Articles by Steve Tignor

1970: The Women's Tour Begins

Thu, 26 Feb 2015 16:17:00 +0000

This year marks the 50th anniversary of TENNIS Magazine's founding in 1965. To commemorate the occasion, we'll look back each Thursday at one of the 50 moments that have defined the last half-century in our sport.

All roads lead to Rome, people were once told. As far as the history of women’s professional tennis goes, you might say the reverse is true: All roads lead away from the Foro Italico.

By the time the world’s best men and women pros gathered there for the 1970 Italian Open, the brave new Open era was two years old. It had, as promised, begun to pay dividends for the top male players. Their prize money was handed to them above the table rather than beneath it, as it had been in the old shamateur days. And it was increasing. The previous year, Rod Laver had become the first player to earn more than $100,000 in a season.

The same could not, however, be said for the women, a fact that was made abundantly clear in Rome each spring. After watching a ladies’ final at the Foro that was scheduled before noon and played in an amphitheater where marble statues outnumbered live humans, Bud Collins concluded that “women’s tennis in Italy had the status of breakfast: something to be gotten out of the way early and fast, before the day’s consequential business began.”

The winner of the women’s final in Rome in 1970, Billie Jean King, had long suspected that amateur officials doled out more under-the-table expense money to the men than they did to the women. Now that the players’ compensation was public knowledge, her colleagues’ second-class status could be read, painfully, in the numbers. That year Italian officials paid the men’s champion, Ilie Nastase, $3,500 for his work, while King walked away with 600 bucks. Billie Jean said she realized at that point “we’d get nowhere at the mercy of the men who ran the federations.”

It didn’t take long for her epiphany to be confirmed. That summer the Pacific Southwest Open announced that it would offer $12,500 to the men, and $1,500 to the women—a “feudalistic ratio,” in Collins’ words. Despite protests, tournament director Jack Kramer didn't budge; he had fought for player rights his entire career, but he believed, as many in the game still believed at the time, that fans would only pay money to see the men play.

Yet on the other side of the country, there was one tennis lover who did not believe this. Since founding World Tennis magazine in 1953, Gladys Heldman had used its pages to push relentlessly for, in the words of her fellow writer David Gray, “freedom, open tennis, democracy, and common sense,” in her sport. World Tennis “set off editorials like exploding fireworks,” Gray wrote. (At right: Carole Caldwell Graebner, Julie Heldman and Billie Jean King at the 1966 Federations Cup.)

Heldman, a 48-year-old native of New York City, was the intelligent, irreverent daughter of a judge, and the wife of a Shell Oil research scientist. She had entered Stanford University after receiving a letter of recommendation from family friend Herbert Hoover, and graduated Phi Beta Kappa in three years. As Doug Robson wrote in Tennis magazine in 2008, Heldman put her money where her words were in 1962 when she put up $1,800, and convinced nine of her tennis-fan friends to do the same, to fly 85 high-level European players to New York to play in the U.S. Championships (now the U.S. Open).

“At that point,” according to Robson, “fewer and fewer foreign amateur players were making the costly overseas trip, which was hurting the quality of the event.” With Heldman’s imports, the quality immediately went up, as did the ticket sales. The tournament grossed $100,000 more than it had the previous year. It was, in a way, the start of the modern, jet-powered tennis circuit that we take for granted today.

“Heldman anticipated that the jet airplane would play a vital role in any world tennis tour,” wrote historian E. Digby Baltzell of her risky master stroke of ’62. “I happened to go out to Forest Hills on opening day that year and incredulously watched the first truly international tennis tournament I had ever seen.”

Eight years later, Heldman would be called on to take an even riskier step in the name of tennis progress. King and her doubles partner Rosie Casals enlisted her help in their fight with Kramer. Heldman was in the process of moving to Houston, so she floated the idea of staging an eight-player women’s professional tournament there, the same week as the Pacific Southwest. Bleachers were soon constructed at the Houston Racquet Club, and tickets were sold. But Kramer, with support from former USLTA president Bob Kelleher, protested, and the USLTA threatened to suspend any woman who entered the Houston event. In those days of top-down federation control, that meant they could be banned from playing the Grand Slams, and from all international team events.

Suddenly, just two years after crossing the threshold into Open tennis, the sport found itself at another historic crossroads between its traditionalist past and its professional future. Back in ’68, Kramer and Kelleher had been insurgent forces against the amateur establishment; now they had become obstacles to further progress. Lined up on the other side of the divide were the new rebels: King, Heldman, and Heldman’s old family friend Joe Cullman, who was also the chairman of Philip Morris. Cullman and Heldman, both Jewish, had played tennis together at the Century Country Club in Westchester County. But Cullman, despite his prominence—his grandfather had owned Benson & Hedges—had felt the sting of rejection at other, WASP-only clubs on the east coast.

“It would have been normal with the connections I’ve got,” Cullman once said, “to have been asked to join one of those clubs, but I wasn’t. I survived very well without it. But I can recall it. It didn’t go unnoticed.”

“This blanket, club anti-Semitism,” Baltzell wrote, “probably led [Heldman and Cullman] to take the lead, in the last decade of amateur tennis, in eventually bringing about the Open era.”

Cullman, with no stake in the game’s past, was happy to make Philip Morris a sponsor of the first U.S. Open in 1968. He was just as happy, two years later, to get his company in on the ground floor of the women’s pro game. He contributed $2,500 to his old friend Gladys’ Houston event, in exchange for naming it after a line of cigarettes that his company had begun marketing to women two years earlier: Virginia Slims.

“When Madison Avenue dreamed up the slogan to go with the launch of the brand—“You’ve come a long way, baby”—they had no idea how apt it would be, or how far Virginia Slims and women tennis professionals would take [the] sport,” British journalist Richard Evans wrote.

In a sense, the Open era meant opening tennis to the marketplace, in particular the American marketplace, with all of the compromises and pitfalls that entailed. The tour would be criticized over the years for promoting cigarettes, but Cullman was the right sponsor for the moment. Heldman even named two of her cats Virginia and Slim.

The establishment, however, wasn’t ready to let go. The USLTA and ILTF were only willing to give the tournament permission to run an amateur event, which meant that the prize money would stay under the table. As Robson wrote, “The organization was trying to maintain control of the players in the pro era,” even if it meant paying them in secret.

Heldman, her lawyer’s genes kicking in, crafted an ingenious way out of the impasse. She signed the nine players who were willing to risk suspension to a nominal $1 “personal service” contract with World Tennis. This made them “contract pros,” which in turn made Houston an all-professional event, which in turn took it out of the USLTA’s jurisdiction. The USLTA went ahead and suspended the players, but the tournament went on as planned. At the same time, Heldman set up two more events and extended her players’ contracts.

In Houston, King, Casals, Kristy Pigeon, Nancy Richey, Val Ziegenfuss, Judy Tegart Dalton, Kerry Melville Reid, Peaches Bartkowicz, posed for a now-iconic photograph while waving dollar bills. With late-entrant Julie Heldman, they became known as the Houston 9. Julie’s mother, Gladys, posed with them in her customary sunglasses. Women tennis players, it seemed, could be pros. They could even be outlaws.

“It was a real risk,” King said later. “We would have looked pretty silly if we had failed. If nobody had come to see us play we would have been dead. But they did come. The timing was right.”

The Slims tour—Heldman nicknamed it “Women’s Lob, Featuring the Little Broads”—had been launched, and despite the early skepticism, fans paid to see it. A niche, it seemed, had been filled, and tennis had crossed another threshold. The following year, King became the first woman to pass the $100,000 mark in prize money.

“They were pioneers and publicity agents and true professionals,” Evans wrote of the first group of women pros, “and because they had such a barrier of prejudice to break down, they were always so much better at selling the game of tennis than the men.”

Forty-five years later, if you jet around the world on the tennis circuit, you’ll find the women making the same money as their male counterparts at all of the Grand Slams. You’ll find them packing the arena at the women’s-only WTA Championships in Singapore. And if you follow that road through the air all the way back to Rome, you’ll find them playing alongside the men, in front of the same teeming crowds, at the Foro Italico.

Roy Emerson vs. Yevgeny Kafelnikov

Tue, 24 Feb 2015 17:30:00 +0000

The Week in Preview: Dubai, Doha, Acapulco, Buenos Aires

Mon, 23 Feb 2015 19:51:00 +0000

The Oscars inspired its share of memorable celebrations on Sunday night, but the awards show had nothing on the tennis tours. Simona Halep, David Ferrer, Ivo Karlovic, Sara Errani, and Gilles Simon all let us know much it meant to them to win a tournament, even a small tournament, on their respective circuits. At the moment of victory, most of this weekend’s champs crouched down and clenched their fists in a show of immediate and, at least to me, surprisingly deep feeling. So deep that they had to hide it away from the rest of us and savor it on their own for a second or two.

That’s tennis, where every week gives us a new set of kings and queens, and even a relatively slow month can produce what looks like once-in-a-lifetime emotion on a regular basis. But that relatively slow month is nearing its end, and the sport, especially on the men's side, is coming out of hibernation. There are two 500-level ATP events scheduled, and for the first time since the Australian Open, Novak Djokovic, Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, and Andy Murray will all be in action.

*****

Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships (ATP)

Dubai, U.A.E.
$2,082,605; 500 ranking points
Hard courts
Draw is here

Djokovic, Federer, Murray, and Berdych are the first four seeds in Dubai; that’s about as top heavy as a non-mandatory event gets.

No. 1 and No. 2, Djokovic and Federer, have split their last two matches in Dubai, and each contest proved to be something of a harbinger. In 2011, Djokovic’s straight-set victory was part of the long, early-year winning streak that took him to No. 1. In 2014, Federer’s three-set win in the semis was a milestone on his comeback trail—he went on to win the tournament—even if he still fell short of unseating the Serb at season's end.

This year Djokovic will play with house money in Dubai. He’s already won a major and opened up a sizable lead in the rankings. His first-round match versus Vasek Pospisil isn’t an easy one, but his win in Melbourne should insulate him from the otherwise obligatory doubts and questions that come with virtually every defeat a top player takes.

Federer is a more interesting case at the moment. His third-round loss at the Australian Open naturally leaves him less insulated from those doubts and questions, especially at this stage in his career. One loss, even at a Grand Slam, is just one loss, but it did leave me wondering about Federer and momentum. Three years ago he won Wimbledon and reclaimed No. 1, before suffering a surprise defeat at the hands of Tomas Berdych in the U.S. Open quarterfinals. From there, the positive feelings he had built up slowly dissipated, and he won just one tournament over the next 16 months.

Where will Federer's loss to Seppi in Australia leave him? Did his run of success in 2014 make him impervious to a shock or two? Or is his self-confidence in his 30s on more fragile ground than it was in his 20s? For now, it’s just a question. Federer’s first answer, a routine win over Mikhail Youzhny, his 16th straight against the Russian, was a positive one.

First-round match to watch: Djokovic vs. Pospisil

*****

Qatar Total Open (WTA)

Doha, Qatar
$731,000; Premier
Hard courts
Draw is here

The women begin round two of their Arabian swing with half as many players—28—as they had in round one in Dubai last week. But while the quantity is down, the quality is still high. Petra Kvitova, Caroline Wozniacki, Agnieszka Radwanska, Ekaterina Makarova, Andrea Petkovic, and Venus Williams make for a strong first seven seeds. And while the eighth, Angelique Kerber, has departed, she did it at the hands of a better player, Victoria Azarenka.

With no injuries, a new coach, and a rankings climb to make before the summer majors, Azarenka will be a player to watch this week and over the next few months. In thrashing Kerber 6-0, 6-3, Vika played like she had something to prove. She could face Wozniacki in the third round.

Another unseeded woman to watch in Doha is Karolina Pliskova. The 22-year-old Czech, who is at a career-high No. 13, might be a little burned out after her run to the final in Dubai, but along with Madison Keys she’s been the breakout of the WTA season thus far. It’s easy to see why Andy Murray was so impressed with her: He recognizes good hands and pure timing, and it’s hard to find a cleaner ball-striker than Pliskova anywhere. Tennis is one place where timing isn’t everything, of course; Halep beat Pliskova in the Dubai final with superior athleticism and more flexibility in her shot selection. But Pliskova, as she showed in her three-set wins over Safarova and Muguruza, knows how to fight, too.

*****

Abierto Mexicano Telcel (ATP)

Acapulco, Mexico
$1,414,550; 500 ranking points
Hard courts
Draw is here

Say this for Acapulco so far: The tournament is on its social-media game. Those photos of sunsets and sandy beaches the players have been posting have had their desired effect on me—I want to be there.

There’s a pretty strong list of ATP players who are there, and it isn't just for the warm weather. Acapulco is not only a 500-level event, it’s a South American event that’s played on slow hard courts, which makes it logical preparation for the upcoming U.S. swing through Indian Wells and Miami.

Kei Nishikori is the top seed and David Ferrer second; each man is coming off a title at his last tournament.

Of interest:

Donald Young: A semifinal in Memphis, a final in Delray, an upbeat new Twitter account, and DY is back into the Top 50. Most impressive was the way he nearly gave away his Delray quarterfinal to Alexandr Dolgopolov late in the third set, only to calm down and take it back in the end. Young showed improved patience in that moment, but he still wasn’t ready for the mental torture of facing Ivo Karlovic in the final. He’ll start against fellow American Ryan Harrison in his Acapulco opener.

Grigor Dimitrov: He won the first of his three 2014 titles in Acapulco, but a year later the world No. 10 hasn’t made much more progress; the young guns we hear about now are Nishikori, Raonic, Kyrgios and Coric. An early loss here would cost Dimitrov ranking points, and would make it feel as if, a couple months shy of his 24th birthday, he's about to take a full step backward.

*****

Argentina Open (ATP)

Buenos Aires
$500,550; 250 ranking points
Red clay
Draw is here

Above I mentioned the “obligatory doubts and questions that come with virtually every defeat a top player takes.” We’ve heard more than a few of them expressed since Rafael Nadal lost, for the first time in five matches, to Fabio Fognini in Rio two days ago. Yes, Rafa played until 3 A.M. the previous night, but a loss on dirt for him, whatever the circumstances, is always going to be a noteworthy event. It’s a sign of his unprecedented excellence on the surface.

On the one hand, there’s reason to wonder whether Rafa can continue to be as dominant on clay as he has always been. He’s taken a few uncharacteristic lumps on the surface over the last year, and more generally he’s lost to a series of players he had never lost to in the past—this was one of the early signs of the aging process for Federer, and it could be the same for Nadal. In Rio, Rafa also had trouble with his forehand for stretches.

"I don't know if the best Nadal will be back," the man himself said after Rio.

On the other hand, Rafa also said he was happy to make the semis, the same way he said he was happy to make the quarters in Australia. I remember him saying something similar, and no one believing him, when he lost in the semis at Indian Wells in 2010, and I can see the same thing happening a few more times this year.

With every season, and every birthday that brings him closer to 30—he’ll be 29 in June—it gets less likely that Rafa will run the clay table again. But that doesn’t mean he’s going to fall off of it entirely, either.

Nadal will try to win his first tournament of the year in Buenos Aires. His toughest opponent could be Fognini; they’re scheduled to meet in the semis.

*****

Abierto Mexicano TELCEL (WTA)

Acapulco, Mexico
$250,000; International
Hard courts
Draw is here

Maria Sharapova, who seems to be doubling as top seed and travel ambassador this week, will take her place on the first line of the women’s bracket in Acapulco. Her opening-round opponent is American Shelby Rogers.

Also here: Errani, Caroline Garcia, Sloane Stephens

First-round match to watch: Anna Schmiedlova vs. Aleksandra Krunic. Schmiedlova reached the final in Rio last week; Krunic showed what she can do by going deep at the U.S. Open last year.

PODCAST: Discussing Dubai; Nadal's New Approach

Sat, 21 Feb 2015 03:43:00 +0000

Chris Evert vs. Gabriela Sabatini

Thu, 19 Feb 2015 15:21:00 +0000

Pete Sampras vs. Stan Smith

Thu, 19 Feb 2015 15:14:00 +0000

1970: The Tiebreaker Is Introduced

Thu, 19 Feb 2015 05:11:00 +0000

“It’s eerie what the tiebreakers do,” Arthur Ashe said at the 1970 U.S. Open. “Those red flags are out and the crowd is absolutely silent.”

Once upon a time, in that briefly freewheeling era of tennis known as the early ‘70s, scarlet banners were periodically furled and unfurled across the lawns at Forest Hills. As Ashe said, whenever one went up, the tension around the court escalated with it. When they saw one, fans knew that a set had reached 6-all, and it was time for Sudden Death.

In case anyone didn’t get the idea, the banners came with the letters S and D emblazoned across them in white. In between, in smaller type, was a logo that consisted of a V crossed with an A. Those letters were harder to make out, but they were every bit as significant. They stood for Van Alen. Jimmy Van Alen, to be precise, the man who had labored for close to two decades to make his dream of Sudden Death—or what we now refer to, in these rhetorically safer times, as the tiebreaker—a reality.

The color of the flags was appropriate, because the tiebreaker represented one of the first and only true revolutions in tennis history. Known as the “Newport Bolshevik,” Van Alen was, as the term suggests, an unlikely rebel. The son of Daisy Astor Van Alen Brughiere, he grew up in a Newport mansion with servants in the kitchen, suits of armor standing guard in the foyer, and a Rolls-Royce parked in the driveway. But it was precisely his high standing within the amateur tennis establishment that gave this “paunchy character in burgundy suede shoes and a matching complexion,” as Bud Collins described him, a chance to change the game so radically from within.

Van Alen spent his youth playing tennis on the grass courts and waltzing on the verandah at the Newport Casino, a Gilded Age country club designed by Stanford White. As an adult he naturally assumed tournament-director duties at the amateur event known as the Men’s Invitational, which was staged there each summer.

In 1954, the two finalists at Newport, Ham Richardson and Straight Clark, made Van Alen rue the day he had invited them to his beloved Casino. On the afternoon of their match, the most highly anticipated event wasn’t the singles; it was the doubles final that was supposed to follow, and which featured two Aussie up-and-comers named Lew Hoad and Ken Rosewall. While the crowd waited impatiently, Richardson and Clark engaged in a war of serving attrition that finally ended with a 6-3, 9-7, 12-14, 6-8, 10-8 Richardson victory. As they were plodding toward their conclusion, Van Alen, whose face had gone from burgundy to purple, was forced to switch Hoad and Rosewall to an outside court, where most of the crowd stood to watch. The Newport Bolshevik had seen enough.

“It struck me,” Van Alen said, “that there had to be a better, more exciting way to control the length of matches without those damnable deuce sets. Matches like that are Chinese water torture for players, court officials, and fans alike.”

With that, Van Alen set out on a quixotic quest to eliminate deuce and introduce sane scheduling to his sport. “With deuce in there,” he said, “matches are theoretically interminable. You ought to be able to schedule tennis matches at specific times like any other sport.”

Van Alen began by inventing what he called VASSS, the Van Alen Simplified Scoring system; contrary to its name, it was a long-running, ever-mutating experiment in how to speed up and energize the game. Even the meaning of Van Alen’s acronym changed over the years, with “Streamlined” replacing “Simplified.”

Tennis players and Van Alen’s old-guard peers didn’t share his enthusiasm. To them, deuce was a symbol of civilization. Endless sets may have been water torture, but they were part of the game, and part of what made it a fair test of skills. Deuce lengthened matches, but it also kept blind luck at bay; with it, if you took care of your serve, you were never out of a match. Even to consider eliminating deuce made Van Alen a traitor to his sport, if not his class. Après deuce, le déluge.

Finally, after 11 years of rejection, Van Alen went where no amateur official had dared go before: To the enemy, the pros. In the summer of 1965, he dangled $10,000, a small fortune in tennis terms at the time, in front of 10 professionals—Rod Laver, Ken Rosewall, Pancho Gonzalez, Cliff Drysdale, Pancho Segura among them—and allowed them back onto the hallowed grass at Newport, all so he could try out his VASSS system on them. A few weeks later and a mile or two down the road, Bob Dylan would shock the 60s youth-culture faithful by going electric at the Newport Folk Festival. Jimmy Van Alen, who trucked floodlights and an electric scoreboard into the Casino for the first time, did the same thing to Newport’s amateur-tennis faithful.

“The Guinea Pig Derby,” was what one player dubbed his event, and there was little that remained familiar to those 10 veteran pros, or the fans who watched them. “Matches” were the first to 31 points, and were meant to last no longer than half an hour. The remote-controlled electric scoreboard, the first ever used in tennis, not only tallied the score, it kept track of how much money each player had accumulated—every point was worth $5. Van Alen had not only eliminated deuce, he had done away with the age-old idea that some points are more important than others in tennis.

“Every point has definite worth,” Van Alen said, “and each is equally important.”

“It was amusingly more crass than even today’s scoreboard messages,” Collins wrote. “It was like playing with five dollar bills wadded up into spheres.”

In the end, the cream rose to the top: Laver walked out of the Casino with the biggest haul, $1,774. But the real winner was Van Alen, who used the tournament to invent and refine the only lasting innovation of his VASSS system, the tiebreaker. At first he called it an “extra game,” and used it when the players reached 30-30—the first player to five won the match. The following year, when one of those extra games reached 4-4, the players looked up into the bleachers and asked, much to the amusement of the spectators, “What do you we do now, Mr. Van Alen?” Van Alen declared that the next point would decide the winner. Sudden Death, in which it was possible for both players to have a match point simultaneously, was born.

Four more years passed before the USLTA agreed to give VASS a chance. What finally brought officials at the U.S. Open around? Television, naturally. The TV set, by inspiring new yellow balls and brighter clothes, had already changed the all-white sport's relation to color. Now it would change its relation to time.

Before television and the prize money that came with it, it hardly mattered when a tennis match began or ended. By the end of the 60s, with millions tuning in around the world, it mattered a great deal. U.S. Open tournament director Bill Talbert, who said he liked the “definite cutoff” that a tiebreaker provided, installed Sudden Death in 1970 over the male players’ strenuous objections. They weren’t going to watch their eternal haven, deuce, go up in smoke without a fight.

“I feel like I’m getting a heart attack playing the tiebreaker,” Gonzalez said.

“Extraordinarily nerve-wracking,” echoed Drysdale.

“Never been in anything like that before,” a bewildered Rosewall said after he losing a match on a 4-all point.

The players petitioned Talbert to drop Sudden Death before it brought them to an early grave. Thankfully, Talbert, who foresaw the tiebreaker’s appeal not just to network executives, but to the new fans that the sport was attracting, had the final say.

“Players don’t buy tickets,” he said.

With that, Jimmy Van Alen, unlikely rebel, had succeeded in bringing about one of the few rules changes in tennis’s long history. Still, even the imprimatur of the Open wasn’t enough to convert everyone to Newport-style Bolshevism.

To Van Alen’s eternal dismay, Rod Laver, who felt that Sudden Death was just a little too sudden, helped devise what was originally known as the Philadelphia Version of the tiebreaker (it was debuted at the Philadelphia Indoor event). First to seven, win by two, was more acceptable to Laver and his fellow players, and that’s the version we use today. “Lingering death,” was Van Alen’s disparaging nickname for it. Deuce, he complained until his death in 1991, had been smuggled back into the game..

Yet all of us who play and watch tennis today owe the man a debt: He took the water torture of endless deuce out, and replaced it with the tightrope-walk known as a tiebreaker. Van Alen, in a term he would appreciate, left the game VASSS-tly improved.

The Week in Preview: Dubai, Rio, Marseille, Delray

Mon, 16 Feb 2015 15:28:00 +0000

We’ve reached, I hope, the nadir of winter in the Northern hemisphere. New York, where I live, is in the grip of an old-fashioned cold snap at the moment—I don’t want to think about life in snow-massacred Boston right now—and my mind is starting to drift forward to March and Indian Wells and desert heat. The more sweltering, the better, please.

Fortunately, those thoughts feel a little closer this week, as the men and women begin to leave the shadows of the Australian Open and creep closer to the heart of the 2015 season. The WTA is in Dubai for its biggest and most lucrative event of the month, while on the men’s side, Rafael Nadal will be the first of the Big 3 to reappear, in Rio. Here’s a quick look ahead at what’s next for both circuits.

*****

Dubai Duty Free Championships (WTA)

Dubai, UAE
$2,513,000; Premier 5
Deco-Turf II
Draw is here

Can we call this the Do-Over Open? This looks like a tournament for all of the women who didn’t make the Australian Open final. Serena Williams and Maria Sharapova have taken a pass on this Middle East money-maker, but the rest of the WTA is happy to pick up their cash. Of the other top names, only Genie Bouchard is a no-show.

Who has the most to prove in Dubai? Who can make the most hay while Serena and Maria stay away? Dubai’s top two seeds, Simona Halep and Petra Kvitova, should be pleased to push the reset button. Each won an Aussie tune-up event, each looked like a contender coming to Melbourne, and each went out with a surprising whimper; Kvitova in the third round to Madison Keys, Halep in an I’d-rather-be-anywhere-else-but-here loss to Ekaterina Makarova. The season still holds promise for Petra and Simona, and it will hold even more if they can straighten things out this week.

It isn’t just Halep and Kvitova who could use a strong result. Agnieszka Radwanska, Caroline Wozniacki, Ana Ivanovic, and Angelique Kerber are all Top 10 players, and they all lost earlier than expected in Australia.

On the other side of the momentum divide are Andrea Petkovic and Venus Williams. With her title in Antwerp this weekend, Petko rejoins the Top 10 for the first time in three years; and with her quarterfinal run in Oz, Venus, the defending champ in Dubai, nearly put herself back in the Top 10 as well. Both will obviously look to build on those results.

Second-round matches to watch:

V. Williams vs. Belinda Bencic

Radwanska vs. Caroline Garcia

Ivanovic vs. Sabine Lisicki

Kerber vs. Svetlana Kuznetsova

Player of Interest: Karolina Pliskova. The 22-year-old Prague native made the final in Sydney, the semis in Antwerp, has cracked the Top 20, and received a tweet of confidence from Andy Murray. What’s next?

If Karlolina Pliskova gets quicker she will be a top notch player for sure! Fun to watch, aces, winners, great timing... #YoungGun
— Andy Murray (@andy_murray) January 15, 2015

*****

Rio Open (ATP)

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
$1,548,755; 500 ranking points
Clay
Draw is here

The season begins in earnest for the top seed, Nadal, at the week’s only ATP 500, in Rio. Rafa had doubts about how ready he would be for Australia, and those doubts proved prescient. The last time he set out on the comeback road, in 2013, he started it with two titles and a runner-up finish on South American clay, and something like that must be part of the plan this year as well. Rafa will play Rio and Buenos Aires before heading to American hard courts in March.

Can anyone throw a wrench in Nadal's plans? He has an interesting first-rounder, against Brazilian native Thomaz Bellucci; he’s a local, he’s a lefty, and Rafa has had his troubles against lefties of late. But that might be the most trouble he has in Rio, at least until the final. The next three seeds are David Ferrer, Tommy Robredo, and Fabio Fognini. The 32-draw in Rio includes eight Spaniards, not including Nadal. I don’t know Rafa’s exact record against his countrymen for his career, but I know it’s pretty good.

*****

Open 13 (ATP)

Marseille, France
$720,450; 250 ranking points
Indoor hard
Draw is here

Stan Wawrinka was last week’s big men’s winner, as he edged Milos Raonic in the Rotterdam semis and came back to knock off a hot-hitting Tomas Berdych in the final. Stan doesn’t have a Slam this year, but with his titles in Chennai and Rotterdam and his semifinal appearance in Melbourne, he’s recorded the most wins of any man so far. He’ll try to add a few more as the second seed in Marseille this week. Waiting in the final, if all goes as planned, will be Raonic.

Also here: Gael Monfils, Ernests Gulbis, Gilles Simon, Borna Coric, Vasek Pospisil, Dominic Thiem

First-round match of interest: David Goffin vs. Jerzy Janowicz

*****

Delray Beach Open (ATP)

Delray Beach, Fla.
$549,230; 250 ranking points
Hard courts
Draw is here

The Little American Winter Tour moves from indoor courts in Memphis to outdoors in Delray, and from one to 250 to another. The draw in Delray has a familiar, U.S.-centric ring to it as well. Americans John Isner, Sam Querrey, Steve Johnson, Donald Young, and Denis Kudla have all made the trip, as have Bernard Tomic and Alexandr Dolgopolov, among other internationals. The runner-up in Memphis, Kevin Anderson, is the top seed in Delray.

For U.S. fans, the continuing saga of Donald Young may be the most interesting story in Delray. He’s back on Twitter, where he has promised to behave himself, and last week he beat Tomic on his way to the semifinals. Young won’t have an easy road in Delray, though: He’s drawn Ivan Dodig in the first round, and might get Querrey after that.

Also here: Tim Smyczek

*****

Rio Open (WTA)

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
$250,000; International
Clay
Draw is here

The WTA’s big money and big names are in Dubai, but there’s a women’s draw on Rio’s red clay as well. If the men’s event there feels Spanish, this one has an Italian vibe: Sara Errani and Roberta Vinci are the first and third seeds, respectively.

American of Interest: Madison Brengle. The 24-year-old Delaware native has parlayed her round-of-16 finish in Australia into a career-high ranking of No. 45 and a fourth seeding in Rio.

1969: Pancho and Pasarell Steal the Show

Thu, 12 Feb 2015 13:38:00 +0000

“Gorgo” was what Ken Rosewall and Rod Laver called their fellow pro Pancho Gonzalez. It was short for “gorgonzola”—i.e., the Big Cheese. The young Aussies, who dominated the barnstorming pro tours for much of the 1960s, resented the fact that the moody and mercurial American always received the lion’s share of attention from press and fans. No matter how many matches, tours, or tournaments that Muscles and the Rocket won, some people still believed that the only thing keeping the pros in business was Gonzalez’s dark allure. Whether he was playing brilliantly or behaving badly, all eyes were on the Big Cheese.

“Pancho always found a way to upstage you,” Laver said, referring to their respective performances at Wimbledon in 1969. By then both men had come in from the pro-tour wilderness and been allowed back onto Centre Court; yet from Laver’s viewpoint, nothing much had changed. While he went on to win the tournament that year, and complete his second calendar-year Grand Slam in New York two months later, the only match anyone wanted to talk about was Pancho’s now-legendary first-round win over Charlie Pasarell.

It’s easy to understand why. Only a handful of individual matches will be included among TENNIS's 50 Greatest Moments of the last 50 years, and fewer still will be first-round contests. But Gonzalez-Pasarell more than stands the test of time, for its statistics and its symbolism, and most of all for the show that Gonzalez put on in front of a Wimbledon crowd that had missed him during his prime.

He was a 41-year-old grandfather by then, but after two decades as a professional outlaw, the world’s most famous player had entered the world’s most famous tournament for just the second time since 1949. He had a lot to prove, and he proved it all in the space of 24 hours. Few players have ever been booed as lustily by the well-mannered Wimbledon audience as Gonzalez was when he walked off, enraged, after the first day’s play had been brought to a halt. And few players received as long and loud an ovation as that same man did when he walked off, head high, a winner the next afternoon.

View image | gettyimages.com

Gonzalez never won a popularity contest among his peers, but he was a revered figure among the generation that came up after him, and he was a generous, if tough-minded, mentor to them. As one of the game’s few Mexican-American stars, Gonzalez came from the wrong side of the tennis tracks in Los Angeles, and he was especially partial to fellow outsiders. He worked with Jimmy Connors and Arthur Ashe in the 60s, as well as Pasarell.

The native of Puerto Rico, who was 16 years Gonzalez’s junior, traveled to the older man’s home base in Las Vegas to train. With his help, the smooth-swinging Pasarell—“Watch Charlie play and copy his strokes,” Ashe would tell his students—became the No. 1 U.S. amateur in 1967. That year, with his upset win over Manuel Santana on Centre Court, he also became the first man to knock out the defending champ in the opening round at Wimbledon. Pasarell had a knack for first-round classics at the Big W. In 1968, he lost a five-setter to Rosewall, but even that much-celebrated match was instantly overshadowed by what happened a year later.

Pasarell and Gonzalez began simply enough: The two of them held serve 45 straight times. Gonzalez served to stay in the set 18 times, and saved 11 set points. Finally, on the 12th, a Pasarell lob found the back edge of the baseline and the first set was his, 24-22. From there, Pasarell, “swaggering, splay-footed across the baseline, gripping his racquet like a tomahawk,” as British writer Richard Evans put it, made short work of his older opponent in the second set, 6-1.

View image | gettyimages.com

“Short work,” but not quick work. The set began a little after 7 P.M. on a gloomy day, and Gonzalez spent most of it complaining about the deteriorating visibility. “How the hell can I play when I can’t see?” he bellowed, while slamming his Slazenger Smasher in front of the umpire’s chair. When the frame clipped the BBC’s courtside microphone, “the explosion sounded like the end of the world” to television viewers at home, according to Evans. “Their screens were filled with a close-up of the Gonzalez scowl, and, with the light so bad, his whole face was tinted green, making him look like some great Aztec god—an awesome, fearsome sight.”

Still, god or no god, even this Lion in Winter, raging against the dying of the light, had to bow to Wimbledon’s iron-fisted authority. These were the days when the tournament was run by grim-faced former military men; the tournament referee, Captain Mike Gibson, remained unmoved by Gonzalez’s histrionics. For his part, Laver sounded unmoved as well: “No light is ever good enough for him,” he said of Gonzalez. Play was finally called at the end of the second set, and Pancho stalked toward the locker room accompanied by a storm of boos and whistles. He was so agitated that he stayed up until 2:00 A.M. the next morning, fuming over a backgammon board.

The weather was much better the following day, but Gonzalez’s play wasn’t. Pasarell nearly sent a serve into the old man’s gut; he had to double up and fend the ball off with his racquet at the last second. But while Gonzalez bent, he was never broken, and the student gradually began to feel the pressure of trying to finish off the master. At 14-15, Pasarell double-faulted twice and lost his serve for the set. Confidence shaken, he double-faulted again to lose the fourth set, 6-3. Pasarell had begun, as Bud Collins said, to look “like someone run over by a geriatric in a wheelchair.”

In the fifth set, the rallies grew more dramatic and complex as the two men, who had faced each other so often, went to greater lengths to gain an edge over the other. “Gonzalez smelled blood,” Evans wrote. “He knew where to look for it, too.” But few expected Pasarell to lose a final-set war of attrition to the weary-looking Gonzalez, who had begun to lean on his racquet and stall for time between points.

View image | gettyimages.com

So it came as no surprise when Pasarell reached match point first—three of them in a row, in fact—with Gonzalez serving at 4-5, 0-40. Pasarell had tormented Gonzalez with his lob earlier in the match, but now two of them landed inches long. Seven deuces later, the tension building with each of them, Gonzalez held for 5-5. At 5-6, the old man had to do it all over again, digging himself out of another 0-40, triple-match-point hole to hold for 6-6. Finally, three games later, serving at 7-8, Gonzalez faced a seventh match point.

“A hush fell over Centre Court,” Evans wrote. “Could this be it? Up went another Pasarell lob as Gonzalez’s tired old legs carried him to the net. But, as gasps were emitted all around the arena, the ball again landed inches long.”

From there, Gonzalez held, and Pasarell snapped. The Lion in Winter, the Old Wolf, the Big Cheese: He lived up to all of his nicknames by winning the final 11 points to claim a 22-24, 1-6, 16-14, 6-3, 11-9 victory. It had taken five hours and 20 minutes and lasted 112 games, shattering the 82-game Wimbledon record of 1918. You don’t see set scores as mind-boggling as those today, and that’s partly a product of what happened between Gonzalez and Pasarell. Their match hastened the advent of the tiebreaker, which made its debut the following year at the U.S. Open. For years, after Wimbledon also went to the tiebreaker at 6-6 in the first four sets, it seemed that those 112 games would never be surpassed. But they were, in 2010, when John Isner and Nicolas Mahut played 183 games (138 of them in the breaker-less fifth set alone) in their own first-round epic.

At Wimbledon in '69, Gonzalez would win his next two matches in straight sets before going out in four to Arthur Ashe in the round of 16. But he had made his point on those opening two days, one stormy and one sunny, when he showed everyone at Wimbledon, and everyone in tennis, what they had been missing all those years.

View image | gettyimages.com

PODCAST: Fed Cup Takeaways; State of the Men's Game

Wed, 11 Feb 2015 02:49:00 +0000

Power, Past and Present

Tue, 10 Feb 2015 16:02:00 +0000

The Week in Preview: Feb. 9

Mon, 09 Feb 2015 15:34:00 +0000

We’ve had a Grand Slam and a long weekend of Fed Cup; now February, the most frenetically insignificant of tennis months, begins in earnest. That means a lot of tournaments, a lot of appearance fees, and not a whole lot that we’re going to remember by the end of the season. Still, for us hardcore fan types, there’s plenty to watch.

*****

ABN AMRO World Tennis Tournament (ATP)

Rotterdam, Netherlands
$1,811,522; 500 ranking points
Indoor hard courts
Draw is here

The men scatter to three locations this week, but Richard Krajicek’s Rotterdam event rises above the pack. Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal have made the trip to play this 500-level tournament in the past, and this year it has snagged the fourth of the Big 4, Andy Murray, as its top seed. He’ll lead a small draw of solid, and solidly European, talent. Two Canadians, Vasek Pospisil and No. 2 seed Milos Raonic, are entered, but no U.S. players have made the trip.

Squint a little harder at this draw and you’ll find a name that may surprise you two-thirds of the way down: Stan Wawrinka. Over the last year, we’ve gotten used to seeing the Swiss No. 2 in either the top or bottom bracket. But after his run to the semifinals at the Australian Open, he has fallen out of his Top 4 perch all the way down to No. 8—if you’re going to win a Grand Slam, you better do it again the next year. But Wawa’s loss is Rotterdam’s gain. Instead of taking most of February off, as he did last season, Stan will get right back on the court. He’ll start against Jesse Huta Galung, and could play Grigor Dimitrov in the quarters.

Also here: Tomas Berdych, Gael Monfils, wild card Alexander Zverev

Already out: Ernests Gulbis, to his friend and training partner Dominic Thiem

*****

BNP Paribas Fortis Diamond Games (WTA)

Antwerp, Belgium
$731,000; WTA Premier
Indoor hard courts
Draw is here

Yes, February is supposed to be a slow month, but it’s been a fast one for news so far. Last week the tennis world got two jolts out of the blue: Serena Williams announced that she’s returning to Indian Wells in March after 14 years away, and, maybe even more shocking, Eugenie Bouchard announced that she had hired Sam Sumyk, Victoria Azarenka’s longtime svengali, as her new coach.

Bouchard will show off what, if anything, she’s learned from Sumyk so far in Antwerp, where she’s the top seed. Maybe his first lesson was to take your guaranteed money while you can. Bouchard bailed out of Canada’s first World Group Fed Cup tie this past weekend. Instead, she’ll start against either Mona Barthel or a qualifier this week.

Also here: Angelique Kerber, Andrea Petkovic, Lucie Safarova

First-round match to watch, or at least be curious about: Alizé Cornet vs. Belinda Bencic. The Swiss sensation of 2014 had a rough start to her season, losing her opener in Australia.

*****

Memphis Open (ATP)

Memphis, Tenn.
$659,070; 250 ranking points
Indoor hard courts
Draw is here

Here is where the American men are hiding. Eight of the 28 players entered in Memphis are natives: John Isner, Steve Johnson, Sam Querrey, Donald Young, Ryan Harrison, Robby Ginepri, and perhaps most interesting, teenagers Stefan Kozlov and Jared Donaldson. The latter two, both wild cards, face each other in the first round on Monday night. Hopefully it’s the first of many between them. Kozlov is the country’s next great hope at the moment, but I think Donaldson, a Californian by way of Rhode Island currently ranked No. 180, may have more longterm potential.

Top seeds: Kei Nishikori, Kevin Anderson

*****

PTT Open (WTA)

Pattaya, Thailand
$250,000; WTA International
Hard courts
Draw is here

Are there two, or even three, women’s tournaments in Pattaya? There always seems to be something happening there. The top seeds at this outdoor event are Shuai Peng and Elina Svitolina. But there’s a veteran feel, to put it mildly, to the tournament this time around. Kimiko Date-Krumm, 44, will face Svitolina, who is 24 years her junior, in the first round. On the other side of the draw, Thailand’s Tamarine Tanasugarn, 37, will open against Misaki Doi.

Also here: Vera Zvonareva, as a wild card

*****

Brasil Open (ATP)

Sao Paulo, Brazil
$505,655; 250 ranking points
Clay
Draw is here

The South American clay swing gains a little momentum as it moves from Ecuador to Brazil this week. The top seed in Sao Paulo, Feliciano Lopez, had a good run in Quito, but he'll probably want to put his loss in the final there to Victor Estrella Burgos, in a third-set tiebreaker, out of his mind ASAP.

Lopez leads a Spanish invasion that includes No. 2 seed Tommy Robredo, Nicolas Almagro, Fernando Verdasco, Pablo Andujar, Albert Ramos-Viñolas, and Pablo Carreño Busta.

Also here: Fabio Fognini.

Who says February is a dull month?

1969: Rod Laver Wins His Second Grand Slam

Thu, 05 Feb 2015 22:34:00 +0000

In the same year that the United States sent a rocket to the moon, Australia launched its own Rocket—a freckled, 5’8”, 143-pound flash out of Rockhampton, Queensland—across the globe to win an unprecedented second calendar-year Grand Slam. Rodney George Laver’s four-for-four run at the majors was a celebrated achievement at the time; when he won the last leg, at Forest Hills in New York, he was declared by many to be the greatest player of all time. But the myth of his perfect season has only grown in the 46 years since, as the world’s best male players, from Jimmy Connors and Bjorn Borg to Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal, have strived to match the little Aussie master, only to a fall a shot or two short of his legendary standard.

Of course, Laver wasn’t quite perfect in 1969, but he was certainly productive: He won 18 of 32 tournaments he entered and finished with a 106-16 singles record. Who says the tour is more physically demanding today, when 80 matches in a season is considered a debilitating grind? Laver and his opponents didn’t engage in the grueling rallies we see now, but the serve-and-volley style they played forced them to move at top speed throughout their points; and they did it in both singles and doubles. At big events, every round was three-out-of-five sets, and there were no tiebreakers to bring those sets to a predictable close.

Laver might have been thankful for a breaker or two in his first serious test of ’69, a 90-game, 7-5, 22-20, 9-11, 1-6, 6-3 death march through 105-degree heat against Tony Roche in the semifinals of the first Australian Open. Laver brought three sun hats to the match, which he called the “hardest of my career,” and he soaked them all. The two butcher’s sons from the Aussie bush threw lefty bombs at each other until, unfortunately, a line call sealed their fates. Serving at 3-4 in the fifth, Roche felt—and almost certainly still feels today—that a Laver shot had landed wide, but instead of hearing "out" from the line judge, he heard nothing at all. Roche never recovered, and Laver, after a comparatively pro forma straight-set win over Spain’s Andres Gimeno in the final, had secured the first of the Big 4.

“You get all the calls when you win the Grand Slam,” Laver said as he looked back over his charmed season, and that call in the Aussie Open semis wasn’t his only break that year. Just beating Roche at all that day could have been seen as a stroke of good fortune. According to Laver, at the start of ’69 the younger Roche “made it clear he thought my time was over and his time had come.” Roche might have been right if it hadn’t been for the majors. He beat Laver in the tournament immediately before the Aussie Open, in Sydney, and the tournament immediately after, in Auckland. Roche finished ’69 with five wins in their nine matches, but he could never catch the Rocket when it counted.

Laver’s next task, to win the title in Paris, looked even more daunting. Clay was this net-rusher’s least-favorite surface, and while he had won the title at Roland Garros during his first Slam run in 1962, he was just 6-5 there otherwise. In ’69 he was nearly gone before the tournament began. In the second round he faced another countryman of his, the long and lanky Dick Crealy, who jumped out to a two-set lead. Play was stopped and resumed early the next day in the main stadium, in front of what Laver described as approximately four people. As he said, “10:30 is not really the French spectator’s hour.”

Alone together, the two Aussies fought to 4-4 in the fifth set. Up a game point on his serve, Crealy had an easy sitter. Laver, assuming he would have to serve to stay in the match, turned away; to his shock and delight, he watched as Crealy smacked the ball past him, and well out. Laver broke and held for the match. Given that reprieve, he powered through the rest of the draw, and right past his greatest rival, Ken Rosewall, in the final. Motivated by his loss to Muscles in Paris the year before, Laver attacked early, and attacked with precision. “I don’t know of any match I enjoyed better,” he said, “the points just rolled in.”

But even Rod Laver couldn't stay on that kind of roll for long, and even he had trouble with the sport’s lightning-fast transition from clay to grass. Two weeks after cruising past Rosewall in front of a packed house at Roland Garros, Laver found himself on godforsaken Court 4 at Wimbledon, down two sets to an Indian player named Premjit Lall. Again, Laver was helped by his opponent’s overzealousness. Lall, like Crealy, missed a sitter at 3-3 in the third set, and Laver was off to the races. He won the last 15 games of the match.

That wasn’t Laver’s last comeback at Wimbledon that year. In the semis, he faced a red-hot Arthur Ashe, who won the first set 6-2 by playing what Jack Kramer called the best tennis he had ever seen. But Laver, who had never lost to Ashe to that point, knew that patience had its rewards against the American. He waited him out through the middle two sets, before turning the tables entirely and winning the fourth at love.

In the final, Laver faced yet another fellow Aussie, John Newcombe, the Wimbledon champion two years earlier. Newk, who liked to junk Laver, had beaten him at Queen’s Club two weeks earlier, and he looked primed for a repeat when he went up 4-1 in the third on Centre Court. But again Laver turned it around, this time with a surprise slice crosscourt backhand pass that left Newcombe shaking his head, and wondering where his lead had gone. The next thing the Rocket knew it was the following morning, and he was waking up in the bathtub at his hotel, still in his Champion's Ball tuxedo.

When he’d recovered, it was on to New York for one more major and one more comeback. This time it happened against Dennis Ralston in the fourth round, on the rain-drenched grass at Forest Hills. Down two sets to one, with the crowd in the American’s corner, Laver took it to a fifth. There, serving at 2-3, Ralston obliged just as Crealy and Lall had, with a volley that he tried to make too good, and which cost him the match. Laver, the fastest of tennis players, seemed to have that effect on his opponents.

Waiting, in a rain-delayed Monday final, to try to spoil the Slam was the same man who had almost stopped it before it began, Tony Roche. The Rocket had one more trick up his sleeve, though, and one more opportunity to turn bad luck to good. Wearing cleats was the best way to combat the soggy turf at the West Side Tennis Club; Laver put them on at the end of the first set, but Roche was afraid they would hurt his already strained thigh muscles. From there, Laver ran Roche, almost literally, into the ground over four sets.

The last time the low-key Rocket had jumped the net after a victory was in 1957; when his foot caught the tape, he had fallen straight onto his face. But there was no stopping him this time. A few seconds after Roche's final forehand sailed out, Laver found himself in mid-air. He leapt across the net, and into tennis history. No man has followed him there yet.

Crossing the Invisible Net

Wed, 04 Feb 2015 20:21:00 +0000

Andy Murray appeared to be on the verge of vindication at this year’s Australian Open. Two months earlier, he had been dismantled by Roger Federer, 6-0, 6-1, in front of his home audience in London at the World Tour Finals; the loss had been embarrassing enough that Murray felt compelled to apologize to his fans for it: “I will work as hard as I can through the off-season and get back to my best level for the beginning of the new year...sorry,” he wrote on Twitter.

Now, as he stood inside Rod Laver Arena after a tough semifinal win and praised his coach, Amelie Mauresmo, Murray could feel like he had lived up to his word. He was in his first Grand Slam final since Wimbledon 2013, and he hadn’t been wrong, it was clear now, to choose Mauresmo.

Then it happened all over again. Murray had lost 12 of 13 games to Federer at the O2 Arena in November, and that’s exactly what he did at the end of his Aussie Open final to Novak Djokovic. After winning a second-set tiebreaker, Murray led 2-0 in the third; he would win just one more game and go out, flailing bitterly, 6-0 in the fourth set. Worse, as he admitted afterward, he had let himself become distracted by Djokovic, who struggled physically early in sets two and three before recovering. Murray complained at the start of the tournament about being a called a “drama queen” in the past; now he seemed to be implying something similar about Djokovic.

Is Murray back to square one? Will the whispers about Mauresmo being a poor substitute for his last coach, Ivan Lendl, begin again? British writer Mark Hodgkinson addressed that question in a post at ESPN.co.uk, “Murray’s anger: Should Lendl fans blame Mauresmo?” Did Murray suffer what Pat Cash called a “meltdown” in the final because Lendl wasn’t there to scare him straight?

Hodgkinson quotes Judy Murray, Toni Nadal, and Chris Evert on the Lendl-Murray relationship; they all agree that the best thing Ivan did for Andy was to keep him calm.

“The talent and the shots, they have always been there,” Uncle Toni says, “but Lendl definitely helped Murray with the mental side. In the important moments, Murray could be much calmer on court, much more tranquil.”

How quick we are to invent lost paradises. Lendl undoubtedly had a positive effect on Murray; with him, he won his first two, and so far only two, major titles. And he was calmer, at times. I remember Murray working hard to stay that way during his opening round at the Australian Open in 2012, the first Grand Slam match where Lendl was in his player’s box. But plenty of un-calm moments were to follow, even when Murray had his greatest successes.

During the 2012 U.S. Open final, a match he won, Murray spent the better part of a set screaming that his legs were "Jelly!" And while he won the title at Wimbledon the following year, he had more than a few choice words for himself along the way, especially when he came back from two sets down to beat Fernando Verdasco in the quarters. As Hodgkinson helpfully recalls, Murray has said, “It wouldn’t make me feel good, bottling up my emotions—saying nothing and standing there makes me feel flat.”

The truth is that Murray not only likes and needs to be vocal; he likes and needs to hear new voices in return. Over the years, he hasn't been afraid to change his coaching situations up when they get stale. He also hasn’t been afraid to go in different directions with his choices, and to fly solo when necessary. Early in his career, Murray made progress with Brad Gilbert, but after deciding that the American’s voluble style wasn’t for him, he put together a more laid-back team of friends led by the easygoing Miles Maclagan. Later, when a major title continued to elude him, Murray hired Lendl, a player who had worked hard to go from Grand Slam also-ran to Grand Slam champion.

When that relationship ran its course two years later, Murray, in an echo of the Gilbert-to-Maclagan transition, brought Mauresmo on board. After living with the famously hard-edged Lendl, he seems happy to be in a cooperative working relationship with Mauresmo. Asked what he likes most about her, he invariably mentions how well she listens, and how productive their conversations are. With her, Murray also mixed up his training again in the off-season, emphasizing sprints and speed work for the first time in years. The results spoke for themselves in Melbourne. One of the pleasures of being a tennis fan is seeing a person grow up and and discover themselves, and Murray has given us that opportunity over the last decade.

“I enjoy working with Amelie,” Murray said in Australia, “I think she’s fantastic. She gets on very well with my team, too. She has a good personality to coach and also has a lot of experience as well, so I’m happy with the way it’s working.”

Murray also described Mauresmo as “brave” for taking on the job, and he hasn’t shied away from addressing the gender politics involved in his choice.

“A lot of people criticized me working with her,” Murray said, “and I think so far this week we’ve shown that women can be very good coaches as well.”

It’s these kinds of comments that have made Murray, who likes nothing more than to prove people wrong, a feminist hero of sorts.

“Professional sportsmen aren’t usually feminist icons,” wrote Claire Sibbick at Elle.UK last week, “but the fact that Murray is championing women as being just as capable as men is a good step in the right direction.”

Murray being hailed as an icon of anti-sexism may come as a surprise to some, but the seeds have been evident for a while. Murray’s mother, Judy, was his first coach, and unlike most of the men, he has always shown an interest in the women’s side of the sport. He championed France's Caroline Garcia four years ago, and did the same with the Czech Republic's Karolina Pliskova this January. He has pronounced himself a fan of Agnieszka Radwanska’s. And his run to the mixed-doubles silver medal with Laura Robson was one of the highlights of the London Olympics.

His move to hire Mauresmo may already have had an effect—not on the men’s side, but on the women’s side. Even there, women coaches have never been the norm; but this off-season, two of Mauresmo’s fellow former Grand Slam champs, Lindsay Davenport and Martina Navratilova, took the coaching plunge with Madison Keys and Radwanska.

Beyond that, Murray’s move feels like a watershed for a game that has never made the most of its dual-gender potential. Tennis is the rare major professional sport where men and women compete at many of the same events, and the women can be bigger stars, and bigger draws, than the men. The latter point is more important than ever; tennis’ international cast of celebrities would seem to be perfect for the age of social media, where stars are the only common denominator. Yet rather than combine forces, the two tours have more typically been at odds, and they have been that way since their beginnings in the early 1970s.

When the ATP brought 80 of its male players together to boycott Wimbledon in 1973, the leader on the women’s side, Billie Jean King, offered to join forces with them. She barely received a call back; even Arthur Ashe, so progressive on other fronts, wasn’t interested. Four decades later and not much has changed. Many of the men still protest the idea of equal pay, and few have a good word, or any word, to say about the women’s game.

But three recent developments have made me hopeful that a slow sea change could be in the offing for the sport. (1) New ATP player council president Eric Butorac has said he doesn’t want to revisit the equal-pay debate; (2) Last fall, the IPTL exhibition league gave us a glimpse of what the sport can offer, in particular on social media, when the men and women team up and put their star power together; and (3) Murray’s pioneering choice of, and success with, Mauresmo.

Andy Murray may not have finished the Aussie Open the way he wanted, but when it come to his effect on tennis, the tournament isn't over yet.

Serena Takes a New Stand

Wed, 04 Feb 2015 18:15:00 +0000

“You don’t make these stands to accomplish a specific goal, I’ve come to realize. You make them because they’re right....You make them because you wouldn’t be here if someone didn’t make them for you, long before you were even born.... Most of all, you make them because somewhere, some little girl might be watching.”

This is how, in her 2009 autobiography On the Line, Serena Williams explained her decade-long boycott of the tournament at Indian Wells. Serena's stand, motivated by the hostile reception she received when she won the event as a 19-year-old in 2001, obviously had a deep meaning for her. It may even have been part of what has driven her for the last 14 years—never forgetting moments like that. Serena saw the boycott as an extension of what Althea Gibson and Arthur Ashe had done to further the cause of African-American athletes in tennis. Over time, as she looked back and recalled her more vulnerable younger self on that day, the importance of sticking to this principle, and continuing the legacies of Ashe, Gibson, and other black athletes, only grew for her.

“I look at pictures of me from that tournament—all fresh-faced and excited and looking sharp in my Puma jumper,” Serena wrote. “I looked so cute!... And yet those people were just ripping me. I was just a kid, and they were ripping me. I feel so badly for the little girl I was back then. How can you justify treating a child so badly?”

So it came as a surprise to me and many others to read today that Serena, after pondering a return last year, has changed her mind for real this time. In an announcement published in TIME on Wednesday, she wrote:

“Thirteen years and a lifetime in tennis later, things feel different. A few months ago, when Russian official Shamil Tarpischev made racist and sexist remarks about Venus and me, the WTA and USTA immediately condemned him. It reminded me how far the sport has come, and how far I’ve come, too.

Indian Wells was a pivotal moment in my story, and I am a part of the tournament’s story as well. Together we have a chance to write a different ending.”

In one sense, Serena, who was raised in Southern California, is coming home. As she has said, Indian Wells was a “pivotal” place for her even before 2001. Two years earlier, she had beaten Steffi Graf there as a 17-year-old, which made it her “absolute favorite tournament.” She said she loved the setting, the knowledgeable fans, and the proximity to home, which “allowed us all to be together as a family.”

“But then, the 2001 tournament came around and changed things up on me.”

That year, Serena was scheduled to play her sister Venus in the semifinals. At the time, there had been accusations that their father, Richard, had a hand in fixing their matches. When it was announced right before the match that Venus had pulled out, suspicion turned to anger among fans at Indian Wells. And it never stopped: Serena, as well as Richard and Venus, were booed throughout her three-set win over Kim Clijsters in the final. Serena and Richard claimed that some of the taunts from the mostly white crowd were racist. (Others who were there dispute this.) The fact that Serena still won the match was a sign of things to come for her, and for tennis.

Now, years later, things have changed again for Serena. In Australia, she talked a lot about how she's trying to relax and enjoy the game more, and she said the same thing in her TIME article: “I’m fortunate to be at a point in my career where I have nothing to prove," she wrote. "I’m still as driven as ever, but the ride is a little easier.”

You could see one sign of that change in Serena’s public friendship with Caroline Wozniacki last year; being buddies with their fellow players was not the Williamses' M.O. when they were younger. Another sign came in the final of the Australian Open, after Serena was called for a hindrance. When she received the same call in the 2011 U.S. Open final, Serena ranted at the chair umpire and eventually lost. This time she shook the call off, went about her business, and won. Venus, who is more likely to credit an opponent for her good play than she once was, has also mellowed with age. As Serena says, they’ve already proven all they need to prove, both as tennis players and as African-American athletes in a white sport.

So rather than continue one stand with her boycott, Serena has decided to take another by ending it. You can make your point and fight for the young black girls of the future by sticking to your guns; and you can make a different one by showing those same young black girls, and the rest of us, that things can change. It’s a personal stand, and a small one in the grand scheme of things, but it’s still an important one. Over the past six months, Americans have watched as the racial strife that some assumed was a thing of this country’s past returned to center stage. Any progress we thought we had made on that front, even at a time when a black man is in the White House, appeared to be an illusion. Today Serena is here to tell us that, even if it’s only on a tennis court, we can still hope for something better.

Assessing Oz

Mon, 02 Feb 2015 21:57:00 +0000

The 2015 Australian Open was the first Grand Slam in two years in which the top seeds in both draws ended up holding the winner’s trophies. The unusually cool fortnight Down Under produced its share of drama and surprise, and gave us a few glimpses into the future along the way. But when it was over, the old order, in the form of the four finalists—Serena Williams, Novak Djokovic, Maria Sharapova, Andy Murray—had held firm, and the guard hadn’t changed. Meet the new bosses; same as the old bosses.

Here’s a day-after assessment of how those bosses and their fellow tennis laborers did in Melbourne. Two reminders: Losing a match doesn’t earn a player an F, and I don’t include everyone. If you see someone missing, add your own grade to the comments below.

*****

Novak Djokovic

In winning his fifth Australian Open in eight years, the ATP’s top player did everything asked of him, which is never as easy as it might sound, and never as easy as he makes it look when he’s at his efficient best. Djokovic took the biggest of the young guns, Milos Raonic, and brushed his vaunted serve aside. He split four sets of sub-par tennis with the defending champion, Stan Wawrinka, before gritting out six straight games when he needed them. And he sprinted past his old friend and rival Andy Murray in the final, closing with some of his strongest hitting of the tournament. By the end, Djokovic had reduced Murray’s forehand to a hopeless flail. The medium-paced courts in Melbourne have long been called the “fairest” at the Slams, so it makes sense that this perennial No. 1 would dominate there. The surface was a little faster this time, yet Djokovic covered it as thoroughly as ever. Is he, at 27, with eight major titles already in the books, just entering his prime? That’s an ominous thought for the rest of the tour. A+

Serena Williams

When the event started, I didn’t pick Serena to win it. That was partly because picking her has become too predictable, and partly because, while she had dominated everywhere else over the last three years, she hadn’t won in Melbourne since 2010. That qualifies as a desert-like drought in Serena’s world—one that she ended in her own vintage, highly personal style. There were a couple of slow starts and early hiccups, against Vera Zvonareva and Elina Svitolina. There was a motivating opportunity for revenge, against Garbine Muguruza. There was the chance to put the next generation in its place, against Madison Keys. And then there was another whack, literally, at Maria Sharapova. At 33, Serena may have lost half a step somewhere along the way, but it's hard to identify it when you watch her. Her superiority, as athlete and player, over the world’s second-best player made me wonder if she’s farther ahead of the field than ever. A+

Maria Sharapova

Like Serena, she struggled early and clamped down late. Her full-swing match-point saves in the second round were another memorable example of Maria being Maria—she lives and dies, flaws and all, by her own sword. In reaching her first Aussie final in three years, the 27-year-old let us know that, even with a dozen years of the tour grind behind her, she’s not going anywhere. Unfortunately for her, she’s also not getting any closer to the one woman who’s ranked above her, either. A

Madison Keys

The most exciting shots of the tournament, both aurally and visually, were the forehand winners that Keys belted past Petra Kvitova in the third round and Venus Williams in the quarterfinals, and which she continued to belt against Serena in the first set of their semifinal. Here, in this 19-year-old’s very live arm, was something new: Power that even Serena had to admit had taken her by surprise. Under her new coaches, Lindsay Davenport and Jon Leach, her shot weren't just fast; each one came with a purpose as well. For the moment, Keys is the future of the WTA. There have been other futures recently: Sloane Stephens and Genie Bouchard both reached the semis in Oz at the same age, and neither was as good there this year. So it wouldn’t be surprising if the next step that Keys takes will be a retrenchment—in other words, she’s still going to be erratic, and she’s still going to have bad days. But now we know how good the good days can be. A

Tim Smyczek

By November, we’ll look back and ask, “Did that Smyczek thing happen this year?” But now that its viral life has ended, let’s try not to forget the American’s show of sportsmanship in his five-set, second-round loss to Rafael Nadal. Smyczek gave Rafa a first serve, and the rest of us a reason to feel good about being tennis fans. A

Andy Murray

For the fourth time, we saw what appeared to be a “new,” more assertive Murray over the course of his first six matches in Melbourne. And for the fourth time a more familiar, less certain, Murray re-emerged in the seventh match. On the whole, progress was made over the last two weeks. This was Murray’s first trip to a Slam final since Wimbledon in 2013; he put himself back into the Top 4 and possibly back into the Big 4; and he did it by weaving the many threads of his game together as seamlessly as he ever has. When it came to his coach, Amelie Mauresmo, Murray had something to prove, and he proved it. (More on his new role as a “feminist icon” in another post.) Which only made it more surprising in the final to see Murray, the man who started the tournament complaining about being called a “drama queen,” ending it by...complaining about his opponent, Novak Djokovic, being a drama queen. Worse, Murray admitted, he let it distract him. There are other, better reasons that he’s lost eight of his last nine matches to his old friend and rival. A-

Venus Williams

We know Venus loves the sport, now we’ve seen the result: The 34-year-old’s first appearance in the round of 16 at a Grand Slam since she announced she had Sjogren’s syndrome in 2010. Venus also outlasted two, much younger players, Camila Giorgi and Agneiszka Radwanska, to get there. A-

Tomas Berdych

A fresh pair of coaching eyes led to a fresh start, but it was Berdych’s ability to execute when he has traditionally struggled to execute—in a tiebreaker—that gave him his first win over Rafael Nadal in nine years and 18 meetings. Finally, an old tennis player had learned some new tricks. Until he forgot them again. In his next round, against Murray, Berdych again played well in the first-set breaker. But did his new confidence lead to an uncharacteristic moment of bluster? Berdych roused Murray with three words of trash talk after the breaker, and promptly lost the next six games. He can, it seems, learn to play with the best. Can he ever learn to compete with them? A-

Ekaterina Makarova

She was so far under the radar in her wins, and even more invisible in her loss, that it’s hard to know what to say about Makarova’s second straight run to a Grand Slam semi. The Russian has made herself a consistent big-event player, with a peskiness that frustrates her betters. This time she was savvy enough to let Simona Halep destroy herself in the quarters. Then Makarova faced Sharapova, who doesn’t find her pesky at all. B+

Nick Kyrgios

There was more flash and dash than ever, right down to his eyebrows. But there was also more substance. The teenager had the patience to wait out Ivo Karlovic, and the grit to save match point and beat Andreas Seppi 8-6 in the fifth—that’s pro stuff. But by hitting hard at Kyrgios's extra-long forehand, Murray showed there’s work for the young Aussie to do, and that the other players are watching him now. B+

Stan Wawrinka

He expelled one of the upstarts, Kei Nishikori, in straights, but he showed little of his Slam-winning form from 2014 in his semifinal against Djokovic. Stan said he was “mentally completely dead” and had “no battery,” in part because of the strain of winning the Davis Cup last November, and having a shorter off-season because of it. Winning more, and resting less: Welcome to the top players’ world. B

Rafael Nadal

He lost to Berdych for the first time since 2006, but Nadal said he was happy to make the quarters in his first Slam since Wimbledon. Still, with Roger Federer already out of his half, more was possible in Melbourne. B

Kei Nishikori

Here’s what we’ll remember from Kei’s Aussie Open: Down 1-6 in a third-set tiebreaker against Wawrinka in the quarters, he was facing five match points. With some of his best hitting of the tournament, he saved them all. Instead of continuing to hit, though, he tried a drop shot at 6-6; it caught the tape. It was the wrong shot at the wrong time, and his coach, Michael Chang, knew it as he slumped in despair. We’ll see what Nishikori learns from this brain freeze; hopefully he’ll trust his ground strokes, which are as good as anyone’s. But while his quarterfinal run was a disappointment, I liked the fact that Kei knew it. “I mean, I could do better,” he said. He’s right. B-

Milos Raonic

I missed most of his matches, but after watching him nearly beat Federer in Brisbane, I expected more than a five-set win over Feliciano Lopez and a straight-set loss to Djokovic. B-

Eugenie Bouchard

Was her near-no-show against Sharapova in the quarters a one-off loss to a strong opponent, or was it a sign that the next steps up the ranking ladder for the world No. 7 are going to be long and arduous ones? I’m thinking the latter. B-

Victoria Azarenka

She was her old self for two sets against Caroline Wozniacki, and for one set against Dominika Cibulkova. Bonus points for giving us the match of the tournament with Domi. B-

Simona Halep

When she goes bad, she goes bad fast. Last year, the Romanian lost 6-3, 6-0 to Cibulkova in the quarters; this year she lost 6-4, 6-0 to Makarova in the same round. When she's frustrated, Halep speeds up instead of slowing down. It can get her to the exit quickly, and make you wonder how she ever got to the quarterfinals in the first place. C+

Agnieszka Radwanska

Of the two new super-coaching arrangements on the WTA side, Aga and Martina obviously made less immediate progress than Madison and Lindsay. Radwanska showed that she may need to improve her volleys if she wants to follow Navratilova's advice and attack more. When she lost to Venus, Martina questioned Aga's emotional investment in the match. It's early, but hopefully it gets better. C+

Roger Federer

Even in victory, he didn’t have it in Oz this year. Federer lost a set to Italian Simone Bolelli in the second round before losing three to his countryman Seppi in the third round. Federer offered no excuses; he said he “wasn’t playing shocking or feeling shocking”—he just wasn’t in rhythm, and he lost to a guy who played well. We may have been shocked at his earliest exit from Australia since 2001, but the more amazing fact is that it took this long to happen. C

The Rubber-Band Man Returns

Sun, 01 Feb 2015 17:54:00 +0000

There was much that was the familiar about the third Australian Open final between Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray. But there was one welcome difference: This one, finally, had some spark.

The winner was the same. Djokovic, in a roller-coaster that turned into a rout, took home his fifth Aussie Open champion’s trophy while dropping Murray to 0-4 in finals in Melbourne.

The scoreline, 7-6 (5), 6-7 (4), 6-3, 6-0, was very similar to Djokovic’s winning 6-7 (2), 7-6 (3), 6-3, 6-2 scoreline over Murray in the same round in 2013.

And the way in which the match unfolded was equally familiar. Two close, grinding sets to open. Lots of long, tiring rallies. Surprising turnarounds and momentum shifts. Plenty of between-point sturm and drang, as well as a few racquet bangs. Three hours and 38 minutes for four sets. And, in the end, a sprint down the homestretch by Djokovic. By the close of the third set, Murray appeared to be flailing, with steadily increasing hopelessness, against a brick wall.

It was familiar enough that Djokovic predicted how it would go way back in September, after he beat Murray in their most recent Grand Slam match, at the U.S. Open. Yesterday, in my preview of this final, I used this quote of Djokovic’s from Flushing Meadows, about what he thinks separates him from Murray at the majors, to explain why I thought he would win:

“We’re going to have a lot of long rallies and a lot of exchanges. It’s going to be physical but also mental. I get the feeling that if I get to stay with him and kind of, you know, work, work, and not get too loose and frustrated with points and not allow him to get into a big lead, I feel like there’s a point where I feel that I have that edge, you know, maybe physically.”

That about sums this one up as well. Djokovic stayed with Murray, until Murray couldn’t stay with Djokovic.

Yet this final offered more than just the traditional Muzzovician war of attrition, and until the last five games it wasn’t at all predictable.

In the first set, Djokovic hurt his thumb after falling, yet it was Murray who tightened up and handed the tiebreaker to him. Murray, up 4-2 in the breaker and serving with the wind, double faulted and pushed the easiest of forehand volleys long. He had talked pessimistically about his chances before the match; had he taken too many defeats at Djokovic’s hands—Murray has now lost eight of their last nine—to believe this would turn out differently?

In the second set, Djokovic appeared to be rolling toward a quick win, but a delay, to oust a group of protestors from the stadium, slowed his momentum and gave Murray a chance to settle down, step in, and take that set. By the end of the second, the match reached its peak. The rallies went from exercises in attrition to rapid-fire, all-court shot-making contests.

In the third, Djokovic appeared to be reeling physically, and went down a quick break. This time it was the Serb who settled down and stepped in again. Perhaps the most important point of the match came with Djokovic down a break point at 3-3. Djokovic hit a short-angle drop volley, Murray covered it and appeared to have the down the line pass in his sights, but drilled the ball into the net as he flew onto Djokovic’s side of the court. Novak roared and commanded his coach, Boris Becker, to stand in appreciation. On the other side of the net, Murray seemed to surrender. One game later, serving at 3-4, he double-faulted at break point and flung his racquet down. It would only get worse from there.

“It was a cat-and-mouse fight,” Djokovic said, “it always is. I think both went out with the full repertoire of the shots we have. From my side it was definitely very exhausting. Saved some break points at 3-all in the third set and managed to make that break and win the third. After that I felt huge relief. I felt I could swing through the ball. I felt the momentum was on my side and wanted to use that.”

Murray’s press conference was dominated by talk of Djokovic’s physical struggles early in sets two and three, and his ability to quickly dust himself off and leave them behind. Afterward, Murray admitted that he let it get to him. 

“The third set was frustrating,” Murray said, “because I got a bit distracted when he, like, fell on the ground after a couple of shots. It appeared that he was cramping, and I let that distract me a little bit. That’s what I’m most disappointed about.”

Murray gave Djokovic a brusque handshake when it was over, and while he praised him graciously during the trophy ceremony and never accused him of sandbagging, he also didn’t dispel the notion.

“I have no idea what the issue was,” Murray said. “He obviously looked like he was in quite a bad way at the beginning of the third set and came back unbelievable at the end of that set. Then obviously the way he was hitting the ball in the fourth set and moving was impressive. So, yeah, I don’t know exactly what the issue was for him.”

Djokovic stumbled and shook out his foot repeatedly at the start of the second set; in the third, the problem returned and seemed to travel farther up his leg. But he said he didn’t have a bad ankle, or cramps.

“I was just weak,” said Djokovic, who blamed “the length of the rallies” and the physical nature of the match. “I went through the physical crisis in the matter of 20 minutes.”

We’ve seen Djokovic mysteriously stumble around the court in the past—go here to see him “playing drunk” in Shanghai in 2013—before recovering to win. I don’t think he was acting today, or trying to distract his opponent. Murray himself is known for mysteriously grabbing body parts and then coming back strong a few games later. He said he was disappointed he let that distract him this time, and he should be. We know that the mind, and the body, can do strange things in the heat of high-stakes competition.

In this one, it was the body of one player, and the mind of the other, that ended up deciding it.

Djokovic, as he seems to realize, is just a little better than Murray at what they both do. His forehand is smoother, more versatile, and a bigger weapon; few have ever covered the court the way he does; and over the course of a five-setter, he has a way of bending but never quite breaking. Djokovic is a rubber-band man in body and mind.

As for Murray, at one stage ESPN’s Darren Cahill said he thought the Scot was “fighting himself.” I think he was fighting to make himself believe that he should beat Djokovic in a match like this. He had no trouble believing it against Tomas Berdych in the last round, but he couldn’t get over that mental hump today. Up 4-2 in the first-set tiebreaker, Murray faltered. Up an early break in the second, he lost the next four games before coming back to salvage the set. Up an early break again in the third, he would lose 12 of the next 13 games.

Most telling was a shot Murray hit when he had a set point at 5-4 in the second. For much of the tournament, he had been taking his ground strokes early and punishing them, and he started the final the same way. This time, though, with the pressure on, he let the ball drop and put it into the net. The old passivity had cost him, and I don’t think, if Murray has that shot in that situation against his three previous opponents, Grigor Dimitrov, Nick Kyrgios, or Berdych, he makes that mistake.

Djokovic has now won his fifth Australian Open and eighth major. On what is often called the fairest surface of all the Slams’, he has been dominant, and this time he did it on a faster version. Maybe most impressive was the way Djokovic, after battling tooth and nail with Murray in the final and Stan Wawrinka in the semis, handed each of them a final-set bagel for their troubles.

Two days ago, after he beat Wawrinka without being close to his best, I said Djokovic was like the Germans in soccer and the old Oakland Raiders of the NFL: They won, period. In Australia this year, Djokovic went himself one better. In the end, his motto could have been, “Just"—or Djust—"win 6-0, baby.”

Australian Open Final Preview: Novak Djokovic vs. Andy Murray

Sat, 31 Jan 2015 23:29:00 +0000

“We’ve known each other since [we were] 11, 12. There is only one week difference between us. Very similar game and very similar role to professional tennis.”

Novak Djokovic said yesterday that these were the reasons his relationship with Andy Murray is “very special.” To me, these are also the reasons that their rivalry, despite the fact that this will be the fifth time they’ve faced each other in a Grand Slam final, has only rarely caught fire in the three-out-of-five-set format used at the majors.

Their games, as Djokovic notes, are similar. Each is a defender, runner, and counter-puncher at heart. Which means there’s little to no contrast in their styles; points are often won by attrition, when one of them finally, after much exertion, misfires. This isn’t true when Djokovic or Murray play Roger Federer or Rafael Nadal. Federer’s one-handed backhand and willingness to rush the net, and the fact that Nadal is left-handed and hits with more topspin, are enough to inject a sense of stylistic variety, of cause-and-effect, into the proceedings.

More of an issue, though, are the other two elements that Djokovic notes: He and Murray were born within a week of each other in May 1987; and they have “very similar roles” in the men’s game today. In a sense, they’re too similar. Unlike Federer’s rivalries with the other, younger members of the Big 4, there’s no Oedipal—or Fedipal—dynamic, no champion vs. challenger aspect, no sense that the rise of one man will mean the decline of the other. At 27, these tennis twins who will go on being brothers, and top players, for the foreseeable future.

Part of the reason for that lack of spark is that Djokovic, while he has lost two Grand Slam finals and a bitter semifinal to Murray at the 2012 Olympics, has remained comfortably ahead of him in the rankings and in their head-to-head. The Serb leads the Scot 15-8, a margin that was much closer until 2014, when Djokovic ran off four straight wins over Murray and dropped just one set while he was at it. The Serb has also won seven of their last eight meetings.

But what if Murray can begin 2015 by ending that streak and turning that dynamic on its head? After watching their respective semifinals, some prognosticators have begun to move in his direction. As quoted on the BBC’s website, Mats Wilander says he believes that Murray’s game has never worked together so “harmoniously” as it has over the last two weeks. And Martina Navratilova says, “Andy might be a slight favorite for me.” She thinks he has slimmed down and is moving better, yet hasn’t lost any power and has improved his second serve. And while Navratilova liked what she saw from Murray in his win over Tomas Berdych in the semis, she didn’t like how Djokovic looked in his semifinal win over Stan Wawrinka.

It’s true, Djokovic left the door open for speculation with his passively erratic performance in that match. The only thing to like about it was that he won the fifth set 6-0; something not to like was his brief attempt to grab his lower back at the start of that set. Djokovic didn’t mention it, or seem to be physically constrained at all, but it bears watching in the final. He also played a longer semifinal one night later than Murray did; though as Murray says, in 2012 Djokovic beat him in five hours in the semis, then came back two days later to beat Nadal in six hours in the final.

Still, there’s little reason to think of Djokovic as anything other than the favorite. As noted, he’s won his last four matches against Murray; he’s 4-0 in Aussie Open finals, and he beat Murray without much trouble in two of them; and this year, before the semis, Novak was in the finest form of anyone in the draw.

“I think I have much more positive things to reflect on in my game,” Djokovic said, “and in all the matches I played in the tournament than the negative. Getting to the finals in any way possible is a great achievement. I’m going to use that to build up confidence for the finals.”

Djokovic says he’s been impressed with Murray’s forehand in Australia, and he thinks the court conditions favor his opponent.

“The courts are playing a little bit faster in the last two years than it was in previous years in Rod Laver Arena,” Djokovic said. “Because they are faster, because the ball is bouncing a bit lower, that’s pretty suitable to [Murray's] style of game. He likes that. He has a flat backhand and moves around the court pretty well. So it’s going to be a physical match, no doubt about that.”

As for Murray, he’s one prognosticator who won’t make himself the favorite, or anything remotely close to it.

“I know it’s going to be extremely difficult to win the match tomorrow,” he said on Saturday. “I know if I want to win, it will be very, very tough and challenging physically...It would be a big upset if I manage to win tomorrow.”

A big upset?

“Well, I’ve never won against him here before,” Murray continued. “I think I’ve lost to him the last four or five times we’ve played against each other, as well. Maybe only one set in those matches. I played him a couple times very close the end of last year and lost pretty comfortably. For me, it would be a big turnaround in a few months if I was able to win. I’m not saying it’s not a possibility, but it’s going to be very, very tough.”

We know all about tennis players playing the lowered-expectations game, but doesn’t Murray, by mentioning how many sets he’s lost and how recently he lost them, seem a little more specific than necessary here? I hope he thinks winning is more than a “possibility.”

He should. Navratilova and Wilander are right to be impressed by his form in Oz. He played the men’s match of the tournament in out-gunning Grigor Dimitrov; he fended off half of Australia in deconstructing Nick Kyrgios; and he cooled down a hot-hitting and hot-headed Berdych. Like Djokovic, I’ve enjoyed watching Murray hit his forehand in particular; we know about his running cross-court pass from that side, but in Oz he’s taken the ball on the rise and counter-punched with a deeper, hooking version of that shot. We’ll see if it makes an appearance in the final.

More than that, though, I’ve liked Murray’s fire. He was driven to keep the Aussie crowd out of his match with Kyrgios; and in his match with Berdych, he was driven to to prove that his old coach, Dani Vallverdu, wasn’t better than his new coach, Amelie Mauresmo.

That last element could be the key to this match. Can Murray, when he’s facing his tennis twin, play with the same no-holds-barred desire to prove himself that he showed in his last two rounds? How far will he go to show that Mauresmo was the right choice? Murray has historically not played with that kind of edge against his fellow Big 4 club members. This time it could make the difference.

With all of those factors in mind, though, I’ll take Djokovic, and I’ll let the words he spoke after he beat Murray at the U.S. Open last fall explain why.

“When I get to play Andy,” Djokovic said, “at the Grand Slams especially, where we both try to peak with our performances obviously, I know that the matches are going to go the distance. We’re going to have a lot of long rallies and a lot of exchanges. It’s going to be physical but also mental. I get the feeling that if I get to stay with him and kind of, you know, work, work, and you know, not get too loose and too frustrated with points and not allow him to get into a big lead, I feel like there is a point where I feel that I have that edge, you know, maybe physically. That’s where I always try to focus.”

There will be long exchanges, there will be tight sets and probably tiebreakers, there will be moments when Djokovic has the lead but, as he says, he “makes life complicated for himself” and lets Murray back in. There will hopefully be a show of fire from the Scot. And, even more hopefully, there will be a new spark to this rivalry.

Winner: Novak Djokovic

How Do You Solve a Problem Like Serena?

Sat, 31 Jan 2015 17:27:00 +0000

The first thing that must be said of the 2015 Australian Open women’s final is that none of it was a surprise. From the first point to the last, from the champion’s show of skill to the runner-up’s show of will, we got everything we expected.

With her opening swing of the match, Serena Williams battered a backhand return down the line. As well-prepared as her opponent, Maria Sharapova, must have been, she still looked jarred by the shot, and she immediately dropped serve. With one feel swoop, Serena, who hasn’t lost to Sharapova since the first George W. Bush administration, was a step ahead of her again.

An hour and 51 minutes later, with her closing swing of the match, Serena hit an ace to win the second-set tiebreaker, her sixth Australian Open, her 19th Grand Slam singles title, and her 16th straight meeting with Sharapova, 6-3, 7-6 (5). Does Serena finish big matches any other way? If she does, it’s hard to remember them. In this case, only an ace, her 18th of the evening, would do. More than ever, it was Serena’s serve, a shot she describes as “mean,” that spelled the difference between her and the world's No. 2-ranked player.

In between the first point and the last, surprises were few. Both women had a chance to show off their strengths, but only one had her weaknesses exposed. Serena and Maria hadn’t played since last March, which was long enough to make me forget just how superior the American is an athlete, and as a tennis player. Against everyone else, Sharapova dominates the scene with her power and her presence; against Serena, she suddenly looks overwhelmed, reactive, inflexible, and much less natural and versatile in her movements.

Near the end of the opening game, Serena and Sharapova traded running crosscourt forehands. The sequence lasted for half a second, but it told us everything we need to know about the difference between them as players. In the way Serena sprung forward with her first step, moved at a angle to cut the ball off, made contact with a full, helicoptering swing, and sent her shot back at a sharper crosscourt angle, she had the obvious advantage.

That advantage continued through the first set. Before the match, Sharapova said that Serena’s aggressiveness can force her to be too aggressive in return. “She’s great at making players hit that shot that you don’t necessarily have to go for,” Maria said. The first step to solving a problem is to know that you have one, right?

But what if there’s no solution available? By the end of the first set, as Sharapova’s shots caught the tape and skidded wide of the sidelines, her words no longer sounded like a healthy realization of what she needed to change; they sounded like a self-fulfilling prophecy. How do you solve a problem like Serena?

If you’re Maria, you do what you always do: dig in. While the first set showcased Serena at her most untouchable, the second showcased Maria at her most intransigent. She moved forward, varied her serve effectively, and even wrested away control of some rallies. She never took the lead, but just staying close enough to reach a tiebreaker seemed like a monumental achievement. Down match point on her serve at 4-5 in the second, Sharapova did what she does one more time: She let a forehand fly that caught the sideline and earned a racquet clap from her opponent.

“The match definitely got tough in the second set,” Serena said. “Maria started playing a lot better. She also started being a little more aggressive. It definitely got really interesting.”

So interesting that Serena, 15 straight wins or not, felt the pressure.

“Usually I’m just so on it and I feel like if I have to go for it, I go for it,” she said. “Last two [Slam finals] I’ve been a little nervous. I made some odd errors in the tiebreak that I normally wouldn’t miss because I got a little tight and I didn’t move.”

What do you do when you’re too nervous to move? If you’re Serena Williams, you win without moving. You serve your way to the title. At 2-2 in the second set, she hit three aces; at 3-3, she hit a service winner to swat away a break point, and an ace to hold; at 5-5, she hit an ace to hold; and in the tiebreaker, which she won 7-5, her two aces were the difference. No amount of fight could help Sharapova catch up to those missiles.

“I really want to go for it and I wanted to do everything I could to stay in those games and stay in the match,” Sharapova said. “You know, on that last one [match point], I couldn’t do much to get to that ball.”

“Maybe it’s something that has saved her in many matches,” Sharapova continued, referring to Serena’s serve. “I think when I did have the opportunities to get in the rally, I think I handled it quite well. But there’s not a lot of times in important situations where I could get in the rally.”

All of this may have sounded familiar, but there was one moment that felt new, and which was an example of where Serena has improved in recent years. At 3-3 in the second set, she hit what she thought was another ace. But as she screamed “Come on!” Sharapova reached out and popped a backhand return over the net. Serena was, rightly, called for a hindrance by chair umpire Alison Hughes, and the point was given to Sharapova. Serena accepted the penalty, settled back down, and eventually held.

Afterward, she was asked if she had ever had a hindrance called on her before. Serena smiled incredulously and asked back, “Do you follow tennis?” 

It was the only appropriate response. How could anyone forget Serena’s enraged reaction the last time she was called for a hindrance, for doing the same thing in the 2011 U.S. Open final? This time, though, Serena was calm.

“I moved on very fast to the next point,” she said. “Just tried to stay as focused as I could.”

After the match, Serena thanked her coach, Patrick Mouratoglou, and told him that she “was grateful to have you in my life.” Too much can be made of the effects that coaches have on their players. At this year’s Aussie Open, Tomas Berdych, who reached the semis with new mentor Dani Vallverdu, made sure to remind the press that it’s the execution, more than the plan, that’s the difficult part of tennis, and he was right. But I don’t think you can discount the positive effect that Mouratoglou has had. Serena has talked about his calming influence when she gets overwrought on court. Staying calm and finding a way to hold at 3-3 in the second set was a key to this win.

Finally, about that last ace. Having watched Serena enough times in moments like these, I felt like I knew she was going to end the match that way—she loves to win, and she loves to win on her terms even more. But did she know what was going to happen? Not according to her; a few seconds earlier, she had hit what she thought was an ace, only to have it called a let. 

“I wasn’t confident at all,” Serena said. “I thought after the let, 'Man, I am not meant to win this tournament.' I was like, ‘C’mon. First of all, why [didn’t] I hear the let?' Then I was like, 'OK, do I go T. Do I go wide? What am I going to do?' Then I just tossed and served as hard as I could.”

The result was her 19th major championship. It also made her 19-4 in major finals; by comparison, Martina Navratilova was 18-14, Chris Evert 18-16, and Steffi Graf 22-9. Serena’s record is now 17-2 against Sharapova, who is the second-best player of this time period. Only Margaret Court, who went 24-5 in Slam finals, can match Serena's performances in the biggest matches. When it comes to beating her closest late-career competition, Williams stands alone.

Yet her thoughts haven’t changed much since her first Slam victory, at the U.S. Open in 1999. Serena has always cited a return of serve winner she hit in that match, against Martina Hingis, as a seminal moment in her career. She says she wondered for a minute what to do with the ball, before finally just stepping up and clocking it—that’s when she knew how she had to play. Sixteen years later, she’s still playing that way, still winning her own way, and still living up to all of our expectations.

Australian Open Final Preview: Serena Williams vs. Maria Sharapova

Fri, 30 Jan 2015 22:02:00 +0000

For 10 years, it has been exceedingly easy to guess the outcome of a match between Serena Williams and Maria Sharapova. No rivalry—sorry, Serena fans, I meant match-up—between two Hall-of-Fame players has been so predictable. But as Williams’ winning streak has lengthened, from five to 10 to 15 consecutive victories, each seemingly more definitive than the last, it has also become more difficult to find new, ever snarkier ways of describing just how lopsided it is.

Leave it to Twitter to deliver on the snark front. As of Friday afternoon, it was clear that the most popular form of analysis before this year’s Australian Open final was to tweet a photo of a celebrity above the line, “Famous Person X looked like this the last time that Maria Sharapova beat Serena Williams.”

That last time was in the final of the WTA Championships in November 2004. I’ll add my own bit of historical snark by mentioning that the match took place nine days after John Kerry’s defeat in that year’s U.S. presidential election. The idea of Kerry as leader of the free world now seems about as strange as the idea of Sharapova beating Serena.

The last time Sharapova beat Serena, Miley Cyrus looked like this. pic.twitter.com/6J3YpAKNbL
— Bryan Armen Graham (@BryanAGraham) January 30, 2015

Last time Sharapova beat Serena, Grigor Dimitrov looked like this! pic.twitter.com/zJUI68cc1v
— Troll Tennis (@TrollTennis) January 29, 2015

Even worse from the Sharapova side of things, Serena has become more dominant over time, and on all surfaces. She’s won 10 of their last 11 meetings in straight sets, and in only two of those sets has Maria won more than four games. In the lone match where she did win a set, in the 2013 Miami final, Serena came back to hand her a bagel in the third.

Why is Serena-Maria so one-sided? From a playing perspective, Serena can match Sharapova at her strength, hitting big from the baseline, while totally outdoing her when it comes to the serve. Serena pushes Sharapova out of the middle of the court and forces her to defend, counterattack, move side-to-side, and put her shots even closer to the lines than normal. All of that will be especially tough on a fairly quick surface like the one currently in Rod Laver Arena.

As Serena put it two days ago, “I think my game matches up well against her. I love playing her. I think it’s fun. I love her intensity. For whatever reason, I love playing. I have the time of my life.”

Beating anyone 15 times in a row does sound fun, but it’s also true that Serena is a different player psychologically when she faces Sharapova. The slow starts, nervous patches, and emotional dips that plague her against other opponents tend to disappear with Maria on the other side of the net. It’s often said that she’s still getting revenge on Sharapova for upsetting her in the 2004 Wimbledon final, and I do think Serena enjoys keeping the WTA's other major star, and No. 2 player, under her thumb. But I also think her extra focus is a sign of respect, rather than disrespect. Serena doesn’t want to give this opponent, of all opponents, a chance.

“Maria is playing great,” Serena said on Sharapova, who saved two match points against Alexandra Panova in the second round. “She’s in the tournament only because she’s a fighter and refuses to give up. So yeah, it’s a new match. She has nothing to lose, once again. She has only things to gain.”

According to Sharapova, though, the key for her is not to try to gain too much in any one rally. After her semifinal, she said that Serena takes her out of her game by making her cut her shots too fine.

“Her power and aggressiveness,” Sharapova said when asked what in Serena’s game gave her the most trouble. “I think that’s always made me a little bit too aggressive, maybe going for a little bit more than I had to. She’s great at making players hit that shot that you don’t necessarily have to go for—maybe going for too much, going on the line.”

And that’s Sharapova’s quandary: Her style is to hit big; how does she dial that back while staying true to her own game? It’s been 10 years since she found the balance. Still, while it’s easy to guess who might win this match, it’s even easier to guess that Sharapova will try her best to prove all of us snarky prognosticators wrong.

“I think my confidence should be pretty high going into a final of a Grand Slam,” she said, “no matter who I’m facing and whether I’ve had a terrible record, to say the least, against someone. It’s doesn’t matter. I got there for a reason. I belong in that spot. I will do everything I can to get the title.”

She can only give everything, but chances are, everything won’t be enough.

Articles by Steve Tignor

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