Concrete Elbow by Steve Tignor

CE 10: Plus One Edition

2009-07-13T16:19:49-04:00

If there’s a universal truth in tennis today, it is this: The Davis Cup cannot win. In 2009, the big idea was to move the quarterfinal and semifinal ties to the weekends right after Wimbledon and the U.S. Open, so the players could go straight from one to the other. What was the upshot? The team event lost one of its star stalwarts, Andy Roddick, after he surrendered a heartbreaking Wimbledon final and couldn’t face the indoor clay that the Croatian team had waiting for him on Friday.

Still, the event, like a BBC production that casts expert character actors rather than Hollywood stars, continues to produce first-class drama with relatively anonymous talent—do you know the name of the newest DC hero pictured at right? Davis Cup proves that, for 12 days a year, the sport remains bigger than its stars. (Is that what they call damning with faint praise?) Here’s a roundup of what happened in DC and elsewhere this past weekend.

1. Croats Crush

Count me as another casualty of the new DC schedule. Like Roddick, I wasn’t properly prepared to get into the U.S.-Croatia tie; I like to have a week off after Wimbledon to let it sink in. Otherwise, it feels like just one more event on the endlessly churning circuit. I watched what I could on my computer at work on Friday and at my tennis club on Sunday. What I saw more than anything was Marin Cilic pulling at his sweaty,one-size-too big shirt and then hauling off and hitting winners I'd never seen from him before. Davis Cup does funny things to people. Suddenly Marat Safin can focus, and Marin Cilic can show us the passion that lurks somewhere beneath his dour surface. Even at 6-foot-6, he looked much more balanced and comfortable on clay than either James Blake or Mardy Fish. The key to beating the Americans is as clear and simple as ever: dirt.

2. Israeli Upset

Put their semifinal run together with their bizarre and lonely victory in Sweden in the opening round—see their surreal celebration in Malmo here—and Israel’s DC team may qualify as the biggest story of the 2009 season. This time Dudi Sela, Harel Levy and company swept the Russians in front of 11,000 fans in Tel Aviv. Along the way, they extended Marat Safin’s yearlong farewell tour of pain. Safin and partner Igor Kunitsyn came back from two sets down in the doubles only to lose the match, and the tie, 6-4 in the fifth. Israel’s reward is a trip to Spain for the semis. Doubles player Andy Ram says he finds that prospect “frightening.” Give him points for being honest, but at least his team should be very, very loose.

3. Spain Survives

To get to the semis, a Nadal-less Spanish team had to go the distance to beat Germany for their 16^th straight victory at home. This time the hero was JC Ferrero, who picked up the slack after a loss by Fernando Verdasco by winning a straight-set clincher over Andreas Beck—Spain is deep, no doubt about it; they never seem to have the same MVP twice. Ferrero’s turn is especially noteworthy. He led the country to a Cup title early in this decade but had long been relegated to the sidelines. “This competition is amazing and to play for your country also is very special,” Ferrero said afterward. “There’s no words to explain how I feel right now but I’m pretty happy about it.” Pretty happy? After all these years, the proud JC remains a tough man to please.

4. Czech Mating

I spoke too soon at the top of this post. What’s the only thing more snakebitten than Davis Cup? It’s the Argentine team. A year after the Massacre in Mar del Plata, their own star stalwart, David Nalbandian, pulled up lame and left the team exceptionally vulnerable on hard courts in Ostrava. Berdych and Stepanek won all three rubbers in a 3-2 victory. After Stepanek won the clincher, he made one of those statements that only DC seems to inspire. “I had to really dig deep to step on the court,” Stepanek said. “After the doubles [on Saturday] I was like 90 per cent sure that I’m not able to play singles, but I was assured by the doctors that it was not going to damage my knee. I had to lie to myself that it didn’t hurt.”

Kudos to Czech coach Jaroslav Navratil for resting Stepanek in the first singles so he’d be ready for both the doubles and the decider. And kudos in defeat to Juan Martin del Potro, who shrugged off any memories of his key defeat in Mar del Plata and beat both Berdych and Minar in straight sets. That’s what singles stars do.

The Czechs travel to Croatia for the semis, starting September 18.

5. The Loners’ Game

The NY Times pointed out last weekend that it’s been 30 years since the original stereo-for-one, the Walkman, was invented. Did you know why it was created in the first place? Sony co-founder Akio Morita wanted something to listen to while he played tennis. First it was sports agents, then private musical universes. Tennis has certainly done its part to up the self-absorption levels of modern life. As for me, after cranking a white bargain-bin cassette of the Clash’s first album on my Walkman until it broke, my ears would never be the same.

6. The Roid Question

Slate informs us that tennis is ripe for a steroid infestation. The writer, Bill Gifford, claims that there isn’t much out of competition testing. I was under the impression that there was a decent amount done by surprise and during the off season.

7. Ramming Ahead

Like I said last week, tennis is nothing if not utterly unpredictable. Who would have thought that veteran Challenger mainstay Rajeev Ram, 25, was due for a surge? The American was the lucky loser in Newport when Mardy Fish pulled out to play Davis Cup. Ram rode this lucky break all the way to a win over Sam Querrey in the final.

8. Life of Johnson

Also in Newport this weekend, legendary African-American tennis coach Dr. Robert Johnson—he worked with both Althea Gibson and Arthur Ashe, not a bad résumé—was inducted into the tennis Hall of Fame. Tennis.com profiles him here.

9. New Old Blood

New faces have been what the WTA has needed for a while now. It got one at the top of the tour today when Stacey Allaster was named the new chairman, replacing Larry Scott. She had previously been the organization’s president under Scott. Whatever her plans—according to SportsBusinessJournal, she’s not looking to make any big changes—it’s a positive for the sport just to have visible leadership in an important post. The USTA isn’t replacing Arlen Kantarian at the U.S. Open’s director, and ATP chief Adam Helfant, perhaps in reaction to the flashy style that doomed his predecessor, Etienne de Villiers, has been virtually invisible since he took over at the start of 2009.

10. Speaking of Walkmans . . .

Three songs I’ve been spinning—yes, I still think of songs as “records”—in my IPod on my way to the tennis courts.

Luna’s version of the Velvet Underground’s “Ride into the Sun”: weak singing, poetic guitar

Eddie Cochran’s “Lonely.” Perfect for tennis players. As a gravelly voiced musician friend of mine in college told me, “Everyone writes a song with that title.”

Bob Seger’s “Night Moves.” Sue me, it makes me feel like it’s summer.

11. Night Game, Part II

And speaking of such moves, in my last post, which was about the particular vibes that come from playing tennis in the evening, I forgot to mention one of my very best experiences along those lines. In high school I was a counselor for a week in June at a local tennis camp. During the day, we sweated it out in the humid glare while feeding balls and yelling at brats of various ages. In the evening, sans rugrats, we gathered again to practice against each other. The competition was serious, but everyone was looser under the lights. The cooler air and darker sky relaxed us—I could see the ball better under the lights. We were pounding out the annoyances of the day and remembering why we picked up the sport in the first place. There was something luxurious and indulgent about the scene. Nature, in the form of the setting sun, told us that the tennis day should have been over. But the buzzing electric lights had the final say: We could play as long, long, long, long, long as we wanted.

***

I’ll be back this week to preview the U.S. hard-court season, when the sport makes its annual transition from the hallowed grass of Wimbledon to the asphalt parking lots of Indiana. Still, no part of the tennis year looks as good at night.

Playing Ball: Night Game

2009-07-10T20:51:15-04:00

Three or four years ago, I traveled to Key Biscayne with a fellow New York tennis writer. Driving through the cluttered Florida suburbs along route 95 one evening, we passed a sight that was as welcome as it was startling: a vast outdoor tennis center, brightly lit and chaotic with players. Each of us was quiet for a minute as we went by, until my friend said, “Can you imagine being able to play tennis outdoors every night of the year?” It was the same question I'd just silently asked myself.

For most people reading this, that must sound like a rather hum-drum fantasy. “Yeah, of course, I play four times a week after work,” a typical tennis fanatic from most places around the U.S. might respond. I can remember being able to that myself for the first 20-odd years of my life in Pennsylvania.

The lights burned brightly all summer at the far end of our town’s park. Eight or 10 lighted asphalt courts were lined up next to three baseball fields and a bandshell. Summer concerts were held there, though it seemed that no matter who performed—old-time swinging bandleaders like Doc Severinson and Maynard Ferguson were the norm—the crowd would end the evening bellowing that traditional tribal chant of the Midwest: “Oz-zy! Oz-zy! Oz-zy!” I knew the stage better from my Little League days, when our “assistant coach,” a sadistic 20-something slacker with long blond hair who never took off his sunglasses, would yell at us to run “to the bandshell!” every time we dropped a fly ball in practice. At certain moments, there was no one left for him to hit balls to; we were all running to the bandshell.

Well, anyway, the courts sat in the heart of this nexus of summer-evening commotion. I played all kinds of tennis on them over the years. I practiced with my dad, I hacked around with friends in cut-off jeans who could barely get the strings on the ball, I won and lost tournament matches there, I hit serves out of buckets by myself, I dodged girls on roller skates circling the courts, I played doubles matches with friends where all we did was try to thread a lob between the two tree branches that hovered far above the court—we couldn’t leave until somebody pulled it off. As you can see, the park was mostly a spot for tennis of the most social and disorganized sort. The serious play went down earlier in the day at another, more sedate set of courts in a nicer section of town.

In the park, early in the evenings, there might be two Little League games going on at the same time, even as the tennis courts were overflowing with random action. Once, when I was 13 or so, a foul ball thudded down next to me while I was playing.

“Hey, kid, we need that ball,” one of the baseball players yelled to me, as if I had planned to put it in my pocket and take it home.

“That’s Steve Tignor,” another one yelled to his friends. I’d pitched on the same team with him a couple of years before. “He can throw,” he added. His current teammates seemed skeptical that I had the strength to get the ball all the way back to them, even though the field and the courts were about 50 feet apart. With two-dozen kids watching, I picked up the baseball and threw it high and lazily in their direction. It was a weak throw—after a year or so of tennis, I hadn’t anticipated how heavy it would be—and I cringed as it quickly began to dive. It cleared the baseball field’s fence by about a foot. The only sounds were a few scoffing laughs and grumblings of general dispapproval. No one said thanks. No one was very impressed. My baseball life was officially behind me. It was all tennis from then on.

This leafy, humid, buggy, artificially lit zone of hot dogs, Orange Crushes, concession stands, licorice, braces, peanut shells, skateboards, curse words, and wild pitches was a regular stop on the somewhat limited social tour of the area’s junior high students. Few of these kids had ever thought about picking up a tennis racquet; those of us who did play were figures of curiosity. My most vivid memory of this scene is of three guys, slightly older than me, strolling up to the fence and standing behind a cute girl who was playing with her friend. The dudes frowned silently behind her, their long hair in their faces. Either they couldn’t think of anything to say, or none of them wanted to risk venturing a line and looking like a moron if she ignored him. Finally, after playing three or four points while they watched, the girl looked back and asked, “Where are you guys heading tonight?”

The tallest snapped his head sideways to get his hair out of his eyes and said, “You know, we’re just gonna go wherever the wind blows.”

I’ve resigned myself to the idea that this world is a thing of the past for me. In New York, there are few lighted tennis courts, and they’re invariably booked. Even if you're lucky enough to find yourself on one, it won’t be for longer than an hour—not nearly enough time to try to send a lob in between two tree branches. The club where I play is jammed so tightly against a set of apartment buildings—you can hear silverware clink while you’re waiting to return serve—that any lights around the courts would blast straight through the residents’ living rooms.

But if you get there early, no later than 6:30 in July, you can squeeze in a couple of sets in fading sunlight. I did that for the first time all year yesterday, which is sad because the longest days, and seemingly half the summer, are already past us. Still, I drilled ground strokes—also a first this season—for half an hour and played nearly three sets of doubles. All five courts were being used, but the clubroom was empty and the place was peaceful. On the opposite side from the apartments is an outdoor subway line. Every few games during the evening rush hour you can see the rusted top of the Q train barrel past. As the airplanes once did at the U.S. Open, the train drowns out all other noise. It’s somehow soothing to play a point when you can’t hear the ball hit the racquet.

Above there was planes flying into La Quardia in the opposite direction from the train. The sunset made them pink. A chimney belched black smoke. Players from other courts left one by one. Their places were taken by a cat that likes to lie on the Har-Tru at night. We could hear a few crickets in the bushes, a rare sound in New York. Otherwise, with darkness creeping down the walls around us, the only signs of life in this particular center of the city were the politely enthusiastic sounds of our match—doubles is always social tennis, and the best method the sport offers for leaving behind a day at work.

“Hey, great point.”

“Let’s break ’em here.”

“That’s the way, nice and simple, no problem.”

"It's OK, it was the right shot."

“I’ll serve the ball up the middle and you move, it's easy.”

“Last game, guys.”

A well-struck ball smacked the net's wide white tape. You know the sound, it’s so solid and final, even though it really could have gone either way. When I hit a ball right and still hear it collide with the net, I snap my head up in frustrated surprise. But as long as the point wasn’t life or death, I can take some pleasure in that smacking sound. And when is a point life or death, really, when you’re playing tennis on a summer evening?

W: The Rest

2009-07-08T18:25:57-04:00

It’s Roger Federer’s world at the moment, and you may or not be happy to be living in it. But as we know around here, there’s more to tennis, and there was more to Wimbledon, than just the winners. If anything, this season has shown us again that one of the gratifications of being a fan of this sport is the stone cold unpredictability of it. The only thing you know for sure is that, with 256 players starting a Slam together, there are going to be stories you didn’t see coming, for better and for worse. Before we forget they ever happened, I give a few of them their ephemeral due here, and over at ESPN.com.

Venus Williams

Her yearly run to the final is getting to seem almost unremarkable. This one was notable mainly for her demolition of world No. 1 Dinara Safina in the semis, the worst mockery of a rankings system I can remember. Then Venus upstaged herself by defending Safina in her press conference. But watching her watch Serena hold up the winner’s dish, I wondered whether Venus had done that herself for the last time in 2008. Her reign must end sometime. A

Elena Dementieva

I can’t believe I never realized that she couldn’t hit a serve to her opponent’s backhand side. Seeing her do it against Serena in the semis was bizarre. For the first time, Dementieva looked like a full-fledged tennis player. An unlucky one, too. A-

Tommy Haas

Haas reminded us that a one-handed backhand and a crisp volley still make for beautiful, electric tennis. If you want to have the latter, you have to have the former. Suddenly I want to see the cranky German do it some more. A-

Lleyton Hewitt

His quarterfinal against Roddick was a calm and quiet classic between “two old married guys,” as the American said. Hewitt took us back to those bygone and not-much-missed days before Federer and Nadal. It’s not a place any of us want to live, but I enjoyed the visit. His feistiness and his never-changing lunchpail style should have more appeal now that he’s officially an elder of the game. A-

Pete Sampras

Nice gesture, suave entrance, blond wife, good jacket, bad sunglasses. A-

Bjorn Borg

Where, exactly, did he get that skin? A-

Rod Laver

The Rocket isn’t going down without a fight. A-

Melanie Oudin

I liked the patience and intelligence, as well as the fist-pumping gusto—she looks like she's practiced it—of this 17-year-old during her win over Jankovic. I hope I see it again soon. B+

Sabine Lisicki

Another heavy hitter throws her hat in the ring. If only she’d closed Dinara out and saved her from facing Venus in the semis. B+

Victoria Azarenka

It’s always eye-opening to see a young sure-shot go toe to toe with Venus or Serena when it matters. Serena showed another one just how much work she has to do yet. B

Andy Murray

The Scot has a problem. The defensive, leg-based game that he devised over the last year is working everywhere but at the majors, where big-hitting opponents have three sets to find their range. I think he felt the pressure more than he might have anticipated—he pressed against both Wawrinka and Roddick. But the real issue is that, despite having superior net skills to Roddick’s, he hit virtually no volleys during their semifinal. He still has to find a way to use everything he’s got. B-

Dinara Safina

I feel bad for her, and she should be commended for toughing out a couple of three-setters when she wasn’t at her best, but the late-Slam breakdowns are getting hard to watch. Pretty soon I won’t even turn it on when she’s playing on the final weekend, just to spare myself the vicarious angst. Like Jankovic, Safina is proof that it’s hard, bordering on impossible, to win your first major late in life. The evidence is building that, improved physique or not, she doesn’t have what it takes. B-

Juan Martin del Potro

He took a step back against Hewitt here, but he understood where he had gone wrong. Next thing to fix: consistency on returns. You get the feeling he’s working on it now. B-

Novak Djokovic

Another thing that’s getting hard to take is watching Djokovic grin and embrace the guy who’s just eliminated him from a tournament. Match to match, it’s hard to tell how motivated the Serb is going to be. C+

Jelena Jankovic

Seeing her up close for the first time since March, I'd say Jankovic looked extremely average all around, even when she was winning. Not much power, not much purpose, a lot of confusion. Maybe this is more than a slump; maybe it's a correction. C

John McEnroe/Ted Robinson

We know Robinson is the Old Faithful of purposeless statistical filler, but why did I once think that McEnroe was selective in his commentary and didn’t just say whatever came into his head? Perhaps it was the absence of Mary Carillo, but Johnny Mac blathered over, under, and around what was otherwise a highly enjoyable final. C-

Federer Fashion, 2009 Edition

Rog, Rog, don’t you know you’re not supposed to go with gold during a recession? Two words come to mind regarding the fashion gimmicks: Just. Stop. F

W: The Lucky Few

2009-07-06T18:00:58-04:00

In 2009, the headline-making players and stories have remained the same. The record books of the future will remind us that Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, and Serena Williams continued to make history this season. What will be forgotten are the reasons that tennis fans kept watching in surprise from match to match and week to week: the sudden, unlikely rises and falls of the mortals who reside on the second rung of the sport’s totem pole. This year’s Wimbledon was rife with them. Andy Roddick, Tommy Haas, Elena Dementieva, and Andy Murray, while they didn’t end up winning anything, tantalized us with the idea that they could. If Federer made this year’s fortnight historic, it was those players who gave it its texture. I’ll memorialize their efforts here this week, before they fade out of our minds. But first things first: the A-plus performers.

Roger Federer

The spoilsports, curmudgeons, and logicians will tell us that we “can’t compare players from different eras.” I would answer by saying that we can do whatever the hell we want to do. Even if I admitted that their point, however prudish it may be, was a reasonable one, my mind would go ahead and make the comparison anyway before I could do anything about it—I’m a sports fan, which means I always want to know who's going to win. When I picture Roger Federer playing tennis, there’s no doubt in my mind that he’s the best in history at it. But just when that idea seemed to be corroborated by all relevant statistics, the fact that Federer hasn’t won a calendar-year Grand Slam, à la Rod Laver, has begun to be used against him, presumably by those same spoilsports and curmudgeons (it certainly can't be the logicians). Leaving aside the fact that Federer was one match away from doing it on two separate occasions, Laver’s two calendar-year Slams—the first took place during the amateur era, when he didn’t face the world’s best competition—qualify as single-season achievements, not career achievements. If you consider them, by themselves, a reason to think Laver is untouchable, you then have to ask yourself: What if he had never won another match aside from those Slams? Would he still have the greater career than Federer? The answer, I believe, is no.

Still, when I picture Federer playing, my analytical skills fall far behind my appreciative ones. On dozens of occasions I’ve tried to describe to myself how he won a particular match. Often all I can visualize is Federer patiently slicing his backhand from behind the baseline, and then . . . winning the set 6-3. But this year’s French Open and Wimbledon crystallized for me what it is that he does better than anyone else, on and off the court: He takes what you give him.

If a draw opens up for him with the shocking defeats of his primary rivals, which happened with suspiciously destiny-like regularity in both Paris and London, Federer is always there, uninjured, to take advantage. If you don’t punish his floating slice backhand with a perfect approach, he’s there to stun you and take the point from you with a crosscourt forehand. If you leave a ball hanging in the middle of the court, he goes from passive to aggressive in one long, predatory stride. And if you don’t close out a tiebreaker on your first opportunity, when you’re up 6-2 and serving, he’ll take a Wimbledon title from you.

As you know, the second-set breaker was the tide-turning moment of yesterday’s final. Andy Roddick looked assured of going up two sets to love and putting a firm grip on the match. As you also know, he would eventually blow his fourth and final set point with an embarrassing backhand volley wide (to win 15 Slams, you have to take everything you’re given). But it wasn’t that moment that seems crucial to me now, or that exemplifies why Federer won. It was the reflex flick backhand that he hit to save the first set point, with Roddick serving at 6-2. The American hit a strong forehand up the line; Federer stood his ground and found a way to short-hop the ball and direct it into the open court. Nobody else owns that shot. Nobody else would have been alive in that tiebreaker long enough to see Roddick stone that backhand volley wide at 6-5.

And nobody else would have hung around long enough to win that match. As in 2007, when he beat Rafael Nadal in five sets, Federer snuck past an opponent who was frankly the better player on the day. He did it the same way, by serving lights out—the only thing you’re given on a tennis court is your serve, and he took it with everything he had—and saving his best tennis for the tiebreakers. Like the man he passed on the all-time Slam list, Pete Sampras, Federer continues to succeed in his late 20s because he does nothing more, or less, than win. Sometimes that means finding a way to take a match that belongs to someone else.

After last year’s Wimbledon final, it appeared that Federer, whatever his other achievements, would be known for losing his greatest battle. Now, along with his 15 majors and umpteen other records, he has an epic victory to his credit as well. This is a fitting capstone to a fantastical six weeks for Roger Federer. While his French-Wimbledon double will be remembered as one more historic achievement from the greatest player ever, those of us who were watching Federer all year know that fortune has smiled on him to an unusual degree since the 4^th round of the French Open. In tennis, however, “fortune” has a narrower meaning than it does just about anywhere else.

In few other sports are you responsible for everything that happens during play, including your good and bad luck. Aside from aces, there are virtually no winning shots from your opponent that you can honestly say were “just too good.” Chances are, an imperfect shot from you allowed your opponent to hit that winner. (This is what makes a loss in tennis so hard to accept—deep down, you know it was your fault). And vice-versa, simply by putting one more shot in the court, as Federer did at 5-6 in the second-set tiebreaker, you give your opponent a chance to screw up, to send a volley 10 feet wide. If he does, you weren’t merely lucky; you had a hand in making your good fortune.

“You create your own luck”: It’s a phrase that’s both too optimistic and too cruel, but it’s undeniably true in tennis, where cause and effect, fortune and skill, are fully intertwined. Staying healthy for every Slam while your main rival falls to injury; getting yourself to the semifinals while your other rivals fall prey to pressure or exhaustion; remaining calm when you’re on the verge of defeat and you have a chance to break the all-time record for majors. These are seemingly routine marks of consistency, but no one else in tennis history has matched them. Luck? Roger Federer has earned more of it than anyone else. A+

Serena Williams

Her competitive energy was wild and unfocused in Paris, where she trash-talked Dinara Safina and threatened an early-round opponent. At Wimbledon it was just as fierce, but she channeled it into pummeling the little yellow ball. Does anyone, other than perhaps Rafael Nadal, embody the desire to win as much as Serena? She grunts—no extraneous screams for her—and pumps her fist, she bends over in disbelief when she’s missed, and most theatrical of all, she leaps after she hits a ball that’s going to land close to the line, hoping to bring it down safely with the power of her body English.

And while she’s never tidy about it, Serena gets what she wants. Talk about creating your own luck. Down match point to Elena Dementieva in the semifinals, Williams played with no fear, taking the first opportunity to come forward. You can sum up her subsequent net cord volley winner in four words: “fortune favors the brave.” You can sum up her crucial first-set tiebreaker win over her sister Venus in the final the same way. A+

Men’s Final

Nadal-Federer 2008 overflowed, with long rallies, daredevil shot-making, rain delays, flashbulbs, operatic drama, darkness, tears. This year’s was fast and spare by comparison, a quartet rather than a symphony. The points themselves weren’t as spectacular, though you also got the sense that no one wanted to claim it was as good as last year’s final, right after we all got done calling that one the greatest match in history.

This was just as entertaining, however. I’ve never seen anything quite like the end. Each player faced a quandary. On the one hand, the longer the match went, the more emotionally drained Federer and Roddick became with each game—how many aces and service winners could they hit? But at the same time, the longer it went, the more there was at stake for each of them—they must have been winding down just as the drama was winding up. They were stuck on a high-wire together. I had a feeling that, unlike last year, the end would be anti-climactic. Roddick’s terrible mishit into the back tarp proved me right. It’s too bad, for Roddick and for us, that we’ll have to watch that shot replayed for so many years to come. A+

Andy Roddick

Late in the final, John McEnroe seemed to overspeak while watching Roddick hit a strong backhand down the line. He said that that shot should make the people back home “proud to be Americans.” It’s probably a lot to ask from a ground stroke.

But McEnroe was right in the larger sense. We saw Roddick grow up in front of us over the July 4th weekend. He never lifted his eyes, changed his gait, or showed more emotion than what was absolutely necessary—he looked consumed by the task at hand. He ignored the wishes of 15,000 people in the semis and a soul-crushing blown tiebreaker in the second set of the final. Can you imagine him talking to the camera, the way he did the last time he played Federer in a Slam final, at the 2006 U.S. Open?

Moreover, has Roddick ever hit his vaunted serve so effectively or rushed the net with such intelligent selectivity? Has he ever hit so many forcing forehands and deadly backhands on the run? Has he ever looked more like a born tennis player rather than an all-around jock? This was muscular tennis at its most controlled and purposeful.

Roddick had been beaten three straight times by Murray and 18 times by Federer, but he approached both of this weekend's matches as if they were contested on even terms. He had been written off at Slams for years, but he set about remaking himself with a new coach for at least the fourth time. The upshot is that he just played the two best matches of his life at age 26: He pushed Murray back without trying to blast through him and controlled the rallies against Federer off both sides.

He's been known in some parts as the American who couldn’t keep his country’s tradition of great tennis champions alive. A win over Federer yesterday would have banished that criticism forever. Instead Roddick played beautiful tennis for 4 hours on Sunday only to run up against a brick wall and end the day in tears, a lifelong dream and career vindication thwarted by his more gifted nemesis again. Then he was forced to describe how he felt to the world. Asked by Sue Barker if he felt the sport could be cruel, Roddick said to the crowd, who had supported him as they always do at Wimbledon, “No, I’m one of the lucky few who gets cheered for, so thank you for that.”

Roddick may not be a champion on the order of Sampras or McEnroe or Connors, but none of those guys could match the breadth of his personality, or his unpretentious humanity. His performance on Sunday, first in his actions and then in his astoundingly stoical, winning words before a worldwide audience, was inspiring. It really did make me proud to be an American. A+

W: Semifinal Preview

2009-07-01T18:53:28-04:00

Let me begin by saying that the question I was asked most frequently when I returned from London had nothing to do with Wimbledon, or tennis, or England, or Michael Jackson. It was: “How was your flight? I hope it was better than the one you had going over there.” The return trip was much smoother, just so you know, though I was surrounded by a class of high school students, mostly girls, from Dayton, Ohio, who I can only assume hadn’t descended through many bumpy banks of clouds before. Each time the plane lost altitude and began to float downward during our landing, they shrieked, hugged each other, and then broke apart in spastic giggles—“Dude, we're going to die!” the girl next to me happily squealed to her friend. It was better than Space Mountain.

Seeing Wimbledon on TV after a week of seeing it with my own eyes, I had the same thought that I’d had when I came home last year: It might be better in HD than it is live. You get the same sunlight, but it’s concentrated and made more comprehensible—meaningful—inside the TV’s rectangle, and you get closer to the players. One close-up this morning showed the texture of Serena Williams’ hair in more detail than I’ve ever seen it in person. It seemed to be within touching distance.

Live or on TV, Wimbledon received its best match of 2009 from Lleyton Hewitt and Andy Roddick today. They rallied and rallied and rallied some more, but the quality was high enough and the score close enough to keep it from ever sinking into the mundane, even over five long sets and numerous multi-deuce games. Hewitt, after playing his finest tournament in years, dug himself too deep a hole when he suffered a brief brain camp in the third-set tiebreaker. It was one of the few bad patches of play all afternoon, but it was enough.

With that, the semifinals of Wimbledon are set. What do they hold in store for us?

Elena Dementieva vs. Serena Williams

I know what you’re thinking: Is Elena Dementieve really still in this tournament? I don’t think I’ve seen one point of hers so far, but give her credit: She took an easy draw and didn’t blow it.

If you think Dementieva’s cause is hopeless against Serena Williams, who played a very determined, quality match to beat Victoria Azarenka in the quarterfinals, you’re probably right. Serena beat her in a routine straight-setter the last time they met in a Slam semi, in Melbourne in January, and the American appears to want another crack at her sister in a Wimbledon final as much as she’s wanted anything on a tennis court in recent years.

Before Australia, however, Dementieva had won three straight over Serena, including a big one at the Olympics in Beijing. The Russian thrives on pace, and Serena certainly brings that. Still, I liked Williams’ form, and focus, in the quarters. She doesn’t often lose that once she’s got it at a major.

Winner: S. Williams

Dinara Safina vs. Venus Williams

Serena’s big sister follows her onto the court for the second match, having looked almost as sharp as her sibling this week—neither sister has dropped a set at Wimbledon so far. Her opponent, Safina, has dropped plenty, having struggled her way back from one-set deficits against Amelie Mauresmo and Sabine Lisicki.

Williams and Safina have only played three times over the years—how is that possible?—with the American winning twice. The Russian snuck out a three-setter the last time they played, but that was on clay, Safina’s best surface. This is, as we all know, Venus’ best surface. Like her sister, she gets better as the matches get bigger. How can Safina spoil the seemingly inevitable Williams final feud? I would say that she should try to give Venus no rhythm by mixing up spins and paces, but that really isn’t her specialty. So Safina is going to have to bomb away heavy and deep from the baseline, take charge of points with her return when possible, and not hurt herself with her serve. What are the chances that it will be enough?

Winner: V. Williams

Roger Federer vs. Tommy Haas

There’s always been a little resentment from Tommy Haas over Roger Federer’s outrageous success. The German beat him in two of their first three matches, including a five-setter in Melbourne way back in 2002. For years, Haas must have thought of Federer as another guy of similar talents, not someone who was going to win 14 Grand Slams, while he never even reached a major final. The upshot is that Haas has never bowed to Federer, never put him on a pedestal, never considered him unbeatable. As we all remember, he was just a point away from serving for a straight-set win over him in Paris last month.

Haas is playing even better now. He showed off some frankly beautiful all-court tennis today in beating Novak Djokovic, and proved that a competent transition game and vintage volley technique can still make the difference on grass. Haas, naturally, tried his best to lose his concentration and fold when he served for a two-set lead, but he uncharacteristically gathered himself a few minutes later and saved three set points in the ensuing tiebreaker. He sealed the set with a fabulous approach and stretch volley winner of a sharp Djokovic pass.

You might say Haas has nothing to lose against Federer, but that’s only true until he gets a lead. It isn’t that he can’t close the deal against his old rival; it’s that Federer has looked just as bulletproof at Wimbledon as he did at the French. Soderling threw the kitchen sink at him in the fourth round, and he came up with all the right responses when he needed them. I’m looking forward to seeing Haas do the same, by coming to the net at every plausible opportunity. And I’m betting that Federer, while surrendering a set, finds a way—with stab returns at his opponent’s feet, with clutch serves during tiebreakers, with a killer forehand pass on his only break point of the set—to end the 31-year-old Haas’ Indian Spring.

Winner: Federer

Andy Roddick vs. Andy Murray

From the start, even when Murray was a scraggly whippersnapper, his crafty game gave Roddick fits. The Scot beat him in their first two meetings, in 2006, the second of which happened at Wimbledon. And he’s beaten in their last three meetings, including a straight-setter early this year in Doha.

Does Roddick have a chance against the hometown favorite? He is a steadier and more patient player than he has been in the past, but he also did a lot more work in his quarterfinal, taking five sets to oust Hewitt while Murray terminated JC Ferrero in straights. Murray has borne the pressure well; only in his match against Wawrinka did he appear to be pressing, particularly on his forehand. Roddick will be the guy with nothing to lose, and his serve has been more effective than ever over this fortnight—why is he suddenly acing people left and right? For his part, Murray will have to banish all thoughts of the final, of the Queen in the royal box, of a chance at immortality. That will have to affect his psyche, won't it? Just a little? Maybe?

Steadier or not, 30 aces or not, Roddick has fewer ways to win points than the Man Who Might Be King. The Yank has to serve lights out—which won’t be easy against Murray, who puts a racquet on more serves than just about anyone else—and take his chances in tiebreakers. I'll bet he almost pulls it off.

Winner: Murray