Madrid from fall to spring to replace it, and left Monte Carlo perched nebulously in between. The tournament retained its 1000 ranking-point status, but it was no longer mandatory.

The latter change, as you suggest, makes the draw less likely to be loaded. Federer has skipped the event three of the last four years, and Andy Murray isn’t there this time. A case could be made that this keeps Monte Carlo from living up to the “Masters” ideal, which is that you must beat the best in the game to win the title.

Still, with the ranking points intact, the draws in the Principality have remained deep, and Nadal has generally had to face his biggest rivals there. In the mandatory days, he beat Federer in the final three times; in the non-mandatory era, he has beaten Djokovic in the final twice and lost to him once. And it’s not as if any win by Nadal on clay is a fluke.

You obviously can’t demote Nadal's four wins there from 2005 to 2008, when Monte Carlo was a mandatory tournament. I also don’t think you can demote the next four, either, because he and his opponents believed they were playing for a title that would go down on their records as a Masters victory. As for the future, it’s probably too late to suddenly decide that Monte Carlo isn't up to snuff; it wouldn't make the event or the players happy. I'd say you could downsize Rafa's 2010 title, when he lost one game to Fernando Verdasco in the final, except that Nadal played some of the best tennis of his career that week.

But you have a point. Or, like Monte Carlo’s status in the game, half of one.

Monte Carlo: Djokovic d. Montanes

Tue, 15 Apr 2014 10:28:00 -0400

Five minutes into his opening-round match against Albert Montanes, Novak Djokovic was down 0-40 on his serve at 1-1 in the first set. Forty minutes later, he was happily scribbling on the ATP’s victory camera lens at the side of the court, a 6-1, 6-0 winner.

Djokovic began with a few cursory backhand errors, but once he found his range with that shot, the match was no contest. By the third game, his range had become pinpoint. At 1-2, he broke Montanes with a backhand winner on the outside of the sideline, and he held for 4-1 after putting the same shot on the very back edge of the baseline. Both times, Montanes inspected the marks dubiously, as if Djokovic’s shots couldn’t possibly have been good. Both times he had to concede that they were.

That’s about as much resistance as Montanes could muster today. He managed just one winner to his opponent’s 27, and the majority of points that he did win came on Djokovic’s unforced errors. Montanes was on defense from the start of virtually every rally; by the end of the first set, Djokovic was comfortable enough to go into experimental mode. He tried a few heavy topspin backhands, he tried a few more forays into the net than usual—he won eight of nine points up there—and he spent some time working on his kick serve into the ad court. The strong serving that Djokovic showed in Miami continued in his first match on clay: The Serb made 71 percent of his first balls and hit five aces. By the end, he didn’t even have to aim anywhere near the lines to crack winners past a demoralized, slump-shouldered Montanes.

Djokovic’s next match will be against either Gael Monfils, Kevin Anderson, or Pablo Carreño Busta. Until then, he’ll enjoy some time at his apartment in Monte Carlo. He certainly looked at home today.

Clay Still Needs Its King

Mon, 14 Apr 2014 13:56:00 -0400

Around this time last year, my friend and colleague at TENNIS.com, Pete Bodo, wrote an article entitled “Rafatigue.” Its theme, in case you can’t guess, was about how dully predictable it can be to spend a large part of every spring watching Rafael Nadal win match after match and tournament after tournament on clay.

The sentiment isn’t hard to understand. No tennis player has ever turned an entire stretch of a season into his own personal playground the way Nadal has. Over the last decade, Rafa's record during the clay swing is 216-8, and he’s won 36 of the 44 tournaments he’s played. Going strictly by the numbers, when Rafa enters an event in spring, the suspense exits.

Yet I tend to see his presence at this time of year the opposite way. Because Nadal is such a heavy favorite every time he takes the court on dirt, it means that even the slightest slip-up or sign of nerves from him, or the briefest run of nothing-to-lose good play from his opponent, can turn his matches into must-watch tennis—until he eventually finds his range and drops the hammer again. The fact that Nadal wins so much on clay makes even the slightest possibility that he’ll lose that much more momentous.

On Sunday, I thought about Nadal during this time of year as I tuned into the end of the Masters. I usually watch a good chunk of golf's first major; this time, though, I wasn’t able to muster up much interest until the 65th hole or so. The reason wouldn’t have surprised a TV programmer, but it did surprise me a little: Tiger Woods wasn’t in the tournament.

I’m not a Tiger fan; in fact, I’ve almost never rooted for him. This has something to do with my natural preference for the underdog, though that doesn’t explain all of my rooting choices—in the 1990s, I was happy to watch Michael Jordan win everything. But from the start there was something about Woods’ air of invincibility that rubbed me the wrong way as I watched him stride down a fairway, and his early, Nike-sponsored image as a golf messiah only made me want to see him taken down a notch. (Again, this isn’t always the case: While LeBron James was hyped with similar thoroughness as a kid, it never bothered me, and I’ve always rooted for him.) Every two years, I do get the chance to go over to Tiger’s side for one weekend, when he plays for the U.S. in Ryder Cup. I’ve always found it strange how how much more likable—human, vulnerable—he suddenly seems to me in the team context.

But that isn’t how I’ve seen Woods at the Masters. Following the tournament on TV or in the papers, I typically kept one eye on the leaders’ scores, and one eye on Woods’s score. For a decade, of course, he was the leader; over his last five, Slam-less years, though, Tiger has tended to stay within striking distance for 54 holes, before fading on Sunday. But even when he isn’t challenging for the title, his presence alone at a major adds an edge to the tournament and raises the historical stakes—other guys can win, obviously, but only Tiger is within striking distance of Jack Nicklaus’s all-time Grand Slam record. I don’t think I’m the only casual golf fan who watches this way, and I don’t think I’m the only one who found this year’s Masters difficult to care about after he underwent back surgery.

“I’ll admit, I miss him,” USA Today sports columnist Christine Brennan, never known as a Woods fan, conceded last week. “I miss Tiger Woods. I wish he were here. Love him or loathe him, he makes golf tournaments so much more interesting.”

Apparently, the viewing public agreed. ESPN’s broadcast of Thursday's opening round was down nearly 25 percent from 2013, and earned its lowest rating since the network began broadcasting the Masters seven years ago.

Among tennis players, Woods has been most closely linked to his fellow Slam king Roger Federer. But Nadal, while he has never projected a Tiger-like air of invincibility, considers the golfer one of his athletic role models, for his excellence and dedication to a sport whose frustrations Rafa the recreational duffer understands. Nadal also understands that appearances can be deceiving when it comes to dominant athletes. As he has always reminded us, it’s not as easy as it looks, even for the best, and no match is a sure thing.

“I know I’m not going to keep winning all of the tournaments on clay forever,” Nadal said this week, in his customary, almost superstitiously, fatalistic way. “And there is going to arrive a day when I’m not going to win one more. But hopefully not yet.”

Nadal also likely understands what it means to have a polarizing effect on the devotees of a sport. It’s hard to imagine any halfway serious golf fan not having a strong opinion one way or the other about Tiger Woods, and it’s the same for Rafa with tennis fans. There are those who love his fiery, physical style, and those who loathe his tics and tardiness. More important, there are also plenty of fans who loathe how often he beats their favorite players. And by now, after so many years of seeing him sweep through this part of the season, there are probably plenty of others who, like Pete Bodo, could simply do with a changing of the clay guard.

All of which makes Nadal’s presence on dirt as essential as Tiger’s presence at the Masters—more essential, in fact, because Rafa is still at the top of his game. Imagine a clay season without Nadal. I can almost hear the cries of relief from some of you, but by the end of two months, how satisfying would it be? There would still be dramatic matches, and deserving new champions, and no one would have to wait while Rafa lined up his water bottles. Yet there still would be something missing for all fans.

Those who love Nadal wouldn’t get to see him play. Those who are bored, or think they're bored, by his dominance wouldn’t get to sense history in the making—however briefly—every time he has his service broken. And those who loathe him, while they would be happy to see their favorite player win, wouldn’t have the pleasure of seeing Rafa, the world's greatest dirt-baller, knocked off his throne. Anyone who cares about sports knows that the taste of your side's victory is only made sweeter by your enemy's defeat.

You may love him, you may loathe him, or you may just be tired or him, but the king still needs his clay, and clay still needs its king.

Principals of the Principality

Sun, 13 Apr 2014 21:36:00 -0400

Tennis, in my possibly biased opinion, has the most reliable symbol of spring in sports.

Opening Day in baseball is the traditional harbinger of warmer days in the U.S., but this season it came too early. The lingering chill of a long winter has kept fans away from the park in droves thus far. Now the Masters, golf's spring “tradition unlike any other,” was revealed over the last four days as a one-trick—or one-player—pony. The only thing it takes, it seems, to rob the tournament of all tension and interest is for Tiger Woods to withdraw.

Tennis, by contrast, can never go wrong with its own entrant in the “you know it’s spring” sweepstakes. All you need is a photographer, or three, to stand at the top of the Monte Carlo Country Club and take a shot of the red clay on center court, with the blue Mediterranean beyond. That's spring to a tennis fan. Then, over the next week, we have the little bonus of the tournament itself, a traditional stop for the men since the 19th century.

These days, spring begins a day early in Monte Carlo. In the greedy spirit of expansion that grips all sports, the tournament now schedules four first-round matches on Sunday. With those results in mind, here’s a look ahead at a pretty loaded Monte Carlo draw. It’s no longer a mandatory Masters event, but there are still 1,000 ranking points for the winner. This year, that was enough to lure seven of the Top 10 to the little country by the sea. The ATP's principals are in the Principality.

*****

First Quarter

Monte Carlo is Rafael Nadal’s favorite tournament, and it's played on his favorite type of clay. As usual, the event also comes at an opportune moment for him. Two weeks ago, in the Miami final, Rafa endured one of the most lopsided big-match losses in his career, to his primary rival for No. 1, Novak Djokovic. Traditionally, Monte Carlo is where Rafa puts whatever troubles he’s had that year behind him. This time he’ll try to start that process against either Teymuraz Gabashvili or Gilles Simon. Rafa beat Simon here in straight sets in 2012, though he has lost to the Frenchman once—on indoor hard courts six years ago, 8-6 in a third-set tiebreaker.

The two most intriguing names in Nadal’s quarter are No. 6 seed David Ferrer and No. 12 seed Grigor Dimitrov. Of the two, it might be Dimitrov who has the better chance of pulling an upset over Rafa. He lost to him 6-4 in the third here last spring; Ferrer has lost three times to his countryman in Monte Carlo over the years, each time in straight sets. A Dimitrov-Ferrer match in the round of 16 would be an interesting referendum on where those two men stand at the moment. So far in 2014, the 22-year-old Bulgarian has been climbing the career hill, while the 32-year-old Spaniard has said he feels like he might be heading over it.

Semifinalist: Nadal

*****

Second Quarter

Every player enters a draw with a question mark over his head, but the biggest in Monte Carlo belongs to Stan Wawrinka. I said after the Australian Open that he might struggle in the U.S., but that he would likely thrive again on European clay. He wasn’t at his best in the States, and he showed off some of his absolute worst in Davis Cup last weekend. Did that signal the end, finally, of his Aussie hangover? We’ll get an idea when Wawrinka plays his first match, because it won’t be easy. He gets the winner between Marin Cilic and Fernando Verdasco, each of whom has at least one title in 2014.

After that, though, this could be a friendly section for Stan. The second seed here is clay non-specialist Milos Raonic, and the next two seeds are Tommy Robredo and Nicolas Almagro. Wawa is probably the pick, primarily because there’s no one else to pick.

Already—unfortunately—out: Austrian up-and-comer Dominic Thiem, who lost to Nicolas Mahut on Sunday.

Semifinalist: Wawrinka

*****

Third Quarter

Aside from his countryman’s title in Melbourne, Roger Federer’s appearance in Monte Carlo may qualify as the surprise of the season so far. Federer has skipped the event the last two years, and three of the last four. He has already added Davis Cup to his schedule this season, and he just finished a three-match weekend for Switzerland. And, in case you've been living under a large rock, he’s 32 years old and has had back issues.

Yet Federer is here, and presumably feeling good to be on what he recently termed his “beloved clay.” But he may not have the easiest start on it: Federer will begin against either Ivo Karlovic or Radek Stepanek, irritating opponents who both own a win over him.

The highest seed on Federer’s side is Jerzy Janowicz, who hasn’t won a match since February. On the other side, though, there could be challenges. Fabio Fognini, who is coming off perhaps the biggest win of his career, over Andy Murray in Davis Cup, is here, as is Jo-Wilfried Tsonga. Are we going to see the Jo-Willy who trounced Federer at Roland Garros last year, or the Jo who has mostly been Willy-Nilly so far in 2014?

First-round match to watch: Vasek Pospisil vs. Roberto Bautista Agut

Sleeper: Roberto Baustista Agut

Semifinalist: Federer

*****

Fourth Quarter

Novak Djokovic says he’ll try a new approach to the clay season this year. In 2013, he says, he let himself get bogged down worrying about Roland Garros, rather than focusing on each tune-up event as it came. This time he’ll give the three clay Masters their due. That may be another way of saying “I’m taking it one match at a time,” but it sounds like the right plan to me.

Djokovic’s other problem in 2013 was that he peaked too early—snapping Nadal’s run of eight straight titles in Monte Carlo is a tough act to follow. But did he just do something similar, with his comprehensive win over Rafa in Miami? Did he peak too early again? I doubt it; Djokovic is still No. 2 in the rankings, a place where he has been very comfortable since last fall, and which lets him continue to think of himself as the hunter, rather than the hunted.

Nole's hunting this week should be happy, but it might not be easy. He will start against either Benoit Paire or Albert Montanes; the seeds in his section are Tomas Berdych, Alexandr Dolgopolov, and Kevin Anderson. That’s manageable for Djokovic, obviously, but Berdych did beat him on clay in Rome last season, and Dolgo has been the surprise of 2014 so far.

Already out: Ernests Gulbis, who lost to Dolgopolov on Sunday.

Also here: Gael Monfils, who opens against Anderson, is coming off a clinching fifth-rubber win for the French in Davis Cup.

Semifinalist: Djokovic

*****

Semfinals: Nadal d. Wawrinka; Djokovic d. Federer

Final: If Nadal and Djokovic do face off for the title, it’s impossible to say right now which direction their 41st match will go. Is it time for Rafa to find a new answer to the thorny questions that Djokovic’s game always poses for him? Or is Novak’s latest run in their rivalry destined to go on longer? I’m going to say, after three straight-set victories in a row, that Djokovic has at least one more win in him.

Djokovic d. Nadal

Playing Ball: The Brain Comes Back

Fri, 04 Apr 2014 13:21:00 -0400

Recently I returned to the tennis court for the first time in 2014. Below, in perhaps slightly exaggerated form, is what my brain had to say to itself that day.

I'm off the rest of this week, and will be back for the start of the European clay season in Monte Carlo.

*****

First swing, no pain, feels good—freeing—to be back out here. How long has it been, eight months? Always forget how much I miss hitting a tennis ball until I’m in the sun, doing it again. The ball is always bouncier than I remember, too—how do you control this thing? But the warm-up shots are landing in the court. Like riding a bike, really, your muscles never forget all of those hours of practice/torture when they were 14. Time to take a little bigger cut on the forehand...

Wait, is there pain? I do feel something back there, but it’s in a totally different spot from yesterday. I can’t even remember where I felt it last year. Left side, right side, dull ache, or shooting pain: When someone asked, I never knew the answer. Maybe it was all in my head. Can’t worry about it forever. Can’t stretch forever. Can’t swing the racquet around in the living room and put it back in the closet forever.

And I'm just going to take it easy today, anyway. Probably lost to this guy two times in the last five years. He’ll know I’m just getting back into it, the result doesn’t mean anything. Though he didn’t ask how my back was, didn't mention that we hadn't seen each other since last summer. Barely cracked a smile at me, in fact. When I got here, he was even pedaling on one of those exercise bikes they have in the basement so he could break a pre-match sweat. Have I ever seen him do that before? Have I ever seen anyone at this club do that before? He looked pretty serious when we spun the racquet, too, like he was happy to get to serve first...

Anyway, who cares? It’s all about exercise anyway, right? When a tennis ball is in your hands, the world is in your hands again. It’s April, it’s Brooklyn, the sun is out, the sky is blue, the nets are up, the Donna Summer and Marvin Gaye are blaring through the neighborhood, and I’m running around again—isn’t that enough?

Shanking a few balls, too, it’s true. That first warm-up serve didn’t even reach the net. Hacker on the next court watched it bounce off my frame and go straight into the Har-Tru in front of me. Hate that—why do people always glance over when you look like a beginner? Or is it only when you look like a beginner that they make it clear that they saw what you did?

Jesus, take it easy. Now you’re competing with your opponent and the guy on the next court?

Time to get into the ready position, feet dug into the clay, this feels right, it's been too long. Racquet spinning in my hand again, too. Why do I do that? It doesn’t serve any purpose, but I catch myself doing it even in the middle of rallies. First goal of the season: Stop spinning your...whoa, his first serve just went right down the T, right into the fence. Aced on the opening point. Has he been working on his serve while I was gone?

But the first contact is good. Nothing like a sweetly struck return in the middle of the strings, just out in front of you. Don’t have to swing hard, just smoothly; take the pace and send it back the other way. Absorb the pace? That’s what the commentators say, but is that really the right word for it? Anyway, the ball seems to pick up speed as it hurtles down the line. He can’t get to it. First winner of the year. Did the guy on the next court see that? Take a peek. No, of course not, he's pretending to look the other way.

"You spin me round round baby right round, like a record baby." How did that get in my head? And how do I get it out? This is why the 80s will never die; its songs leave scars on the brain.

Round, round, round, hold, hold, hold, hold: 4-4 in the first, break point for me. Forgot how different it feels returning at break point. Much harder to imagine going after the ball, even a second ball. Harder to get the racquet through as quickly; like playing underwater. The "haven" of deuce? Please. Lose this point and deuce feels like the pit of despair.

Second serve, he kicks it. He’s sneaking into net, I drop the return at his feet, perfectly placed. I’m going to break serve...wait, what just happened? The ball’s on my side of the net, spinning away from me for a winner. He’s come up with a stumbling, no-look, utterly lucky half-volley, like he always does.

“I knew there was a shot you hit that annoyed me,” I call out to him. With a smile, I think. A smile through gritted teeth. He lets out a stiff chuckle, like he doesn’t really appreciate the joke.

Tiebreaker. Serve is loose now, the pain long gone, the ball’s not landing on my side of the net anymore. It’s the adrenalin, probably, like a painkiller that will wear off, but the back feels better than it has in months. My turn for an ace. Feels like magic. Next point is even better. Long rally, both of us digging, work it to his backhand, get a short ball from him.

I'm flying forward, sliding into the ball, coming over it with a forehand into the corner and following it in—this, every part of me suddenly remembers, is what tennis is about. The reckless abandon of chasing a ball, combined with the precision of trying to hit it to a spot. It’s like levitating, that's the only way to describe it. There's no easing back into a tennis match, and that might be the best thing about it.

Now, did the guy on the next court see any of that?

No matter, either way, it’s enough. I lose the set. My opponent acts as if he never knew I'd been injured. The hacker on the court next to us never sees me play even a half-decent point. But it’s enough. A tennis ball, and the world, are in my hands again.

The Rally: Marching On

Thu, 03 Apr 2014 17:32:00 -0400

The Rally returns this week, with a discussion between TENNIS.com senior editor Richard Pagliaro and myself about the month past, and what it may mean for the two months ahead.

*****

Richard,

We've made it through another March, which means we’ve made it through another month of chatter about which tournament is the true—by which I mean fake—fifth Grand Slam. What did you think were the most interesting stories, or topics of discussion? Here are three that have stayed in my mind this week.

—Novak Djokovic proved that in tennis, you have to make your own confidence. He hired Boris Becker to help him with his mental approach, but it really took just one win on his own, with Becker 4,000 miles away, to turn himself around. Until the second set of his Indian Wells final against Roger Federer, many of us were wondering if Djokovic was going to have a tough year. By the time Miami was over, he had played some of the best tennis of his career in routing Rafael Nadal.

—How much better can Li Na get at 32? Carlos Rodriguez has helped her get in better shape and hasn't been afraid to give parts of her game an overhaul. While she has struggled at times, it seems to be working. In Miami, I was impressed with the way she handled her inconsistency; until the final, she didn't let it beat her. Now the battle might be between her new game and her aging body.

—Serena Williams is still the best, and she didn't drop a set to Maria Sharapova or Li in Miami. But after her slow starts there, her early loss in Charleston, and her talk of being fatigued after a "long two years," is there any reason to wonder about her going forward?

*****

Steve:

Your March points are on target. Driving from Miami to Daytona Beach after the tournament was a reminder of how Florida is still a spring-breaker’s paradise—and how Djokovic makes March a season of regeneration.

Djokovic started the month in New York for the Madison Square Garden exhibition with Andy Murray talking about searching for confidence when closing matches. By the end of the month he had edged Roger in the Indian Wells final, eviscerated Rafa in the Miami final, and remade his season.

Potentially, Miami could carry repercussions because of how thoroughly Nole handled Rafa, the fact that he attacked Nadal's forehand without any apprehension, and at times played true all-court tennis. By the time the bubbles were bouncing off his head during the trophy ceremony, it reminded me of the end of Wizard of Oz, when the wizard tells the scarecrow: "They have one thing you haven't got: A diploma." Working with Becker, Djoker is seeking validation for closing time, but the confirmation that comes from beating two rivals in very different matches may carry him much farther.

I'm not concerned with the weary Serena's slip-up in Charleston and here’s why: Look at the sluggish starts she had against Sharapova and Li, as well as some passive stretches against Caroline Garcia, yet she still took home the title. We've seen Serena play her way into form during the course of a tournament, but this time the form came in waves and she still won.

Going out early in Charleston could give Serena enough time to unplug, clear her head, and prepare for the big clay-court events in Madrid, Rome, and Paris.

Here's three from me on March:

—Djokovic-Nadal will be the primary narrative on the men's side this season, and not just because of the race for No. 1 and Novak's desire to win Roland Garros. Their head-to-head is so close, they currently share all the Masters titles, and Nole showed a bit of an adjustment targeting Rafa's forehand in Miami. Can that translate to clay? What's the next adjustment in that rivalry?

—Doubles Clutch. Martina Hingis and Sabine Lisicki winning in Miami, the Bryans doubling up in Indian Wells and Miami for the first time (and moving closer toward a 100th career title), all of the high-profile combinations in Indian Wells made it a showcase month for doubles—even if you couldn't catch it on TV.

—Tournament Experience. Indian Wells has Hawk-Eye on every court, a sparkling new stadium, Nobu, and the sight of stars playing soccer next to practice courts. Miami's facilities need an upgrade, but the city is so cosmopolitan, the fans so passionate, and the site so scenic, it was a real shame to see both semifinals wiped out by injury and illness. What is a tournament's responsibility as an entertainment package? You see Major League Baseball stadiums with hot tubs, batting cages, and pool tables and I think that detracts from the focus on the field. Has Larry Ellison's investment raised the bar to the point where other Masters events have to supplement the tournament experience?

*****

Richard,

Three good questions coming from Miami. Let me take a crack at them:

What's next for Rafa-Nole?

I'm not sure about the Oz part, Richard, but Nole was indeed a wizard in the Miami final. Yesterday I wrote that I had never seen Nadal have so much trouble finding his inside-out forehand, or get beaten so badly by an opponent's cross-court backhand, as he did against Djokovic in the final. Nole has found a soft spot in Nadal's game: The space he leaves open on his forehand side, to protect his backhand.

What can Rafa do to counteract that? I would say two things, each of which have been keys to his wins over Djokovic in the past. (1) Make the down-the-line forehand a regular part of his repertoire from the start. Whether he's hitting that shot or not is often the key to whether he beats Djokovic or not; and (2) Forget the slice backhand and hit over it whenever possible.

Either way, if Djokovic is going to target Nadal's forehand, Rafa has to find a way to make Nole do that from more of a defensive position.

What can be done about doubles?

Last month, Pete Bodo and I Rallied about the future of doubles; one thing we left out was how often it's shown, or not shown, on TV. It's always a great scene when Federer or Nadal or Murray are on a small court in a doubles match at Indian Wells, but that doesn’t do anyone any good at home. I enjoyed reading tweets and reports about Hingis and Lisicki in Miami, but I never found them on my TV.

The ATP World Tour Finals has probably done the best job of integrating doubles into its event, and into its telecasts. Is there a way for other tournaments to follow its lead, to feature doubles matches on prime courts and at prime times and have them broadcast? One positive is that the former tournament director of the World Tour Finals, Chris Kermode, is now the head of the ATP. Perhaps he can spread the doubles word around.

Miami vs. Indian Wells

It's true, while Miami gets a bad rap these days, it does have a more energetic fan base and atmosphere than Indian Wells—even Larry Ellison can't do anything about that. But I like what he has done with Indian Wells, and I left there this year thinking that more is possible on that wide-open site in the desert. It may or may not have anything to do with Ellison, but Rome, Madrid, and Cincinnati have all made, or tried to make, big improvements in their facilities in recent years. Miami now looks laggard for standing still.

To me it’s a positive sign for tennis that these events, and the dual-gender Masters/Premier structure in general, have made their marks on the game. We don’t want the Grand Slams to overshadow everything.

A question: Do you think there's anything that can be done for paying customers on a day like this year's Miami men's semis? I know some brought up the idea of having a lucky loser fill in when there's a withdrawal.

*****

Steve:

Miami was a tactical shift in the Rafa-Nole rivalry, but the fun of shifting surfaces is seeing if the blueprint Djokovic used on a purple hard court translates to red clay. Novak can control the center of the court against Rafa on hard courts because he's better at hitting on the rise, but can he sustain the same aggressive court positioning on the slippery, slower surface? And how much does Rafa's defense neutralize Novak's aggression on clay?

I agree with you on Nadal overplaying the slice backhand, which sometimes lacks both bite and depth and usually conveys the sense he's digging in for a defensive point. I'd like to see him occasionally hit heavier topspin with the two-hander to try to back the opponent up more—he sometimes goes to the short slice and then hits his two-hander too flat.

Last year, Nadal and Djokovic faced off on clay only once, in the Monte Carlo final, before their classic Roland Garros semifinal. It would be fun to see them play a couple of times before a potential French Open meeting this spring, to see how Rafa responds. Nadal is good at learning from losses and making adjustments, but he identified the issue in Miami by pointing out that when Novak is better with the serve and return, you can't gain ground in rallies. Djokovic has also played down the line more effectively in his recent wins, which is why, as you say, the Nadal down-the-line forehand becomes so important early in rallies.

As for doubles, a way for it to gain some traction is if more players used it as a game developer. Watching Hingis and Lisicki, one partner was talking to the other after almost every point. Those experiences can be more valuable than practice because you're being tested in a match from more positions on court, and you have a guide helping you work out solutions. When you see the singles success of former doubles No. 1s like Flavia Pennetta, Sara Errani, and Sam Stosur, it makes me wish players like Sloane Stephens and Caroline Wozniacki played it more.

And I like the late-round lucky loser concept a lot more than I like the thought of a tournament losing an entire semifinal slate. Obviously it's a rare occurrence, but I'd favor advancing the highest-ranked prior-round loser in the event of a late-round withdrawal—assuming those players hadn't left town.

At each of the Masters events in March, we saw big runs from players outside the Top 10—Pennetta reached the Indian Wells final, Alexandr Dolgopolov was an Indian Wells semifinalist and Miami quarterfinalist, and Kei Nishikori made the Miami final four. Given that Djokovic and Nadal combined hold all of the Masters titles now, which non-Top 10 players are most likely to go deep in upcoming clay Masters events?

*****

Richard,

If only we could throw in blue clay as well, to go with the purple hard courts and the red and green clay we currently have. I was against it at first, and the stuff they laid down was too slippery, but I do find myself wishing that Madrid was still blue. It was photogenic, if nothing else.

I do agree with you on doubles helping singles players round out their games. The decline of dubs among the elite is probably an underrated factor in the lack of net play in singles. If doubles were more important to the top men and women, we’d likely see a wider variety of shots in singles.

As for the lucky loser concept, I don't think I like the idea of one fortunate player getting a chance to lose a match, and then still win the tournament. Somehow it reminds me of the time Radek Stepanek was brought in from vacation to play the Masters Cup after a withdrawal, because he happened to be in the area. He didn’t have his snaeakers. But it's true, a day like last Friday in Miami is a disaster not just for paying fans, but for the tournament's relations with its TV broadcasters and sponsors.

As for clay-court sleepers, I think you have to look at Stanislas Wawrinka being dangerous again; Grigor Dimitrov springing a big upset or two, as he did over Djokovic in Madrid last year; and I do like the possibilities for Dolgopolov's game on clay. Do you believe in him as a closer, though? That's always been his Achilles' heel.

Among the women, I'll be curious, as I said earlier, to see the continued progress of Li, the 2011 French open champion. I also wonder if we'll see more improvement from Dominika Cibulkova and Simona Halep. Both are in the Top 10 now; Cibulkova was a semifinalist in Paris five years ago, and Halep made the semis in Rome last spring. I also have to think Serena won't be quite as thoroughly dominant as she was last year.

Who do you like this spring, Richard?

*****

Steve,

While in Miami, I got to hit on the purple Crandon Park courts, and whether it was the clear sky and high sun, or the fact I'd only hit on indoor Har-Tru where the dirt can disguise the ball, the visibility was so sharp. It felt like seeing tennis in HD for the first time. So for visibility reasons (read: My eyes are now worse than my second serve), I was one of the few favoring Madrid’s blue period. It was more lava lamp blue than Boise State blue, so the ball popped more to my eye.

Players prefer the predictability of similar courts and ball bounce from week to week, and that makes sense from both a playing—and branding—perspective when you have Australian lead-in tournaments to Melbourne or the U.S. Open Series event setting the stage for Flushing Meadows. But I like tournament courts with their own quirky characteristics. The Miami court surface felt grittier too, and the balls got scruffier.

Dolgo is tricky because right now he's backing up the dazzle with consistency—three semifinals in his last four tournaments—but aside from an Australian Open quarterfinal run a few years ago, he hasn't done much at the majors. Still, when you see him in person he's got an electric arm, a quick-action serve that’s tough to read, he's so light on his feet, and in an inside-out forehand era he can break down players with the cross-court forehand. He's the son of a coach and knows the percentages, yet under pressure he hits the self-destruct button too often. I don't know if it's an involuntary reaction to pressure, or a deep belief that he's got to always beat the opponent to the punch, but he’s a bit like James Blake in his tendency to red-line. Dolgo may best be suited to the best-of-three-set format.

If Dimitrov can play with the kind of commitment he showed beating Djokovic in Madrid last year and Milos Raonic in Australia in January, I think he can do damage, but I thought the same thing last year. Fabio Fognini is an excellent Davis Cup player, and if he plays well this weekend I can see him having a strong clay-court season. Several people I spoke to in Miami are raving about Dominic Thiem's game as well.

On the women's side, if Caroline Garcia can put together a string of solid matches, I really like her game because she can play points on her terms against anyone. Bouchard put up a couple of good results on clay last year, she's off to a great start this year and she moves well so I think she's a threat too.

Elite Eight

Thu, 03 Apr 2014 11:45:00 -0400

The Big 4-Oh

Wed, 02 Apr 2014 13:39:00 -0400

Some tennis players live long, full lives together. Rod Laver and Ken Rosewall played 144 times, with Laver ending up ahead 80-64; Martina Navratilova and Chris Evert faced off on 80 occasions, with Navratilova finishing in the lead 43-37.

Other duos set off youthful sparks before burning out early. Bjorn Borg and John McEnroe played 14 matches, with each man winning seven; Steffi Graf and Monica Seles, sadly, met just 15 times, with Graf ahead 10-5.

This past Sunday, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic officially entered middle age together. It was their 40th meeting—the Big 4-Oh—though from a competitive standpoint it was one of their least memorable. For the third straight time, Djokovic was by far the better player. Last fall, in both Beijing and London, he beat Rafa 6-3, 6-4; in Miami he closed him out even more rapidly, 6-3, 6-3. It was one of the most comprehensive wins by either man since they first met at the French Open eight years ago.

With this result, Djokovic and Nadal have also come full circle in six quick months. As recently as last September, it was the Spaniard who was completing his own hat trick against the Serb; Nadal’s win in the U.S. Open final was his third straight over Djokovic, and marked his sixth win in their last seven matches. It also virtually guaranteed that he would reclaim his year-end No. 1 spot from Djokovic. For a fleeting moment, Nadal seemed to have the upper hand in the rivalry on both clay and hard courts for the first time.

“Fleeting moment” is the important phrase here, because that’s what the Nadal-Djokovic rivalry has mostly been about: A series of seemingly solid, but ultimately illusory periods of momentum traded back and forth. After the Miami final, Djokovic’s coach Marian Vajda compared the two to Formula One drivers jockeying for position at the front of the race from one week to the next. It’s a good analogy for their careers together. Just when one man appears to have solved the other and put him in the rearview mirror, the other one switches gears and comes roaring past him again. After 40 matches, Nadal leads 22-18, a margin that has been slowly narrowing over the last four years.

Rafa-Nole, in its eternal back and forth, is a rivalry in the truest sense of the word. Since they first played, in ’06, only twice has either man put together a winning streak that lasted longer than three matches. In 2008 and 2009, Nadal won five consecutive times. In the most famous sequence between them, Djokovic beat Rafa seven straight times from March 2011 to January 2012.

After Miami, Novak has his nose in front again. Only time, and their next expected matchup in the Monte Carlo final, will tell whether he can extend his streak, or whether it’s time for Nadal to make another counterattack.

Judging by the statistics I just went over, you might expect it to be Rafa’s time again, and that’s not just because the tour will switch to his favorite surface, clay, for the next two months. It also has to do with this rivalry’s psychology. Part of what has kept these two in flux for so long is the respect that each shows for the other’s game. Any time they’re asked to discuss the other, or to give some insight into how they approach their matches, Nadal and Djokovic talk about how they simply have to play their best to win, and that anything less isn’t going to get it done. They’ve felt that way from the start; I remember being struck by Nadal’s praise for the up-and-coming Djokovic as early as the spring of 2007. Even then, Rafa was already saying that it was no shame to lose to Novak because, “Djokovic is a great player, and that’s it.” Four years later, after Djokovic beat Nadal in the final in Indian Wells, the Serb called the Spaniard the greatest player ever.

The upshot of their two-sided respect is that whenever one player gains the upper hand on the other, his natural instinct isn’t to expect to keep that upper hand, but to have to give it back at some point. And when one player falls behind, his instinct is to believe that, with a tactical maneuver or two, he can take the lead again. Neither Nadal nor Djokovic expects to beat the other forever, and so far they haven’t.

Will that change this time? Will things be different as the two enter their 40s as rivals, and edge closer to their 30s as players? In Miami, Djokovic didn’t just have the edge in execution, he also had the tactical edge. In the past, it seemed that his natural advantage on hard courts was enough; he was so solid all around that he could stay within his normal game and force Nadal to take more risks and be more aggressive than he likes to be. This time, Djokovic went a step farther. He specifically went into Nadal’s forehand and exploited the extra room that Rafa leaves on that side. I’ve never seen Nadal have fewer chances to hit his inside-out forehand, or get beaten so badly by an opponent’s crosscourt backhand. As Djokovic said afterward, that’s a tactic that should work on any surface, including clay.

Now it’s up to Rafa to turn the tables back around, to find a way to cover that open court and still create chances to hit his inside-out forehand. The location will be on his side; in Monte Carlo, he’ll be going for his ninth title at his favorite tournament. Is time still with the 27-year-old Rafa? This week the blog Thriding had a look at the numbers over in the Rafa-Nole rivalry over the years. What sticks out is how, since Djokovic’s career turnaround at the 2010 Davis Cup, he has closed the early gap that Nadal had opened between them. Up to that point, Nadal led 16-7; since then, Djokovic is ahead 11-6. By that measure, according to Thriding, we “might expect” the head-to-head to be 26-26 two years from now. But he also writes, “Are we really expecting nothing to change in the next 24 months?” We might also ask: Will the trend of the last four years continue, or is another phase about to begin?

Of more immediate importance is the fact that, since 2010, Nadal only leads Djokovic 4-3 on clay, and last year Nole stopped his eight-year win streak in the Monte Carlo final. After that match, Djokovic sat down on the sideline with a smile that mixed disbelief with satisfaction. I was reminded of the first time Djokovic had played Nadal on clay, at Roland Garros in 2006. Even after retiring down two sets to love, a 19-year-old Nole turned heads in the interview room when he claimed that he had been in control of the rallies, and that the King of Clay was “beatable.” In Monte Carlo, the 26-year-old Djokovic showed that Rafa was indeed beatable on that court. This year, Nole will try again to prove his 19-year-old self right by beating Nadal on his other favorite court, in Paris.

As for Rafa, he looked relieved to have his streak in Monte Carlo snapped. And while it appeared that Djokovic had the upper hand in their rivalry heading into the clay season, it would be Nadal who would go on to win 44 of his next 45 matches, including three over Djokovic, and finish the season No. 1. Nadal seemed freed up somehow after his Monte Carlo defeat, the same way Djokovic was freed up after surrendering the No. 1 ranking to Rafa at the U.S. Open. Sometimes, the loser can win.

Through 40 wins and losses, the rule of thumb between Nadal and Djokovic has been that, eventually, the hungrier player finds a way. The question now, as Rafa stands at No. 1 but Nole has nosed ahead in their ever-fluctuating personal battle, is which of them is the hunter, and which is the hunted?

Reading the Readers: April 1

Tue, 01 Apr 2014 12:48:00 -0400

With March Madness in the books, it seems like a good time to open the mailbag—with no April fooling around, either. If you have a question or comment for this column, please email me at stignor@tennismagazine.com.

*****

Steve,

I see that you gave Roger [Federer] a B for his performance in Key Biscayne. Do you think that’s really fair for someone who is 32 years old? He's now in the Top 5 and should have beaten a guy [Kei Nishikori] who is 10 years younger than he is.—Alexa

I thought the B was generous, actually; or at least empathetic. I wonder what Federer would give himself for losing to Nishikori after being up a set and a break twice? My grade did factor in, if not his age, his current situation. Federer is 32, he had just reached the finals of back-to-back tournaments, and, with Davis Cup following soon, he had suggested in Indian Wells that he might not even play Miami. Federer also said in Indian Wells that he half-expects himself to have good results followed by “early exits.” Taking his busy and successful last month of play into consideration, I thought a B, despite the fact that he blew a lead in the quarters against a lower-ranked player, was fair for his Miami run.

Your question leads to bigger one: How much slack should we cut Federer for his "advanced" tennis age? Some is in order, of course; I don’t think anyone, even Federer himself, expects him to win 12 tournaments in a season, the way he did in 2006 when he was 25. And leaving aside his past achievements, what he’s doing at 32 is impressive. By that age, Borg, McEnroe, Sampras and most other male Open era greats were either out of the game or in terminal decline; Federer, as you said, just moved back into the Top 5, and he nearly beat the world No. 2, 26-year-old Novak Djokovic, two times in one month. Once upon a time we celebrated Andre Agassi for playing well into his 30s, but he won his last major title, the 2003 Australian Open, at the age Federer is now.

Yet I think we can make too many allowances for Federer’s age. One reason we celebrated Agassi was that at the time he was a rarity. Now we can look back and see that his career marked the beginning of a trend toward success at older ages in tennis. Federer said last month that he doesn’t feel ancient in part because so many of the guys he grew up with are still on tour with him. He’s not a outlier, but part of the aging of the sport in general. Tommy Haas, who turns 36 this week, is ranked No. 17. Radek Stepanek, who has clinched the last two Davis Cups for the Czech Republic, is 35. Stan Wawrinka, who turned 29 last week, just made his biggest career breakthrough. Only one player in the ATP’s Top 10, Milos Raonic, is under 25 (and he’s ranked No. 10). On the women’s side, the world’s two top-ranked women, Serena Williams and Li Na, are both 32.

(The phrase “aging of the game” is unfortunate; it makes it sound like a bad thing, a weakening in some way. I’d say it’s the opposite, that it’s a sign the tour has become at least slightly more humane, and less prone to burning its stars out, over the last two decades. Tennis players shouldn’t have to stop doing what they love at 30, and there's nothing wrong with fans getting to see them at or near their best for as long as possible.)

With Federer, I think we can balance the obvious fact that he won’t be the same player at 32 (or 33, as of early August) that he was when he was 25, without making excuses for him or acting like this part of his career is nothing more than icing on the cake. Federer himself doesn’t make those excuses, or act like he's simply taking a victory lap. He knows that he’ll have more ups and downs than he once did, but he still thinks he should win tournaments regularly and challenge for every Grand Slam. I hear a lot of fans say, after one of his losses, “Well, what do you expect? He’s 32.” But I’ve yet to hear those words out of Federer’s mouth, and I doubt he likes to hear other people say them. Considering that he's 22-4 so far this year, I doubt many of his opponents walk off the court thinking that he's not the player he once was.

For Federer, competing at 32 means competing full out; he couldn't be successful any other way. He has a little more perspective in defeat than he once did, but he's still eating the cake, not the icing, of his career. He's still playing with the same desire and expectation to win that he always has. We should expect the same from ourselves as fans.

*****

Steve,

Maybe you can settle an argument: A friend and I disagree about upsets. I tend to root for them, because they’re exciting. He says he supports the better player, and if you root for an upset, you’re really rooting for the better player to fail. Do you think wanting to see upsets makes me a hater?—Sundip

As a lifelong lover of the upset and the underdog, I’ve had similar conversations over the years with different people. And I had some of the same thoughts last weekend, during the Sony Open and the NCAA March Madness games. Even as I was enjoying the spate of college-basketball upsets in the early rounds, I had to admit that part of that enjoyment came from seeing coaches who have been elevated to god-like status—Tom Izzo, Jim Boeheim, Bill Self, Coach K—come crashing back to earth. Which means that I was rooting in part for someone’s failure. But that wasn’t enough to stop me. To my mind, one of the benefits of sports is that, except for a few rare cases, every athlete, team, and coach is proven to be human in the end, and that no result is set in stone. I don’t think these are bad things for the rest of us to remember.

In tennis, my argument in favor of upsets starts with the (dubious) concept of, as you call it, the “better player.” All players are obviously not created equal, but when two top pros face off, there’s no such thing as a “better player” in the absolute sense. There’s only a winner and a loser of that particular match; or, as the pros like to say, there’s only someone who is “the better player on the day.” Over time, by looking at the results of many matches, we can determine who had the better career. But that doesn’t mean anyone is supposed to win any match. As the commentators like to say, “That’s why they play the game.” It’s the ultimate cliché, but it’s a worthy one. All any can match determine is a winner and a loser, not a better and a worse. Next week there will be a new match, and a new winner and loser.

When you root for the underdog, you aren’t rooting for failure. You’re rooting for surprise and, as you say, excitement. You’re rooting for the idea that every match—every sporting event—offers an equal opportunity for either competitor to win, and to be the better man or woman on that day.

Making the Marks in Miami

Mon, 31 Mar 2014 23:00:00 -0400

The Sony Open suffers in all current comparisons with its rival in Indian Wells, and it wasn’t helped this year by a disastrous double-pullout in the men’s semifinals. But the tournament closed well, with weekend finals between the No. 1 and No. 2 men and women—not many events can say that. As the tours and the talk move to clay, here’s an assessment of what we saw from the major players over the last two weeks in Miami. Feel free to hand down your own grades in the comments below.

*****

Novak Djokovic

Who says new coach Boris Becker hasn’t helped? He seems to have given Djokovic a better appreciation of what his old coach, Marian Vajda, has to say.

What a difference a match can make: Before Djokovic’s win over Roger Federer in Indian Wells—even during his win over Federer—he looked and sounded frustrated and doubtful. Djokovic was inconsistent and, in his own words, unsure of his “mental approach in the big moments.” Now, two weeks later, he’s walked away with the rare Indian Wells-Miami double for the second time; on the men's side, only Federer has also done it twice.

Just as significant for the immediate future, Djokovic has done what he hired Becker to help him do: Catch up to Nadal. Since his loss to him in last year’s U.S. Open final, Djokovic is 3-0 against Rafa, with all of those wins coming in straight sets. Yesterday’s was the most comprehensive of all. He was superior in every aspect of the game, and had success going straight into Nadal’s strength, his forehand, and exploiting the gap that the Spaniard leaves open on that side with his cross-court backhand. As Djokovic said afterward, there’s no reason this tactic can’t work on clay, too.

For the last three years, we’ve been told that Djokovic would never go back to playing the way he did in 2011. That’s probably true. But now that he’s looking good yet again, it’s time we all stopped speculating and worrying that he’s going to go back to what he was like before 2011. A+

Serena Williams

Serena also used these two weeks, as she has six times in the past, to show that she’s not going anywhere, anytime soon. After losses in Melbourne and Dubai, she won her second event of the year and recorded wins over two of her closest competitors (in the rankings, anyway), Maria Sharapova and Li Na, in straight sets. While the scores of those two matches looked routine, Serena started slowly in both; she went down 1-4 to Sharapova and 2-5 to Li Na. Her coach, Patrick Mouratoglou, told the New York Times that she felt the pressure of having to repeat her dominant ways of the last two years. But it looked to me like Serena, as has often been the case with her, simply needed to feel challenged—to feel the urgency of a possible defeat—before she could engage fully and instinctively.

Those slow starts aren’t the best sign for the immediate future; the pressure to repeat will be with her for most of the year, and she won’t always be able to come up with a backhand winner from well behind the baseline when she’s down set point, as she did against Li. But the way she responded showed that once she does engage, Serena's still a cut—and a serve, a forehand, and a backhand—above everyone else. A+

Li Na

It ended quickly and brutally, but Miami qualifies as progress for Li. For much of it, she suffered through her usual wild swings in form. This time, though, rather than succumbing to them mentally and lashing out at her coach and husband, she stayed patient and managed her way through—she seemed to be confident that her lulls wouldn’t last forever. And the shot she hit, a high forehand, when she had set point on Serena, was the right one. There wasn’t much she could have done after that. A-

Rafael Nadal

It’s all about match-ups, no? Nadal started this tournament looking much better than he had at the previous one, in Indian Wells. He finished it by enduring one of the most lopsided defeats of his career. Rafa is still No. 1, and after skipping Miami last year, he gained 500 points in the rankings with his runner-up finish. But Djokovic remains a thorny match-up.

In their 40th meeting, nothing worked for Nadal. It was bad enough for him to watch Djokovic’s crosscourt backhands sail past; it must have been even worse watching his own service returns sail over the baseline for no discernible reason. Or maybe there was a discernible reason: Nadal knew that everything had to be perfect if he was going to stay with Djokovic on this day. During the first set, Nadal hit nine percent of his shots while he was in front of the baseline, 91 percent while he was behind it.

“Easy to analyze,” Nadal said afterward, “the opponent was better than me. That’s it.”

So here we are again. As in 2005, 2008, and 2011, Nadal leaves Miami a final-round loser. Each of those years he went to Monte Carlo and left a final-round winner. In 2014, that tournament, his favorite, will mean more than ever. A-

Dominika Cibulkova

Even if she doesn’t reach another Grand Slam final anytime soon, Domi has established herself. She was three games from the final in the third set against Li. She beat Agnieszka Radwanska for the second straight time this year. And she cracked the Top 10 for the first time in her career at 24. Judging by her overjoyed reaction, she’s been waiting to say that last fact for a long time. Could chasing her dream leave her burned out down the road? Cibulkova has already played seven tournaments, plus Fed Cup, this season. Still, it’s hard to imagine her running out of energy. A-

Kei Nishikori

His leaping backhand winner at match point against Roger Federer in the quarterfinals turned out to be a leap too far. He hurt himself and had to withdraw from the semifinals. But add him to the list, with Dimitrov, Gulbis, and Dolgopolov, of young-ish guys who have made inroads in the first quarter of the year.

And that backhand did make for a helluva way to go out. A-

Maria Sharapova

She won without her best in the early going, then she won with something approximating her best against Petra Kvitova. She also played well against Serena, and at least made her loss a high-quality one. But I thought the most telling moment came on a changeover, when her coach, Sven Groeneveld, told her that “the plan was working” against Serena, despite the fact that she had just lost the first set. Sharapova essentially rolled her eyes at him. As determined as she is, after 15 straight losses, it’s going to take more than anything a coach can say to get her to believe she can beat Serena again. B+

Milos Raonic

Raonic recovered from an early-season injury to reach the quarters and push Nadal to three. Then, at 3-all, he made the fatal mistake of getting his first serve in at break point. Rather than having to think about it, Nadal just reacted to the bomb, and won the point. I’m not sure Raonic has improved since last year—he still struggles when his serve comes back—but as of this week, he’s back in the Top 10. B+

Alexandr Dolgopolov

Just when I start speculating about his improved closing skills, he fails to close a second set against Tomas Berdych. Still, a quarterfinal appearance and a win over Stan Wawrinka qualifies as a surprisingly solid follow-up to his Indian Wells run. B+

Elina Svitolina

Once the unknown up-and-comer, Svitolina, of Ukraine, is making a name for herself. She beat fellow youngster Genie Bouchard in three sets, and took a set from Radwanska two rounds later. A player, finally, to remember. B+

David Ferrer

Yes, he was beaten by Nishikori in the fourth round. But on a hot day, when his fellow Europeans Tsonga, Gasquet, and Wawrinka looked as if they were trying to beat each other to the airport, Ferrer stayed in (little) beast-mode and fought it out to the bitter end. B+

Agnieszka Radwanska

Another week, another surprising disappointment for Aga. In Indian Wells, a knee injury caught up to her at the wrong moment, in the final. In Miami, Cibulkova did. In the second set, Radwanska had three match points at 5-4 and led 5-2 in the tiebreaker. For all of her genius, Aga's body leaves her vulnerable to breakdown, and her finesse game leaves her vulnerable to any opponent’s hot streak. B

Roger Federer

It’s all about matchups and pressure, no? In his easy win over Richard Gasquet, Federer’s backhand was, as they say, firing on all cylinders. In his three-set loss to Nishikori, it lost a cylinder or two along the way. At a certain point in their quarterfinal, Nishikori started to dictate the baseline rallies, yet Federer didn’t try to vary things much. For all of the talk of Fedberg, he came to the net just 16 times over the course of a long three-setter. Federer has had a very good and promising first quarter of 2014, but against Djokovic in Indian Wells and Nishikori in Miami, he was the less-confident player in the crucial moments. B

Andy Murray

Murray finished the spring hard-court swing in an OK, if still vexing, place. While his back troubles seem to be behind him, and he’s certainly played enough tennis in 2014 to feel comfortable on court, he’s still dealing with another residual effect of his time off for surgery: A diminished ranking—he’s currently No. 8—that has put him up against Federer in the quarters in Australia, and Djokovic in the quarters in Miami.

Against Novak, it didn’t appear that Murray knew quite how to react after being robbed of a point at the end of the first set. Anger didn’t take him far in the second. Now, without Ivan Lendl, how far can he climb before he has to defend his Wimbledon title? B

Stan Wawrinka

You can't keep failing better forever. C+

Richard Gasquet/Jo-Wilfried Tsonga

In retrospect, their hit-the-road fourth-round losses to Federer and Murray made those two look like they were playing at a higher level than they were. D+

Sloane Stephens

I won't speculate about her future or criticize her words afterward. I'll just say that I hope her 55-minute, 6-1, 6-0 loss to Caroline Wozniacki goes down as a low point in her career. It's hard to get lower. F

The Week in Preview: March 31

Mon, 31 Mar 2014 16:58:00 -0400

There’s no rest for the weary, the wicked, or the legendary this week. As of last night, Serena Williams had already joined her sister Venus in Charleston, while Roger Federer was on his way to joining his fellow Swiss Stan Wawrinka for a Davis Cup tie in Geneva. I’ll be back on Thursday with previews of this weekend’s four quarterfinal Cup ties. Today I’ll take a look at what’s ahead for the women as they begin their shift from hard courts to clay.

*****

Family Circle Cup

Charleston, S.C.
$710,000; Premier
Green clay
Draw is here

Miami is the tournament that Serena Williams has won seven times, but the last two years, Charleston was where she began a clay-court roll that took her all the way to Paris. In 2012 that roll was stopped by Virginie Razzano in a first-round stunner at Roland Garros; in 2013 it took her to the title.

While clay was once her least-favorite surface, in recent years it has been the spring season on dirt where Serena has really separated herself from the rest of the field. Both times she began that separation with wins in Charleston.

Serena will begin her 2014 Charleston campaign against either Melanie Oudin or Jana Cepelova. The seeds in her half are Sloane Stephens, Sara Errani, and Sorana Cirstea. Stephens, who will start against the winner between Elina Svitolina and Jarmila Gajdosova, could obviously use a win after her...disappointing performance in Miami. Come to think of it, Errani, who has lost early at her last three tournaments, dropped out of the Top 10, and is a specialist on clay, could use a boost right about now as well.

The event’s No. 2 seed is Jelena Jankovic; last year she made the final here, and won the first set from Williams before losing. This year she’s coming off a rough loss to Varvara Lepchenko in Miami; JJ will try to get back on the right track against Lauren Davis of the United States. The seeds on her side are Sam Stosur, who has won this tournament, Sabine Lisicki, and Eugenie Bouchard.

Already through her opener: Madison Keys

Already out: Alison Riske

Qualifier to watch: Belinda Bencic of Switzerland, who upset 10th seed Maria Kirilenko on Monday

Sleeper: Caroline Garcia

*****

Monterrey Open

Monterrey, Mexico
$500,000; International
Hard courts (Plexipave)
Draw is here

Monterrey is full of surprises, at least to me. First, it’s played on hard courts, not clay. Second, it offers a heftier-than-I-expected $500,000 in cash. Third, it has a stronger draw than I thought it would. The top seed is Indian Wells champion Flavia Pennetta, and the second seed is the woman who beat Pennetta last week in Miami, Ana Ivanovic. Between them are, among others, Garbine Muguruza, Monica Puig, Kirsten Flipkens, and Caroline Wozniacki.

First-round match to watch: Garbine Muguruza vs. the Garbine Muguruza of 2013, Donna Vecic.

Methods to the Madness

Fri, 28 Mar 2014 13:27:00 -0400

For those of us who follow tennis and other sports in the U.S., March is the month when we get the most practice with our TV remote controls. We spend the better part of three weeks flicking back and forth between broadcasts of the NCAA college-basketball tournament, and the big tennis events in Indian Wells and Miami. These days, the NCAAs are played during Miami; once upon a time, they happened two weeks earlier, during Indian Wells. One of the pleasurable challenges of working in the press room there was trying to concentrate on a tennis match on one monitor, while keeping an eye on a basketball game on another nearby. The effort, of course, was mostly futile. As you scribbled some useless tidbit about a double fault, a shout would go up from a group of people who were crowded around a screen in the next row, watching hoops. You had obviously missed the buzzer beater.

To fans in the States, the NCAA tournament, which determines the Division I national champions in basketball, is known as March Madness. To the players, it’s known as the Big Dance. I can’t say that tennis’ version quite measures up to those classics of sloganeering hype. As fun as Indian Wells is, the word “madness” doesn’t come to mind when I walk the grounds there—unless an occasional senior moment qualifies. And as important as these tournaments are, most would agree that if tennis has a Big Dance, it still takes place at the All England Club in the summer.

But there are similarities. In the 1960s, tennis was a last bastion of amateurism. Looking back, it’s difficult to grasp that as late as 1968, the winner of the U.S. Open, Arthur Ashe, received $280 in expense money, which he used to make a monthly payment on his Ford Mustang. Yet today, college football and basketball players are still playing for scholarship and expense money, even as they help bring in millions for their universities. If you’ve been following the news in the U.S., you know that this week, for the first time, athletes at a college were deemed to be employees, and thus theoretically allowed to unionize. Perhaps in the years ahead, collegiate athletes will look to the struggle of tennis players in the 1960s and 70s for inspiration.

At a less serious level, I’ve always been amazed at the capacity of both tennis and college basketball to generate hate. It’s no coincidence that in 2011, the NCAA tournament inspired an article in Slate entitled, “Teams We Hate: Duke, Akron, and Five More Odious Schools in the NCAA Tournament." That was followed last year by Grantland's “The Most Hated College Basketball Players of All Time.” The latter was written as a bracket, with seeds, and voted on by readers. If you know anything about college hoops, you know who the winner was. Even my mom, when I asked her to guess the champion, immediately said, “Oh, it has to be Christian Laettner.”

She was right. The much-reviled Laettner led Duke to back-to-back titles in the 1990s, and his miracle buzzer-beater jump shot against Kentucky from ’92 still haunts us, like a horrible recurring national nightmare, in NCAA promotional ads every March. Seriously, I can still remember where I was when it happened, and the searing pain it caused.

By now, Duke-hating is a sport in itself in this country. Grantland filled a full quarter of its villain-bracket with players from the school, and sportswriter Will Blythe wrote an entire book about its basketball team called To Hate Like This is to Be Happy Forever (the cover pretty much sets the tone). Despising Duke is a class-based activity; it’s an elite, expensive, smart-person school that also happens to have the most successful basketball program of the last 30 years. What’s not to resent?

Tennis-fan hate reminds me more of the partisan divide in U.S. politics. First, you instinctively choose a side in a rivalry—Rafa or Roger, Chris or Martina, Borg or McEnroe, Serena or Justine. From then on, you give your unconditional love to the player you’ve chosen, and despise everything about the player you’ve rejected. You always think the best of your favorite, and find whatever his or her rival does suspicious (at best). After a million close-ups on TV, your favorite player becomes a virtual member of your family—no one understands this person the way you do. His or her rivals, as threats to the family member, must be destroyed. Or at least highly disliked.

Yet it’s virtually impossible to explain the appeal of college sports to tennis fans from other countries. Last year at the U.S. Open, London tennis writers shook their heads at the sight of 110,000 people, all in one color, gathering to watch a football game between Notre Dame and the University of Michigan. And when you see it from that point of view, it does seem slightly ludicrous. My only explanation is to compare college athletics to another event that retains some of its old amateur spirit, the Olympics. During the Games and the NCAAs, you get briefly but intensely involved in the lives of people you’ve never heard of, and whose names you will have forgotten two weeks later. And that's the nature of the excitement: It comes from the fact that everything is on the line for them right now.

Part of the appeal of college sports and the Olympics is that this particular type of excitement feels old-fashioned. For most of the competitors, it has nothing to do with money or a future profession. Sports is something they’ll move on from, and that strikes part of us as the way it should be. The opposite feels true for tennis, at least in March. In our now-highly-professionalized sport, there’s always another match, another tournament, another chance coming down the pike. In fact, this month there are two tournaments that are exactly alike. Rafael Nadal and Maria Sharapova went out early in Indian Wells? No problem, there’s always Miami next week.

At the same time, though, the now-ness of the Olympics and the NCAA tournament is absurd and unfair. Neither is a good way to decide who’s the best at any skill; these events just tell you who was the best at it on a single day. That makes for heart-pounding viewing, but it’s no way to structure a year-round professional sport. Tennis fans often lament that the game goes too far in the other direction, that it has no climactic tournament or moment. And it's true: The year-end No. 1 can be decided, and is usually decided, by the tour's computer, after a random match that takes place months in advance of the end of the season.

Yet I think tennis, once amateur, now professional, has stumbled upon something close to an ideal balance between thrills and fairness. The Grand Slams function as four NCAA tournaments each year; for the players and their fans, winning one of them is always going to be a do-it-now-or-you-may-never-have-this-chance-again kind of moment—think of Andy Murray in the last game of the 2013 Wimbledon final. But determining who's the best in any given tennis season never depends on just one match. Recent reductions in the schedule, however minor, have also made the year-end No. 1 ranking feel more prestigious. The top player owns that title for a little bit longer now, and each season feels more individuated, like something worth winning in itself.

As for this weekend, we can enjoy the best of both worlds. There will be madness on the basketball court, but we can return to sanity on the tennis court in Miami, where the world’s two best women, Serena Williams and Li Na, will face off, and the world’s two best men, Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal will be in action. And we can love and hate whomever of those people we choose.

Miami: Li d. Cibulkova

Fri, 28 Mar 2014 01:18:00 -0400

At times Indian Wells and Miami can seem to be carbon copies of each other, two hot American hard-court events with virtually the same draws, played over back-to-back fortnights. Happily for Li Na, and unfortunately for Dominika Cibulkova, these two women probably feel like they just played carbon-copy matches at each tournament.

For the second time in a month, Li beat Cibulkova in three sets; and for the second time in a month, Cibulkova had Li on the ropes at the start of the third set, only to watch her bigger, stronger opponent blow past her down the homestretch. This time the final score was 7-5, 2-6, 6-3.

Cibulkova has come a long way already in 2014; she’s cracked the Top 10 and reached her first Grand Slam final. But she still can’t beat Li; she’s now 0-7 against the world No. 2, and three of those losses have happened this season. It’s not hard to see why. Both women hit hard and go big at the first available opportunity; but Li is bigger, and can hit harder. If she’s playing well, she has more power and can open the court with sharper angles; if she’s playing well, she’s going to win.

This time both women played better than they had in their error-riddled slog in the California desert. It was windy in Miami, and that led to nine double faults and 14 service breaks between them—as well as countless errant ball tosses that needed to be caught. But on Thursday night, Li and Cibulkova connected on plenty of winners to go along with the mistakes that always come with their risky, streaky games. For much of the match, they traded breaks of serve; Cibulkova, especially, went all-in on her returns.

By the middle of the third, it looked like Domi’s risks would be rewarded. She won the first eight points of the set, and at 3-1 she had a point to go up a double break. Li, who had been reeling, and shanking, for the better part of two sets, shanked another forehand that landed on the sideline, then scooped a forehand off the court and into the corner for a game-saving—and, it would turn out, match-saving—winner. Li went on to hold, and on the second point of Cibulkova’s next service game, at 3-2, she rifled her cleanest shot in an hour, a forehand return down the line, for a winner.

Sometimes a switch seems to go on—or off—in Li’s game, and everything changes; shots that had been going out, go in, and vice-versa. This was one of those switch-on moments for her. She broke with a backhand winner for 3-3, broke again at 4-3, and, despite two horrid, frame-job double-faults at 5-3, she saved a break point and closed it out on her third match point. As she had in the previous round against Caroline Wozniacki, Li managed her way through her lulls and made the most of her hot streaks. She actually lost more points to Cibulkova than she won, 95 to 94, but won the two tight sets.

With the victory, Li advances to her first final in Key Biscayne, and tennis fans get a look at the first match between the WTA’s No. 1 and No. 2 of 2014, when she meets Serena Williams on Saturday. Li has survived some rough patches of play to get this far. She’ll need to do more than that to get her second win in 11 matches against Serena.