Articles by Steve Tignor

40 years later, Renée Richards' breakthrough is as important as ever

Wed, 20 Sep 2017 04:00:00 +0000

Before autumn's arrival on Saturday, we'll relive one of tennis' most memorable summers. The 1977 season was one of the most colorful and enduringly significant in the game's history. Over three days this week, we’ll celebrate the 40th anniversary of that most memorable of sporting summers.

Part 3: Renégade

The 1977 US Open was the culmination of Renée Richards' lifelong journey in tennis and identity

Part 2: The Best of Rivals, The Best of Friends—How Borg, Connors, Gerulaitis and McEnroe stirred masses and moved poets at Wimbledon

Part 1: The Eternal Second—Guillermo Vilas' herculean, 145-win campaign still wasn't enough to make him No. 1

As Renée Richards walked through the winding, Tudor-lined lanes of Forest Hills, people from the neighborhood gathered around her to wish her luck. After seeing the ophthalmologist’s picture in the newspapers for months, the locals of Queens knew where she was going—the West Side Tennis Club—and the magnitude of what she was about to do.

It was August 1977, the closing weeks of the notorious Summer of Sam in New York City. Over three harrowing months, the crumbling metropolis had been rocked by terrorizing riots, a chaotic blackout and the frantic search for a serial killer. As autumn mercifully approached, though, tennis became the talk of the town, and Richards was, for the moment, the world’s most talked-about athlete.

In 1953, Richards had entered the men’s draw at the U.S. Nationals under the name Richard Raskind. Twenty-four years later—and two years after having sexual-reassignment surgery and changing her name—Renée was on her way to play her first match as a woman at the same event, now known as the US Open. To make it there, she had weathered a chromosome test, boycotts by her fellow players, the scrutiny of the media, a ban by the sport’s officials and a lawsuit to overturn that ban.

But Forest Hills wasn’t just the home of the Open; it was also Richards’ home. These tree-lined lanes were where young Richard had grown up, where he had learned to play tennis—and where he discovered as a child that he had a second, female self inside him, fighting to get out.

“People crowded ’round,” Richards recalled of her walk to West Side that day, “wishing me well on the same streets where I had skulked 30 years before, wearing my sister’s clothes.”

Now, at 43, she felt free.

“There was tennis to be played,” Richards said. “My heart lightened at the prospect. I was about to do the thing that had saved me so many times before—and on the greatest stage in the world, I would do it as Renée.”

Richards’ walk through the gates at West Side was the culmination of a 12-month whirlwind that had upended her life and her sport, and left her playing, as she put it, “tennis in a fishbowl.”

She had taken the plunge into that fishbowl in August 1976, when she entered her first pro tournament as a woman at the Orange Lawn Tennis Club in New Jersey. There had never been a debut quite like it. The Rolls Royce that took her to the grounds before her opening match was greeted by dozens of fans, autograph seekers and celebrity hounds. As the car approached the clubhouse, the mob surged toward it. Inside, Richards sank down in her seat. Was this private person ready for the public life that awaited her?

Just one year before, Dr. Richard Raskind, an accomplished athlete who had captained the men’s team at Yale two decades earlier, had undergone sexual-reassignment surgery. Soon after, as Dr. Renée Richards, she moved from New York to Newport Beach, CA, to start a new life. But there was one thing she couldn’t leave behind: her conspicuous skill at tennis.

After impressing the members at her new club, Richards agreed to enter a tournament in nearby La Jolla. A woman in the audience made the connection between the tall lefty who was mowing down the competition, and a story she heard about a tennis-playing doctor who moved west after having a sex change.

When a TV station subsequently—and erroneously—ran a report that Richards was a man masquerading as a woman, she became front-page news. Richards set the record straight at a press conference. The attention died down, and the paparazzi moved on. But one set of reports continued to irk her.

“Officials in the governing bodies of tennis,” Richards wrote in an autobiography, Second Serve, “were quoted as saying that I would not be allowed to participate in major championships for women because of my past as Richard Raskind.”

Richards had never been an activist, but after her story broke she received an avalanche of mail, many from minority communities, urging her to play. “The whole world seemed to be looking for me to be their Joan of Arc,” she said.

After some prodding, Richards decided to take on the role. She wanted “to prove that transsexuals as well as other persons fighting social stigmas can hold their heads up high.”

Among the letters Richards received was one from an old friend, Gene Scott. The former pro was angry at how Richards was being treated, so he invited her to enter the tournament he ran in New Jersey. When she accepted, 23 female players boycotted.

At the Orange Lawn Tennis Club that August, Scott was there to help Richards out of the Rolls Royce and through the crowd of gawkers. The clubhouse offered a respite from the masses, but she wasn’t free of the press. To get to her practice court, Richards slipped out a back window and down a fire escape.

By the time her match began, she was punch-drunk and exhausted. “Don’t fall down, Renée,” was all she could think.

Knowing that Howard Cosell was calling the match for a national television audience didn’t help. The only thing that did was the fact that her opponent, Kathy Beene, was even more nervous. Beene double-faulted 11 times, and Richards won in just 47 minutes.

Richards was front-page news again, though sportswriters didn’t know what to make of this new brand of athlete.

“At first, it seemed like a put-on,” Sports Illustrated wrote. “A transsexual tennis player? A 6'2" former football end in frilly panties and gold hoop earrings pounding serves past defenseless girls?”

UPI, in its report on her first-round match, described Richards as a “tall and attractive 42-year-old ophthalmologist.”

Later that night in Manhattan, Richards took pride in what she had accomplished when she saw the next day’s Daily News. As her fellow New Yorkers leaned out of cab windows to shout their encouragement, she read a headline that could have been written for Jimmy Connors or Joe Namath: RENEE ROLLS IN NEW JERSEY OPENER

Richards’ victory took her to a dizzying new place in her public life, but it also brought her back home. The night before her match against Beene, she paid a surprise visit to her father, David, at the family’s house in Forest Hills. She was relieved when he greeted her as if nothing had changed. A few days later, David Raskind paid a surprise visit of his own when he showed up at Orange Lawn for Renée’s third match.

Tennis had been at the heart of their relationship. Years before, they had bonded during hitting sessions at the Sunrise Club in Queens, as both tried to escape the stressful intensity of life at home. There, young Richard was dominated by his mother and his older sister, who dressed him as a girl. By 9, he had begun to dress himself that way.

As a teen, Richard came across Man Into Woman, the autobiography of Lili Elbe, a transsexual who was portrayed by Eddie Redmayne in The Danish Girl. Elbe’s story rang true for Raskind. From his teens through his 30s, his psyche was the site of a prolonged battle between his outer male self, and an inner female persona who was constantly fighting to get the upper hand.

“During this period,” Richards said, “I probably would not have survived without tennis. Athletics was the one constant in an otherwise uncertain world.”

On the surface, Richard Raskind was a success. He excelled at sports, graduated from Yale, became a surgeon, married and had a son, Nick. Underneath, though, he felt that he might “go mad” if he “continued masquerading as Dick.” At 40, Raskind underwent the three-and-half-hour procedure that set Renée free for good.

When Richards’ run in New Jersey came to an end in the semis, against Lea Antonopolis, she thought she would repeat her breakthrough at the US Open. After all, that loss proved a woman could beat her.

Despite being certified as a woman by the state of New York, though, Richards was forced to take a chromosome test. She refused to take it at first; when she did, the result was ambiguous. After being denied entry into the 1976 US Open, Richards countered with a lawsuit.

During that time, Richards said she saw the “best and worst of women’s professional tennis.” Promoter Gladys Heldman risked WTA sanction when she invited Richards to play at her events. Billie Jean King’s World Team Tennis offered her a contract. Martina Navratilova encouraged Richards and later hired her as her coach. Others weren’t as welcoming: one opponent responded to Richards’ aces with a middle finger.

Help came from an unsavory, if effective, corner: Roy Cohn. The legendarily vicious consigliere to Joseph McCarthy and Donald Trump took Richards’ case. The tennis authorities never stood a chance. With a supportive affidavit from King, Richards won her suit.

Yet that wasn’t the end of the controversy. At the 1977 US Open, Richards drew Virginia Wade in the first round. Asked how she would feel if she lost to Richards, Wade said, “I’d demand that she be tested.” Wade said she was joking and was misquoted, but did admit she wasn’t “comfortable with the whole idea.” By the time the match started before a capacity stadium crowd, Richards and Wade weren’t speaking.

Wade, the ’77 Wimbledon champion, needn’t have worried; she beat a nervous Richards, 6–1, 6–4. But Richards settled down in doubles and reached the final with Betty Ann Stuart. She would eventually settle into the tour as well, climb to No. 20 in the world and coach Navratilova to No. 1. Richards found a home in women’s tennis, playing the game that had saved her so many times before.

Now 83, Richards lives in upstate New York, far from the spotlight. Controversial in 1977, she is hailed as a pioneer in 2017, a time when the world has watched Bruce Jenner become Caitlyn Jenner.

Richards remains a reluctant symbol. She has said she sees her gender status as a “part of life,” not a “way of life.”

“I am first and last an individual.”

Spoken like a tennis player. If Richards is a hero to the LGBT community, she should also be one to players and fans. She made the Open era live up to its name by forcing the game to welcome anyone with the courage to be herself.

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How Borg, Connors, Gerulaitis & McEnroe stirred masses and moved poets

Tue, 19 Sep 2017 12:11:00 +0000

Part 2: The Best of Rivals, The Best of Friends

Forty years ago, Wimbledon started by marking its 100th anniversary, and finished by taking the men’s game to new heights of popularity

Part 1: The Eternal Second—Guillermo Vilas' herculean, 145-win campaign still wasn't enough to make him No. 1

“It’s the day of the superstar,” Gordon Forbes thought as he took his seat inside a sun-drenched Centre Court to watch the 1977 Wimbledon men’s final. A 43-year-old ex-player from South Africa, he had known the All England Club in a simpler time, before the sport boomed and the masses invaded its lawns.

Forbes had returned, like dozens of his friends from the amateur days, for Wimbledon’s Centenary celebration. He wasn’t the only one among them to discover that, as he wrote, “Tennis has changed. Come into money and gone absolutely public.”

Looking down at the familiar well-worn grass, Forbes watched two of the superstars of the new game in action. Bjorn Borg, 21, and Jimmy Connors, 24, the first pure products of the Open era, were about to play a fifth set for the title.

“Marvelously detached. Inscrutable. Patient. There is a balance in his perspective,” Forbes marveled at Borg, as the Swede raced to a 4–0 lead.

When Connors roared back to make it 4–4, Forbes compared the American to “a complicated machine that has been finely programmed to hit hundreds of risky winners.”

Connors slapped his thigh and rolled his head like a prize fighter. Borg silently bent down into his return stance, showing no signs of the emotions roiling him. The championship was in the balance and Centre Court was on a knife edge.

It was the only way for this extraordinary fortnight to end. WIMBLEDON WAS NEVER BETTER, Sports Illustrated declared when it ended, and it was hard to argue. After 100 years, the ’77 edition showcased a men’s field that—in the form of semifinalists Borg, Connors, John McEnroe and Vitas Gerulaitis—had reached a peak of popularity, personality, quality and controversy.

Superstars had come to tennis, and the pro game was about to take a turn in the sun.

In 1977, the International Lawn Tennis Association, which had run the sport for 65 years, dropped “Lawn” from its name. It was an acknowledgement of the fact that, by the 1970s, tennis was tennis, whether it was played on a grass-court preserve or on one of the new public asphalt courts being laid down across the United States.

Throughout that decade, as the sport found a TV audience for the first time, it began to echo the surrounding culture in a way that it never had before. In ’77, that echo could be heard, loudly, at Wimbledon.

It was a tumultuous summer in London. The city was celebrating Queen Elizabeth II’s Silver Jubilee, even as its radios were tuned to the punk rock that had upended the pop charts. In early June, the most notorious of those punks, the Sex Pistols, blared their sardonic anthems, like “Anarchy in the U.K.,” during a boat cruise up the Thames. Two weeks later, the anti-establishment spirit found its way into Centre Court.

Before the first day’s play, Wimbledon held a champions’ parade, in which all living singles winners were invited back to receive a medal. Forty-three of 52 past champions attended, including Rod Laver, who hadn’t played at Wimbledon since 1971. His second-round loss later that week was seen by many as the end of a more gentlemanly era in tennis.

In place of Laver, the sport now had Connors, for better or worse. The champion in 1974, Connors was also scheduled to receive a medal. Instead, while the parade was held on Centre Court, Jimbo practiced with Ilie Nastase on the grounds. Connors said he needed to test a splint for his injured thumb, and hadn’t intended to snub the club. That’s not how the fans saw it; they showered him with boos when he appeared for his first match. Only when a serve hit Connors in the crotch and sent him tumbling to the grass did their jeers turn to cheers.

The next day, Wimbledon announced that a medal would not be sent to any champion “who had the extreme discourtesy not to collect it.”

Still, Connors made his way through the draw as expected. The only surprise was that his “Ugly American” antics suddenly seemed tame when compared to those of the 18-year-old he would meet in the semis. There was a new Johnny Rotten in town, and his name was McEnroe. Years earlier, Connors had been branded “The Brat” by the British tabloids; their writers upped the ante for McEnroe, who would forever be known in their pages as “Superbrat.”

That summer McEnroe skipped his prep-school graduation in New York for a European adventure at the French Open and Wimbledon. The self-described “unheralded amateur with chubby cheeks, thick thighs and Snickers bars in my equipment bag” made it through qualifying, and then found himself, to his surprise, cruising into the second week on the strength of his lefty serve and precocious racquet-work. But it wasn’t McEnroe’s talent that fans noticed first; it was his temper.

“He had an assortment of facial expressions reminiscent of a hungry infant denied milk,” wrote TENNIS’ Peter Bodo.

In a preview of tantrums to come, McEnroe, in his quarterfinal against Phil Dent, put his foot over his wooden racquet and threatened to snap it in half. When the spectators voiced their disapproval, he kicked the frame across the grass. The boos got louder.

But McEnroe discovered—not for the last time—that his temper didn’t undermine his talent, and he beat Dent in five sets. The teen’s adventure would take him to a place he never expected: Centre Court, and a meeting with Connors.

Did McEnroe’s countryman welcome him to the big time with open arms? Not exactly. In the locker room beforehand, McEnroe timidly tried to introduce himself to Connors. “He wouldn’t look at me,” McEnroe recalled. “He wouldn’t even acknowledge my existence.”

“Do I even belong here with this guy?” McEnroe wondered. “At that moment, I pretty much decided I did not want to win this match. Couldn’t handle it.”

McEnroe’s wish was granted. Connors ground him down in four sets, but not before acknowledging that “this skinny kid was probably going to be around for a while.” Jimbo had seen the future and, for a day, he had intimidated it. The decade-long rivalry between these two hot-headed Irish-American lefties had gotten off to an appropriately unfriendly start.

“If McEnroe stirred the masses,” wrote Sports Illustrated’s Curry Kirkpatrick, “the other semifinal moved poets.”

As Jimbo and Johnny Mac exited Centre Court, Borg and Geruliatis entered. The Angelic Assassin and the Lithuanian Lion made for an oddly matched pair. Each sported long, blond hair and wore skin-tight white shirts and ultra-short shorts—Borg was in his customary Fila pinstripes, while Gerulaitis had his Sergio Tacchini collar turned up. For the next five sets, their play was as crisp as their clothes.

While Connors and McEnroe made their noisy way through the fortnight, Borg had done the same in his trademark style—silently, and a little miraculously. He survived a five-set scare against Mark Edmondson in the second round; the sometimes janitor went up two sets to love before Borg woke up.

Now Borg had to survive another, even more perilous five-setter, against Gerulaitis. When Gerulaitis wasn’t at Studio 54, the fast-talking 23-year-old from Queens was coming into his own as a player. That spring he had won the Italian Open, but Gerulaitis’ finest tennis came in his loss to Borg.

British writer Rex Bellamy compared their semifinal to a flash of “summer lightning” across the grass. Borg won the first set, but Gerulaitis settled in and took the second with his measured attack. By the third, both men were in peak form, and the match crested in an epic fourth game.

“The two longhairs drifted about the grass as if on wings,” Kirkpatrick wrote. “Side to side, back to front, here delivering rocket drives, there issuing drop volleys; here racing down delicate lobs, there serving and volleying away heavy artillery. Fourteen of the game’s 22 points were clean winners.”

When Gerulaitis broke to go up 3–2 in the fifth set, on yet another clean winner, Borg looked ready to lose. The question was, did Gerulaitis think he was ready to win? Then, for the first time all afternoon, Gerulaitis hesitated.

Borg took advantage, broke back and escaped, 8–6 in the fifth. Gerulaitis’ shoulders slumped after he shook Borg’s hand. He would never reach a Wimbledon final, and he would never beat Borg.

If Connors vs. McEnroe was the start of a great rivalry, Borg vs. Gerulaitis was the start of a great friendship. Gerulaitis showed up the next day at the club where Borg trained, and said, “Whenever you want to practice, I’m ready.”

As oddly matched off the court as they were on it, Borg and Gerulaitis would be inseparable from then on.

A fair bit of old tennis there, one could safely say,” Forbes thought two days later, as he sat in Centre Court and recalled the Borg-Gerulaitis semifinal. The same could be said for the match finishing in front of him. Again it was Borg who escaped, 6–4 in the fifth set. It was a fitting end to Wimbledon’s remarkable Centenary, and a fitting start to a new—if brief—golden age.

Connors, McEnroe, Gerulaitis and Borg—friends and rivals—would make their summer lightning strike for the next four years. From Wimbledon 1977 to the US Open in 1981, they would win 14 of 18 majors. At the ’81 Open, all four again reached the semifinals, but by then the old pecking order had been overturned. When McEnroe beat Borg in the final, Borg drove out of Flushing Meadows and never returned. The sun had set on tennis’ first superstars.

Guillermo Vilas broke through at the 1977 French Open—then went 145-14

Mon, 18 Sep 2017 04:00:00 +0000

Before autumn's arrival on Saturday, we'll relive one of tennis' most memorable summers. The 1977 season was one of the most colorful and enduringly significant in the game's history. Over the next three days, we’ll celebrate the 40th anniversary of that most memorable of sporting summers.

Part 1: The Eternal Second

Guillermo Vilas’ Herculean, 145-win campaign in 1977 may have been the greatest single season of all time. But it still wasn’t enough to make him No. 1

Guillermo Vilas pawed at the clay with his white Puma sneakers as he waited for his opponent to serve. The 24-year-old native of Argentina, who was known as the game’s most soulful philosopher, looked more pensive than ever as he stared at the baseline. At long last, his moment had arrived.

The year was 1977 and the place was Roland Garros. Vilas was playing Brian Gottfried in the French Open final and, for the first time at a Grand Slam event, he had reached championship point.

Sporting a small tree trunk for a left arm, the Young Bull of the Pampas had bludgeoned his way through the draw, losing only one set, and he had surrendered just three games to Gottfried. One more point and Vilas would win the most lopsided men’s singles final in French Open history.

Still, while he was ahead 5–0 and had reached championship point, Vilas had reason to be nervous. Two years earlier, in the semifinals at the US Open, he had led Manuel Orantes, 5–0, 40–0—triple match point—in the fourth set before losing in five. But that was just the most infamous of his late-round defeats. Losses in the finals at the French Open, the Italian Open, the Australian Open and the U.S. Pro Championships had led the Argentine press to dub Vilas the “Eternal Second.”

As Gottfried trudged to the line, Vilas’ eyes darted toward his coach, Ion Tiriac. The glowering Transylvanian with the bushy beard, whose every twitch was suspected of being a signal to Vilas, had spent the last year steering his student, with a Svengali’s assurance, toward this moment.

“In 1976, I prepared to try to win my first Grand Slam,” Vilas recalls today. “I thought of all the details, but after three or four months I realized...that I could have brilliant ideas on the court, but I wouldn’t go beyond without a strategist. “The next year, we already knew more, and Tiriac had promised that I would win a big tournament.”

Tiriac changed Vilas’ foot position on his serve, developed his backhand slice and encouraged him to be more aggressive. He drove him through lacerating, six-hour practice sessions. To Tiriac, Vilas was raw physical material; if he was going to make use of it, though, this sensitive soul—Vilas “couldn’t kill a fly,” Tiriac said—needed to toughen up.

Off court, Tiriac became a father figure to Vilas; no coach and player had ever been so attuned to each other during matches. Opponents joked that Vilas needed to look over to Tiriac to make sure it was OK to shake hands.

Yet the big win eluded them. Vilas began the 1977 season by losing in the Australian Open final to Roscoe Tanner. According to Vilas, though, that defeat gave him the final piece to his Grand Slam puzzle.

“I decided to play the Australian Open for the first time,” Vilas says, “and I was not wrong. I lost the final to Tanner, but I made strategic mistakes. I practiced 30 or 40 minutes before entering the court, and that was not enough. I took it as a lesson and from there I worked several hours before each major final.”

For Vilas, there was nothing that a few more hours on court couldn’t solve. At the ‘77 French Open, the hard work had finally paid off.

When Gottfried went into his service motion, Vilas began bouncing on his toes maniacally, as he did before every service return. Four shots later, a forehand pass proved too powerful for the American to handle. Vilas, the Eternal Second, had finished first.

“It was like breaking a giant piece of glass that was hanging over my head,” Vilas says. The French crowd, which loved Vilas’ bohemian blend of the physical and the philosophical, roared its approval. A few spectators charged onto the court and tried to pull his headband off. It was a sign of things to come that summer.

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From the beginning, Vilas had a style that matched the times. In 1974, he made his Top 10 breakthrough as a 21-year-old. His hair was long and his outfits were yellow. He published poetry, collaborated with a jazz-rock band and wrote a screenplay. He dropped out of law school, studied Buddhism and wore a bracelet to honor the dead in Vietnam. With Vilas, the counterculture had come to the clubby world of pro tennis.

“I liked the creativity of the game,” Vilas told Sports Illustrated’s Curry Kirkpatrick. “When someone said, ‘Come to the court,’ it was like saying, ‘Come paint.’ Only better.”

Vilas climbed the rankings, but stalled short of the top. The question, as TENNIS Magazine’s Peter Bodo wrote, was whether he could resolve “the tension between his soulful personality and his character as a competitor.” Tiriac helped him cross that bridge.

“With Tiriac, I progressed at twice the speed in half the time,” Vilas says. “He had a great vision of the game.”

“As his constant companion,” Bodo wrote, “Tiriac could make it easier for Vilas to become a loner, like so many of the game’s great champions.”

In 1977, Vilas played like the greatest of those champions. It all started during his title run on indoor carpet in Springfield, MD, in February.

“I changed the movement of my serve, and the position of my body,” says Vilas, who defeated Stan Smith in a four-set final. “It helped me for the rest of the season. My new philosophy made my mind less tired.”

Later that year, after his breakthrough at Roland Garros, Vilas’ new philosophy was on full display at a much bigger American event: the US Open. After 53 years, the Open was being held for the final time in Forest Hills. The tournament also came at the end of New York’s sinister “Summer of Sam,” and the surrounding sense of lawlessness and controversy seeped through the club’s Tudor gates. Overflow crowds swarmed the grounds. A fan was shot during a night match. Renée Richards, a transsexual who had played the event as a man, made headlines when she entered the women’s draw. Jimmy Connors waged war with the crowds, which had turned against their country’s No. 1.

The player they had turned toward was Vilas. When it was announced that one of his matches would be rescheduled, a stadium full of fans staged a sit-down strike—“We want Vilas!” they chanted. Tournament officials reversed course and put him on.

The atmosphere for the final between Vilas and Connors was every bit as riotous, and anti-American. “This crowd wants blood,” Arthur Ashe said. Vilas gave it to them by bouncing back from a first-set loss to win in four. His Tiriac-inspired slice backhand was the key.

“I was trying to go past my limits that year, and make adjustments to address difficult moments,” Vilas says. “In the final at Forest Hills, I used my tactics at the start and lost the first set. [Beginning] in the second set, I applied what Tiriac told me.”

Afterward, Vilas’ fans stormed the court and pulled his headband away—“I thought they were going to rip my head off,” he says—before carrying him around the stadium.

In 1977, Vilas won 46 consecutive matches—a men’s Open era record—and 53 straight matches on clay, a mark only eclipsed by Rafael Nadal 29 years later. By season’s end, Vilas had won 17 titles and amassed a 145–14 record.

Asked to explain his rise to Grand Slam glory, Vilas summed it up:

“Once you win a big title, you want to win another one. If you win two, you want a third, and then you want them to build a statue of you in the middle of Buenos Aires.”

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There was no end to what Vilas wanted, and got, in 1977. After the US Open, he won titles in Paris, Tehran, Bogota, Santiago, Buenos Aires and Johannesburg. For him, playing that much was a matter of survival.

“The 1977 season was exhausting for me, not only physically, but mentally,” he says. “I could not stop playing, because I needed the pace of competition. I struggled if I stopped for a while.”

There was a temporary halt in Aix en Provence. In the final, Vilas played Ilie Nastase, who was using a soon-to-be-banned set of “spaghetti” strings which created massive topspin. After surrendering the first two sets, a sore-shouldered Vilas retired in disgust.

“I didn’t lose against a player,” Vilas said. “I lost against a racquet.”

But Vilas picked up where he left off, winning his next 28 matches. If you discount the Nastase match, his consecutive-win record would stand at 74.

The end finally came with a defeat to Bjorn Borg at the season-ending Masters. Somehow Vilas had avoided facing his nemesis during his win streaks, but he couldn’t avoid him forever.

In the 1978 French Open final, Borg beat Vilas easily. For the Argentine, though, there will always be ’77. “I got everything in one year, what other players get in five or six,” he said.

Everything, that is, except the No. 1 ranking. While Vilas won more than anyone in 1977, Connors retained the top spot. In those days, rankings were based on an average of results; going by today’s system, Vilas would almost certainly have finished No. 1.

“I was winning and winning and could never take the next step to No. 1,” Vilas says. “The answer was always the same: ‘Still second.’ I felt helpless.”

While the No. 1 ranking is missing, Vilas’ other statistics from 1977 have become legendary. At a time when the pros claim exhaustion after 70 wins, we can only look back in awe at Vilas’ 145.

“Tennis is always the same,” he says. “Each player adapts to the time he’s in. In 1977, I decided to play an almost unreasonable amount of weeks. Today, the best players enter fewer tournaments because they’re the ones they consider necessary to reach their goals.”

Vilas was destined to remain the Eternal Second. But 40 years later, his 1977 season remains unsurpassed.

Five moments that defined the 2017 US Open

Mon, 11 Sep 2017 17:57:00 +0000

This was the wide-open Open. With Serena, Novak, Stan, Andy and Kei—all recent finalists at Flushing Meadows—watching from afar, we braced for the unexpected, and we got it. A pair of Grand Slam final rookies on the women’s side; a brand new pair of young guns on the men’s side; and the tournament’s most surprising male finalist of the Open era.

Will we eventually come to see the 2017 US Open as the moment when pro tennis’ long-delayed future finally turned into its present? For now, here’s a look at five moments that defined the last two weeks, which were filled with emotional comebacks and encouraging arrivals.

*****

A Chapeau for Shapo

The bottom half of the men’s draw was so starved for stars that Open officials had no choice but to give an early, coveted night-session spot to an 18-year-old Canadian qualifier with a name few American fans could pronounce. Was it too soon for Denis Shapovalov, who was a virtual unknown as of July, to make his prime-time debut against a solid veteran like Jo-Wilfried Tsonga? Not a chance. Shapovalov broke Tsonga at love in the opening game and only got better from there. The boy with the baseball cap and the hockey hair leaped and lunged at the ball, raced forward and knocked off volleys, and looked to create excitement during points and after them. By the end of the first set, New York had a new late-night favorite. For the roughly two hours that Shapovalov was on the court, the sport, which has become a thirtysomething’s game in recent years, felt young again.

“I’m playing incredible tennis,” Shapovalov said afterward with a wave at the audience.

He was back in Ashe for his next two matches, one of which he won and one of which he lost. By the time he was through, Shapovalov was the first 18-year-old to reach the fourth round at the Open since 1989. His run, along with 19-year-old Andrey Rublev’s to the quarterfinals, expanded the ATP’s class of Next Genners, and also overturned it. Before the tournament, the kids to watch were Alexander Zverev and Nick Kyrgios; by the end of the first week they were long gone, and we were happy to watch Shapovalov and Rublev graduate to the big time.

*****

A Reluctant Hero’s Welcome Return

“It feels great!’ Petra Kvitova practically shouted on the set of ESPN when she was asked what it was like to hit her rocket forehand for winners again. For many fans, those were three of the happiest words they heard all tournament. Kvitova’s straight-set win over pre-event favorite Garbiñe Muguruza in the fourth round was the latest, largest step toward normalcy—and excellence—that the Czech had taken since she was attacked in her home nine months ago. For the first time in her comeback, we were reminded of the raw force, and even rawer emotion, that she can bring to the court.

“I didn’t know where this journey would end,” Kvitova said after that win.

While Kvitova’s journey would end in the next round, it lasted long enough to give us one of the matches of the tournament, a tug-of-war quarterfinal loss to Venus Williams in a third-set tiebreaker. Kvitova was grateful to have her game and her touch back, overjoyed to be on the “big stage” and moved by the response from the crowd there. But what’s also nice about Kvitova is that she doesn’t milk the moment or try to dramatize her comeback. She’s a tennis player first, and she shies away from the hero label. That honesty and modesty only make her more appealing and relatable.

Still, Kvitova couldn’t hide her excitement entirely.

“I do feel a little bit [pumped up], of course,” she said before her match with Venus. Us too, Petra.

*****

The Dud That Became an Epic

This Open wasn’t a good year for competitive finals, but it was a good year for competitive matches overall: Venus-Kvitova, Sloane-Venus, Federer-Youzhny, Del Potro-Federer, Anderson-Querrey, Monfils-Young, Vandeweghe-Radwanska, Keys-Svitolina, Sharapova-Halep, Sevastova-Sharapova, Sloane-Sevastova, Kanepi-Osaka, Coric-Zverev and Pliskova-Zhang were all dramatic and well-played. Also hidden away on a side court, destined only to be remembered by the record books and by those who actually played it and saw it, was the longest women’s match in US Open history, between Shelby Rogers and Daria Gavrilova.

Most epic of all was a contest that appeared at first to be an epic dud: Juan Martin del Potro’s 1-6, 2-6, 6-1, 7-6 (1), 6-4 win over Dominic Thiem in the fourth round not only had the year’s best scoreline, but featured the tournament’s most death-defying high-wire act of a comeback by the winner. Delpo, in another of this Open’s returns to glory, showed us again why he’s a star.

In 2016, the Argentine and the Austrian had also met in the fourth round; the match, in which Thiem was forced to retire, had been played in Ashe. This year it was squeezed into the Grandstand, and the smaller venue made all the difference. Around the grounds, and even inside Ashe Stadium, you could hear the songs and chants of “Olé” rising out of that jammed arena. When a flu-ridden Delpo trudged listlessly through the first two sets, the fans stayed and tried to will him into it. As it does on occasion, Flushing Meadows had turned into Little Buenos Aires.

“It was very important,” Delpo said of the support, “because I was trying to retire the match in the second set. Then I saw the crowd waiting for more tennis, waiting for my good forehands, good serves. I took all that energy to change in a good way and think about fight and not retire.”

Del Potro, like a tank slowly turning and sighting its target, brought all that energy to bear on Thiem—and the ball. The two men threw haymakers at each other for the last two sets, with each punch landed drawing a roar louder than the last. Thiem, fighting Delpo and the fans, grew increasingly desperate under the strain. Always a contortionist on court, he tried to swing harder and leap higher than ever. He reached double match point, but Delpo—the heavyweight to Thiem’s middleweight—wiped them both away with aces. From there, Thiem was fighting an even more uphill battle, but even he could appreciate the moment.

“It was a great atmosphere,” Thiem said. “I mean, we’re not playing every day in an atmosphere like this. I was enjoying it, actually.”

Del Potro, more than other players, invites the crowd into his matches and invites fans to join his side. This time they carried him farther than they ever had before.

*****

The Sloane Show

The shot of the tournament was also the shot of Sloane Stephens’ career: a backhand pass, at 4-5 in the third set, that she plucked from thin air and sent lasering down the line past an outstretched Venus Williams at the net. Stephens, normally reticent on court, let loose with a fist pump and a “Come on!” Somehow she seemed to have been freed to compete in a way that she never had before, and her game was freed as well.

From there, Sloane played the best three games of her career, winning one point after the next with stunning displays of speed, defense and shot-making. Through most of the third set against Venus—the best set of the tournament—I had assumed that Venus would outfight Sloane in the end. Instead, the opposite happened, and a new tennis star had appeared out of the New York night sky.

That wasn’t the only moment I’ll remember from Stephens’ first Slam-winning run. If it was her talent and her fight that pushed her past Venus, it was her smarts that got her to the semifinals in the first place. Down a break to Anastasija Sevastova in the quarters, Sloane forced a third-set tiebreaker. She went on the offensive in the breaker and ran Sevastova all over the court, but it didn’t work; Sevastova, a counterpuncher like Sloane, was happy to defend. So, with the score knotted at 3-3, Stephens changed tactics and took a step back. Forced to go on the attack, and go against her instincts, Sevastova missed.

In the final, we saw what kind of star Sloane will be. She played another intelligent, perfectly measured match. She hugged her friend, Madison Keys, who she had just beaten, and made her laugh on the sidelines. And in her final act of the night, she played comedian. Stephens cracked up the crowd with her wide-eyed reaction to her winner’s check, and later she trotted out her many Sloanisms— “Like, how insane is this?” “Hel-loooo, this is awesome,” “I was, like, literally looking at car reviews last night,” “Shut the front door!”—in front of an appreciative press corps.

Tennis has a new star, a new American star and a new African-American star. With that backhand pass in the semis, the 24-year-old Sloane may have grabbed a torch from the 37-year-old Venus. Someday Stephens might pass that torch to CoCo Gauff, a 13-year-old African-American who reached the girls’ final.

When Venus made her Open debut in 1997 and went all the way to the final, she was called a “party crasher.” Twenty years later, African-Americans are no longer the outliers in U.S. women’s tennis; they’re the tradition.

*****

Sweet 16

Rafael Nadal wasn’t my last choice to win the Open, exactly, but he certainly wasn’t my first. It’s hard to remember now, but he came to New York after two troubling losses, to Shapovalov in Montreal and Nick Kyrgios in Cincinnati. A good draw at the Open helped; Rafa didn’t face anyone in the Top 20. So did a couple of early tests, against Taro Daniel and Leonardo Mayer, where he was forced to stay patient and hit a lot of balls. After that, his champion’s muscle memory kicked in; the Open is, in an under-the-radar way, one of his favorite tournaments.

The moment I’ll remember most from Rafa’s third title here is a small one. He had a break point early in the first set against Kevin Anderson in the final. Anderson missed his first serve and spun a second ball into Nadal’s forehand. Longtime Rafa watchers know that this can mean trouble; if there’s a shot he’ll get nervous on, it’s the second-serve forehand return on break point. Sure enough, he hit it long. But rather than shake his head or put his hands over his face or show any frustration whatsoever, Nadal just walked to the deuce side of the court and went back to work. It took a few more games, but he eventually broke Anderson.

For me, that moment of non-frustration defined Nadal’s 16th major title. Surface-wise, this one was a long time coming; the last Slam he had won outside of Roland Garros was the 2013 US Open. Since then, he had lost a lot of five-setters at majors, and a couple of tough-to-swallow finals in Australia. But he never stopped vowing, against odds that grew longer every year, to find a solution. Now he has. Afterward, when he was asked how he stayed so calm in the final, Rafa described his mental approach in a way that I had never heard before.

“I was not calm, no?” he said. “I was nervous, but all the body language that is not in a positive way is stupid to make it, because it’s going against you, no?

“Is one of the things that I tried to do all my life, that the body language helps me, not go against me, no? Because it’s one of the things that depends just on me, not on the opponent, no? Was not the day to have negative body language. Completely the opposite. Just to accept all the moments.”

That philosophy should be taught to every young player, and remembered by every older one.

It’s a philosophy that also ties Nadal to his friend and rival, Roger Federer. After failing to win any Slams for two years, the two legends monopolized them in 2017. While Federer may show more negative body language than Rafa, what they share is a willingness to put themselves on the line every time they take the court. They never phone it in, never exaggerate an injury, never tank, never act like they don’t care or that a certain match doesn’t matter and never pull the ripcord if they fall behind. Federer and Nadal are always willing to accept the psychological consequences of defeat, and that’s what helps them win so much.

“I think we had the spirit of improvement all the time,” Nadal said when asked what he has in common with Federer. “Passion for what we are doing, and we have been hard workers in general terms.

“We have been there almost every week for a lot of years. That’s difficult to make happen.”

I wrote this in my Wimbledon wrap-up two months ago, and I’ll write it again now. Seven years ago, after Wimbledon in 2010, Federer had 16 majors and Nadal had eight. I predicted that Federer would finish with 19 and Nadal would finish with 16. For a long time, I thought I had set the bar too high. Now it’s clear that I underestimated them. I’m happy I did.

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Rafael Nadal’s 16th Slam was a fitting final tribute to his Uncle Toni

Mon, 11 Sep 2017 03:22:00 +0000

Tennis Channel's exclusive interview with 2017 US Open champion Rafael Nadal

NEW YORK—They say you should never underestimate the heart of a champion. As Rafael Nadal showed in his flawlessly controlled 6-3, 6-3, 6-4 win over Kevin Anderson in the US Open final on Sunday, you should never underestimate the unorthodox tactical decisions of a champion, either, no matter how often they’re questioned on TV or mocked on Twitter.

From the start, Nadal moved back as far as he possibly could to return the 6’8” Anderson’s powerful serve. Rafa was parked about a foot in front of the line judges, and on television he was little more than a black dot at the bottom of the screen. But as usual with Nadal, what looked like a dangerous ceding of territory was in reality a tactical retreat. It paid dividends right way, and would earn Rafa all the service breaks he needed—four in all.

By giving himself extra time and getting as many balls back as possible, Nadal made Anderson work, and work, and work some more to hold. Through four games, Anderson had played 13 deuce points on his serve, and he found himself mired in two games that lasted 10 or more minutes. To borrow a baseball phrase, that’s a high pitch count; any time you’re serving, you’re doing a lot more work than your opponent, especially if he’s holding easily as Nadal was today (he was never broken).

By the seventh game, Anderson was breathing hard and missing shots he normally wouldn’t miss. When he pulled a forehand wide at break point, the competitive part of the afternoon was essentially over.

“I think I played the right match, the match that I have to play,” Nadal said. “I put a lot of balls in. I let him play all the time, and that was my goal, no? To try to have long rallies, to try to have long points, because he will try to play short.

“Finally he missed that forehand with the 3-all. That changed the rest of the match.”

If Nadal’s returning was smart, his serving was close to perfect. Can you be a serve-bot—i.e., a Karlovic, or an Isner or a Raonic—while hitting just one ace? In 14 service games, Rafa didn’t face a break point, and only in the final game did Anderson push him to deuce. Anderson said he struggled to adapt to Nadal’s left-handed delivery, but this performance was also the result of a revamped serving philosophy that new coach Carlos Moya brought in when he joined Nadal’s team this year. Instead of pounding everything to his opponent’s backhand side, Rafa began to mix up his speeds, spins and locations. It made a major—literally—difference in his season: Nadal did some of his best serving at the two Slams he won, in New York and Paris.

Who is the ATP player of the year?

But that wasn’t the only place where Nadal showed off a veteran’s versalitity at the Open. From one match to the next, he put together and executed entirely different game plans. In his semifinal win over Juan Martin del Potro on Friday, Nadal was forced to open up the court, go on the attack, and take risks; the result was his most dazzling shot-making display since the French Open. On Sunday, Nadal went in the opposite direction. Against Anderson, he played conservative, lockdown, don’t-do-anything-stupid tennis. But he didn’t just push the ball back in the court. Rafa finished with 30 winners and 11 errors, and he was a sparkling 16 for 16 at net. On the flip side, virtually every time Anderson ventured forward, Nadal dipped a passing shot at the big man’s feet; Anderson was just 16 of 34 at net.

“Rafa made it very difficult for me tonight,” Anderson said. “I felt he got a lot of returns back...I think he had a pretty good read on my serve.”

Anderson said the biggest problem for him wasn’t major-final nerves; it was the “conundrum” of playing Rafa. If he had won, it would have ranked among the most stunning upsets in US Open history. Even so, Anderson’s two-week run was impressive. At the advanced age of 31, he tapped into a more aggressive side of his personality, but he couldn’t fist-pump his way past the original fist-pumper.

“I know we’re the same age,” Anderson said in a trophy-ceremony tribute to Nadal, “but I feel like I’ve been watching you my whole life.” He said Rafa was one of his idols, and that he has made a great ambassador for the sport. The same, as this speech made clear, can be said for Big Kev, and it was good to see the gentlemanly South African take an unexpected turn in the spotlight.

In his press conference later, Anderson said something else interesting about what makes Nadal unique.

“I have seen so many times where he’s able to play every single point at such a high intensity,” Anderson said. “A lot of guys sometimes, you know, you might see them get angry at a line call and suddenly they start playing better tennis. I have never seen him—some external factor and suddenly he’s bringing better tennis. He brings that high energy every single point.”

Nadal would echo those thoughts a few minutes later, when he was asked how he had stayed so calm.

“I was not calm, no?” Nadal said. “I was nevous, but all the body language that is not in a positive way is stupid to make it, because it’s going to be against you, no?”

“Is one of the things that I tried to do all my life that the body language helps me, not go against me, no? Because is one of the things that depends just on me, not on the opponent, no? Was not the day to have negative body language. Completely the opposite...I have [to be] ready to accept all these moments to compete well all the tournament.”

Embed from Getty Images

Rafa needed his philosophy of relentlessness more than ever to achieve this victory, which was his third at the US Open and his 16th at a major. Before today, he hadn’t won a Slam outside of Roland Garros since 2013. But during those dry years, he accepted all the bitter five-set losses he had taken, and never failed to come into the interview room vowing to work even harder to “find a solution.” In the third round at this tournament, Nadal struggled for more than an hour to break Leonardo Mayer’s serve, but each time a break point was wiped away, he put his head down and tried to create another one.

“I had a lot of moments to be very frustrated in the match, and I have been not,” Rafa said after beating Mayer. “I have been just fighting for the next point and with the right mentality.” Nadal called that win a turning point in his Open, and he took the “right mentality” with him the rest of the way.

On Sunday, the man who helped instill that mentality in Rafa, his Uncle Toni, was in the stands, in his customary corner seat, living and dying with each point his nephew played. Toni began coaching Rafa when he was 4, and has been with him for all 16 of his Slam wins. They’re the greatest coach-player partnership in tennis history, but this was Toni’s last major; he has said he’s coming off the road at the end of the year.

But he hasn’t lost any of his fanatical coaching drive. During the last game, when Rafa was struggling to hold serve for the title, Toni stood and yelled toward him, so loudly that Moya laughed and patted him on the back when he sat back down. During the final point, as Rafa moved to the net for the winning volley, you could see Toni flinch with nerves as he swung; that’s a flinch everyone who has ever watched a family member play tennis knows all too well. When Rafa’s shot went for a winner, Toni stood and raised his arms. Then, as the trophy ceremony was starting, he turned and walked up the stairs and out of the arena.

The unorthodox tactics, the always-positive body language, the constant, unflagging energy and will to win: Toni taught his nephew as well as any coach has ever taught a player, and he leaves Rafa in very good hands—his own.

Champion, friend, comedian: Stephens did it all on US Open final day

Sun, 10 Sep 2017 00:36:00 +0000

NEW YORK— “Breathe. Swing. Move your feet.” Is there a T-shirt with those words on it yet?

That was the extremely simple, extremely effective advice that Sloane Stephens’ coach, Kamau Murray, gave to her before she walked onto the court for her first Grand Slam final on Sunday.

Those three commands worked because they reminded Stephens that, whatever nerves she might be feeling, her job on this day wasn’t a complicated one. The fact that she was facing one of the sport’s hardest hitters in Madison Keys gave the speedy, steady Sloane a decisive advantage: If worst came to worst, and she began to wilt under the pressure, she could always use her legs and keep making balls, two things that she can do in her sleep. It would be Keys’ job to take the risks.

“I was very nervous,” Stephens said, “but I knew that whatever I was feeling, she was probably feeling, too.”

It turned out that Stephens had nothing to worry about. She quickly settled into an imperturbable groove a few feet behind the baseline. She hit heavy and deep, moved Keys from side to side and returned whatever rockets were launched at her. No need to pull any triggers or aim for any lines or try any high-degree-of-difficulty finesse shots. Sloane’s first two service games were love holds that took a little more than a minute.

Instead it was Keys who had the complicated job of trying to win points outright. Her coach, Lindsay Davenport, told her that she wanted her to “take a lot of balls out of the air.” While Keys can pummel a swing volley, it’s a shot that requires a player to be loose rather than tight. With Stephens getting everything back, Keys said she only grew more anxious as she tried, and failed, to figure out a strategy for winning points.

“I was obviously nervous all morning,” Keys said. “Sloane’s a tough opponent to play when, you know, you’re not making a lot of balls. But then, at the same time, she’s not going to miss, either. I didn’t know what to do once I got on the court, which just intensifies those nerves even more.”

By the fifth game, Keys’ best shot, her forehand, had deserted her. She missed three of them and was broken, and missed three more to lose the next game. Keys, whose left leg was heavily taped, was moving sluggishly and playing without a perceptible plan.

“I think at the end of a Slam, whoever is still on the court is physically going to be feeling something,” she said. “I definitely think my play today came down to nerves and all of that, and I just don’t think I handled the occasion perfectly.”

Keys would never settle in. At the same time, Stephens only got better. She didn’t just hit the ball back in the court; as her confidence grew, she began to dictate points and show off some delicate touch around the net. And she betrayed no nerves at all down the stretch. Down 0-40 at 4-0 in the second, with the fans begging Keys to make it a match, Stephens calmly won five straight points. Her 6-3, 6-0 win was a masterpiece of controlled tennis.

“I just went out and competed and focused on every ball,” said Stephens, who made six unforced errors compared to 30 for Keys. “That’s all I focused on.”

In winning the US Open, though, it turned out that Sloane was just getting warmed up. When Keys’ last forehand landed in the net, Stephens covered her mouth and kept her emotions in check. She saved them, instead, for the long hug she shared with her old friend at the net. “Tough one,” she told Keys as they embraced. A few minutes later, as the two waited for the trophy ceremony to begin, Stephens joined Keys on the sideline. As they talked, Madison’s tears dried and she began to laugh.

“Sloane, being the great friend that she is, was very supportive,” said Keys, who planned to make Stephens buy her a drink or three on Saturday night.

Having won the match and consoled her friend, it was on to act three for Sloane: entertaining the press. This is one area where she has traditionally lived up to her potential, and she didn’t disappoint this time.

What was she thinking after the last point?

“Wow, how insane!” Sloane said. “I actually won the US Open. I was just a little bit like ...Wow.”

What did she do to calm her nerves beforehand?

“I was literally in my room twiddling my thumbs … I literally was looking at car reviews on Autotrader … I was just looking at safety reviews, honestly. That’s kind of weird, but that’s what I was doing.”

How did she feel about making just six unforced errors?

“I made six unforced errors in the whole match?” a shocked Sloane cried. “Shut the front door. I don’t think that’s ever happened to me before. Oh my God. That’s a stat.”

Does winning this Slam make her hungry for more?

“Of course, girl! Did you see that check that lady handed me? Like, yes. Man, if that doesn’t make you want to play tennis, I don’t know what will. Man…”

Sloane, in short, was in her glory. In a matter of a few hours, she had proven herself to a be a tennis player of the highest caliber, the best friend a woman could ask for and a born comedienne.

If it was surreal for us to think of her as a US Open champion, it seemed to be doubly unbelievable for her. But by the end of her presser, Stephens was already beginning to grasp the significance of it. In her own Sloane way, of course.

“I think it will be super cool,” she said when she was asked what she thought it would be like to look back on this day. “I think one day I’m going to, like, be able to show my kids that I won the US Open. Like, how many people can say that? Not very many. And they already engraved my name on the locker.

“Like, hello. This is awesome.”

2017 US Open Men's Final Preview: Rafael Nadal vs. Kevin Anderson

Sun, 10 Sep 2017 00:10:00 +0000

Rafael Nadal [1] vs. Kevin Anderson [28]

Anderson is, quite simply, the most unexpected US Open men’s finalist of the Open era. Before last week, he had reached one quarterfinal in the 34 majors he had played in his 10-year career, and he was seeded just 28th here. When Andy Murray dropped out of an already thin bottom half of the draw two days before the tournament began, a surprise finalist was virtually assured. But Anderson’s run has still been a stunner.

Can he pull off another surprise in the final? A victory over the top-seeded Nadal would be one of the biggest upsets in major-tournament history. Anderson, who has yet to face a Top 10 opponent here, is 0-4 against Rafa, and he has won just one set in those four meetings.

This being a tennis match, though, nothing is impossible. As Nadal noted after his semifinal win on Friday, he had to save match points to sneak past Anderson on an indoor hard court in Bercy two years ago. And while his competition hasn’t been the stiffest in New York, Anderson has played the best, most aggressive, most fearlessly positive tennis of his career over the last two weeks. He also possesses the physical tools—height, big serve, two-handed backhand, put-away power from the baseline—that typically trouble Rafa.

The problem for Anderson is that Rafa has been looking less and less troubled with each match at the Open. He found his game in the third round against Leonardo Mayer—the Argentine’s game bears more than a passing resemblance to Anderson’s—and played with his old swagger in his semifinal steamroll over Juan Martin del Potro. Anderson’s serve alone should allow him to stay close in sets, and it’s easy to imagine him wiping away a dozen break points with it. But Nadal has played 22 more major finals than Anderson. That may be the only stat you need to know for this one.

Winner: Nadal

Jean-Julien Rojer's fashion statement was a moving political statement

Sat, 09 Sep 2017 16:08:00 +0000

NEW YORK— Sometimes it’s the spur of the moment questions that elicit the most lasting answers.

As the men’s doubles’ trophy ceremony wound down on Friday, Tom Rinaldi of ESPN seemed to be finished with his interview with one of the winners, Jean-Julien Rojer of the Netherlands. But Rinaldi, glancing at Rojer’s outfit, had to ask: Why was he wearing a shirt with the Statue of Liberty plastered across the front?

“Quickly, for you, Jules, your choice of wardrobe today, seemed to make a statement in this particular place,” Rinaldi said with a smile. He probably expected to receive an answer that was more comical than eloquent. But eloquence was what he got.

“A friend of mine owns a clothing company and makes these clothes for me to play in,” Rojer said. “I have Lady Liberty on the front, and on my jackets I have a peace symbol on the back. The idea came after the tragic incident in Charlottesville, and we came up with this line promoting peace and freedom and liberty.”

Rojer is a 36-year-old native of Curaçao who has won 25 doubles titles, including three Grand Slams. He says he’ll forever be grateful to the U.S. for allowing him to come to this country to train with his coach when he was 12. He went on to play at UCLA, where he was inspired by the legacy of social activism of its most famous tennis-playing graduate, Arthur Ashe.

“I think Arthur Ashe is awesome,” Roger said on Friday, expanding on his words after the final. “Once you’re in UCLA, you hear his name all the time, an unbelievable person and the stuff that he did not only for tennis players, but, you know, in general.”

Long before college, Rojer had seen and felt a difference between the U.S. and Curaçao when it came to race relations.

“First time I noticed color was when I came to the U.S., sad to say that, when I was 12, because we don’t grow up with that back home,” Rojer said. “In the Caribbean, we see a black father, as well, and a white mother.”

Rojer says he watches the news in the States, and “sees a lot of unfair stuff going on,” but doesn’t typically get too involved. That changed after the clashes in Charlottesville.

“I thought it was a good message,” Rojer said of the symbols on his shirts and jackets. “And quite honestly, I liked the clothes and the stuff so I went that route. I mean, you can never say too much stuff for equality and everybody in this country. I think that message needs to be passed on constantly.”

“It’s funny, in the beginning, I wasn’t getting questions,” about his clothes, Roger said. “Once we made the semifinals, finals, you get a little bit more attention and more press.”

Rojer is happy to have the attention. His message is one that he and his doubles partner, Horia Tecau, don’t think is expressed enough by their fellow players. In their minds, the dizzingly diverse pro tours break down barriers and teach a lesson of inclusion, one that they’ve tried to get across on social media.

“It’s part of our job, being athletes at this level, we are viewed as role models for a lot of the people,” said Tecau, who came to the States from Romania at age 14 to train.

“You know, it all starts with sport. In the locker room everybody is the same...We say congrats and move on. It’s no hard feelings, no anger between us. It’s good to send that message outside to the world.”

“On the political side of things—I don’t know how much the tennis world gets into it,’ Rojer said, “but I just wanted to have the conversation going and promoting again, just freedom and justice, liberty for everybody on gender issues, on racial issues which we deal a lot with in this country.”

“Everybody has a platform, everybody has,” he added. “So I think it’s important that everybody do their part, and that’s how you make either change or progress.”

The Statue of Liberty, as Rinaldi noted, is a symbol sure to be embraced in New York. This has never been an “all American” type of town, and it’s the antithesis of what we like to call “the real America” these days. But since 9/11, and especially as the anniversary of the attacks approaches each September, New York has become a safe haven for displays of patriotism.

“I think it’s symbolic to be here, man,” Rojer said. “This is New York City, as far as police offers, firefighters.” He was pleased to find out that one firefighter tennis fan appreciated his shirt and its message.

There has been a lot of debate in the U.S. recently about the nature of the country. Is it fundamentally a land of opportunity, or fundamentally a land of segregation? Rojer and Tecau, who came here as teenagers and thrived in way they wouldn’t have in their home countries, have seen the opportunities it can offer. They want it to continue to live up to the promise embodied in the statue on Rojer’s shirt.

The crowd in Arthur Ashe Stadium applauded when Rojer spoke of Charlottesville and civil rights and peace and liberty. And they applauded his concluding statement even more loudly:

“I’ve been here since I was 12 years old,” Rojer said. “It’s a great country and I’m happy they let me in, and I’ve got to do my job here. So hopefully we’ll create these opportunities for everybody.”

There was no second-guessing from Nadal in semifinal win at US Open

Sat, 09 Sep 2017 04:09:00 +0000

NEW YORK—After the first set of Friday night’s semifinal between Rafael Nadal and Juan Martin del Potro, ESPN’s Pam Shriver did a short sideline interview with Rafa’s uncle and coach, Toni Nadal, who is retiring after this season.

Del Potro had won the first set 6-4, and to that point he had the upper hand in the rallies. Toni wasted no time diagnosing what was wrong. “We have a problem,” he said. Rafa wasn’t hitting his forehand with enough oomph to control the rallies, even the ones that went crosscourt to Delpo’s weaker backhand. The Argentine had surprised the Nadals by hitting over that shot rather than slicing it. Either way, it wasn’t proving to be the vulnerability they thought it would be. Toni’s prescription? He thought Rafa needed to hit his forehand with more power and variability.

Uncle and nephew were on the same wavelength, it turned out. Nadal started the second set hitting with more depth and height. After that, he began opening up the court and going down the line with his forehand. From there, the winners began to flow and the match turned around completely. Instead of trying to grind Delpo down, Nadal set himself free to use his full shot-making repertoire. He won points with down-the-line forehands, great gets, backhand passes and well-timed serve-and-volley forays.

What looked like a standard leveling of the match at one-set all was, in reality, the end of Del Potro. He couldn’t stem the Nadal tide in the second set, and by the time he had lost it 6-0 and gone down an early break in the third, he looked gassed. He was a step slow moving along the baseline, his velocity dropped on his serve and his forehands lost their fearsome power—by the end, most of them were ending up in the net. Delpo finished with 40 unforced errors against just 23 winners, was broken six times and never threatened Nadal’s serve after the first set.

As Delpo’s energy level dipped, Nadal’s rose. He took second-serve returns on the rise and forced his 6’6” opponent to defend both corners. He even played more quickly than normal to take advantage of Del Potro’s sluggishness. The winners came in bunches in the second and third sets, and his “banana” forehand hooked with laser precision into the corners. Nadal finished his 4-6, 6-0, 6-3, 6-2 win with 45 winners; in the stat that told the story of the match, 25 of those winners came from his forehand side, compared to just 11 for Del Potro.

“I changed a couple things,” Nadal said about his second-set gear shift. “I was playing too much to his backhand … I needed to move him more and be more unpredictable.”

Maybe the best sign for Rafa was how annoyed he was to lose the first set. Rather than acting as if he were doomed, he acted as if he should be winning this match. This was his standard reaction during his prime, but over the course of this hard-court season he had seemed more fatalistic. In his losses to Denis Shapovalov in Montreal and Nick Kyrgios in Cincinnati, Nadal had played poorly and appeared to have little confidence that he could play better, or that he should be winning these types of matches on this surface. But all of the second-guessing was gone by the start of the third set against Del Potro, and it never returned. Afterward, Rafa said that when he beat Leonardo Mayer in the third round, he believed it could be a “turning point” for him in this tournament. Now, in retrospect, he thinks he was right.

While New York tennis fans missed a chance to watch Nadal play Roger Federer, they might witness another historic Fedal moment on Sunday. A Rafa win over Kevin Anderson in the final would complete a clean sweep of the majors in 2017 for the old rivals, leaving them with two apiece. It would be an appropriate capper for this season of the aged, and an appropriate Slam finale for the lifelong partnership between Rafa and his uncle, Toni. We’ll see if they can find the same wavelength one more time.

2017 US Open Final Preview: Madison Keys vs. Sloane Stephens

Fri, 08 Sep 2017 23:48:00 +0000

NEW YORK—Madison Keys, 22, and Sloane Stephens, 24, have known each other since their junior days, and trained within a stone’s throw of each other in South Florida. Earlier this year, they commiserated by text about how frustrating it is to be injured. And yet the two Americans have played each other just once, two years ago in Miami, a match that Stephens won by the innocuous scores of 6-4, 6-2.

In those days, many of us had a vague belief that we could be watching a future Grand Slam final, but the idea that it would happen at the 2017 US Open probably would have seemed far-fetched. As Stephens said on Thursday, though, the question marks that have surrounded the future of American tennis for so long have been erased for the moment. That future is here, now, facing each across the net in Ashe Stadium.

As much as Keys and Stephens have in common as people, they present a classic contrast in styles as players. Keys is an attacker who hits two types of ground strokes—fast and faster. Stephens is a speedy defender whose stated goal is to “get my racquet on every ball.”

As usual in a match between a slugger and a retriever, the result will be on the slugger’s racquet. Can Keys stay in the same rarefied zone that she was in during her blowout semifinal win over Coco Vandeweghe? Or will she Stephens make her hit enough balls to take her out of it?

We won’t know until Saturday, and any guess with be just that—Keys can go from brilliant to bad and back to brilliant again in the space of a single afternoon. But the recent history of women’s tennis says that when it comes to the Slams, the slugger usually wins.

Winner: Keys

Stephens and Keys turned the future of U.S. tennis into the present

Fri, 08 Sep 2017 03:53:00 +0000

NEW YORK—“For American tennis, there’s no question marks,” Sloane Stephens said with a grin on Thursday night at the US Open. For the first time in a long time, the statement was indisputable. Stephens, 24, had just finished beating Venus Williams in the evening’s first semifinal. An hour or so later, her friend Madison Keys, 22, would do the same to Coco Vandeweghe in the second semifinal. Suddenly, just like that, in the matter of a two-week span, the future of the U.S. women’s game had become the present.

For nearly a decade, tennis fans in this country had been marveling at the talent and potential of Stephens and Keys, hoping they would fulfill it, and occasionally wondering if our hopes were misplaced.

Yes, Sloane had an elegant game and was lightning fast. Yes, Madison had the easiest power some of us had ever seen. Yes, there were days when you would watch them pull off a ridiculously athletic move and we’d shake our heads and tell ourselves they were the real deal. And yes, when they made breakthrough runs to the semifinals at the Australian Open in 2013 and 2015, respectively, we made wild speculations about how many major titles they might win, or when they would crack the Top 10.

But as their rankings bounced up and down, and injuries stalled their progress, and neither of them reached another Grand Slam semi, the question marks remained. Did Sloane actually like tennis? Could Madison play two good sets in a row? Were they hitters, rather than players? Did they have the grit to win the close ones? In reaching their first major finals in the same night, Stephens and Keys answered all of those questions.

“I just don’t want anyone to ask me about the state of American tennis ever again!” a smiling Sloane said afterward.

Appropriately for a slugger and a sprinter, Keys and Stephens took opposite paths to victory in their semifinals. One match was dramatic and competitive, the other was a blowout. One was won with insane defense, the other with insane shot-making. Both were equally impressive in their own ways, and both ended up being career-changing victories.

The question for Stephens was whether she could stand up to Venus, the resident legend of U.S. tennis in such an important match. Sloane won the first set easily, but got a tight at the start of the second and allowed Venus to pounce. At the start of the third, Stephens jumped out to another lead, only to let Venus catch up.

Now, surely, Sloane would finally cave and let the tougher competitor blow by her. Instead, she bore down, went on the attack, saved break points, and helped give Open fans the set of the tournament.

The moment of truth came at 4-5, 30-30. Stephens was ready for it. After a long rally, she came up the shot of the night, a backhand pass that she seemed to pluck from thin air and send straight down the line for a winner.

“That was good, huh?” Sloane said later, a little amazed by her own handiwork.

It was good enough to lift Stephens to an entirely new plane, one she might not have realized she could reach. Making stunning gets and an even more stunning lob on the run, Sloane lost just one more point in closing out Williams, 6-1, 0-6, 7-5.

“I tried to get my racquet on every ball,” Stephens said. “I mean, why not go for it?”

Five months ago, Stephens was in a cast after having foot surgery. One month ago, she was ranked in the 900s. But her time away may have been the best thing that could have happened to her. During those months, she came to an important realization: All of the things she thought was missing by playing tennis, those things that “normal” people do? She found out that they really couldn’t compare to playing tennis, and that maybe being exceptional is better than being normal.

When she came back, she had no choice but to work her way back up.

“I was so rusty, and I couldn’t run,” Stephens said of her return. “The only thing I really had left was fight.”

Now Sloane knows: Fight was all she needed all along.

What did Madison Keys need all along? Through the middle rounds at the Open, she needed a little help from the crowd. The fans in Ashe lifted her to three-set comeback wins over Elena Vesnina and Elina Svitolina. But by the time she took the court against Vandeweghe, Keys didn’t need any help from anyone.

From first game to last, Keys played crushingly clean tennis. There were none of the lags and dips and hiccups and mood swings we’ve always seen from her. There was just that easy power in all of its glory. Keys hit 25 winners against just nine errors, and won 62 points to Vandeweghe’s 36. She made her usual power shots, but she also made touch shots and defensive shots and shots on the run. This was the tennis many had dreamed of seeing from Keys. In the 66 minutes she was out there for her 6-1, 6-2 win, she made Arthur Ashe Stadium, where she has been ensconced for the last week, look like her second home.

“It was one of those days where I came out and I was kind of in a zone, and I just forced myself to stay there,” Keys said.

Like Stephens, Keys had surgery (on her left wrist) this year, after the French Open. But she was determined to play Wimbledon just three weeks later, and she ignored advice from those around her to take the safe road and skip it. As with Sloane, the break made Keys appreciate what she does for a living in a way she never had before.

“Since then, it’s been a big weight off my shoulders, and I’m playing really free,” Keys said. “More than anything, I’m really, really enjoying my time on the court. I think that’s been a massive part of why I have been playing well.”

You go away from the game and come back hungrier and fresher. You play in front of home fans who believe in you even when you might not believe in yourself. You win one close match, and start to think you can win them all. You turn the future of American tennis into the present. And you get to go for your first Grand Slam title.

Any questions?

US Open men's semi preview: Two former champions and two first-timers

Fri, 08 Sep 2017 00:30:00 +0000

Kevin Anderson [28] vs. Pablo Carreño Busta [12]

We wondered what kind of craziness might ensue when Novak Djokovic, Andy Murray and Stan Wawrinka all dropped out of the Open. Now we have our answer. OK, Anderson vs. Carreño Busta hardly qualifies as “crazy”—these are two of the game’s straightest faces and least colorful characters—but Grand Slam semifinals don’t come any more surprising. Anderson, after being injured for much of 2016, is ranked 32nd. Carreño Busta is 19th, and neither has been this far at a major before. Both have obviously benefited from a bottom half that included precious few highly-ranked players. While Carreño Busta has played his usual solid game at the Open, Anderson, who is already 2-0 against the Spaniard, has raised his. He has been playing like a man on a mission, and that mission likely doesn’t include losing to PCB for the first time.

Winner: Anderson

Rafael Nadal [1] vs. Juan Martin del Potro [24]

“I can be dangerous” against Nadal, Del Potro said on Wednesday night. There’s no question about that. Delpo was fresh off a win over Roger Federer when he said those words, and he has won his last two meetings with Rafa, including a classic at the Rio Olympics last year. Delpo has the assets—height, point-ending power, a two-handed backhand—that typically work against Nadal. Even better, he’s coming off an all-time comeback win over Dominic Thiem, in which he saved two match points. That can leave a player feeling as if everything afterward is gravy, which in turn lets him relax and swing away, a prospect that should frighten any opponent of Delpo’s. But Nadal has improved throughout this tournament, and the fact that there would be no shame in losing this match should also leave him feeling relaxed—or as relaxed as Rafa gets, anyway.

Winner: Nadal

No sound was as sweet as the roar in Ashe for American semifinalists

Thu, 07 Sep 2017 14:36:00 +0000

NEW YORK—The four American women who will play in the semifinals at the US Open on Thursday agree on one thing: This tournament has been a lovefest for them, and they might not be where they are without some timely—and deafening—help from the fans at Flushing Meadows.

Venus Williams, Sloane Stephens, Madison Keys and Coco Vandeweghe have each come from a break down in the final set of a match in Arthur Ashe Stadium, and have each credited the crowd with helping them pull through.

“Thank you guys so much. I felt every single one of you behind me,” Sloane Stephens said after her third-set-tiebreaker win over Anastasija Sevastova in the quarterfinals.

A few hours later, Stephens was echoed by Williams when she won her own quarterfinal over Petra Kvitova in a third-set tiebreaker. "I have to say, I felt every single one of you guys behind me, all 23,000," Williams said. "I didn't want to let you guys down."

“You guys were amazing,” Keys said after reeling off four straight games to beat Elina Svitolina in the fourth round. “Thank you for helping me through that one.”

“It’s hard to beat a New York crowd when they’re for you,” said Vandeweghe, a native daughter of the city, after the fans in Ashe carried her past Agniezska Radwanska, a player who has traditionally been a nemesis for her.

Suddenly it’s all happening in U.S. women’s tennis.

For a few years now, the country has had quantity, but not (the highest) quality. As of this spring, 14 women in the Top 100 were from the U.S., by far the most of any country. But for the better part of a decade, only the now-35-year-old Serena Williams was a regular member of the Top 10, and a regular in the later rounds at majors.

Now that’s changing, too. Venus, 37, has turned back the clock and reached two major finals in 2017, and the next generation is finally making its move. Keys, 22, Vandeweghe, 25, and Stephens, 24, have now reached their second Grand Slam semifinals. Young and old, the women are gutting out the tight matches that we’ve become accustomed to seeing them lose. The crowds are helping it happen, and eating it up when it does.

It wouldn’t normally be worth noting that an audience in a certain country is rooting vociferously for athletes from the same country. But it hasn’t always been the case in cosmopolitan, contrarian New York City. In the 1977 men’s Open final, Jimmy Connors was cast as the villain, and Guillermo Vilas of Argentina was the player who was carried around the court when the match was over. In 2013, a Louis Armstrong audience chanted for Gael Monfils of France, rather than John Isner of North Carolina, in their second-round match. And Roger Federer always had at least half of the crowd on his side in his matches with Andy Roddick there.

Just ask Venus Williams, who has never taken the fans’ backing in New York for granted. The reaction to the rise of the Williams sisters at the Open in the late ’90s was a tense and ambivalent one, with strong reactions in all directions. Some saw their brilliant games and competitive grit and thought they were the best thing that could happen to the staid old sport of tennis. Others saw them as brash and standoffish, and thought their father, Richard, was a loose cannon who fixed their matches.

After her debut at the 1997 Open, Sports Illustrated made the racial subtext of the story obvious by putting Venus on the cover under the headline “Party Crasher.” Four years later, little had changed. When Venus beat crowd favorite Jennifer Capriati in the semifinals in 2001, tension ran as high as it ever has in Ashe.

It would take another 11 years, in fact, for Venus to feel entirely at home at her home Grand Slam.

After losing to Angelique Kerber at the Open in 2012, she said of the raucous crowd in Ashe, “There were a lot of people shouting out. I know this is not proper tennis etiquette, but this is the first time that I’ve ever played here that the crowd was behind me like that. Today I felt American, you know, for the first time at the US Open. So I’ve waited my whole career to have this moment, and here it is.”

Five years later, Venus probably still doesn’t take anything for granted at the Open. But she can say with a confident smile that she feels “every single one” of the 23,000 people in Ashe behind her. Twenty years after her “party crashing” debut, Venus can also look around with pride at what she has helped create.

Not much has been made of the fact that three of the four women’s Open semifinalists are African American. A 4-year-old Keys was inspired to pick up a racquet (a racquetball racquet, but close enough) after seeing Venus on TV playing in a dress she liked. While Stephens has more frequently cited Kim Clijsters as her favorite player growing up, she has also said that the Williams sisters were motivators for her. And Naomi Osaka, a Japanese-American player who had a successful US Open, and whose father is Haitian, idolizes Serena. I’ve never seen a more multicultural crowd at Flushing Meadows than the one that came out for Osaka’s third-round defeat this year.

Maybe the fact that we don’t have to talk about any of these players being black, or refer to them as party crashers, is a sign of progress in tennis—the Williams sisters blazed a path to Ashe Stadium for them.

Some say that stadium is too noisy these days, but there has been no greater pleasure at the Open this year than hearing the roar of the crowd in Ashe for these four American—and three African American—women. Let’s give them a deafening hand.

Del Potro brings career full circle with latest Open upset of Federer

Thu, 07 Sep 2017 04:55:00 +0000

NEW YORK—When Juan Martin del Potro’s 7-5, 3-6, 7-6 (8), 6-4 quarterfinal win over Roger Federer was finished, the two players were in agreement.

“I think I deserved to win in the end,” Del Potro said.

“Juan Martin deserves it more,” Federer said.

Before the match, some of us had wondered about Del Potro’s readiness to play after his five-set marathon win over Dominic Thiem two nights earlier. By the end of the night, it was Federer’s readiness that was the issue.

Over the course of the match, Federer did many things that he normally doesn’t. He double faulted on a crucial point at the end of the first set, and missed an easy overhead on an even more crucial point at the start of the fourth. He let four set points in a tiebreaker slip by. He sent a wild forehand volley 20 feet out in the last game, when he still had a chance to break to stay in the match. He failed to capitalize on Del Potro’s obvious weakness, his backhand. His mood and level of play swung up and down and up and down again from one set to the next.

In short, Federer didn’t look like he believed he should win this match, and judging by his comments afterward, he didn’t.

“The way I’m playing right now,” Federer said, “it’s not good enough in my opinion to win this tournament.”

Federer said he never felt like he was in a “safe place” with his game at this event, and that while his recently injured back hadn’t been the difference-maker tonight, it had slowed his preparation for the tournament, and his “rhythm” throughout it.

“So it was one of those matches where if I ran into a good guy, I was going to lose, I felt,” he said.

And he did run into a good guy. From the start, Del Potro was moving well and belting his forehand. Sometimes he needs time to bring his tank-like game to bear on his opponent, but not on this night. He knew that he couldn’t afford to throw away a set, or two, as he had against Thiem.

Still, it wasn’t until 5-5 in the first set that Del Potro made it clear that he was here to win this match, and that he was going to be a threat. With Federer serving up 30-15, Del Potro launched a 100-m.p.h. rocket forehand down the line and past an outstretched Federer. Like a boxer who has had his bell rung, Federer staggered through the rest of the set. He double-faulted on the next point, was broken on the point after that, and watched as Delpo closed it out with a 129-m.p.h. service winner. If Federer had any doubts about his chances in this match, Del Potro confirmed them with that triple-digit forehand.

Yet Federer fought back in the second set. He used his slice, he mixed paces, he came to net, and he brought Del Potro forward and made him bend on his backhand side. Federer won the set, and when he erased a 1-4 deficit in the third, and took a 6-4 lead in the third-set tiebreaker, he seemed destined to get home safely in this match, after all.

Then, apparently, Del Potro forgot all about the script that said Federer was supposed to meet Rafael Nadal in the semifinals. At 6-4, Federer chose to serve to Del Potro’s forehand, and he paid the price, with a massive return leaving him helpless. At 7-6, instead of stepping forward to close on a volley, Federer chose to step back and hit a backhand; he shanked it wide. At 8-9, Federer chose to serve and volley, and sent a backhand volley long to lose a set that looked to be all but his.

“”I didn’t think I played bad,” Federer said. “You know, towards the end of the breaker, I can do better, sure, but I think the decisions that we both took, me serving, him returning, or whatever it might have been, it just didn’t go my way.”

“He came up with the goods when he needed to, and I helped him maybe sometimes a little bit, too.”

Federer would help Del Potro two more times in the fourth set, with two of the more shocking shots that anyone could remember from him. In the fifth game, he plunked an easy overhead into the net and was broken. In the last game, with Delpo serving for the match at 30-30, he missed wildly on a forehand volley.

But as Federer said, Del Potro had the goods, and by the fourth set he was locked and loaded, with victory in his sights. In the final set, he cracked five aces, won 91 percent of his first-serve points, hit 12 winners, made just one error and didn’t face a break point. His forehand was lethal and his backhand was reliable, and that was all he needed.

While some in the audience were disappointed again that there won’t be a Federer-Nadal match in New York, plenty of others—most of them in the upper deck, singing “Olé”—were happy to see Del Potro at his best again here. This match brought him full circle, back to the biggest win of his career, on this same court, against this same opponent, in 2009. Injuries have kept Del Potro from becoming the champion we thought he would become then, but his ability to survive them has only made him more popular.

“I played really well,” Del Potro said. “I served so good. I hit my forehand as hard as I can.”

What are you—or Roger Federer, for that matter—going to do against that?

Broadway Blues: How Roger & Rafa have avoided bringing their act to NY

Thu, 07 Sep 2017 04:09:00 +0000

Roger Federer's four-set loss to Juan Martin del Potro on Thursday night prevented what would have been his first match against Rafael Nadal at the US Open. It's not the first time the career rivals and all-time greats have come close to colliding at Flushing Meadows, but ultimately fell short:

2008

As the tennis world gathered at Flushing Meadows, it was still riding high from that summer’s Federer–Nadal Wimbledon classic. A rematch in New York seemed all but guaranteed until Rafa, who also won Olympic gold that year, ran out of gas against Andy Murray in the semis, one round before he was to face Federer. “Too many matches in my shoulders,” a tired Nadal said afterward.

2009

For the second straight year, Federer and Nadal reached the semis, and for the second straight year, Nadal would go no further. This time an abdominal tear hampered him, and Juan Martin del Potro took advantage to the tune of a never-in-doubt 6–2, 6–2, 6–2 victory. Two days later, the 20-year-old Argentine would upset Federer to win his first (and only) major title.

2010

The previous two years, it had been Nadal who had failed to keep his final-round date with Federer. Now it was Federer’s turn to stand up his rival. This time Novak Djokovic provided the roadblock when he saved two match points with gutsy winners and came back to beat Federer 7–5 in the fifth. Djokovic wasn’t so lucky in the final against Nadal, who went on to win his first U.S. Open title.

2011

Was it a curse? How else could anyone explain Djokovic’s repeat performance in the semifinals? Again he faced two match points against Federer; again he saved both—one with a screaming service return that would become known as “The Shot”—and went on to win 7–5 in the fifth. “Hats off to Roger,” Nadal said. “I think he deserves to be in the final.” Two days later, Nadal probably wished Roger was there, because Djokovic beat him in four sets.

2013

“For two times we were one point away. For this time we were one match away.” That’s what Nadal said when he learned of Federer’s shocking defeat, one round before they were to play in the quarterfinals. Fate had intervened at the Open again, this time in the form of Nadal’s fellow Spaniard Tommy Robredo, who beat Federer for the first time in 11 tries.

Vandeweghe, Anderson are showing what a little mental coaching can do

Wed, 06 Sep 2017 21:29:00 +0000

NEW YORK—Coco Vandeweghe was serving for the match and a place in her first US Open semifinal, but she was also teetering on the brink. While she led top seed Karolina Pliskova by a set and 5-3, Vandeweghe’s backhand was doing its best to sabotage her chances. Over the previous 10 minutes, she had slapped nearly as many backhands into the net as she had hit over it. Now she was down 15-30 and on the verge of letting Pliskova back into the match.

The Coco of old might have panicked and lost her cool in this situation. She might have slammed her racquet or screamed in rage. And, truth be told, she had done both of those things earlier. But now wasn’t the time to let her anger out. Now was the time to bury it and get on with the job at hand.

What do you do when you can’t hit a backhand? You make the most of every forehand you get. Vandeweghe rifled two crucial forehands for winners to dig herself out of trouble and complete the 7-6 (4), 6-3 upset. When she raised her arms and looked to her player box, her coach, Pat Cash, couldn’t hide his amazement. He shook his head a little, as if he couldn’t quite believe how well his player had just handled the most pressure-packed moment of her career.

Afterward, Vandeweghe sounded the way Cash looked: pleasantly perplexed by how well their partnership is going.

“I think the biggest thing [he has done] is channelling my intensity and tenacity out on the court, and putting it into a singular focus,” she said.

But exactly how had he done this? How had he improved her mentality at the relatively late age of 25? Trying to explain that, Coco was at a loss.

“You’ll have to ask him how he’s been able to do that,” she said. “I don’t really know. Maybe it’s, like, some Jedi mind trick. I don’t know how he’s doing it.”

Vandeweghe isn’t the only player who has been making sudden and unexpected mental strides at the Open.

Twelve hours earlier, on the same court, Kevin Anderson had been in much the same situation as Vandeweghe. For three hours and four sets, he had been the superior player in his quarterfinal with Sam Querrey. He had competed, as he had competed all tournament, like a man possessed. At the moment, when it comes to fist pumps and “Come on!”s, Rafael Nadal and Maria Sharapova have nothing on the big, and previously mild-mannered, South African.

But now Anderson was on the verge of letting Querrey back in. After saving a match point, Querrey had reached set point in the fourth-set tiebreaker. The Ashe Stadium crowd was doing what it does after midnight: roaring for the American, cheering for more tennis and baying for blood. But no one was going to stop Anderson. While Querrey retreated and played defense, Anderson went after his shots with the same controlled fury he had used all match, and he eventually won the point, the set and the match. When he looked to his player box, his wife, Kelsey, had a similar reaction to Cash’s on Wednesday: She smiled in amazement at her husband, who had just reached his first Grand Slam semifinal at age 31.

Querrey led their head to head coming in, but on this night Anderson raised his game at the right moments and never caved, no matter what the score. Trailing 2-5 in the first-set tiebreaker, he came back to steal it 7-5. Trailing 1-6 in the second-set tiebreaker, he came all the way back to level it at 6-6. And he hung on to win the decisive breaker 9-7. All in all, Anderson’s performance was the most fearsomely stubborn of the tournament so far.

It’s also the most surprising. Anderson has always been among the most even keel and poker faced of players. Win or lose, he takes off his baseball cap, rubs his hair, shakes hands with his opponent and walks off the court. Now, after 13 years on tour, he’s expressing all of the desire he had kept bottled up, and hitting the ball with a new single-mindedness and unflagging intensity.

“I feel like that’s something I have sort of added to my game,” Anderson said of his newly aggressive attitude. “You know those matches are tough. I feel like I just try to play each point as best as I can … I felt I did a fantastic job resetting.”

On the one hand, Vandeweghe and Anderson are opposing personalities with opposing problems to overcome. She’s trying to rein herself in while he’s trying to pump himself up. But each has gone about it in the same way, with help from a sports psychologist—or, as Vandeweghe prefers, a “mental coach.”

“It’s not a psychologist,” she told the WTA website this summer. “I’m still not a fan of it. I told the mental coach this, also: ’Listen, I’m not a fan of what you guys do.’ He said, ‘That’s fine. You don’t have to be as long as it works.’ I was like, ‘Prove me wrong.’”

Anderson was less leery of the idea.

“I just felt it was a part of my game I could maybe just get a bit better at,” Anderson told Reuters. “So many people say it’s 90 percent mental. Everybody knows how to hit tennis balls, and we’ve been playing tennis so long that it’s tough to make huge changes.”

As Anderson says, for a sport that’s supposedly “all mental,” tennis players have been loath to admit that they might need help with that side of their games. Watching Anderson pummel his way to victory last night, John McEnroe also sounded a note of skepticism about how much fist-pumping and psyching yourself up can really do for you.

For many of us who watch tennis regularly, there’s also a certain amount of disbelief about how much any player can change. We see too many pros have a good week—or a good month, or even a good year—and then revert back to old, bad habits.

What I’ve liked about Vandeweghe and Anderson at the Open is how much their new mental outlooks seem to be helping their decision-making. She has become clearer about what her strengths are and how to use them, while he shows no hesitation whatsoever about taking a rip at the ball.

Old habits could, and probably will, creep back in for both of them. But there are reasons to believe their improvements will stick in the long run. Vandeweghe is proving that her trip to the Australian Open semis this year was no fluke, and that she can play with anyone. Anderson is getting the most out of a game that has always been there.

Either way, their late-blooming runs through the draws have been highlights of this year’s Open, and proof that seemingly insurmountable weaknesses can be overcome. You just need a Jedi mind trick or two to do it.

Venus Williams discovered again why she never wants to give tennis up

Wed, 06 Sep 2017 03:53:00 +0000

NEW YORK—If any tennis promoters out there are looking to start a two-player barnstorming tour, they might want to consider booking Venus Williams and Petra Kvitova. These two women, it seems, can’t play a bad match.

All six of their previous meetings had gone three sets. The last three had either ended in a third-set tiebreaker or 7-5 in the third. And their most recent encounter, at Wimbledon in 2014, was one of the best of its year, a taut, tense, mesmerizing affair between two power players throwing thunderbolts back and forth on Centre Court.

As you might guess, expectations were high for their night-session quarterfinal here on Tuesday. The near-capacity crowd was largely present and accounted for at 7:00, when the match was scheduled to begin, and they were ready to explode for the tournament’s sentimental favorite, the 37-year-old Williams.

At first, it seemed that the expectations in the arena might be a little too high; both women had trouble settling down. Venus began slowly, throwing in two wild double faults and hanging her head after one netted forehand. Instead of taking advantage of the opening, though, Kvitova slammed the door in her own face. Serving at 3-4, her ground strokes suddenly went haywire. Three straight times, on the first ball of a rally, she made an error and was broken at love.

Was Kvitova coming down to earth after her flawless set and a half against Garbiñe Muguruza on Sunday? Were we due for a dud after a string of stunners?

The answer to both questions would be a resounding no. Kvitova’s timing, and the power that inevitably flows from it, began to click early in the second set. So did her vocal cords: Each winning shot, it seemed, was followed by her customary all-caps scream of “POJD!” Kvitova, in body and mind, had arrived. Most important, her serve had arrived. Venus made a valiant effort to work her way back into the set, but she couldn’t crack Kvitova’s serve. At 4-2, Kvitova saved two break points with two service winners—and added a couple of POJDs for good measure. A few minutes later, we were where we had hoped to be all along: a third set.

Still, not much had changed. Kvitova’s serve still looked like it would make the difference. After breaking with a backhand return winner at 1-1, she served her way out of a 0-40 jam for 3-1. Venus had established herself as the better, steadier player from the baseline, but she still needed to break. Or, it turned out, she needed to watch as Kvitova broke herself. Serving at 3-2, the Czech obliged with another haywire game: She hit a forehand long, a backhand long, a backhand wide and a double fault at break point.

From there, though, both players played clean tennis as they raced each other down the homestretch. They had found their range and left their nerves behind, and they were using their serves and ground strokes to maximum effect; neither would face a break point over the last six games. The match peaked with Venus serving at 4-4, a long game where it appeared that Kvitova would take the upper hand again. But Venus hung on and celebrated her hold with the rarest of rarities for her, a fist pump. \

Over the last four, five, six—who knows, maybe 10—years, Venus has played well enough to stay in matches like this, but has struggled to win them. At the Open in 2016, she lost a third-set tiebreaker to Karolina Pliskova, and she had lost two deciding tiebreakers to Kvitova in their last three matches. But this year has been different. Venus isn’t just playing well; she’s winning. After Tuesday night, no one has more victories at the Slams in 2017 than she does. Rather than lose this deciding tiebreaker, she won it, and she won the match, 6-3, 3-6, 7-6 (2).

What, in the end, was the difference in this excellent, compelling contest which could have gone either way? It was simple: Venus had her forehand clicking in the tiebreaker, and Kvitova didn’t. Venus hit four strong forehands while Petra made four errors from that side.

“These big matches, there have been times where I have won, and there have been times I didn’t win them,” Venus said afterward. “My opponent was better. It made me go out and work harder. Either way, the experience makes you grow.”

While losing makes you grow, winning makes you feel a whole lot better. On Tuesday night, as she saw her lead build in the tiebreaker and listened to the crowd’s roar grow louder with each point, she remembered again why she still plays this sport, and why she has no plans to stop.

“In the tiebreaker, you just want to create space,” Venus said with a dreamy smile. “So when you see that gap opening bigger in your favor, it feels amazing.

“There is a point where you say, ‘I’m not ever letting this go.’ That’s kind of what I felt like out there.”

There isn’t much that separates Venus and Kvitova. And for both women, that’s what makes finding a tiny edge over the other so satisfying—enough, in Venus’ case, to make her want to play forever.

It’s winning matches like these that keeps Venus playing. It’s witnessing matches like these that keeps us watching.

US Open QF Previews: Federer, Nadal could finally meet in Flushing

Tue, 05 Sep 2017 20:40:00 +0000

Each day during the US Open, we'll preview and predict three—in this case, four—must-see matches.

Karolina Pliskova [1] vs. Coco Vandeweghe [20]

“I would not really put me and her together, like not even personally,” Pliskova said of her American opponent on Monday. “Even if she just miss like five meters out, she doesn’t care, so it’s different. It’s not my game style.” Does this qualify as bulletin-board material? Vandeweghe, who has never been known to shrink from a fight, might see Pliskova’s words that way. Even without the extra motivation, Coco has always felt like she matches up well against the world No. 1, and their head to head is knotted at 2-2. Which Pliskova will we see on Wednesday: the woman who saved a match point to scrape past Shuai Zhang in the third round, or the woman who blitzed Jennifer Brady in 46 minutes in the fourth round? And which Vandeweghe will we see: the woman who bageled Garbiñe Muguruza in the Australian Open quarterfinals this year, or the woman who struggled to keep the ball in, or even near, the court in her quarterfinal loss to Magdalena Rybarikova at Wimbledon? As you can see, this one could go in many different directions before it’s over.

Winner: Pliskova

Rafael Nadal [1] vs. Andrey Rublev

The 19-year-old Rublev has spent his teens idolizing Nadal and buying all of his Nike outfits—“I was trying to copy,” he said last week. On Monday he called Rafa the “real champion,” and said he would just try to enjoy his time on the court with him. These are not, at first glance, the words of a player who stands much of a chance of winning. But before we pat Rublev on the back for making the first of what should be many Slam quarterfinal runs, it’s worth noting that he also said he would just try to enjoy his fourth-round match with David Goffin. He won that in straight sets.

Winner: Nadal

Madison Keys [15] vs. Kaia Kanepi [Q]

Can Keys win a match before midnight? Her last two ended in the wee hours on Ashe, but this one will start at 7:00 P.M.; so unless this is the best-of-three epic to end all best-of-three epics, she won’t have to go that late against Kanepi. And maybe that’s a good thing. Keys says she has fed off the crowd here this year, and playing earlier means there should be more people in the seats. The only problem is that the player across the net has survived without much help from the fans in New York. She already came back from 2-4 in the third to spoil Naomi Osaka’s party two rounds ago on Court 5. Can she do the same against Keys in Ashe? It will be a tougher ask.

Winner: Keys

Roger Federer [3] vs. Juan Martin del Potro [24]

“Is Federer out for revenge?” one headline read on Tuesday. Revenge for the defeat he suffered at the hands of Del Potro in the 2009 US Open final? Federer has beaten Delpo—who also happens to be represented by his agency—10 times in the eight years since that match. Still, it is true that this is their first meeting at Flushing Meadows since, which I guess is close enough to make this qualify as a rematch. Federer may not be motivated by vengeance, but he probably won’t need to be. He has won his last three meetings with Delpo—all on hard courts—he has improved with each match at the Open and he should be a lot fresher than the flu-ridden Argentine will be after his epic five-set comeback on Monday.

Winner: Federer

Keys taps into deeper vein of emotion in round-four win over Svitolina

Tue, 05 Sep 2017 13:24:00 +0000

NEW YORK—Madison Keys had been here before.

Midnight was approaching, and a fervent and surprisingly large crowd in Arthur Ashe Stadium was doing what it could to will her to victory in her fourth-round match against her higher-ranked opponent, No. 4 seed Elina Svitolina. Over the last two years, this round had become a stumbling block for Keys at the Grand Slams—she lost in the fourth round at all four of them in 2016, and she had lost in it at the US Open in 2015 and 2016.

At a certain point in every major, this go-for-broke player has stopped being able to simply overpower the opposition. She has, inevitably, run into a player who makes her hit too many balls, from too many uncomfortable spots. Svitolina, who has won five tournaments this year and put herself in the running for No. 1, appeared to be that opposition.

While Keys had snuck through the first set in a tiebreaker, Svitolina had run away with the second set, 6-1, and now led 4-2 in the decider. The problem for Keys was the same as it has always been: How to use the power she possesses, which is superior to virtually any of her opponents, while also making enough balls to stay in rallies. For the last hour, she hadn’t found that balance. Her down-the-line forehands landed in the alley; her backhands were driven into the middle of the net. Her shots lacked shape and she lacked the patience to change them.

“I definitely felt like I kind of hit a wall at the beginning of the second set,” said Keys, who won her last match, over Elena Vesnina, in a late-night three-setter on Saturday. “My energy dropped. Once I got broken in the third, I just kept telling myself, ‘Just try to figure it out, just get as many balls in as you can.’”

What Keys found, as she had found against Vesnina, was a reservoir of energy and emotion from the audience.

“I was lucky that I had an amazing crowd and atmosphere,” Keys said. “...No matter what the score is, they were definitely behind me. They definitely help you raise your level.”

In most cases, Keys would have been down on herself by the latter stages of a match like this. She would have hung her head and looked desperately in the direction of her coaches. But against Svitolina, Keys made necessity the mother of invention—or at least improvement.

From 2-4 down, Keys' shots took on what they so often lacked: shape. She hit them with pace, yes, but she also hit them with enough topspin to get them safely over the net and inside the lines.

“I went from beind down 5-0 in the second set to just kind of making a lot of balls and being tough,” Keys aaid. “I’m really happy with how I closed out the match today.”

At 4-4 in the third set, Keys did more than just make balls and shape her shots. When she held and the crowd let out its roar—sounding “like a jet engine and a giant heartbeat,” in the words of Andre Agassi—Keys threw her head back pumped her fists. It was an un-Maddy-like show of joy, which was matched by the tears in her coach Lindsay Davenport’s eyes.

With help from the fans, Keys had found a deeper vein of emotion in herself, and it propelled her through the final game. Powering the ball with depth and pace from both sides, running Sivtolina all over the court, and closing match point with a brilliant backhand winner from outside the sideline, it was one of the best games that Keys has ever played.

“It’s definitely more than just a win,” she said of her 7-6 (2), 1-6, 6-4 victory. “So often a match like that could have gone really quick for me, and I could have lost that third set fairly easy and come off and been really disappointed. So the fact that I dug deep and I figured things out, I came out with a win means a lot to me. More than that, it just proves how deep I can dig and how hard I can fight.”

Have we turned this corner with Keys before, only to see her turn back? To an extent, yes, and it could happen again; as she knows, there are no easy matches in the second weeks of Slams. But the Keys who raised her head up and pumped her fists at end of this one looked new. Maybe what was missing wasn’t smarter shot selection or more spin on the ball; maybe what was missing was emotion.

For now, she might want to request another wee-hour time slot in Ashe.

“It’s late night with Maddy,” Pam Shriver said to Keys when it was all over. “How’s it going?”

“It’s going pretty well, don’t you think?” Keys said with the grin of her life.

As Delpo went the distance, Federer made short work of Kohlschreiber

Tue, 05 Sep 2017 03:14:00 +0000

NEW YORK—For once, a Roger Federer match was not the place to be at a tennis tournament. As Federer and Philipp Kohlschreiber began their fourth-round evening encounter in Ashe Stadium, cheers and roars and chants of “Olé” could be heard coming from the nearby Grandstand, where Juan Martin del Potro and Dominic Thiem had just begun the fifth set of what was fast becoming an epic.

It was hard to imagine a more extreme contrast in scenes. Delpo-Thiem was drawn-out, grueling, suspenseful and operatic; Federer-Kohlschreiber abrupt, businesslike, hit-and-miss and ultimately academic. The Swiss and the German had played 11 times, and the Swiss had won all 11. Make that 12. Federer would go on to win this one, 6-4, 6-2, 7-5, in an hour and 49 minutes.

As that match-duration implies, Federer and Kohlschreiber didn’t mess around with rallies. They went after their serves and returns, and tried to find the advantage in points right away. Federer, of course, was the one who found them more often than not. He finished with 11 aces, 39 winners and 20 errors, and he didn’t face a break point.

There were a few fleeting moments of competitiveness, early and late. Over the first five games of the first set, Federer made a spate of errors, a few of which inspired angry self-denunciations. But Kohlschrebier couldn’t take advantage of the mistake or the frustration, and Federer righted himself with an inside-in forehand winner to break for 4-3.

That was all Federer would need to win the first set, and the second quickly followed. At the start of the third, though, a few errors returned, as did the unhappy chatter. Again, Kohlschreiber couldn’t take advantage of this tiny opening, and Federer slammed the door by playing two terrific, high-energy games at 4-5 and 5-5. With a short-hop backhand pass, Federer secured the final break.

Is there any reason left to worry about Federer’s condition? He did leave the court after the second set to get what he called a “rub” on his lower back—or “bottom,” as he said. But he didn’t have any trouble covering the corners and racing from sideline to sideline when necessary. Late in the third, when Kohlschreiber went up 0-15 on his serve at 4-5, Federer snuffed out the quasi-threat by ranging hard to his right and rifling a crosscourt forehand winner. It looked to be the shot of a healthy man.

Best of all for Federer may be what happened in that operatic epic on the Grandstand. Del Potro, who has the flu, fought for three and a half hours before prevailing. Like the songs that came from that arena tonight, that news has to be music to Federer’s ears.