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The Rally: Rafa's Brain

Sat, 25 May 2013 16:18:00 +0000

This weekend, as Roland Garros gets underway, I'm doing a two-part look inside the mind of its only seven-time men's champion, Rafael Nadal, with clinical psychologist, Alexandra Guhde, Psyd. Alexandra is also the author of the tennis blog Extreme Western Grip.

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Alexandra,

Since your last psychological study of the world's tennis players here was so well received, it seemed appropriate to come back and get a little more specific with one of the more interesting "head" cases in the ATP, Rafael Nadal. We'll probably be seeing quite a bit of him over the next couple of weeks in Paris.

When we talked at Indian Wells, you mentioned that RAFA, his autobiography, was a treasure trove of insight about his mental makeup. It's true, you learn a lot about his worldview, and its origins, in those pages. The most obvious origin is his uncle Toni, who basically implanted his Spartan philosophy of competition and life in Rafa's brain when he was a child. I'm curious: What, from a psychologist's perspective, is the significance of having an uncle, rather than a father, as the dominant figure in your career, and to an extent your life? You told me that Rafa is an "Oedipal victor," which I think means that his father never stood in his way; he never had to "conquer" him. It doesn't seem like Rafa ever tried to conquer Toni either, but he's not afraid in the book to complain at length about how tough, even cruel, his uncle was to him. In general, Rafa always seems to be concerned with doing the right thing, which in his world means sticking to his uncle's philosophy of constant self-effacement. Do you think Toni is sort of a superego for his nephew? Even Rafa's penchant for making his opponents—and the media and just about everyone else—wait for him seems to have its origins with Toni, who would arbitrarily show up later than planned for their meetings and practices.

There's much more to talk about here, obviously, including Nadal's daily transformation from a bundle of nerves off the court—he's afraid of just about everything—into one of the game's most confident competitors on it. From you point of view, Alexandra, what brain type do you think Rafa has? What sticks out at you immediately about him from a psychological perspective?

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Hi Steve,

Thanks for having me back. Did I really describe RAFA as a "treasure trove"? I must have been well under the influence of that gold Indian Wells sun. Still, it’s not untrue. So far as psychologists are concerned, autobiographies are the mother lode.

So, what does RAFA tell us about the forces that drive Nadal? As you say, a lot about his relationship with Toni Nadal, for starters. Is it any surprise that the most three-dimensional character in the book is Uncle Toni? Emphatically a “thinking type,” with a moral code that borders on dogma, Toni seems to be one of the ATP’s most compelling and polarizing supporting characters. The question I am most often asked by Nadal fans—after “does Rafa have OCD?”—usually goes something like, “Is Rafa’s relationship with Toni healthy?”

It’s an important question, and not made less so by the fact that I cannot answer it! The difficulty with psychology, as it offers outlines for human behavior and experience, is that theories work with probabilities, or averages and generalizations. The moment you try to pin them to an individual, you risk assumptive error. This might be part of the reason why the role of psychology in sports remains so unsettled. It can be profoundly useful—except when it’s not.

That said, what is unquestionably valuable about the psychological lens is the way it can expand a field of view, or, even help the explorer reflect back on him- or herself. For example, in the final chapters of RAFA, Nadal devotes some quality time to railing against his uncle’s unjust treatment. He even experiments with his own psychological theories about Toni’s approach to coaching. On one level, those passages are awkward for the reader. The material is raw and personal, and Rafa is by turns defensive and attacking.

On the other hand like so much else in Nadal’s career, he seemed to approach the autobiography more as a process than as a finite product. And if the process gets a bit messy at times, well, that’s life. There was a way the Rafa-Toni portions of the book reminded me of one of Nadal’s more effortful tennis matches—his agonizing victory over Fernando Verdasco in Cincinnati in 2011 comes to mind— even as part of me wanted to look away, I could not but press on, all the while admiring his commitment to the endeavor.

And on a psychological level, railing against Tito Toni was a valuable endeavor. You asked about the importance of Toni’s familial relationship to Rafa—that he is uncle and not father—and yes, I believe that is crucial, although, obviously, tennis has no shortage of successful parent coaches. Parents, as tennis fans well know, make remarkably potent coaches. The trouble is that they are often narcissistically over-involved in their charge’s success. Letting go, or providing space to grow, as the child becomes a professional adult can become all but impossible. Even if the parent-coach is able to step back, he risks leaving a player rudderless.

At this point I am not saying much that educated tennis fans don’t already know. But what's unique about Toni Nadal as an uncle-coach is that he has access to the power of the familial bond—being in a sense free to inflict the intensity of his needs on his nephew, to infuse Rafa’s game with multiple generations worth of desire. Yet Rafa still has a psychological “way out” of the relationship. Even if his parents are at home on another continent, they provide Nadal with an emotional touchstone.

Furthermore, Toni acts as a mentor to Nadal in ways a father simply cannot. The term mentor originates with the ancient Greek character by the same name; “Mentor” was the wise and loyal advisor assigned to protect Odysseus’ son in Homer’s Odyssey. Modern psychological study has recently proved what Athena and the ancient Greeks knew all along: It’s important to have parents and mentors! There are lots of reasons for this, but a crucial one is that mentors help deflect the deadly heat of Oedipal competition. Competitive desires can be pretty scary to kids, particularly to remarkably gifted kids who might worry about outshining their parents. It doesn’t require much stretch of the imagination to picture Rafa as one of those kids.

You mentioned the term “Oedipal victory” in reference to Rafa’s relationship with his father Sebastian. Yes, you’re right, Oedipal victory can be understood as a father not blocking his son’s way. But it also has a darker side. If the son surpasses the father at too young an age, before he is truly prepared to take on the grown-up tasks that come with triumph, the victory will come back to haunt him. Even if this victory exists primarily in the mind of the child, it can be deeply disturbing. If you’re 12 years old and you’ve already “defeated” your father, who can possibly protect you from attack?

From an outsider’s perspective, it seems that Toni Nadal, as Rafa’s mentor, functions as a guide, but also as a kind of displaced target for the ferocity of Rafa’s competitive drive—as a buffer for Rafa’s relationship with his father. In an illuminating passage in RAFA, a young Rafael is bereft over losing a tennis match he feels he ought to have won:

"On the way back home in the car I was deathly silent. My father, who’d never seen me so gloomy, tried to cheer me up. He said, “Come on. It’s not such a big deal. Don’t feel bad. You can’t always win.” I said nothing.… He insisted. “Come on, you’ve had a terrific summer. Why’s that not enough?” “Yes, Dad,” I replied, “but all the fun I had then can’t make up for the pain I’m feeling right now. I never want to feel this way again.” (p. 45)

Nadal goes on to say that his father retells that conversation to this day, and I can well imagine Sebastian Nadal, quietly driving along, wondering how the hell he got such a force of nature for a son. But because Toni Nadal is also so close to Rafa, yet not his father (and thus also not the root source of Rafa’s “deathly” Oedipal impulses), Toni is available to bear the brunt of Rafa’s competitive force.

So all this sounds pretty good, right? And it is. From a psychologists’ perspective, there’s a lot to like about the interdependent Rafa-Toni pairing. But where there are strengths, there are also struggles; which brings us to your superego question, Steve.

Yes, for better and for worse, Toni seems to function as a kind of looming superego enforcer for Rafa. One function of the super-ego is to protect the ego (the “self”) from pain at all costs. The young Rafa says, “all the fun I had then can’t make up for the pain I’m feeling right now. I never want to feel this way again…” Well, this is essentially a superego statement. The lesson is ‘discipline will prevent pain.’ Or rather, controlled self-inflicted pain protects against the uncontrollable pain of loss. And really, in tennis, this is true!

Toni reinforces this dictum with his insistence on humility at all costs. The message being, ‘A lack of humility will cost you everything.’ (I’d hazard a guess that thinking of himself as “the favorite” in a tournament might equate with “fun” in Rafa’s lexicon.) But before you feel too sorry for the hardworking Rafa, another task hyper-muscular superegos are really good at is cruelty. There is nothing like a dominant superego to teach a person the soul-killing power of subjugating another. RAFA tells us of a tennis training game Uncle Toni used to play with his nephew in which the first person to reach 20 points was the winner. Toni would let an excited young Rafa get all the way to 19 before stealing the game away from him. Sound familiar?

How many times have we seen Rafa play defense for 10, 12, 19 strokes, lulling his opponent into a false sense of safety, before breaking his competitor’s spirit with an off-the-back-foot wrist-snapping forehand pass? Superego tennis at its best.

But is it healthy? A healthy superego is psychologically protective. An overdeveloped one is self-destructive. Is what’s good for the tennis good for the man? This is a question only Rafael Nadal can answer, and probably will answer many different ways over many years time. Tennis careers are short, but the individuation process lasts a lifetime. For the rest of us, our opinions are likely say far more about our own questions and answers. But so far as Nadal’s tennis is concerned? Well, that speaks for itself.

Basquet Cases

Sat, 25 May 2013 14:03:00 +0000

In our “Rally” here the other day, I suggested that the French are in desperate need of a male player to win the French Open—something that hasn’t happened since Yannick Noah’s stunning upset of Mats Wilander in the 1983 final.

It wasn’t just a delightful surprise to see Noah, a charismatic athlete of Cameroonian origin, do what no other Frenchman in the Open era had been able to accomplish. That win also lit the fire under the French, and it killed a number of birds with one stone: It greatly boosted national enthusiasm for the game, helped bump along plans to renovate what was becoming a rickety-old Roland Garros, and it served as a great example to aspiring young athletes across lines of color and class.

The Noah factor has paid many dividends currently enjoyed not just by his countrymen but by the global tennis community. What it did not do, however, is inspire succeeding generations of French men to duplicate his feat. In fact, while the French have probably fielded the most skilled, diverse, and successful set of players in the world since around the 1990s, they presently trail tiny Switzerland in the Grand Slam derby, and by 16 titles.

Okay, not entirely fair.

But you get my point, and it raises an interesting question: What’s worth more to a nation: one Roger Federer, or a fleet that might include Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, Guy Forget, Gael Monfils, Sebastian Grosjean, Henri Leconte, Richard Gasquet, Gilles Simon, and the Seven Dwarfs?

That no Frenchman since Leconte in 1988 has even made the French Open final is downright shocking, especially when you consider the roll of players who have. That list includes names like those of Martin Verkirk, Alberto Berasategui, and Mariano Puerta.

Tsonga and Monfils have stirred the hopes of the home crowds in recent years. The former has reached at least the fourth round in three of the last four years, and last year had match points against top seed Novak Djokovic in the quarterfinals. Unfortunately, four such chances slipped away and Djokovic went on to win.

Injury plagued Monfils (career-high of No. 7, but now ranked No. 109 as he battles back from injury) has gone one round better than Tsonga once, when he made the semis in 2009. He lost that year to the ultimate champ, Federer. He also lost two quarterfinals to Federer in recent years. No shame in that, but. . . then there’s also the case of current No. 9 Richard Gasquet and many other Frenchmen more like him than Monfils.

When Richard gets Roland Garros, he becomes a real basquet case—as does his Top 10 colleague, Gilles Simon. In nine tries, Gasquet has won back-to-back matches just three times (two of those in the past two years) and he’s never been past the fourth round. Simon, presently No. 17, has been as far as the fourth round just once in seven attempts. In 2008, the year Simon would rocket into the year-end Top 10 for the first and only time, he lost in the first round of the French Open.

There’s another way to look at this undeniably grim record, which is not through the lens of underachieving but that of the inspiration—or lack thereof—taken from the “home court/crowd” advantage. It’s no mere coincidence that Andy Roddick won his only major in the United States; that Andy Murray’s great breakthrough last year started at the Olympic Games in London; or even that two of Austrian Jurgen Melzer’s four career titles were collected in Vienna. Some players clearly are inspired rather than intimidated by the prospect of competing for their domestic championships.

The most relevant example here may be Tim Henman. Since the 1990s, the French have churned out such a staggering array of diversely talented players that you have to wonder how at least one of them didn’t somehow stumble or wander into a final. The British, of course, have had exactly one—one!—top 10-caliber player since the dawn of the Open era, and that was Henman. He reached a career high of No. 4, but he was among the year-end Top 10 for just four of his 14 years of Grand Slam competition.

At his peak, between 1995 and 2002, Henman lost to a Wimbledon champ on all but two occasions, and he consistently surpassed his seeding there. He lost to Pete Sampras in back-to-back semis at the peak of the “Sampras era” at Wimbledon, but he let his best chance to win slip away in 2001.

That year, wild card and ATP No. 125 Goran Ivanisevic (a multiple-time Wimbledon finalist) beat Henman in the semifinals in five dreary and rain-plagued sets—after some kid named Federer had upset Sampras in the fourth round. It was a sad and sodden end to Henman’s best chance to win his home championships (and save Murray a considerable amount of grief), but Henman did go on to make another semi and a quarterfinal before he faded out. Let no one say that “Gentleman Tim” didn’t give it his best shot.

Well, the only consolation for most of the French players is that by choking at the French Open, they’re participating in a national pastime open to players of either sex—and running with a pretty fast crowd. Their countrywoman Amelie Mauresmo, a former No. 1 and multiple Grand Slam champ, never did get past the quarters in Paris, and got even that far just twice. You could go on and on through the list of French players—Paul Henri-Mathieu, Julien Benneteau, Arnaud Clement, Fabrice Santoro, anyone?—playing this game, but I think the point is made.

But boy have I got a guy for you, if you’re of the mind that what the French most need is a collective case of amnesia and a fresh start. (Who can forget Tsonga’s Cassandra act last year, when he blithely told the press that no Frenchman was going to win Roland Garros any time soon?) His name is Benoit Paire, a 24-year old from Avignon who reached a Masters 1000 semifinal for the first time in his career last week in Rome.

Paire acts—and plays—like he was raised by wolves, and that may be just what the French need at this point. He has been a rebel and outcast from the French establishment, which for our purposes isn’t necessarily a bad thing. He just might have the stones to decide, “I don’t care if I’m French, I’m gonna win this danged thing!”

Of course, Paire also could get a bad call in his opening match, blow up emotionally, and go on to lose 6-1, 6-0, 6-2. After all, he is French. And that seems to be a common problem this time of the year in Paris.

Parisian Thoroughfares

Sat, 25 May 2013 00:56:00 +0000

A draw is a conversation starter, but it may be more valuable as a conversation killer. Once the men and women are locked in their brackets, we can leave behind the airy speculation about “favorites”—a meaningless word if you’re a player—and stop pondering the endless “what ifs” about who might play whom in what round. Now everyone has their path, and they must walk it. Or, if they can, slide it.

Who has the easy road, and who has the tough one to the Coupe des Mousquetaires in 2013? Let’s take a look at what awaits us over the next two weeks. (Draws are here.)

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First Quarter

The primary question on the men’s side, to my mind, concerns Novak Djokovic and his recent form. Will his early losses in Madrid and Rome, and his ongoing recovery from an ankle injury, carry over to Paris? Judging from his play over the last three years, it won’t: No matter what he’s done at the Masters events, Djokovic has reached the semifinals or better at the last 11 Grand Slams. Whether he continues that streak could decide who wins this French Open.

Djokovic has said that Roland Garros, which would complete his career Grand Slam, is his highest priority in 2013. He has also wanted to prove that he can knock off Rafael Nadal here since at least 2006. That year in Paris the two played the first of their 34 professional matches against each other. Nadal won, but afterward Djokovic stunned many by claiming that Rafa was “beatable” on clay—in this gentlemanly era, that was enough to put the stamp of brashness on Nole. Since then, Djokovic has proven himself correct by beating Nadal on clay in Monte Carlo, Madrid, and Rome; everywhere, that is, except Paris. Rafa is 4-0 in their head-to-head at Roland Garros, but Djokovic won his first set from him there in last year’s final. He also walked away believing that the experience of playing his first French final had helped him.

This year Djokovic and Nadal are scheduled to play in the semifinals. But each needs to win five matches first, and given Djokovic’s recent form, that’s not a lock for him. He has, relatively speaking, a difficult opener against Belgium’s David Goffin, a talented player who made his mark with his run to the fourth round here in 2012. It might not get any easier for Djokovic in the third round, where he could face Grigor Dimitrov, the Bulgarian who upset him in Madrid two weeks ago.

Theoretically, though, things should get better for Nole after that. He’s scheduled to play Philipp Kohlschreiber in the fourth round, and his countryman and whipping boy Janko Tipsarevic in the quarters. And there don’t appear to be many dangerous types in this section—Dolgopolov, Haas, Isner, and Youzhny are the other seeds. If trouble comes for Novak, it looks like it will come early. But if he makes it to the fourth round with his body intact, he becomes a co-favorite with Nadal to win the tournament.

Americans in Paris: Isner and Ryan Harrison. They could face each other in the second round.

Question Mark: Tommy Haas. The Ancient German is having a good year, but will he struggle with three-out-of-five on clay? He's been ill this week, and he lost in the first round in the year’s other major, in Australia.

First-round match to watch: Djokovic vs. Goffin. They’ve never played each other.

Nice to have you here: Bernard Tomic. He opens against Victor Hanescu.

Semifinalist: Djokovic

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Second Quarter

As of this morning, the second big question of this draw was: Where will the fourth-seeded Rafael Nadal land? Now we know he’s on Djokovic’s side. Does it make a difference if they play in the semis or the final? Probably not. Nadal does tend to raise his game for finals, and he did that in Rome and Madrid; but this match would have all the trappings of a final anyway. It’s possible that it could end up hurting the winner, who will have to go out and play another match two days later.

Nadal comes into the event in his usual excellent clay form. Rome in particular forced him to deal with very different opponents in Gulbis, Ferrer, Berdych, and Federer; Nadal improved as he went. He should also be in a good frame of mind. He already owns the all-time record for titles here, and whatever happens, he'll still have to be happy with his season thus far. Nadal opens against Germany’s Daniel Brands. The two have never played. On the one hand, Brands’ height—he’s 6-foot-5—and big serve might make him a tricky opponent; on the other hand, his one-handed backhand might not. Of more interest to most is Nadal’s possible third-round opponent, Lukas Rosol, though Rosol would have to beat 27th-seeded Fabio Fognini to get there.

Nadal’s presumed fourth-round and quarterfinal opponents are Kei Nishikori and Richard Gasquet, respectively. More intriguing, though, are the presences of Stan Wawrinka and Jerzy Janowicz, both of whom are on Gasquet’s side. Stan and JJ could play each other in the third round.

Also here: Benoit Paire, who opens against Marcos Baghdatis. How will the new French hope deal with that status when he plays in Paris, perhaps in Chatrier? There’s a chance Paire could play Rafa in the fourth round.

Semifinalist: Nadal

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Third Quarter

Is this David Ferrer’s shot, at long last? As the fourth seed this time, he has avoided his traditional quarterfinal against one of the Big 4. Even better, he has landed in the opposite half from Nadal and Djokovic. There is that little issue of his potential semifinal opponent, Roger Federer—Ferrer is 0-14 against the Fed—but why be so negative so early? For now, Ferrer, who lost to Nadal in the semis here last year, opens with Marinko Matosevic and has what looks to be a nice draw into the quarterfinals.

If everything goes as planned, his opponent there would be Tomas Berdych. Like Ferrer, the Czech should be thinking of this draw as an opportunity. Nadal and Djokovic are on the other side. Murray and the man who beat him here last year, del Potro, are out. While Berdych is just 3-7 against Ferrer for his career, he won’t mind him as far as potential quarterfinal opponents go. And if Berdych does make the semis, we know what he can do against Federer.

Unfortunately for the Berdman, he’s been handed a scary opening two rounds: A hot-hitting Gael Monfils in the first, and, most likely, Ernests Gulbis, the self-proclaimed most dangerous unseeded player in the tournament, in the second.

Question Mark: Xavier Malisse. Does he have what it takes to knock off a struggling, between-coaches Milos Raonic in the first round?

First-round match to watch: Berdych vs. Monfils

Potential second-round match to watch: Berdych vs. Gulbis

Player who could go out in the first round or make the final: Gulbis

Semifinalist: Ferrer

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Fourth Quarter

What a difference a few days can make. On Sunday, Roger Federer looked helpless against Rafael Nadal in Rome; today, as he scans the draw in Paris, things are suddenly looking up again. Federer will avoid playing either Nadal or Djokovic until the final, which means he could avoid Rafa, the one player he almost surely can’t beat in this draw, altogether. Instead, Federer is scheduled to play Ferrer in the semis, a player he has never lost to in 14 matches.

But Federer has to get there, right? There’s good news on that front as well. Federer will open against a qualifier, Pablo Carreno Busta of Spain—he's not a pushover, but he is ranked No. 166—and then get the winner of two other qualifiers in the second round. In the third, Federer may face Julien Benneteau, who beat him earlier this year in Rotterdam, but who has been slumping of late. Federer’s scheduled quarterfinal opponent, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, would certainly be challenge; Jo had match points on Djokovic here in 2012. But he also has to make it to the quarters. Tsonga lost to Janowicz early last week, and has said that he doesn’t feel especially confident at home on clay. Jo does have a decent draw this time, though; the next highest seed in his half is Marin Cilic.

Americans in Paris: James Blake, who plays Viktor Troicki in the first round, and Sam Querrey, who gets Lukas Lacko

First-round match that may or may not end: Gilles Simon vs. Lleyton Hewitt

Semifinalist: Federer

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Semifinals:

Nadal d. Djokovic: Nadal is the favorite to win the tournament, but he’s less of a favorite to beat Djokovic specifically—Novak won their last match on clay, in Monte Carlo, and we know his style troubles Rafa. Each will play five matches before they face each other, and we won’t know what their form will be until then. What we do know is that Nadal tends to get on a roll at Roland Garros.

Federer d. Ferrer: This could be the Spaniard’s moment, to finally make a Grand Slam final and finally beat Federer. But I can’t pick against the guy who is 14-0 in the head to head.

Final: Nadal d. Federer

A Roll Through Roland Garros?

Fri, 24 May 2013 20:05:00 +0000

Not so long ago, the introductions to my women’s Grand Slam previews all had two words in common: “wide open.” As late as the end of 2011, that’s how the WTA draws always felt. Things have changed in a hurry. Coming into Roland Garros in 2013, the top women are vying with the top men to see who can put a tighter stranglehold on their respective tour. Serena Williams, Maria Sharapova, and Victoria Azarenka have collectively split the last five majors between them, and they’re the women to beat in Paris as well.

Actually, only one of them qualifies as a woman to beat this time around. Serena will enter this major with the rest of the draw fading fast in her rearview mirror, and that includes Maria and Vika—Serena dominated Sharapova in the Madrid final, and Azarenka this past weekend in Rome. Should the rest of the WTA even show up in Paris? Now that the brackets have been filled, let’s see if anyone stands a chance of tripping Serena up on her way to the coronation. (Draws are here.)

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First Quarter

Williams will open against 83rd-ranked Anna Tatishvili. The two have never played, and there’s no reason to expect a repeat of Serena’s first-round loss here last year Virginie Razzano—except that Razzano was ranked No. 111 at the time. Serena will be, needless to say, determined not to let that happen again. More interesting is a possible second-round match against France’s Caroline Garcia, who nearly upset Maria Sharapova in Paris in 2011. If that gets at all tight, the French crowd could become a factor, as they were in the Razzano match last year.

The closest seed to Serena is Roberta Vinci, an Italian slice queen who would at least give her a different look. A bigger-hitting threat could come from Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, the Russian turned Parisian who has shown some progress since hiring Martina Hingis as her coach this year.

If her Grand Slam history is a guide, Williams will have a scare at some point over the next two weeks, a day when she won't be moving well or hitting crisply, when she'll be furious at herself for not playing her best. If and when that happens, her opponent will have a shot; we'll see if anyone can take it. Serena is obviously the best everywhere else, but she hasn't reached the semifinals in Paris since her infamous loss to Justine Henin, and her equally infamous hand, at Roland Garros in 2003.

Angelique Kerber is the top seed on the other side, though she’ll have her hands full in her opener, against fellow German Mona Barthel, the best unseeded player in the field. Kerber has had a see-saw year, but she likes clay, reached the quarters here in 2012, and does have a win over Serena, who was less than fully into their match in Cincinnati last summer. She’ll be fully into it if they play at Roland Garros.

Americans in Paris: Christina McHale, who starts against Jana Cepelova; Grace Min, who qualified and will face Galina Voskoboeva; Varvara Lepchencko, who play Mirjana Lucic-Baroni

First-round match to watch: Laura Robson vs. Caroline Wozniacki

Semifinalist: S. Williams

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Second Quarter

Agnieszka Radwanska is the top seed in this section, but she’s hardly an intimidating presence at the moment. Aga comes to Paris having lost in the first round in Madrid and Rome, and fighting lingering shoulder pain. Radwanska will start her longshot campaign off against Shahar Peer, and will play the winner between Mallory Burdette and Donna Vekic after that.

That means, for everyone else, this is the quarter to be in. Who can take advantage of the opportunity to make the semis? Sara Errani, the fifth seed, is the first choice. She reached the final here last year and was a semifinalist in Rome last week. On paper, her first test could come against Sabine Lisicki in the third round.

But there are other candidates. Carla Suarez Navarro is seeded 20th but loves clay and has done some damage this spring. Ana Ivanovic made the semis in Madrid and has won this tournament before. Venus Williams remains dangerous on any given day, but perhaps not for five of them; she plays the younger Radwanska, Urzsula, in the first round.

First-round match to watch: Suarez Navarro vs. Rome semifinalist Simona Halep

Americans in Paris: Madison Keys, who plays Misaki Doi; Shelby Rogers, who faces Irena Pavlovic

Also here: Virginie Razzano, currently ranked No. 178.

Semifinalist: Errani

*****

Third Quarter

As if Serena Williams needed any more good news, she found out today that she’ll only to have to beat one of her fellow members of the Top 3 to win the title. That’s because No. 3 Victoria Azarenka has landed in Maria Sharapova’s half.

That’s good news for Vika as well, and it only gets better when you look at who is with her in this quarter. Azarenka starts against Elena Vesnina—they’ve played four times and Vika has yet to drop a set—and the three seeds on her side are Cornet, Flipkens, and Bartoli. Azarenka is a heavy favorite to make the quarters.

If she does gets there, the seedings say that she’ll meet 2011 champion Li Na, though Li’s road may be a little more complicated. She opens against Anabel Medina Garrigues, who nearly beat Serena Williams two weeks ago in Madrid. In the second round, Li could face Bethanie Mattek-Sands, who has played well this spring. Li hasn’t been at her best lately; she was upset by Jelena Jankovic in Rome and run off the court by Keys in Madrid. It feels like a long time ago that Li reached the final of the last Grand Slam, in Australia. Yet she remains a threat.

Americans in Paris: Mattek-Sands, who plays Dominguez-Lino in the first round; Coco Vandeweghe, who plays Shvedova.

Semifinalist: Azarenka

*****

Fourth Quarter

And what about Maria? She’s the defending champion, yet few would give her much of a chance of succeeding in that defense.

But even when she hasn’t won Grand Slams in recent years, Sharapova has been reliable through the early rounds. She’s made the semis or better at four of the last five majors, and was an Olympic silver medalist. Her opener, against the eccentric, off-pace game of Taiwan’s Su-Wei Hsieh, could be tricky. After that, though, the closest seed to Sharapova is No. 28 Tamira Paszek.

The highest-ranked player on the other side is No. 7 Petra Kvitova. She lost to Sharapova in the semis here last year, but her up-and-down game has mostly been down of late—the Czech went out early in Madrid and Rome. Kvitova starts against France’s Aravane Rezai.

Of more interest may be two potential dark horses that have landed in this section: No. 9 Sam Stosur and No. 18 Jelena Jankovic. Stosur reached the final in Paris in 2010, Jankovic is a three-time semifinalist, and each has shown signs of life on dirt this spring. But each also opens against a talented veteran: Stosur gets Kimiko Date-Krumm, while Jankovic plays Daniela Hantuchova.

Sleeper: 2012 quarterfinalist Dominika Cibulkova. She could play Sharapova in the fourth round, and has beaten Maria twice in the past.

Americans in Paris: Sloane Stephens (she plays Karin Knapp first); Jamie Hampton (vs. Safarova); Lauren Davis (vs. Mladenovic); Melanie Oudin (vs. Paszek); and Vania King (vs. Cadantu).

Semifinalist: Sharapova

*****

Semifinals:

Williams d. Errani: Serena is 5-0 against the Italian, and that shouldn’t change, even on clay.

Sharapova d. Azarenka: This one would be tough to call. Sharapova won their last match-up, in Istanbul last fall, and has won their two matches on clay. But Azarenka has won four of their last six overall, three of them with ease. I’ll take Maria to continue her good vibes in Paris, at least for one more day.

Final: S. Williams d. Sharapova

Speaking the Language

Thu, 23 May 2013 19:41:00 +0000

What was the most impressive aspect of Serena Williams’ win over Victoria Azarenka in the Rome final on Sunday? There were the big serves and the winning ground strokes, of course; few players have dominated their closest competition as thoroughly as the women’s No. 1 has this spring. But while her play was excellent, it was hardly a shock; we’ve been watching Serena hit and run circles around her opponents for 15 years now. It’s what she did afterward, in her victory speech, that surprised and impressed me the most: She spoke in Italian. According to most knowledgeable reports, it wasn’t perfect Italian; there may have been a few Spanish words that made their way in as well. But it was good enough to earn the appreciation of the trophy presenter, and the applause of the Roman audience. Whatever they thought of Serena's pronunciation, the effort alone from an American must have stunned them.

But that’s Serena, and to me that speech was one more indication of why she’s been so successful. She showed no fear, she embraced the challenge with a smile, and she didn’t seem at all concerned about failing. Take it from one of her typically unilingual countryman: It’s easier for me to imagine hitting my forehand as well as Serena than it is giving any kind of speech in a language other than English.

That's always been the Williams way. Whether it’s playing tennis or launching themselves into life in Europe, they tend not to recognize any limits to what they can do. Serena, who trains at the Mouratoglou Academy in Paris, has had an apartment in that city for years, can speak passable French, and has no problem using its bike-sharing plan to cycle her way through its chaotic streets. Venus, who is also a lifelong globe-trotter and a person of many interests, said last week that Rome is her favorite city (outside of her hometown in Florida). The sisters have a downright un-American attitude toward the world, in the best possible way.

It’s also an attitude that some of their male counterparts from the U.S. could do well to imitate. At the same time that I was watching Serena roll through Rome, I was reading updates from other American players about their own adventures in Europe. The men, as a whole, didn’t sound as content as Serena.

The last I heard, John Isner was beginning his first run through the entirety of The Sopranos, 14 years after its debut. In 2012, Isner’s promising season was undone by his disastrous spring trip to Europe. He complained then of the long, dull days on the road; a year later, he still seems to have a fair amount of time on his hands.

In another part of France, Ryan Harrison was taking pictures of the foul weather that greeted him there, pointing incredulously at the tiny cars on the cramped streets, and wondering how to eat the gigantic whole fish that was placed in front of him at a local restaurant. Harrison finished his fish tweet with the hashtag, #IsThisRealLife

Only Jack Sock sounded pleased to be in France, though that didn’t mean he had embraced the local food or culture. The Kansas native tweeted, with satisfaction, that his quest to find a Chipotle in Paris had proven successful. (I can’t really blame him. I myself once went to bed hungry in Paris because the only thing open at 1:00 A.M. was a McDonald’s, and I would rather have starved than eaten at a McDonald’s in Paris. I guess I can’t scold Sock for doing the more sensible thing and finding something he liked for lunch.)

With tennis players, struggling to savor life in Europe is a tradition dating back, at the very least, to Vitas Gerulaitis. Even as he was winning the Italian Open in the late 1970s, the brash Brooklynite still maintained that Rome was the “a--hole of the universe.” As a teenager, Gerulaitis's friend John McEnroe was fueled by pizza grease in London and Paris. In the early 90s, Andre Agassi pushed aside three-star French meals to go in search of Taco Bell. Pete Sampras portrayed his slog through the fall European indoor circuit in 1998, in a successful attempt to finish No. 1 for a record sixth straight year, as something akin to the seven labors of Hercules. Three years ago, Sam Querrey, after doing the full clay tour, was so fried by the time he lost in Paris that he bailed on the doubles with Isner and flew straight back to home sweet home in California.

The language barrier doesn’t help; most of us Statesiders can’t speak anything other than English. Maybe it shouldn’t be surprising that the only U.S. man to win more than one title at Roland Garros in the last 50 years, Jim Courier, also developed a worldly spirit and learned to speak French. In the tennis sense, clay is the equivalent of a foreign language to us.

It could also be a function of this country’s exceptionalist psyche, which is well represented in athletics. Tennis is one of the few sports where Americans mix in on the same tour with the rest of the world. For the most part we play our games—U.S. football, basketball, baseball—while Europe and the world play theirs—soccer, cricket, rugby. Golf and race-car driving are international in theory, but each is divided into U.S. and European tours. In tennis, Americans are forced to take our place in the society of nations, to play on the same surfaces, to broaden our horizons, to live with everyone else on equal terms.

I’m not saying that visiting the Louvre or learning to say "Merci" is going to lead any of the American men to a French Open title anytime soon. Maybe, rather than Venus or Serena, a better role model for them is Jimmy Connors. Like his fellow ugly Americans, Jimbo hated Paris at first; after being banned from the French Open in 1974, he boycotted the event for four years. But Jimmy being Jimmy, a tennis lover and a cussed punk at heart, he returned in 1979 and reached the quarters or better every year until 1985. Connors says that he learned to love the atmosphere in Paris, where "the crowd was close to you, and you got down in the dirt and really battled.”

A couple weeks ago, Connors told me, “There was nothing more satisfying than grinding it out for four hours and beating a clay-courter on his surface”—that's a dirtballer’s mindset if ever there was one. I got the sense that, rather than going to Europe discouraged that he probably wasn’t going to win the tournament, Connors took pleasure in the process, in the novelty and challenge of the clay-court game, in the adventure that came with staying in Paris and trying to win one match at a time there. You don’t have to be Serena Williams, the No. 1 player in the world, to have that attitude.

Speaking of the sisters again, it should be noted that as African-Americans, they could be thought of as belonging to another American tradition. Successful black performers from the U.S.—artists, writers, jazz musicians—have often been more comfortable in Europe, and have ended up moving there. But I’d like to think that we could all learn from the Williamses’ self-confidence. And Serena has certainly not been a favorite at Roland Garros in the past. She was booed off the court there after losing to Justine Henin in 2003.

I look forward, this year or another year, to listening to Serena stun that same Parisian crowd by accepting their winner’s trophy with a few fearlessly imperfect words in French.

Tennis Talk with Steve Tignor

Wed, 22 May 2013 20:40:00 +0000

On Thursday, May 23 at 11 am EST, TENNIS.com senior writer Steve Tignor will take your questions about the upcoming French Open and anything else tennis.

Tennis Talk with Steve Tignor

The Rally: 2013 French Open

Wed, 22 May 2013 10:58:00 +0000

With the French Open just days away, senior writers Peter Bodo and Steve Tignor are here to give their thoughts on the tournament, in a back-and-forth exchange not dissimilar to the rallies you'll see in Paris. Check back throughout the day for updates; editor Ed McGrogan leads off the conversation.

MCGROGAN: I'm not sure if either of you realize it, but we're about halfway through the tennis calendar and at the midpoint of two very symmetrical seasons. In January, Novak Djokovic and Victoria Azarenka, two relatively new entrants into their tours' uppermost echelons, rode their two-handed backhands to title defenses Down Under. But neither picked up another hard-court title in Indian Wells or Miami, and by the end of March, three of the four top men and the three top women each had a big tournament win under their belt. Then clay came, and one player from each tour has won pretty much everything in sight—I'm of course talking about Rafael Nadal and Serena Williams. They are both massive favorites to cap off their dirt runs with a title on the terre battue.

Of course, many people think the season truly begins now, with three Grand Slam events to be contested in roughly the next three months. I think there's some merit to that, but regardless, who do you think needs a title at Roland Garros the most, across the sport? Will Nadal's comeback, amazing thus far, look different to you if he doesn't win the ultimate prize? Will the pressure begin to bubble over for Djokovic, who needs just a French Open to complete the career Slam, if he fails to back up another clay Masters win over Rafa in Paris? What about Serena, who inexplicably went out in round one last year? There's certainly pressure on her to perform. Is it someone like Azarenka or Maria Sharapova, needing to escape Serena's shadow, or an outsider like David Ferrer, who's playing at his peak? Or Roger Federer, just to shut everyone up about his demise?

BODO: That’s an interesting analysis, Eddie, and the way Djokovic and Azarenka were caught and then surpassed in recent weeks shows just how much parity there is in today’s game. I want to get back to that and pose a question to Steve on the subject, but let me answer your direct question first.

The player who most needs this title is Sharapova—far and away. And that’s especially true if form holds and she faces Serena in the final. You just know what pundits and astute fans will say if Serena crushes Maria in yet another big match, running her winning streak to 13 matches, dating back to 2004.

It may already too late to revise the judgment that the Russian was a placeholder number one and Grand Slam champion, as incapable of beating Williams as the WTA journeywomen are of beating Sharapova. It’s truly bizarre that there’s such a huge gap between Sharapova and Williams. Their matches haven’t even been competitive.

On the men’s side, the guy who needs this most is a Frenchman—any Frenchman—while the guy who could most use the title (there’s a big difference there) is Federer. Let’s focus on the French for a moment. They’ve established themselves as perhaps the most diverse—and diversely talented—national block of players. They’ve had numerous Top 10-level players in recent years, going way back to the Cedric Pioline/Sebastian Grosjean era. Yet none of them have even had a whiff of their native title. Imagine if England had produced a dozen Tim Henmans instead of just one, and they had comparable lack of success at Wimbledon (where Henman played above his head consistently). It wouldn’t be a pretty sight.

Now let me pose my question for Steve: Don’t you find it interesting that despite the growing similarity in the playing properties of the surfaces, players seem to be carving out fiefdoms based on surfaces (e.g. Nadal on clay, Djokovic on hard courts)? Does that tell us something about the surfaces, or is it that we’re entering an era in which tennis has grown so popular and remunerative that we’ll regularly have four or five players—both WTA and ATP—content to divvy up the spoils, feeling no real pressure to dominate on a 10-month basis? And is that good for the game?

TIGNOR: Hey Pete, let me take a crack at Ed's original question in this back and forth before I get to yours about surface fiefdoms. I think the player who "needs" this French Open the most is Serena Williams—I put that word in quotes because it's hard to say anyone needs any Grand Slam title when there's another one coming two weeks later. But Serena would suffer if she didn't win this one. She was the favorite last year and went out in the first round; she's an even bigger favorite this year, and you have to think that if she just plays at 80 percent of her best throughout she'll still win the tournament. All of which means that there will be sky-high expectations—from the outside, from all of us who have called her a virtual shoe-in, and from the inside as well. Last year Serena came to Roland Garros on a similar roll, but she got tight in the first round in Paris when she suddenly didn't find herself playing as well as she had been. Serena has always had a reputation as the ultimate competitor, someone who doesn't succumb to the doubts that the rest of us do. If she loses here again, after crushing Maria and Vika the last two weeks, it will look as if the pressure got to her.

Pete, you mention that the surfaces have been divvied up, at least on the men's side. It's true that, going by this season, Novak is at his best on hard courts and Rafa is still the king of clay. But if you take the long view, to me this is still an all-surface era on the men's side compared to the past. Federer and Nadal are two of only four men since 1968 to own career Grand Slams, and Djokovic is threatening to become the fifth. Nadal just lost to Djokovic in Monte Carlo, and Federer made the final in Rome. And while Federer has been second-fiddle to Nadal on clay over the years, he's also reached five French Open finals, compared to zero by Pete Sampras.

Do you think the players could become content to divvy up the spoils and carve out their own niches? I can't say that I see that—Djokovic, Serena, and Maria have all made intensive efforts to win at Roland Garros, on their least-favorite surface. It may be true of Rafa and Federer out of necessity. Each will have to do what they need to do, schedule-wise, to stay healthy and play their best at the big tournaments—Rafa because of his knees, Federer because of his age.

But back to this year's French for a minute; I know you're getting ready to head over there, Pete. I think we can agree that, as the tournament begins, Nadal is the favorite to win the event on the men's side. But if he were to play Djokovic in the semis or the final, who do you think would be the favorite in that match? I don't think Rafa is the overwhelming choice then. Do you?

BODO: Steve, I think Rafa is actually in the boat that you put Serena in above, and let me first explain why I don’t think she belongs there. At this stage of her career, I think Serena is bulletproof. She’s 31, and by consensus on the short-list for greatest female player of all time.

In some ways, Serena is the WTA version of Lew Hoad—the Aussie icon who doesn’t have quite the same record as some of his rivals (partly because he was forced to retire prematurely because of a bad back). Legions who saw him play, including that ultimate chorus of his countrymen and peers, say that at his best, Hoad’s power was such that he was well-nigh unbeatable (those who don’t share that opinion tend to say the same of Pancho Gonzalez). That’s said of Serena too, and she’s been far more prolific than Hoad—and is still at it. She may not catch the five women who have more than her number of Grand Slam titles (15), but the testimony of her generation counts.

The long and short of it, though, is that to me Serena is already beyond judgment—as is Roger Federer. It’s all gravy now. And a part of me wishes that they just stopped keeping records when players pass 30, because apart from the chance that they’ll do something spectacular and unexpected, they get mostly punished for having the devotion, game, and physical gifts for extending their careers to the maximum. I mean, does anyone really think that the results between Rafa and Roger going forward will be as meaningful as they were back when both men were at their physical peak?

As for Rafa, he’s just about to turn 27. He’s coming off a long layoff, which presumably had benefits other than those that applied strictly to his knees. He’s demonstrated that those knees are working just fine—at least for the moment. Which brings Rafa right back to where we left off last July at Wimbledon, where he was still trying to solve his nasty Djokovic problem. That could mean big trouble at Roland Garros.

Djokovic simply isn’t as intimidated as others by Rafa, and he’s not dragged nearly as far out of his comfort zone when they play. And some elements in Djokovic’s game reinforce and justify the psychological comfort he seems to feel. His superb backhand tends to neutralize the advantage Nadal has over most players simply by virtue of being left-handed and, frankly, Rafa’s good-but-not-great serve is less of a threat to Djokovic than to most because of the Serb’s returning skill. It just seems that there are special playing-field levelers at play in the match-up—just as there are a number in Rafa’s favor in his mastery of Federer.

On top of that, the pressure certainly will be on Rafa. I mean, just look at the degree to which he’s dominating the early discussions and handicapping! There were some very shaky moments from both men when they met in last year’s final at Roland Garros, and my gut tells me that Rafa may have more trouble dealing with them this year. So let me ask you, do you think these “mental” or “emotional” factors are over-estimated in our coverage of these games and players?

TIGNOR: You mean, do we overplay the pressure that a player might feel? Or do we overplay the idea that another player might be someone's head? Or both?

I'm not sure the mental aspect of tennis can be overplayed—even the greatest champions, after all they've achieved, get nervous and choke. But we can definitely misinterpret, overestimate, or underestimate how much of an effect it has on a player on a given day. Players can tighten up or melt down when you least expect it, and confidence can wax and wane from one set to the next against anyone. Take for example Djokovic vs. Berdych last week in Rome. When Novak was up a set and 5-2, who would have thought that it was remotely possible that he would let that lead go, against a guy he was 13-1 against in his career?

And I do think—and know, from experience both good and bad—that players can get in other players' heads. Nadal admitted it as much about Djokovic last year. Coming into the French final, Rafa had been utterly dominant for two weeks, and he had won his two matches against Djokovic on clay that spring. Yet he still struggled to get past him in the championship round that mattered. Losing four straight Slam finals to the same guy, including one where you were up 4-2 in the fifth set in Melbourne, will do that to you.

How about if they play this year? I think you're right to say that Djokovic presents a special case and special problem for Rafa, both from a technical and a psychological point of view. Nadal exorcised the Djokovic demon in 2012, but it reappeared in Monte Carlo this spring. In the final there, when Djokovic came out firing early, Rafa seemed to lose belief, even on clay—it felt like 2011 all over again. This year, instead of coming to Paris 2-0 on clay against Djokovic, Nadal comes in 0-1. If the two of them played the Roland Garros final today, I would make Nadal the favorite, but not a huge favorite, and a Djokovic win wouldn't surprise me.

They'll play five or six matches before they would meet in Paris, and a lot can happen in that time as far as expectations go. I think back to Wimbledon in 2011, when Nadal had just won the French, and Djokovic had suffered that deflating defeat to Federer in the semis in Paris. It seemed to many of us, including me, that Nadal had the momentum going into the final, but Djokovic stopped him in his tracks. I know this is clay, not grass, but Djokovic has the best game for Rafa on any surface.

As for Serena, there's no question she's going to go down as a legend and a warrior and an all-time champion no matter what happens at the French Open; like I said, there's another major, her favorite, coming right up, and she can make us forget about Paris in a hurry with a win at Wimbledon. But I also think Serena believes she should end her career with more than just one title at Roland Garros. She said she was crushed by last year's loss here to Virginie Razzano, which came after she had experienced a clay renaissance in the spring. A win this time would put that Razzano defeat behind her, to some degree. A loss—and, let's say, for a kicker, another title run by Sharapova—would hurt.

With regards to Federer, I understand that as champions age, their head-to-heads with rivals can get precipitously, and meaninglessly, worse. Jimmy Connors lost his last 17 matches to Ivan Lendl, but that doesn't mean he was a lesser player than Lendl overall. And after Rome, it does seem like the chances of Federer even competing with Nadal on clay again are slim. But I don't think we can start to downgrade his losses to Rafa just yet. Federer beat Nadal in straights at Indian Wells last year, he's the defending Wimbledon champ, he was a set from the Aussie Open final this year, and he finished 2012 at No. 2 in the world. If, later this year, Nadal shreds him on an indoor hard court the same way he did in Rome, then things might begin to look different to me.

Thinking of the draw now, Pete, could things work in Federer's favor in Paris? Andy Murray has withdrawn, which means that the top four seeds will be Djokovic, Federer, Nadal, and Ferrer. It's possible that Djokovic could play Rafa in one semi, and Federer could play Ferrer in the other. That's not a bad set-up for Rog, who has never lost to Ferrer.

We know who won the last time Nadal lost in Paris.

BODO: That’s a great question Steve, regarding Murray’s withdrawal in Paris. My feeling is that it’s a real shame he’s out of action; this is a real playing-field “unleveler” as far as the four seeds go. As much as I admire Ferrer for his doggedness, his inability to really take it up a notch, probably mentally more than physically, somewhat dampens my enthusiasm. It’s easy to respect the workmanlike but difficult to love.

But in all fairness, let’s look at this as a potentially great opportunity not for Federer, who’s not exactly the first person who pops to mind when you list people who can use a leg up, but for. . . Ferrer. I mean, which of the top three guys would you want to face in the semis if you were Ferrer? And should a Federer vs. Ferrer semi be in the offing, the motivation for Ferrer ought to be off the charts. Let’s remember, he’s 31; time is running out. He’s terrific on clay. He’s never been in a Grand Slam final. This is a career moment waiting to happen, and while I don’t much like his chances against Nadal (good picadors all know who the matador is), I think the lapses Djokovic has shown now and then throughout the clay season can be exploited by a guy as steady as Ferrer.

I freely admit that this scenario—a Ferrer win at Roland Garros—may seem implausible, but that’s only because we’ve been so conditioned in recent years by the dominant nature of the three top players. A part of me feels that the dam has to break at some point, the forces and stresses just continue to build, and let’s face it, nobody is rolling into Roland Garros with clear superiority over his rivals.

For Djokovic, I think his recent lapses, and perhaps even his state of fitness (ankle) could become an issue. For Nadal, I sometimes think the dramatic way he’s approached and spoken of his comeback almost makes him a little vulnerable emotionally.

Rafa will face a lot of pressure in his drive to win a mind-boggling eighth title, and nothing, not even his facility on clay, lasts forever. At some point, this attitude he projects—that he can’t believe he’s that much better than everyone else—could come back and haunt him. And then there’s Federer—we’ll see if his decision to cut back on his tournaments and more or less focus on the majors leaves him well-prepared to face all the eventualities.

In some ways, the climate is very different from the conditions over on the WTA side, so let me ask you this: Do you think there’s a greater chance that the top three men will survive to make semis than there is that their WTA counterparts—Williams, Sharapova, and Azarenka—will pull that off? And are we more likely to see headline-generating upsets on the WTA or ATP side? I have a gut feeling that this will be a more exciting tournament than it has been in years past, but that’s just a feeling, not a well-thought out conviction.

TIGNOR: The Picador: Do I hear a new nickname for David Ferrer being born as we speak? I like it; beats Little Beast, anyway. Though I'm not sure Ferru himself would cotton to it.

You're right, though, if Ferrer goes into Federer's half, that's an opportunity for the Spaniard. Still, it would be even nicer for Ferrer if someone else knocked Federer off for him. Federer is 14-0 in their head-to-head, and he has dropped just three sets in those 14 matches; he's also 5-0 on clay. Maybe Ferrer should hope he lands in Djokovic's half instead. He has beaten Nole in the past, and if Djokovic is shaky, he could be the man to grind him down and send him around the bend. Either way, I'm hoping, for logic's sake, that Djokovic and Nadal avoid each other in the semifinals. If they face off, it should for the title.

To answer your question, as strong as the Top 3 women have been over the last year and a half, I would still bet on more of the Top 3 men reaching the semifinals. Nadal is the King of Paris, Djokovic hasn't lost before the semis of a Grand Slam since 2010, and Federer, whatever his recent struggles, is still a regular in the late rounds at majors. On the women's side, I think that if Serena is going to lose, it will be earlier rather than later; she hasn't made a semi in Paris in a decade. Azarenka, based on past results here, is even less of a lock—she's been to the quarters at Roland Garros twice, but no farther. That said, I'll probably pick all six of them to survive until the semis.

I'll finish with what I think are the two most important questions coming to Paris, one for each draw:

Djokovic has suffered upsets in his last two clay tournaments, and he has had ankle issues this spring. But will those struggles carry over to Roland Garros? Recent history says no. As I just wrote, whatever else has happened to Djokovic over the last two-and-a-half years, he has put it aside and reached the semis or better at the last 11 Grand Slams. If that continues, and he's still around on the second Friday in Paris, Djokovic will have a very good shot at winning this tournament, because we know he can beat Nadal on clay.

On the women's side, I don't see Serena losing in the semifinals or the final, or to Sharapova or Azarenka. She has crushed those two this spring. But she hasn't been at her best in every match, either. In the semis in Madrid, Serena was listless enough to nearly lose to Anabel Medina Garrigues. I don't think we'll see that kind of performance from her, exactly, but she's had her bad days in the middle of majors before, for no apparent reason—in fact, it's something of a tradition with Serena, in particular at Roland Garros. We know she can put a beat down on anyone, but can Serena win seven straight matches at Roland Garros? She hasn't won five in a row there since 2003.

I know Paris isn't your favorite city, Pete, but I hope the tournament is a good one for you. Like you said, we have two big favorites, but there's also reason to believe that we could be in for a few surprises.

Have a question of your own? Ask Steve on Thursday at 11 am EST, and Pete at 4 pm EST.

The Rally: 2013 French Open

Wed, 22 May 2013 10:58:00 +0000

TIGNOR: You mean, do we overplay the pressure that a player might feel? Or do we overplay the idea that another player might be someone's head? Or both?

We know who won the last time Nadal lost in Paris.

TIGNOR: The Picador: Do I hear a new nickname for David Ferrer being born as we speak? I like it; beats Little Beast, anyway. Though I'm not sure Ferru himself would cotton to it.

I'll finish with what I think are the two most important questions coming to Paris, one for each draw:

Have a question of your own? Ask Steve on Thursday at 11 am EST, and Pete at 4 pm EST.

Tennis Talk with Peter Bodo

Wed, 22 May 2013 04:00:00 +0000

On Thursday, May 23 at 4 pm EST, TENNIS.com senior writer Peter Bodo will take your questions about the upcoming French Open and anything else tennis.

Tennis Talk with Peter Bodo

They Said What? Coach Hingis

Tue, 21 May 2013 20:05:00 +0000

“She plays like the ones I didn’t like to play so much, like Serena, or Lindsay Davenport.”—Martina Hingis, 2013 International Tennis Hall of Fame inductee and rookie coach, on her protégé, Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova.

We’re accustomed to coaches pumping up their players, but when that coach was No. 1 at age 16 on the strength of the three Grand Slam singles titles she earned in 1997, it adds a heavy dose of credibility to her comments—even if Hingis does have her work cut out with the spectacularly talented but sometimes mortifyingly inconsistent Pavlyuchenkova.

I’m not sure that the comparison with Serena Williams extends much beyond the fact that both players have a surfeit of power. Pavlyuchenkova is just 21, but she hasn’t approached her career-high singles ranking of No. 13 earned in July 2011. At a comparable age, Williams was already a Grand Slam champ (she won the U.S. Open at a Hingis-like 17 years of age), while Pavlyuchenkova’s best result at a major thus far has been a pair of quarterfinals in 2011.

The Davenport comparison is more convincing, not just because Pavlyuchenkova has a comparable platform. She’s thickly built, and while she’s four inches shorter than Davenport, she’s still well on the tall side at 5’10”. Pavlyuchenkova hits a very clean ball, but seems to have some flaws in her competitive make-up. While Davenport had enormous, consistent success, she often disappointed her most devout fans with surprisingly ineffective performances in Grand Slam events. She was the year-end No. 1 four different times, but won “only” three Grand Slam titles, plus an Olympic gold medal in singles.

Hingis also said that coaching Pavlyuchenkova has been a pleasure because the Russian is “a good listener,” and that too is reminiscent of Davenport, an intelligent, perceptive player and commentator who’s gone on to be a valuable asset in the Tennis Channel commentary booth. Still, given the extent to which Pavlyuchenkova has been spinning her wheels for almost two years now, you have to wonder if she’s ever going to justify the strong praise heaped on her by Hingis.

The upcoming French Open may give us some clues. Pavlyuchenkova began working with Hingis this year, and she’s steadily climbed from No. 36 to her present ranking of No. 19. She’s been in three finals already—Brisbane (where she lost to Serena), Monterrey, and Oeiras—the latter two victories, both on the same red clay she’ll find underfoot at Roland Garros next week.

But be warned—Pavlyuchenkova has taken some losses that are truly head-scratchers, less because of the opponent than how poorly she competed. In Rome last week, she lost to No. 44 Romina Oprandi, 6-2, 6-0. At Kuala Lumpur she fell to No. 197 Bethanie Mattek-Sands, 6-4, 6-1. And in her next event, Indian Wells, she dropped a 7-5, 6-1 decision to No. 69 Johanna Larsson.

After losing to Serena in Brisbane, she told the champ: “I don’t know how to play tennis when I play against you.”

Unfortunately for Pavlyuchenkova, she can make that same statement against other players at unexpected times. Hingis’ main challenge will be ironing out the peaks and valleys, and showing her protégé how to be a competitor as well as a huge talent.

Podcast: Rome Reaction

Tue, 21 May 2013 12:37:00 +0000

Thumbs Up, Thumbs Down: May 20

Mon, 20 May 2013 17:00:00 +0000

Okay, so the men’s final in Rome was an avert-your-eyes blowout in which Rafael Nadal razed the game of Roger Federer. I’m still giving them a joint thumbs up because these two just don’t seem to quit, and no matter how often Nadal knocks out Federer (since 2008, the Spaniard leads 12-4), the Swiss all-time Grand Slam champion just keeps on getting up and coming back for more. Meanwhile, contenders and pretenders come and go, full of grand ambitions, good intentions, slick moves and—ultimately—excuses.

Starting in 2015, ESPN will be taking tennis into a world that was idle fantasy as recently as 1998, the year Federer won the Orange Bowl junior title. That is, an environment where the sport is presented on multiple platforms (broadcast and digital), a promised land so long sought by fans in this remarkably diverse, global game—a place where you, Mr. or Ms. Fan, will be able to watch any singles match that takes place at the U.S. Open, live.

This deal is a milestone not just for tennis, but mega-sporting events (e.g., the Masters, the Kentucky Derby, the Daytona 500) in general. And it doesn’t hurt that with a financial commitment of $770 million for an 11-year deal, the annual broadcast-rights income of the U.S. Open will basically double over the present payout.

Ernests Gulbis is at it again. The wacky Latvian blew a big lead over Nadal in the quarterfinals of Rome, eventually losing, 6-4 in the third. Afterward, he once again uttered what is becoming a familiar lament: “I thought I was the better player in the match, and also in the second and third sets (which Nadal won). . . He is solid and he didn’t do anything special and I made mistakes so he won.”

Nadal took the high road, as he usually does in such matters, although he did get it in a pretty good line without actually criticizing Gulbis: “If you hit as hard as you can, and hit every ball at 216 (kilometers per hour) or 220 and then that means being the best player then perhaps he was the best player.”

Ernie: If you make mistakes, dude, the other guy wins. And that means he was the better player. Get it?

The Ohio State Buckeyes men’s tennis team, which will play top-ranked UCLA today in the NCAA tournament. On Saturday, the Buckeyes shocked four-time defending champion USC—a reign that began when the Trojans beat the Buckeyes in the 2009 final.

The hero on Saturday was Peter Kobelt, who clinched for OSU after having lost the decisive match in similar situations twice in the past. The Columbus Dispatch reported that the Buckeyes rushed onto court to swarm Koblet when he clinched, so excited that doubles player Devin ran out of his shoes—literally. I’m going to have to see if we have that on video. . .

Serena Williams seems hellbent on dousing all this talk about Maria Sharapova having become the “Queen of Clay.” Last week she beat Sharapova 6-1, 6-4 in the final in Madrid, with the No. 1 ranking as well as the title on the line. This week she beat world No. 3 Victoria Azarenka—her immediate predecessor at No. 1—6-1, 6-3 in the final in Rome. Wasn’t it mere weeks ago that everyone was taking pains to point out that Serena hadn’t won a title on red clay since Roland Garros in 2002?

What difference does it make? Serena has been producing Nadal-like scores, while not exactly playing a Nadal-esque game. And that spells trouble for her rivals starting next week at the second Grand Slam of the year. Serena rides a 24-match win streak into Paris, and she’s 33-1 on clay since the start of last year—that one loss a shocking first-round upset inflicted on her at the French Open. “Last year I was feeling excellent on clay but didn't do that great at Roland Garros," she said. "This year I'm cautious and I want to work hard and stay focused and win every point I play, and not slack at all."

Jo-Wilfried Tsonga isn’t giving his French countrymen much to feel positive about going into Roland Garros. Tsonga, who had match points against top-seeded Novak Djokovic in the French Open quarterfinals last year, lost in the fourth round of Madrid (while playing just three matches, thanks to a bye) to Stanislas Wawrinka, and then in the second round of Rome—his first match—to Jerzy Janowicz. Tsonga came nowhere near fulfilling his seeding (No. 8) at either event. The best you can say for him is that he won’t go into Roland Garros over-tennised.

Benoit Paire has leaped ahead in the four-way Headcase Derby also featuring Gulbis, Grigor Dimitrov, and Fabio Fognini. Paire reached a Masters 1000 semi for the first time in Rome with an astonishing 57-minute beatdown of a pretty solid clay-court player in Marcel Granollers.

That, after Paire had sent No. 7 seed Juan Martin del Potro packing in the third round. This will be a guy to watch in Paris. He’s crazy and he don’t care about nothin’, so I can see him becoming the first Frenchman to win at Roland Garros since Yannick Noah in 1983.

Caroline Wozniacki and Nicolas Almagro easily qualify for contestants on the game show, “Who Had the Worst Three Weeks?” Wozniacki was seeded No. 10 at the two big Premier events, but lost in straight sets to Yaroslava Shvedova in the first round of Madrid, and was also beaten in her opener in Rome by Bojana Jovanovski. Furthermore, neither of the women who beat Wozniacki did very much after knocking the Dane out; Jovanovski lost her next match, while Shvedova survived just one more round.

Almagro was equally disappointing. Seeded No. 12 in both events, he was knocked out by Mikhail Youzhny in the second round of Madrid; in Rome, he lost in the first round to Julien Benneteau in two uninspired sets. Neither of the men who beat Almagro did any more thereafter than the women who eliminated Wozniacki. Yikes!

It’s always nice to see a wild card player justify their selection. Pablo Andujar, a wild-card “homer” in Madrid (the native of Cuenca was ranked No. 113 when entries closed) panned out for the tournament committee by battling his way to the semis with a truly admirable run that included wins over No. 11 Marin Cilic, No. 16 Kei Nishikori, and No. 21 John Isner.

The mean ranking of the guys Andujar beat was No. 25, which is excellent work by anyone, at any event. Andujar, who’s 27, ran out of gas against Nadal in the semis. I didn’t see him in the qualifying for Rome—could it be that he’s resting up and planning to avenge himself upon his countryman Nadal in Paris?

Why not? He seems to have about as good a chance as anyone, given the way Nadal is playing.

Inside Story

Mon, 20 May 2013 13:22:00 +0000

It’s been hard to miss Jimmy Connors over the past week in New York City. He’s made pit stops at The Today Show, Mike and Mike, CenterStage, Hannity, and Charlie Rose, among, I assume, many others. He’s been written about in the Daily News, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal, along with just about every other outlet in the country. And anyone who happened to walk past the restaurant in the Peninsula Hotel at the corner 55th and 5th in Manhattan would likely have caught a glimpse of him there, ensconced at one of the tables up front, answering one question after another. Jimbo always did say he liked to grind.

I caught up with Connors at the start of this particular five-set marathon at the Peninsula. He was there, of course, to promote his new autobiography, The Outsider, but he didn’t look out of place among the spiffy tourists and businessman sipping $20 gin and tonics. Connors was in a dark blue suit himself, and while his hair was edged with gray, none of it was out of place. Listening to him quietly answer questions that he must have been asked 10 times already that day, it was hard to imagine that this was the same man who, 20-odd years ago, had gyrated his way to the semifinals of the U.S. Open in short-shorts at age 39, and held this city in his grip while he did it.

That’s one reason Connors says he’s doing this book now, two decades after his retirement and well after much younger tennis stars, such as Andre Agassi, Pete Sampras, and even Rafael Nadal, have put their lives on paper.

“It’s been long enough,” Connors says. “I have some perspective on my tennis career, and I saw it a little differently than I did when I was in the thick of it. It was hard to give up playing, and I kept at it [on the senior tour] until the end of the '90s. But now I can look at it as a whole.”

Connors, like most athletes, has never been known as an introspective type, or one prone to revealing every detail of his life. His beloved grandmother, Bertha Thompson—known to Jimbo as Two-Mom—once told him, “Keep a little mystery about yourself,” and Connors says he lived by those words his entire life.

“It was hard work doing this, remembering everything, digging everything up,” Connors admits. “It’s amazing what comes back to you; some things you wish wouldn’t have come back to you.”

When I ask if there are any misconceptions about him that he wanted to clear up, Connors fixes his eyes on me. I flash back to the bug-eyed way he stared across the net as he destroyed Bjorn Borg in the 1978 U.S. Open final. Is he going to treat me the way he treated the tennis ball in that match?

“Read the book,” he says. Next question.

I have read the book, and I can say that it's worth the time of any tennis fan, especially any fan of the game's Wild West 1970s and early 80s. It’s also not exactly what I expected. Connors says “it’s not a tennis book,” and I can see what he means. Written with his long-time friend Casey DeFranco, The Outsider glosses over many of his familiar on-court triumphs fairly quickly—one of his most definitive, his run to the title at the first U.S. Open in Flushing Meadows, in '78, is covered in a couple of paragraphs. What we get more of is Connors’ off-court life, his relationships with his mother, his grandparents, his older brother Johnny (you might describe him as a tennis version of presidential brothers like Billy Carter or Roger Clinton), his coach Pancho Segura, his wife, Patti, and their struggles through the years, as well as his early relationship with Chris Evert.

That last story is what made The Outsider a source of controversy well before its May 14 release. Connors says that he didn’t want to hold anything back; unfortunately, that included the previously unknown fact that a very young Evert had an abortion while they were engaged, and that it contributed to their break-up. From Connors’ perspective, the revelation might seem justified on the grounds that it was a major event in his life. But it was unfair to Evert, who has been blindsided and hurt by the episode. Connors claims that he has talked to Chris since, but declines to say anything more about the conversation.

While that revelation comes at her expense, Connors does confess his share of his own sins and embarrassments. The book reads much like the memoir of that hotheaded Irish-American star of the Open era, John McEnroe. Like virtually every star athlete, Jimmy and Mac both achieve unexpected youthful glory, and then spend the rest of their story confronting the indignities of physical decline and the frightening sense of aimlessness that greets them when they retire. Jimbo admits that he has OCD, though it wasn’t diagnosed until he was in his 30s. He talks about the arrogance that led him to cheat on his wife and briefly leave her and their son, Brett, in the early 1980s. He owns up to an “out of control” gambling addiction. In 1992, he successfully placed a million-dollar bet on himself in his Battle of the Sexes match with Martina Navratilova in Las Vegas. Later he would, as he says, “piss away” an untold fortune on sports betting, until Patti finally staged an intervention and sent him to Gambler’s Anonymous.

Through all of this, Jimbo’s attitude alternates between defiance and, again like McEnroe, a surprising vulnerability—the mask of bravado that he wore as a player is often dropped, sometimes to his own chagrin. After describing the end of one relationship, Connors reflects, “Looking back at it now, I wonder why all the women I broke up with took the news so easily.” Connors talks with real warmth about his long-running friendship with bad-boy mentor Ilie Nastase. “God tennis was fun back then,” Jimbo suddenly gushes, in a poignant burst of nostalgia for the old days, his own youthful days, as he thinks back to one of Nasty’s nastier moments at Forest Hills.

“This is a great era,” Connors tells me when I ask what he thinks of the game today, “but every era has had great champions. There’s not much individuality now. When I played, everyone seemed to have their own game and personality, and I don’t think that’s as true now.”

What is true, thinking back on watching Jimmy in his prime, was that there was a connection, an electric current, that he could establish with an audience, with an entire stadium—sometimes the crowd loved him, sometimes it hated him, but people were caught up in the match when Connors played. I don’t think I’ve seen that, in quite the same way, with any player since.

"How do you get more people to like tennis? That's the question I always had in mind when I played," Connors says. "Back then, we couldn't take for granted that there was going to be an audience for it."

The book comes with some emotional highs and lows, one of which is Jimbo’s unabashed love for the pet dogs that have been his “shrinks” in his retirement. Most moving, though, is his recollection of the death of his grandmother, Bertha, of a heart attack, just as his career was about to take off in 1972.

“How could Two-Mom, the woman who had done so much for me, who had made me laugh, chased after my stray tennis balls, cooked and cleaned for me, treated me to ice cream and soda—how could she not be here anymore? How was it possible that she would never see me walk onto Centre Court at Wimbledon, play for my country, win the U.S. Open five times, or any of the things we had dreamed about together? She would never know what became of me....We’d been through so much hard work together and now, just as things were starting to get good, she had left us.”

Connors can be coarse and self-justifying, he wasn't kind to Evert, and, like most tennis players, he’s focused on his own needs and problems. But he’s also someone I liked by the end of this book’s 400 pages.

*****

(A side note: There’s at least one name that Connors doesn’t divulge. It’s that of a journalist who, according to Jimmy, wrote that he saw Connors doing coke while on-court at Wimbledon in 1980. “That guy’s a dishonest pr--k and he knows who he is,” Jimmy concludes in his book.

That supposedly dishonest so-and-so is my colleague, Peter Bodo. In his 1994 book on the pro tour, The Courts of Babylon, Pete wrote that he had, briefly, wondered whether Connors might be snorting cocaine out of a towel on Court 3 at Wimbledon in 1980. But when he asked one of Connors’ cronies about it, the man scoffed and said that “Jimmy would never fool around with that dope.”

The point Pete was trying to make was that he had realized how ridiculous it had been to think that Connors would join that era’s vogue for coke, and that under the cocky bad-boy image lurked the heart of a midwestern straight-arrow. Jimbo, obviously, never read it that way.)

When I finished The Outsider, I felt like I had learned a lot about what had happened to Jimmy Connors over the court of his life, from his point of view. But I also felt like some of what I knew, the myth of Jimbo, the reason he had been a rebel icon in the first place, was missing. He had, as I said, sped past some of his defining moments as a player. And he had debunked at least one legend from his life:

The story goes that, rather than walk in Wimbledon’s centenary parade of champions in 1977, Connors had snubbed the All England Club and the Duke of Kent by practicing on an outside court with Nastase as the ceremony was taking place. It made him persona non grata at the club, but also something of a punk hero on the streets of London. It turns out, as Connors writes here, that the real reason he had missed the ceremony wasn't because he was making a punk gesture. Rather, he had an injured thumb, had needed to see a doctor about it that afternoon, and had tried his best to make it to Centre Court, only to be shut out at the gate at the last second.

Frankly, I liked the story better when it was a thumb in All England’s eye, rather than an injured thumb. And I wondered: Which is the more meaningful life, the factually correct and occasionally banal one that Connors tells here? Or the fan’s version, the one where Jimbo is a rebel through and through, sticking it to the tennis establishment? That particular fan’s story was told by Joel Drucker a few years ago in his memoir, Jimmy Connors Saved My Life. To Drucker, Connors was the man who showed him that caring about things, fighting for things, and putting yourself on the line was more rewarding than playing it cool. He found meaning in Connors, and a myth that Jimbo himself probably can’t believe, because he knows his own story too well.

The two tales, the star’s and the fan’s, are different, but for the purposes of everyone not named James Scott Connors, they’re equally real and equally valid. We’ve had the myth for decades. It’s good, finally, to hear from the man.

Rome: Nadal d. Federer

Mon, 20 May 2013 00:00:00 +0000

In my preview of the Rome men’s final yesterday, I made a wish that Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer would pick up where they left off here in 2006, when they staged a classic five-set final at the Foro. That wish came true for one of them, anyway.

Nadal has long dominated Federer on clay; their career head-to-head is now 13-2 on the surface. But rarely have their matches been as one-sided as this one—Nadal was as good today as Federer was bad. Rafa, hitting with power and confidence from both sides throughout, went to Federer’s backhand to open up his forehand, then went to his forehand to open up his backhand. The ball never seemed to be in Federer’s strike zone; if he wasn’t struggling to get on top of its high-bouncing topspin, he was lunging to catch up to its bending sidespin. Nadal typically beats Federer by pounding his backhand relentlessly, but once he grabbed the lead today he felt free to mix up his locations and use the whole court. And that included his serve. Nadal varied his targets and hit his spots, putting the ball on Federer’s forehand hip on one point, and then bending it sharply wide on the next. He used the latter serve to save the only break point of consequence, at 0-0 in the second set, that he faced all afternoon.

As Federer said after the 6-1, 6-3 rout, it wasn’t his day. That started to become painfully obvious in the third game, when he couldn’t get all the way around Nadal’s hooking spins to hit his forehand. Federer ended up flipping two of them long and was broken. The floodgates opened from there, as Federer shanked his way through the rest of the first set. If there’s a stat line that tells the story of this match, it’s the unforced errors: Federer made 32, Nadal made eight. Federer also never found the first serve he needed to pressure Rafa; he made just 57 percent of them on the day. As the match progressed, Federer tried to move forward, but he wound up lunging hopelessly at the net as well—he won just nine of 19 points up there. In the first game of the second set, Federer went up 0-30 on Rafa’s serve, but he dumped a makable backhand volley into the net and Rafa ended up holding. There would be no turning points in this match. Fedal XXX was over in 69 minutes, and won't linger long in the game's historical memory.

Nadal improved through the week, and as he did in Madrid, he saved his best tennis for the final. This is Rafa’s seventh title in Rome, and he has won six of the eight tournaments he’s entered since returning to the tour in February. He’s No. 1 in the Race to London, and has, at long last, wrestled the No. 4 seed at Roland Garros away from David Ferrer. But Rafa is hardly the fourth-favorite to win the title there. With Novak Djokovic struggling the last two weeks, Andy Murray contemplating his back, and Federer clearly still a step (or two, or three) behind him on clay, Nadal will go to Paris as the man to beat once again.

Rome: S. Williams d. Azarenka

Sun, 19 May 2013 16:40:00 +0000

At 31 years old, Serena Williams seems to have decided that she has no time left for rivals. Last week she beat world No. 2 Maria Sharapova 6-1, 6-4 in the final in Madrid. This week she beat world No. 3 Victoria Azarenka 6-1, 6-3 in the final in Rome. She’ll go to Paris next week with the rest of the women’s field barely visible in the rearview mirror.

Serena set the tone right away in this one by breaking Vika in a long opening service game. Azarenka was under immediate pressure, and she began to press. With a break point in the second game, she jumped at a forehand and drilled it in the net. At the same time, Serena was showing off the clay chops that had made her so casually dominant all week: She was sliding, she was retrieving, she was hitting penetrating shots while she was on the run. Her most effective play today was pushing Azarenka outside the sidelines with her cross-court forehand, and following that with a backhand winner into the open court. Serena made this play look absurdly easy, against an opponent who is the aggressor in the majority of her matches. Williams won 74 points on the match, an astonishing 41 of them with winners. And she did it on what for her was an off serving day; Serena made just 59 percent of her first serves—though nine of them went for aces.

You could argue that this one was closer than the score indicated. Many of the games went to deuce, the match lasted for more than an hour and a half, and Azarenka mixed things up enough in the second set—charging forward, trying the drop shot—to briefly get back into it. When Vika came back from 1-4 to 3-4, Serena was nervous enough to hit a very tight backhand return into the net at break point. But Azarenka shot her own comeback in the foot by double faulting on the next break point to go down 3-5. There would be, almost literally, no more returns for Vika from there: Serena hit two aces and a backhand winner to close out the match with a fist-pump and a “Come on!” From the score to the rallies themselves, it was too much of an uphill climb for Azarenka to get back into this one.

Last year, Serena went to Paris as the clear favorite. This year it’s even clearer; few players have ever distanced themselves from their closest “rivals” the way she has at the moment—maybe we should just call the other top WTA players, “opponents closest to Serena in the rankings.” She melted down in the first round at Roland Garros in 2012, and it’s possible that the weight of expectations will weigh on her again in 2013. But after losing just 14 games in five matches at the Foro Italico, and showing off her new mastery of a surface she never loved in the past, no one can take Rome away from her.

The Classico Returns to the Foro

Sat, 18 May 2013 22:02:00 +0000

There’s a cinematic theme to Sunday’s Rome final between Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer. It’s their 30th career meeting, which, if we’re naming it Super Bowl style, would make this the XXX edition of their rivalry—however it turns out, I doubt it will be as scandalous as that sounds. It’s also the long-delayed sequel to the epic five-set final they staged here in 2006, which was the second-best of their 29 meetings, and the second-best match played by anyone in the last 10 years. (See the highlights at the bottom of this post.)

Can Rafa and Fed top the Rumble in Rome all of these years later? That’s doubtful. They’ll only play two-out-of-three tomorrow; ironically, that’s a direct result of the ’06 match, which forced both players to pull out of the tournament that followed in Hamburg, and led the ATP to downsize all Masters finals starting the next year.

But I’m thinking this could be a worthy follow-up, whatever its length. Nadal, as he was then, still rules the clay universe, but Federer has yet to drop a set in Rome this week. And while he did lose to Rafa here seven years ago, Federer had two match points.

The last time these two played, in Indian Wells in March, Nadal and Federer described their rivalry the same way: “classic.” Here are four things to consider as we watch its next chapter unfold.

*****

Form

Nadal will be playing in his eighth straight final, which is a career record for him; he has reached the final of every tournament since returning to the tour in February—not bad as far as comebacks go. As for Federer, he seems to have recovered from his own two-month layoff nicely.

Federer hasn’t lost a set, but he also hasn’t played anyone in the Top 10. Rafa has dropped one each to Ernests Gulbis and No. 4 David Ferrer, but he knocked off No. 6 Tomas Berdych in straights, and has looked better with each match. Federer has gone in the other direction. He played his best earlier in the week, but he wasn’t razor sharp against Benoit Paire in the semis on Saturday. Federer struggled with his forehand for stretches and didn’t serve as well as he did against Jerzy Janowicz the previous evening. He’ll obviously need to have a big serving day against Nadal, and avoid any extended forehand shank sessions.

*****

History

The past, as we know, favors Nadal. He’s 19-10 overall against Federer, and 12-2 on clay. He also won their last meeting, on hard courts, in Indian Wells 6-3, 6-4, though Federer was clearly hindered by a bad back that day. Is there anything, from an historical perspective between these two, that might give Federer hope? As I wrote above, he did have match points when they played on this court in ’06, and he does have those two wins on clay.

The standard template between these two is that Nadal uses his forehand to wear down Federer's backhand and take away his belief. It doesn't help that Federer has traditionally not played his best, most confident tennis against Rafa, especially on clay. Part of that is mental; he misses shots that he doesn't miss against other players. But it hasn't always worked that way. In the Madrid final in ’09, Federer escaped the usual losing dynamic and won with a mix of targeted aggression and well-timed drop shots, and he broke free long enough to roll to a 6-0 third set win over Rafa in Hamburg in ’07. Federer knows that an intelligent, varied offensive attack two sets can be rewarded against Nadal on clay, and that he only has to sustain for it two sets tomorrow.

On the other hand, the last two times these two played on dirt, in Madrid and Paris in 2011, Federer won the first set but couldn't sustain his winning level for another. Rafa, who has weathered his share of early storms from Federer in the past, won both matches.

*****

Motivation

Coming into this tournament, I would have given the check to Rafa here. As the week began, many were looking ahead to a semifinal between Nadal and Novak Djokovic. This would have been the last time that the 2012 Roland Garros finalists, and presumed 2013 favorites, would have faced each other before Paris. Getting an edge of Novak, and locking up the No. 4 seed for the French, were big opportunities for Rafa this week. The latter still is—with a win on Sunday, he’ll be safely back in the Top 4, and he’ll go to France as the favorite again.

When he arrived in Rome, Federer’s primary motivation might have been to get in some much-needed matches before Paris—he had played all of two since March. But now he has a chance to do something rare for him: Win a title for the first time. That it would come at the hands of the man who denied him here in 2006 would make it all the more sweetly satisfying.

Beyond that, with Andy Murray’s attendance in Paris in question, and Novak Djokovic suffering surprise losses in Madrid and Rome, Federer has to think that his chances for a second French title have improved dramatically in the last few days. A strong showing here would make him a serious contender again.

*****

Meaning

This won’t have the tension of a Grand Slam final, but it should have more edge, and be more competitive, than their never-in-doubt quarterfinal in Indian Wells. Style is paramount in Rome, and the Romans have always love Federer’s; they’ll be rooting hard for him to finally win their tournament, the same way they did in 2002 when a 32-year-old Andre Agassi won his first title there. But I don’t expect Parisian-style viciousness, either. It should be one of the best atmospheres of the year, and a tennis celebration above all.

Before Federer and Nadal play these days, we’re always told that we should enjoy it, that we won’t see too many more matches between them. Federer is over 30, Nadal’s knees are deteriorating, the sky is falling, and tennis will soon be dying. But this is already the second time they’ve faced each other in last two months, and in their current form there’s no reason they won’t do it a few more times in 2013 alone. When it comes to Nadal and Federer, we’re always talking about the coming decline. But it’s a decline that never seems to come for either of them. Now they’re back in the final in Rome, seven years after their first one.

My memory of that 2006 match was that it seemed to go on forever, and that that was a good thing. It got better and more dramatic as it went. Since I guess I have to pick a winner this time, I’ll take Rafa in three.

That said, my hope is that in Sunday’s match, they pick up where they left off in ’06, giving us more of the tennis that only they can give.

Rivals in Rome?

Sat, 18 May 2013 18:06:00 +0000

Let’s try this again.

Last week in Madrid, Serena Williams played Maria Sharapova in the final. This is the matchup that many in tennis would love to be able to call a rivalry, but Serena stubbornly refuses to let it happen. And she refused yet again at the Caja Magica, sending Sharapova back to the sugar shack, and the drawing board, with a convincing 6-1, 6-4 win.

But there's always a new week in tennis, and tomorrow in Rome we get another chance, with a different contender, to find out if a women's rivalry may be ready to develop. The question now is: Will Serena give the third member of the WTA’s Top 3, Victoria Azarenka, a chance?

The last time we saw Vika at full strength, back in Doha in February, it looked like she was on her way to starting something serious with Serena. There, in a three-set final, she ended a 10-match losing streak to the American. But she never had a chance to follow that win up, as an ankle injury forced her to withdraw in the quarters of Indian Wells, kept her sidelined until last week in Madrid, and kept her from playing at anywhere near her best until this week in Rome. Meanwhile, in her absence, Serena has gone 23-0 (two Fed Cup wins included) and taken full possession of the No. 1 ranking that had previously belonged to Azarenka.

Even more ominous—for Vika, for her fellow players, and for fans hoping for a compelling final on Sunday—is the fact that Serena has played some of her best tennis of that streak in Rome. She’s lost at total of 10 games in four matches, and has hung a 6-0 set on her opponent in three of them. In her last two matches, against Carla Suarez Navarro and Simona Halep, Serena even added a few twists and touches to her usual power-based arsenal. She used the extra time she has on clay to experiment with different speeds, spins, and angles. In the quarters and semis, she looked to be on top of her game and in complete control, without a hint of the sluggishness that she showed in her semifinal against Anabel Medina Garrigues in Madrid. Apparently, though, Serena wasn’t altogether satisfied with her 6-3, 6-0 win over Halep on Saturday. Afterward, she went back out for another hitting session. Now that’s ominous. Hopefully, Azarenka didn't catch any of it.

Can Vika give Serena a match? For the most part, Azarenka has appeared to be her normal self at the Foro Italico—in other words, she has played dynamic, athletic tennis while looking like she could boil over with rage at any moment. She’s only lost one set so far, to Sam Stosur in the quarterfinals, but she did a good job of stopping the Aussie’s momentum in the third set; Sam was playing with an unusually determined head of steam in the middle of the match. Azarenka showed the same cussedness in holding off Italy’s Sara Errani in front of a full Roman house on Saturday afternoon. Like Stosur, Errani fought hard enough to come back and get her nose in front in the second set, but Azarenka, after bending for a few games, refused to break. She brought a rare silence to the Foro's center court by winning the last three games. If there’s one concern for Vika, it could be her fitness over a a long match on dirt, after so much time away from competition.

Clay has never been the favorite surface of either of these women, but on paper, at the moment, it favors Serena. She has won her last two events on it, in Charleston and Madrid, and she seems to be learning new ways to use her game on it even at age 31. The expectations and motivations of the two players are different as well: Serena hasn’t lost since February, she’s building toward a title run in Paris, and she’s not going to want to surrender her second straight match to Azarenka right before she heads there. As for Vika, her goals are likely more modest: She’s trying to find her feet, her fitness, and something approaching her best form as the heart of the Grand Slam season begins.

But it’s also possible that her lack of match play could work in Azarenka's favor. Intense to a fault, she typically gets out to a fast start to each season, as she did again this year, and then runs into a period of burnout later. In 2012, the burnout was happening right about now; this spring, after her time away, she should be mentally fresh. More important, for the first time since 2009 she'll come in having won her last encounter with Serena.

So will our second stab at a women’s rivalry go any better than it did in Madrid? I think Azarenka will make this final more competitive than Sharapova did last week. Still, while Serena hasn’t faced any Top 10 competition so far in Rome, she has looked very comfortable on its clay. Right now it's hard to see her slipping up, even against a player of Vika’s quality. Whatever the result, this is the match we’ve been waiting to see, one that could have a real effect on the WTA’s immediate future, one that we can at least hope is the start of a rivalry that will put a little more spice into 2013.

Rome: Berdych d. Djokovic

Fri, 17 May 2013 23:17:00 +0000

If Tomas Berdych has any sense of humor, he’ll stroll into his press conference after posting an astonishing, 2-6, 7-5, 6-4 win over top-seeded Novak Djokovic in Rome and paraphrase the line once uttered by the late, great Vitas Gerulaitis.

Before the first question is fired at him, he’ll deadpan: “Nobody beats Tomas Berdych 12 times in a row.”

Yes, tennis fans, Djokovic entered this quarterfinal having won the last 11 matches between the two men, and for about an hour and-a-half it looked like he would routinely pocket No. 12. Despite serving at a most respectable 75-percent conversion rate, Berdych won barely half of his first-serve points—52 percent—a comment less on how ineffective he was than on how well Djokovic was returning, and how crisply the world No. 1 was hitting the ball and taking charge of every point at the earliest opportunity.

Djokovic rolled to a double-break, 6-2 win in the first set in just 32 minutes and a 3-2 lead in the second set. Keeping his foot on the gas, Djokovic hit a let-cord winner at break point in the next game to take a 4-2 lead, and it appeared that Berdych was doomed.

Djokovic built his lead to 5-2, after which Berdych produced a solid hold—and then unexpectedly broke the Serb’s serve. It was an inopportune time for Djokovic to begin complaining about an significant, irreparable divot that had appeared at one baseline, but he allowed the landscaping flaw get to him. From 30-all in that game, he responded to a Berdych approach shot with a passing shot error, and then stood by, helpless, when the Czech ended a long and intense rally with a backhand down-the-line winner.

Okay, Djokovic almost certainly must have thought, “No big deal.” But the break would put a gale-force wind at Berdych’s back, and he began clubbing exemplary rally shots, atomic serves and returns, and ground-stroke winners like a man possessed. He held the next game with an ace for 5-all, broke Djokovic for the second time running thanks to a backhand error, and won the set, 7-5, with a forehand that he ripped cross-court for a winner. It was the 16th point Berdych won out of the previous 21.

Occasionally you get a match in which there’s a single, distinct turning point, one that you could graph with a simple inverted “V.” This was one of those, although even a distracted and disgruntled Djokovic can give any player enough to worry about to make every game competitive.

As the match wore on, Djokovic grew visibly frustrated by the conditions. In addition to that baseline gopher hole, a swirling wind continually kicked up to blow crushed brick into the eyes of everyone on the court. Ouch! But Berdych kept his cool, and suddenly that dangerous first serve of his became much more effective. Not only did Djokovic’s return game drop, Berdych began to find greater angles each time he tossed and whacked the ball.

The first man to crack in the third set was Djokovic, who fell behind 15-40 in the third game. Berdych failed to capitalize on his first break point, but forced Djokovic to make a backhand error to end another long rally and record the crucial break for 2-1. The next game produced four deuces, with Berdych struggling to get his first serve in the box. But he found his range in time and followed an excellent serve with a forehand winner to hang onto his break-of-serve lead, 3-1.

Berdych would face two more crises as he matched Djokovic forehand for forehand, serve for serve. In the eighth game, serving at 4-3, he built a 40-15 lead. But he failed to get his next first serve in, and paid when Djokovic nailed a forehand volley winner behind an excellent approach. Then Berdych whacked a double-fault.

Suddenly it was deuce, and all Berdych believers groaned.

But he escaped with the hold, and rushed through Djokovic’s next game to reach his moment of reckoning. Berdych responded with some spectacular serving and reached triple match point (40-love) in no time. Then things got a little hairy.

Djokovic smacked an unreturnable service return off a second serve—40-15. Berdych dropped a ball before he served and had to chase it onto the court, then hit a near ace but was caught out of position, admiring it, and lost the point—40-30. A skittish Berdych missed the kind of inside-out forehand that had brought him to this juncture—Deuce.

Getting hold of himself before a monumental collapse of his own, Berdych hit a service winner to the forehand side at deuce, then cracked an ace (his ninth of the day) to finally end the match, after two hours and 22 minutes of often excellent big-boy tennis.

Stat of the Match: In the third set, Berdych converted a mediocre 56 percent of his first serves—but he won 23 of those 25 points (92 percent).

Rome: Federer d. Janowicz

Fri, 17 May 2013 22:42:00 +0000

Rome was the appropriate place for Jerzy Janowicz, a young Polish player on the rise, to have his first audience with the game’s Papal equivalent, Roger Federer. It went as many of us would have expected.

Janowicz is a 6'8" slugger with a bomb serve who loves the drop shot more than anything else. In other words, high-risk is how he plays his tennis. He was even less cautious than normal on Friday evening, apparently having decided that injecting maximum pace into the rallies at the first opportunity was the best way to counter Federer’s own first-strike style. Until the end of each set, it mostly worked for him. Janowicz, who finished with 29 winners against 26 errors, didn’t face a break point through his first four service games. But in the fifth, when he was down 4-5, his low-margin style couldn’t survive the extra bit of pressure. In that game, Janowicz made a backhand error to go down 15-30; at 30-30, he went for a monster forehand and drilled it into the net; and at set point down, on Federer’s first break point of the match, Jerzy popped up a drop shot and Federer passed him.

To his credit, an unfazed Janowicz kept firing in the second. He broke Federer in the opening game with a forehand return winner and held with ease all the way to 5-4. (This was bang-bang, blink-and-someone-just-held tennis throughout; the two players got through 23 games in an hour and 24 minutes.) Again, though, Janowicz’s nerves, as well as his shot selection, deserted him at the crucial moment. On set point, with a look at a hanging mid-court forehand, he went for a drop shot instead and put it in the bottom of the net. At deuce, he double-faulted. And on his third break point, Federer hit his own drop shot/volley combination to make it 5-5.

Jerzy's chance had come and gone in a flash, and he briefly went haywire. A few minutes after being up a set point, he found himself down two match points at 5-6. He saved both with huge serves and forced a tiebreaker—with Janowicz, there's no middle ground between the jaw-dropping and the head-scratching. The subsequent breaker was all Federer, though, as he came up with two forehand winners and two big service winners to clinch a frenetic 6-4, 7-6 (2) win and a trip to the semifinals.

Federer hasn’t dropped a set in Rome, and has looked as sharp as he has all year. For the most part, he handled Janowicz’s pace, and his serve was actually the bigger weapon—Federer made 76 percent of his first deliveries and finished with 11 aces, a more-than-respectable number on clay. And he was just as effective from the ground, where he hit 26 winners against 13 errors. He’s shaken off the Madrid rust and must have his eyes set on his first trip to the Rome final since 2006. Next up he’ll get surprise semifinalist Benoit Paire. The ex-champions all say that it’s tougher to recover as you get older, but even a slightly less spry Federer than the one we’ve seen so far this week should have enough to win that one.

Rome: Nadal d. Ferrer

Fri, 17 May 2013 18:45:00 +0000

It was an afternoon of surprises in Rome. First Tomas Berdych came back from a set and 2-5 down to beat Novak Djokovic for the second time in 15 tries. Then David Ferrer turned what looked to be a regulation grind-out loss to Rafael Nadal into a dynamite display of all-court tennis. Unlike Berdych, though, Ferrer couldn’t hold off the inevitable. Nadal improved his record to 19-4 against his countryman, 6-4, 4-6, 6-2, to advance to the semifinals.

The culprits, as they usually are for Ferrer in these matches, were the big points. In this case, those were the break points: He converted just three of 16. That alone was the difference in the first set. Ferrer was 0 for 6, while Nadal was 1 for 1. More telling was the way each man played those break points. At 1-2, Nadal came up with a dipping backhand pass under pressure to save one; two games later, he saved another with a wide serve that caught the sideline, which he followed with a down-the-line forehand winner. Ferrer, by contrast, faced with a break point at 2-2, pushed a routine backhand wide. Despite having been two points from beating Rafa in Madrid last week, it looked like Ferrer had even less confidence that a breakthrough was possible today.

However he felt to start, though, Ferru quickly shook off any first-set disappointment. He played better, cleaner, more aggressive tennis from the start of the second. With Rafa serving at 0-1, Ferrer hauled off on a forehand return for a winner. That shot seemed to free him up. He broke with another caution-to-the-wind forehand approach, and kept rolling through the next two games to build a 4-0 lead. Ferrer was on top of the baseline, and, for once, was a step, a shot, and a thought ahead of Nadal in the rallies.

Now it was Rafa’s turn to respond. He crept back into the set to get to 3-5. In that game, Ferrer reached set point and double faulted, while Nadal came up with a brilliant bit of deception—seemingly a sitting duck at the net, he feinted to his left, coaxed Ferrer to go down the line with the pass, and then reached out for a sharp-angled backhand volley winner. When Ferrer netted a backhand to hand over his serve, it looked like this one was going to end in straights.

Except that this time it was Ferrer’s turn to get a bit of (temporary) luck, and to make an opportunistic play of his own. At 30-30 on Nadal’s serve at 5-4, he hit a net cord winner. On set point, he made two seemingly impossible stab gets of very good Nadal smashes, tracked down a Rafa drop shot, and passed him at the net. We were going three, and a second shocker seemed to be in the cards.

The quality of play had risen through the second set, and it continued its ascent at the start of the third. Fans came for a baseline grind, only to see a jailbreak for the net break out. Nadal approached 37 times (winning 27), and Ferrer 36 times (winning 22), high counts for both over three sets. It was as if neither could break the other guy down from the baseline, so each went to the drop shot as soon as he could. What followed were cat-and-mouse scrambles at the net; if you’ve watched any of Nadal over the years, you knew that, despite his bruiser’s reputation, he was going to win the majority of the touch-craft battles. He gradually began to wear Ferrer down, to answer his opponent’s best with something better.

Nadal held off two break points at 0-1, and then broke, on his third chance, at 1-1. Surrendering his serve broke Ferrer for good. Rafa usually beats Ferrer at his own baseline game; today Ferrer adjusted, and Nadal beat him at his adjusted game.

Nadal, with three-set wins over Gulbis yesterday and Ferrer today, has done a lot of running this week, and if he’s going to win in Rome, he’ll do a lot more this weekend. The good news for Rafa is that he’s into the semis tomorrow; the better news is that he’ll face Berdych, rather than Djokovic, when he gets there. Nadal has won his last 13 matches against the Czech.

Rome: Sharapova d. Stephens

Thu, 16 May 2013 22:01:00 +0000

All kinds of bad things happen when you’re in a slump, not all of them obvious, like double-faults or errors that spin out their miserable lives in the net. There’s also a tendency, among other things, to watch rather than participate, to pull up or back out of a shot at a critical moment, to toss the service ball too low, and to rely too much on retrieving, thereby allowing your opponent to dictate.

Sloane Stephens was plagued by many of those shortcomings in her third-round match with Maria Sharapova today, and the net result was a dispiriting, one-hour and 20-minute, 6-2, 6-1 loss.

Stephens looked like the reluctant competitor as the first set began, and surrendered a break in the second game. She showed signs of wanting to get right back into it though, picking up two break points in the very next game. But Sharapova, doing what she does best—which is, go for it—fended them off with a service winner followed by what is becoming her (and everyone else’s) go-to shot, the inside-out forehand winner.

Stephens won her next game for 1-3, and continued to press Sharapova. At 30-40, the women played an intense, crisp rally that ended with a Sharapova backhand error. Stephens had broken back, but her general lack of confidence these days wasn’t easily dismissed, and it probably contributed to the fact that she was unable to keep the pace. Hitting with more power and unwavering focus, Sharapova took advantage of Stephens’ increasingly defensive posture in the next game and broke again with a backhand down-the-line winner off a slice backhand. Sharapova now led 4-2.

Although Stephens was playing reactive rather than proactive, aggressive tennis—some of which had to do with her opponent’s customary belligerence—she still managed to retrieve and rally her way to another break point with Sharapova in the next game. Stephens hit a short angle cross-court, almost a drop shot, that looked a winner, but Sharapova raced forward to make an unexpected get and dumped the reply deep enough to force an error. She went on to hold for 5-2, and broke Stephens to seal the set.

Stephens’ coach, David Nankin, trotted out to speak to his protégé, and told her that instead of 6-2, the women might still be going at it, tied at four-all. It was true, but Stephens seemed in no mood to be inspired. She complained gently about how Sharapova was finding so many lines and angles, to which Nankin provided the intelligent response: “If she can hit those, it’s just too good. Don’t worry about it.”

Sharapova opened the second set with a routine hold, after which she pressed Stephens in the ensuing game. By this time, Stephens was really counting on her retrieving ability, but the slice return of pressing, flat or topspin shots is just begging for trouble—and Sharapova is always willing to provide it.

Sharapova worked her way to deuce in that second game, but Stephens hung in there, as she would through three more deuces. After the fifth deuce, Sharapova achieved her second break point of the long game in classy fashion. Stephens tried to end a lively rally with a lovely drop shot to Sharapova’s backhand side—only to watch, helpless, as the Russian sprinted up, reached the ball with her racquet outstretched and scraping the red dirt, and dumped it parallel to the net all the way across to the far sideline.

The shot seemed to break Stephens’ spirit. Sharapova returned her next serve, and Stephens made a sloppy cross-court backhand error to surrender the break.

With the 2-0 lead, Sharapova continued to press her advantage. Her confidence, already high, continued to swell and produce stinging, deep, offensive shots that rendered even Stephens’ considerable retrieving skills moot. It was becoming ugly, but Stephens managed a face-saving hold in the sixth game before she gave up the ghost.

Stat of the Match: Sharapova won 11 of her 15 forays to the forecourt. I presume her useful retrievals of a number of Stephens’ drop shots count in that tally, as do her drive volleys. The stat is a tribute to one of the greatest areas of improvement in Sharapova’s game.

They Said What? Cable Ready

Thu, 16 May 2013 21:13:00 +0000

“When it opened up and we thought about it, ESPN is the strongest brand in sports. It puts the U.S. Open at the center of American sports culture like never before. It really gives us access to the multiple platforms that ESPN has. It's the way our fans are going to demand to see the Open in the future. We think it opens up all kinds of great possibilities.”—Gordon Smith, USTA Executive Director and Chief Operating Officer

One of the most rapidly evolving stories in today’s hyper-energized media world is growing parity between cable television—once the domain of the unwatched and unwatchable in a severely limited number of households—and the iconic blue-chip networks, like CBS, NBC and ABC, that in simpler times dominated the airwaves.

Today, with the announcement that ESPN is replacing CBS as the exclusive broadcast partner of the USTA/U.S. Open come 2015, that evolution has maxed out, at least when it comes to tennis. For nearly half a century, and since the dawn of Open tennis, traditional broadcast giant CBS was the tournament’s main partner. The network shepherded the game through the Open era, and deserves much credit for opening tennis up to an enormous audience—mostly through its substantial and generally excellent coverage of the U.S. Open.

CBS’ contract expires after next year’s tournament at Flushing Meadows, and it seems that the network was unwilling to meet the USTA’s asking price for renewal. ESPN, which over recent years had quietly acquired the U.S. rights to the other three Grand Slam events, jumped into the fray and snatched the biggest plum off the American tennis tree. The Sports Business Journal is reporting that the 11-year deal is worth as much as $770 million—or an average of about $70 million per year, which is almost double the amount ESPN and CBS currently pay ($40 million, combined).

The move, unthinkable as little as a decade ago, takes yet another chunk out of empire once built by the traditional broadcast networks, and is proof of just how large the cable and satellite-dish audience has grown.

Now for the interesting bits, as far as fans rather than financial wizards are concerned:

Starting in 2014, Super Saturday will be nothing but a distant memory. The USTA will revert to the familiar, alternate-day Grand Slam formula. The women’s semis will be played on Thursday and the final on Saturday. The men’s semis will be broadcast partly in prime time on Friday, and in the familiar 4:00 PM time slot on Sunday.

All that is made possible partly by the fact that, unlike CBS, ESPN has multiple broadcast and digital platforms—the cable-based network can bring you both NCAA football and the U.S. Open women’s final on the last weekend—as well as streaming content throughout the two weeks of the tournament on the cable giant’s sophisticated digital platforms.

This is a great win for tennis. Among other things, ESPN has bundled its U.S. Open commitment with an agreement to also broadcast the U.S. Open Series that leads to the grand finale in New York. All told, ESPN will broadcast about 200 hours over a span of about six weeks (roughly 140 of those hours will be at the U.S. Open).

And perhaps best of all for tennis diehards: ESPN wants to stream every single competitive main-draw singles match of the tournament, from the minute the first ball of the 2015 U.S. Open is hit.

This is a watershed event for tennis—and probably for sports broadcasting in general.

Rome: Djokovic d. Dolgopolov

Thu, 16 May 2013 18:42:00 +0000

Has a player ever had more trouble with a court than with an opponent? That appeared to be the case in Novak Djokovic’s hour-long, 6-1, 6-4 win over Alexandr Dolgopolov in Rome today. The only thing that tripped the Serb up in his stroll into the quarterfinals were a few dodgy, sunken spots on a rain-soaked center court.

The tone of this one was set in the fourth game, when Djokovic won a grinding rally, with multiple deep backhands, to break serve. From that point on, there was nowhere for the 23rd-ranked Dolgopolov to go. He tried to move Djokovic side to side; he tried to rocket balls past him on the first swing; he tried, when all else failed, to drop shot him. None of these worked for long. Djokovic was there to meet all the challenges, and was too solid to need to take many risks of his own. He finished with a tidy 13 winners against nine errors for the match.

Just as important was Djokovic’s serve. He made 69 percent of his first balls, and won 79 percent of the points on them, but that didn’t tell the whole story. What mattered was that whenever he needed a point, he could get one with his serve. Faced with his only break point of the first set, he hit a high kicker that Dolgopolov couldn’t handle. Faced with another in the second set, he went to Dolgopolov’s forehand side and forced another errant return. That play, the sliding serve to the forehand, worked for Djokovic all day—Dolgo couldn’t control his seemingly simple chip return from that side. The stylishly long swing that makes the shot look so appealing is also what makes it so inconsistent.

Djokovic moves on to face Tomas Berdych in the quarterfinals tomorrow. Put his 13-1 career record against the Czech together with his sharp form today, and he’s the heavy favorite to keep strolling toward the semifinals, and a possible 35th clash with Rafael Nadal.

Rome: Nadal d. Gulbis

Thu, 16 May 2013 18:41:00 +0000

There may not be a sure-fire way to beat Rafael Nadal, but there is a type of player who can do it, and Ernests Gulbis, whatever his other flaws may be, fits the bill. The irascible, mercurial, and sometimes lackadaisical Latvian is tall enough to take Nadal’s high-bouncing topspin in his strike zone. He can hit the ball on the rise with his two-handed backhand. He can power ungettable shots from the baseline. And he has a serve that can bail him out of trouble. Gulbis shares many of these traits with other past Rafa-beaters such as Robin Soderling, James Blake, Tomas Berdych, Lukas Rosol, and Novak Djokovic. It’s no accident that Gulbis had taken a set from Nadal in four of their previous five matches, including one on clay in Rome three years ago.

Today the two were back on that same red Roman dirt, and before the stands were full Gulbis had another set in hand, 6-1. There was magic in his racquet for those 30-odd minutes, as he belted backhands that made Nadal look like he was standing still. Rafa was pushed to the far reaches of the court by the pace of Gulbis’s 130-M.P.H. serves and 100-M.P.H. forehands. Gulbis had a point to hand Nadal his first bagel set loss on clay in nearly six years, but he ended up having to wait a game to close it out. That one game, though, was enough for some of the magic to leak out of Ernests’ wand. Shots that had gone for winners began to find the tape and the alley, and in the end he needed two aces to secure the hold.

Nadal dug in and tried, with intermittent success, to move forward in the second set. He also tried to hit the ball deeper and higher to his opponent’s backhand. But Gulbis, despite his best efforts to undermine himself—he can find trouble on even his best days—didn’t go away. At 3-4, it looked as if he had blown the set when he hit a too-casual overhead wide, stopped in the middle of one point, and almost fell down during another. In the next game, though, with Nadal serving for the set, Gulbis began firing backhands to the corners again, and broke with a net-cord return winner.

But Nadal wasn’t rattled by the Gulbis barrage, or that last lucky shot. Rafa came back with a level-headed love hold for 6-5, and then made the most important shot of his afternoon. Serving at 15-30, Gulbis hit yet another backhand bomb at a sharp cross-court angle. It looked unreachable, until Nadal reached it with a long sideways slide and flicked it back from his shoetops to keep the rally alive. A few seconds later, Gulbis netted a drop shot to go down 15-40. A minute or so after that, the set was Nadal’s. It was a mostly defensive performance today from Rafa—he would finish with just 13 winners to Gulbis’s 59—so it makes sense that his most crucial shot of that set was a defensive gem. He gave Gulbis one more chance to implode, and it was enough.

The third set went much the same way. Nadal broke for a 4-2 lead, but Gulbis again proved surprisingly resilient and broke back with one more screaming backhand winner. A little later, serving at 4-5, 15-40, Gulbis saved two match points, one with a service winner and another with a forehand volley that he hit with a broken string. But it was in that same game that Nadal came up with his most important combination of shots of the third set. On the first point, he lofted a backhand lob over Gulbis that won him the point. At 15-30, he pushed Gulbis back with a return and followed it with a rare forehand winner, and at deuce, after squandering those two match points, he came up with another strong forehand to force an error. Like anything else in tennis, it's not how many great shots you hit, it's when you hit them.

Once Gulbis missed a forehand wide on the match point, clay-court order had been restored, and Nadal had an unpredictably predictable 1-6, 7-5, 6-4 win. But it had taken longer than even the most hopeful Gulbis fan might have expected. If Ernests isn’t yet the type of player who can beat Nadal, he’s certainly one who can scare him. But it’s Rafa who moves on, to a very different, but potentially just as difficult, quarterfinal tomorrow against David Ferrer.

Rafatigue

Wed, 15 May 2013 17:49:00 +0000

Okay, allow me to invite an avalanche of criticism by saying something heretical, but also something many people are thinking: I’m getting tired of Rafael Nadal and his whole clay-court shtick. It’s all becoming a little bit like that movie in which the protagonist lives the same day, over and over: “Groundhog Day.”

During this time of the tennis year, Groundhog Day—although “week” might be a more accurate period—goes something like this: First, Rafa disavows that he’s well-nigh unbeatable on red clay. Then he goes out and demonstrates that he’s virtually unbeatable on red clay, bites the winner's trophy, and he goes to the next tournament where he does the same thing.

Rafa has lost to exactly three men in red-clay finals: all-time Grand Slam singles champion Roger Federer, six-time Grand Slam champion Novak Djokovic, and Horacio Zeballos—the latter just a few months ago, in Nadal’s first event back from an eight-month layoff to rest and rehab his troubled knees. When Rafa returned, he showed that he was, to borrow the phrase once associated with disgraced U.S. President Richard M. Nixon, “Tan, rested and ready to run.”

Some people may take umbrage to Nadal’s name appearing so close to that of Nixon’s, but they share a common drift toward paranoia. Nadal professes not to believe in the invincibility that is so obvious to most of us; he seems to feel that all his success can come crashing down, at any moment, and he’s got the knees to prove it!

You want to know paranoid? Think back to the start of the Madrid Masters. There was Nadal, 39-6 in clay-court finals and 21-2 in this “comeback” year—with three titles already in his game pouch—coming off his win in Barcelona, declaring: “I don't see myself as winner. Not me really. . .I just feel myself to be competitive and I just want to give myself the opportunity to be able to fight and to be in a good position to fight until the final rounds.”

Once I stopped laughing hysterically after reading that, I thought a little bit about the role such pronouncements play in Nadal’s seemingly sincere humility and my clearly worsening case of Rafatigue. I somehow had expected that humility to have evolved and matured into something a little bit different over the past few years—something a little less inclined to make me merely nod my head approvingly and paternalistically remark, “Yes, that Rafa is truly a good, humble boy.”

I would gladly trade a few ounces of humility and focus for the same measure of growth and change, for very little seems to have changed thus far in Rafa’s life, or at least in that portion that we witness on a daily basis, and that seems a little sad. He’s more like he’s always been than any other elite player, and I wonder sometimes if the machine isn’t in control of the man, instead of the other way around.

Roger Federer, for example, went from being happy-go-lucky in a “life, what’s not to like?” kind of way to a wonderful champion and an ambassadorial presence in the game (granted, he’s a good half-decade older than Rafa). And Novak Djokovic morphed from a brash youngster who made cringe-worthy declarations about himself into an adult who carries the burden of his accomplishments and role in tennis with dignity and class.

The biggest change in Nadal, though, is that at some point a few years ago, his pants got shorter and his sleeves got longer. Sure, he’s been in some steamy underwear ads and a make-out music video, but apart from that we’ve seen precious little growth. He did take part in the ATP’s political life, along with Federer and Djokovic, but notably walked away from it when things didn’t go his way.

The only real signs of change and growth have been in the masquerade of crises—those periodic episodes of introspective fatalism, and something like real fear, that accompanied Rafa’s struggles with injury. Even those experiences now seem less like game changers in any substantial way (meaning, a way that led to increased self-knowledge or awareness) than temporary, volcanic eruptions that are stilled when times are good again—meaning when Rafa is once again peerless. We’re in that period again; following his win in Madrid, Rafa told us: “My drive is working again at the highest level.”

There’s something terribly one-dimensional in how all this has played out, and more than once now. I suppose that’s my beef. Rafa is an absolute genius—by my lights, the greatest clay-court player in the history of the game. But that only means so much. And it most doesn’t mean that I can’t get tired of him. I love the Cormac McCarthy book, Blood Meridian. But I wouldn’t want to read it a dozen times a year. If I watched my favorite movie as often as I’ve watched Rafa play on clay, my wife would suggest therapy (not that she hasn’t, albeit for other reasons).

And let’s face it, movies and books have plots, while the vast majority of Rafa’s matches on clay have nothing even resembling a plot; they’re mere demonstrations of his superiority.

Of course, the great reason we watch tennis matches while we don’t desire to re-experience certain books or movies is because we already know what happened in the book or movie after our first reading; it will never change. Tennis is a live experience, and anything can happen on any given day. But that doesn’t really apply to Rafa’s matches on clay, does it? At least it doesn’t nearly often enough to justify watching 36 Nadal blowouts on the off-chance that, just this one time, he might lose. I don’t know about you, but I don’t watch tennis to see if someone will lose. Thus a Nadal match on clay is already a losing proposition for me.

Oddly, Rafa’s extraordinary degree of excellence on clay is slightly dimmed by his disproportionate degree of success on that surface. It’s like you want to concede this part of the year to him and get on with the interesting bits. Eight titles in Monte Carlo. Six, and counting, in Rome. Seven—7!—Grand Slam titles at the French Open. It’s preposterous, and nothing in tennis history has prepared us for it. Whatever your response to his record, you can’t say there’s an “appropriate” one because really in unfamiliar territory here.

This intersection in Nadal between a seemingly borderline-OCD personality and the charismatic tennis genius has some dimensions that aren’t especially helpful to the “charismatic” side of the equation. Certainly, tennis is a game based on the successful repetition of certain actions (strokes) under physical and mental duress. But repetition can become a deadly dull thing, so the very predicate of success in tennis is also the element that can undermine it, make it seem more pedestrian, lead us to experience that one unforgivable sensation—boredom.

Nadal has come up with something like a clay-court endgame, and whether or not it’s pretty doesn’t really matter. What does, though, is whether or not it’s interesting. My own answer to that implied question is, “Not unless he’s losing more than he does.” That may not seem terribly fair to Nadal, but there it is.

Rafa probably could help his own cause if he ventured off-script now and then, the way you’re supposed to, or can’t help doing, as time goes by. I’m not saying he ought to show up and swan around Wimbledon with a man-purse slung over his shoulder, as his pal Federer has done. But the signature trophy biting has become a little tedious. So has the sprint to the baseline following the coin toss. And also the uppercut and Radio City Music Hall leg-kick that goes with it.

It’s a little weird to think that Rafa may go on, just like he is now, until the end of his career. But it’s possible. After all, he’s almost 27. His capacity for doing the same thing on clay, over and over, as if it were the very first time, is astonishing. He seems to be getting exactly what he wants out of the game—and it’s a lot—so who am I to ask for more of him? I’ve always felt that there’s something about the idiot-savant in the great tennis player—who else could so enthusiastically do the same relatively simple thing, over and over?—and in that regard, there’s no player greater than Rafael Nadal on clay.

Rome: Janowicz d. Tsonga

Wed, 15 May 2013 12:15:00 +0000

This was the first time that Jo-Wilfried Tsonga and Jerzy Janowicz had played, and their match-up promised a lot. A lot of power, court coverage, big serves, drop shots, and decisions that can only be described in that politest of criticisms: “ill-advised.” The tall Frenchman and the even taller Pole play a brand of tennis that seems to point to the future, even as it remains frustratingly imperfect in the present.

We got what we expected from their games, but the result, a 6-4, 7-6 (5) win for the lower-ranked Janowicz, was a surprise. Jerzy was focused and hitting the ball cleanly from the start. At 0-1 in the first, he held with an ace. At 1-1, he controlled the rallies with his forehand to reach deuce, before blowing that point with a missed drop—as predicted, it didn’t take Janowicz long to go from brilliant to questionable. At 2-2, though, he capitalized on his good play. On the only break point of the match for either player, Janowicz hit a bullet forehand behind Tsonga for a winner. The set, essentially, was his. At 5-4, he made four first serves, and held at love with an ace.

Tsonga woke up in the second set, and the result was some highly athletic all-court tennis. Drops, lobs, overheads, reflex retrievals, passes, and volleys—they used the whole court and every shot they owned, good and bad. But the key remained Janowicz’s serve. It was his get-out-of-jail card on numerous 30-30 and deuce points. The best of those service saves came at 5-6. At 40-30, Janowicz hit a drop shot into the net to make it deuce, and then missed his first serve; suddenly, Tsonga seemed to have a chance to break. But Janowicz jammed him with the second ball, and Jo put his return in the net.

The subsequent tiebreaker was well-played at both ends, as the two traded volley winners and passes. It looked for a millisecond as if the set would be Tsonga’s. Up 5-4, he had a mid-court forehand that he struck confidently. It might have gone for a winner, if it hadn’t caught the tape and bounced long instead. From there Janowicz ended the match in the same high-quality manner he had started it, with a volley winner and a forehand pass at match point.

How good was this win? Jersey-ripping good, in Janowicz’s opinion. By the time he shook Tsonga’s hand at the net, he had a foot-long tear in his shirt. Hopefully he has another for his third-round match, which will be against Richard Gasquet.

Roman Reversals

Tue, 14 May 2013 22:17:00 +0000

What a difference a couple of days make on tour. Rome has started out looking like Madrid through the looking glass. Two of those who were up last week, Grigor Dimitrov and Ana Ivanovic, are already out. Roger Federer has cut his hair, and he cut out the shanks that plagued him at the Caja Magica in a 51-minute blitz job over Potito Starace on Tuesday evening. The Romans themselves sound like Madrileños in reverse: Rather than whistles, Novak Djokovic heard little but love from them in his comfortable opening-round win today. Next thing you know, Maria Sharapova will be announcing her break-up with Dimitrov on a camera lens after her next victory.

The atmosphere couldn’t be more different in general. Where the courts are sealed away in concrete in Madrid, they’re sunken and open to the strolling public in Rome. So open that, with a TV and a couple of side-by-side streams on your laptop, you can almost feel like you’re strolling from one court to the next there yourself, even if you’re an ocean away. Here are a few notes from the early rounds in Rome.

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More Days, More Dollars...More Sense?

This has always been a busy stage of the season, with big events running right up against each other in the madly compressed dash toward Paris. But Madrid and Rome have taken the take the race up a notch. No longer do they follow on the heels of each other; they out and out overlap. While the eyes of the tennis world were focused on Serena Williams and Rafael Nadal in Madrid on Sunday, main-draw matches were already going off in Rome. The same had been true the weekend before, when Madrid got a head start by opening on the weekend. The same will be true in a couple of weeks, when the French Open kicks off on a Sunday.

Is this a positive development? Is more always better? It’s hard to begrudge the European Masters their desire to expand, when their counterparts in Indian Wells and Miami have gobbled up two weeks of the calendar apiece for years. With player prize money on the rise at the Grand Slams and Indian Wells, how long will it be until Madrid and Rome feel the pressure to give their own significant raises, if they don't already? The extra days of tickets sold may become a necessity.

Still, overlapping the tournaments is hardly ideal for fans trying to follow along at home. Ion Tiriac has made no secret of his desire to expand Madrid (though he has long maintained that draws should be smaller). Rome has done a lot of development on its grounds in the last few years, since it went dual-gender—the place seems to have been completely revamped and rebuilt since I was there in 2007. Is there a way, without blowing up the clay season, to separate the tournaments so they have room to grow without running over each other?

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Americans, Vanquished and Vanishing

In one way, it does make sense for the big European tour events to expand, because the continent has virtually eliminated the competition at the top of the game, especially on the men’s side. With the Madrid title going to Rafael Nadal, Europeans have won the last 29 Masters titles, as the well as the last 13 Grand Slams. Nine of the current Top 10 men are Euros, as are seven of the Top 10 women. Of those 20 players, only one, Serena Williams, is from the United States. Even Canada's most recent hope, Milos Raonic, has struggled in Europe; today he went out in his opener to Philipp Kohlschreiber.

Just when Americans thought that things couldn’t get any worse on clay, well, they have. In the old days, you knew we weren’t going to win any titles on dirt, and chances are we weren’t going to win many matches, either; but at least we got to watch our players head ignominiously for the exit. This year, in Rome, Sam Querrey and John Isner both lost on the tournament’s first Sunday, before TV cameras had arrived in the city. Can a 30th consecutive European Masters triumph be stopped? As of now, only Kei Nishikori of Japan, Juan Martin del Potro of Argentina, and Kevin Anderson of South Africa stand in the way.

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The More Things Change...

Two things have remained the same in Madrid and Rome: The puzzling and complete lack of success of Caroline Wozniacki and her friend Agnieszka Radwanska.

Wozniacki lost her third straight first-round match on dirt to a lower-ranked player, in this case Bojana Jovanovski, who hadn’t won a match since the Australian Open and played today with her upper left leg wrapped in tape. I know that Wozniacki’s game isn’t made for clay, but in the past she excelled at winning early rounds with her superior patience and consistency. I only saw the final-set tiebreaker today, which she lost from 5-2 up. This time, when it counted, she was the one who made the errors. Yet I don’t sense that Wozniacki is any less confident in her abilities than she was when she was No. 1.

As for Aga, I watched the first half of her upset at the hands of Simona Halep. Radwanska’s game is also not built for clay; like Caro, she doesn’t have the power to hit through the slow court. Today it seemed that the clay was a great equalizer. Halep matched Radwanska retrieval for retrieval, angle for angle, dig for dig, point for point. Aga didn’t look happy about any of it, even when she was winning.

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An Exo Waiting to Happen, No?

What’s the rematch that the tennis world awaits the most? For many, it would be Rafael Nadal vs. Lukas Rosol, a restaging of last year’s earth-shaking upset. There haven’t been many chances in the last 10 months, what with Rafa’s absence and Rosol’s middling ranking, which means he has to qualify for tournaments like Rome. But it looked like we had a chance, when Rosol was awarded a lucky loser’s spot in the draw, just a couple of brackets down from Nadal. Alas, their third-rounder wasn’t meant to be, as a not-so-lucky Rosol lost today to Viktor Troicki, 6-4 in the third set.

Maybe it’s time to forget the tour and try to put these two together in an exhibition. On grass, say, in England, the week before Wimbledon. I’m pretty sure they’d both give everything they had not to lose that one.

Rome: Stephens d. Pennetta

Tue, 14 May 2013 21:18:00 +0000

As Tuesday dawned in Rome, there were quite a few women who fell into the “could really use a win” category. Unfortunately, two of them were facing two others. Early in the day, Bojana Jovanovski, who hadn’t won a match since the Australian Open, came back to beat Caroline Wozniacki, who lost her third straight first-rounder of the European clay season. A couple of hours later, Flavia Pennetta, a 31-year-old wild card whose ranking has fallen to No. 104, took on Sloane Stephens, the 20-year-old American who has gone 2-7 since reaching the semifinals in Melbourne in February. Somebody had to come out a winner, right?

It was obvious from the start who it should be. Stephens was the stronger, faster, more easily aggressive player the whole way. She says that clay is her favorite surface, and she moves well on it for a hard-court-raised American. On faster surfaces, her sometimes-passive footwork can lead to late swings at the ball, but on dirt today she was able to get around her forehand in plenty of time to knock it off and take over rallies. Stephens finished with a healthy 23 winners against 26 errors—not a bad ratio on clay—and fired her inside-in forehand especially well.

Pennetta, who is still finding her way back after undergoing wrist surgery last year, didn’t have any answers. She was a step behind in rallies, forced to go for desperate winners while on the run, and well behind the baseline. Still, with the Italian crowd behind her, she hung in as long as she could. Pennetta saved a match point at 1-5 down in the second set, broke Stephens in the next game, and did enough to make Sloane, who has lost from this position before, get a little tight. But It wasn’t enough, and Stephens finished with a 6-3, 6-3 victory.

That score may sound routine, but there are no routine wins for Sloane these days. Despite being the superior player, she showed flashes of why she’s struggled of late. In each set, Stephens let a lead slip and gave Pennetta hope. With a chance to break for 5-0 in the second, she missed an easy forehand. With a match point two games later, she tried to do too much with an easy backhand, missed it, and ended up keeping Pennetta in the set for two more games.

In this case, though, a W really is a W, however it went down. Stephens will play Kiki Bertens next. If she gets another W there, she’ll likely be back on a big stage for the first time since Australia, in a third-rounder with Maria Sharapova.

The Dominants

Tue, 14 May 2013 03:00:00 +0000

There’s been a lot of talk over the last year, some of it done in this column, about Maria Sharapova’s mid-career transformation on clay. Suddenly, instead of slipping, the Cow on Ice was sliding, a trick that never comes naturally to a hard-courter like her. Instead of belting the ball at the lines, the woman once derided as a “mindless ball basher” was retrieving, defending, constructing points, and winning 23 straight matches on red clay.

There was, of course, one small caveat to this story: She hadn’t beaten Serena Williams on the surface. Their only meeting on clay in the last year had come on the blue version laid down in Madrid in 2012, and Serena had won that easily. On Sunday, Sharapova had a chance at a rematch in the same city; a chance, on the real red stuff, to prove that she had earned the right to be called the Queen of Dirt.

Leave it to Serena to take all of that away from Maria, in 78 minutes and two quick sets. Williams has now won their last 12 matches, dating back to 2005, and 20 of the last 22 sets they’ve played. But this must have been among the most discouraging of those defeats for Maria. She had taken a rare set in their last encounter, in Miami, and had talked afterward about how she felt like she was making progress against her nemesis. Sunday was a regression: Not only did Serena allow her just five games, but she made Sharapova look like she had forgotten all that she had learned about clay-court tennis.

Afterward, asked to assess what makes Serena so tough, Sharapova focused on her power. That may sound obvious, but it's still the most relevant factor; Serena's easily the biggest hitter out there, Maria said. Big enough that Sharapova had to lurch and lunge after the ball. She was off-balance and a step behind from the first shot of each point, on both sides of the net. Serena’s serve, as it always does, handcuffed her, and so did her returns. I’m not sure I’ve seen Serena stand in and knock off Sharapova’s serves with as much blatant ease as she did on Sunday. No amount of improved play on clay was going to help Maria prepare for those rockets. Maria won just 36 percent of points on her second serve.

Watching the Madrid final, I’d say the Williams-Sharapova matchup—it can’t be elevated into anything close to a “rivalry” at the moment—hinges on two things, one physical and one mental. Because Serena is the stronger player from the ground, and she’s very tough to break, Sharapova must serve her best to stand any chance. Yesterday she made just 62 percent of her first serves and double-faulted five times in her first three service games (she finished with eight doubles for the match). Sharapova’s serve, like her clay-court game, has improved over the years, but both need to improve a lot more to handle Serena.

The second, and even more obvious, factor that separates these two is the mentality that each brings to the court when she faces the other. There’s game-sharpening focus on one side, and a crippling lack of belief on the other. In Miami, Sharapova was scolded by her coach, Thomas Hogstedt, for mentioning that Serena had begun to play well in the second set—he didn’t want her worrying about Williams’ game, or using it as an excuse. But after all of the losses, who could blame her? As for Serena, in her previous match, against Anabel Medina Garrigues, she had been sluggish and unfocused, bageled in the second and on the verge of defeat in the third. Facing Sharapova, Serena was exactly the opposite; beating her is a challenge that never gets old. And when Williams did fall behind 1-3 in the second set, she righted herself immediately with a forehand winner and a fist-pump in Maria’s direction. Sharapova won just one more game.

Afterward, Serena said that Madrid, despite being one of the WTA’s four top-level mandatory events, “wasn’t the biggest title.” But it was good preparation for the big one that she wants coming up, in Paris. In 2012, Serena had a great run on clay in the spring, and she has matched it in 2013 with titles in Charleston and Madrid. But last season she arrived at Roland Garros having not won a Grand Slam title in two years—the pressure was different in Paris, where she hadn’t been a champion in a decade, and she felt it right away. Since then Serena has won two majors, Olympic gold, and returned to No. 1. And she has dominated the defending French Open champion on clay.

If you’re looking for a theme to women’s tennis this spring, it might be this: Anything Maria can do, Serena can do better.

*****

Rafael Nadal, unlike Serena Williams, seemed to think that winning in Madrid was a very big deal indeed. You could see it in the way he fell flat on his back after beating Stan Wawrinka in the final, a celebratory flop that he generally reserves for the most meaningful and emotional victories. You could hear it in the way he spoke about reclaiming his home-country Masters event after the blue-clay debacle of 2012: “Being able to play here in Madrid and being able to win in front of all my people, is something really special,” Rafa said.

But well before the end, you could sense Nadal’s will to win this one. On a deuce point at the start of the second set, he came to the net and won a point by fending off two Wawrinka passing shots with two frying-pan forehand volleys; Nadal hit them with the racquet perpendicular to the ground, swinging from high to low. That’s not exactly how you’re taught to do it, but it got the job done. When Wawrinka’s third pass went wide, Nadal turned, bent down, let out a roar, and finished with a fist-pump/leg kick combination. And this was a deuce point.

Nadal, who dropped one set during the week, played most of this tournament with a similar single-mindedness. By the time he walked out for his first match on Wednesday, the man who had beaten him a couple of weeks ago in Monte Carlo, Novak Djokovic, was already out. From that result, Rafa was reminded that no player was safe; perhaps more important, he knew the tournament was his to win. Wawrinka made for a much less imposing final-round opponent than Djokovic: In his nine matches against Stan, Nadal has yet to drop a set.

As with Wawrinka’s countryman, Roger Federer, it’s the one-handed backhand that kills him. Nadal went at that side whenever he could with his dive-bomb cross-court forehand. As the match wore on, Wawrinka tried to run around and take those shots on his forehand side, but that wasn’t a feasible, let alone winning, proposition in the long run. A few times, after going for big shots and missing, Wawrinka could do nothing but shrug. Even a one-hander as strong as Stan's is a liability against Rafa.

“He’s a lefty,” Wawrinka said, “and puts so much topspin on his forehand, so I have to play my backhand always high. So I need to have perfect timing to play a strong shot...If I don’t have the legs to get there, I have no chance to come back in the point.”

Nadal has now played seven tournaments since returning to the tour in February. He has reached the final of all of them, and won five. He’s second in the Race to London, only 130 points behind Djokovic and 1,100 points ahead of Andy Murray. He says he played his best match of this week in the final, and that’s probably true. His only slip-up, only show of vulnerability, in Madrid came in his quarterfinal against David Ferrer. That day Nadal hit his backhand poorly—it improved in the semis and final—and was two points from his first loss to Ferrer on clay in nine years. Ferrer was able to do a little bit of what Djokovic does against him, opening up the court with his cross-court/down-the-line backhand combination.

Does this mean Nadal will be more vulnerable to Ferrer in Rome (they’re scheduled to play in the quarterfinals again)? I don’t think so. I doubt Rafa will hit his backhand that badly against him again. Next obligatory-but-mostly-unanswerable question: Does winning Madrid give Rafa more confidence against Djokovic (they’re scheduled to play in the semis in Rome)? I doubt that as well. Nadal’s game, he said last week, is close to peak level again, but the match-up against Djokovic is unlike any other for him. He lost their last round, in Monte Carlo, where Djokovic took the initiative early. Nadal will have to find a way, as he did on clay in 2012, to return the favor and turn their baseline dynamic in his favor again. Beating Wawrinka meant doing what he always does; beating Djokovic will mean doing something different, and probably better.

But that’s a story for a different day. For now, Nadal has his 40th clay-court title, one that he obviously relished. You might, after all of the clay wins over the years, wonder why he would be so pumped up to win one more. Here's one reason: Rafa’s bad times have historically made him appreciate the good, and he had the worst time of all while he was sidelined for the second half of 2012. He also knows that his knee pain will almost surely sideline him again at some point.

So while his partner in dominance this weekend, Serena Williams, was looking ahead, Rafa was happy for the here and now. Happy to be with his people, happy to win with a forehand or a frying pan, happy to be running, with the pain in check, on red clay again.

Forward to the Foro

Mon, 13 May 2013 21:45:00 +0000

On Sunday, I spent much of the morning looking at a shiny red car that had been placed behind the players inside the center court in Madrid. On Monday morning I was greeted with a new view, of the white statues and marble rows of seats that surround those same players in Rome. The Caja Magica made progress this year, but there’s only one Foro Italico, and there’s no mistaking it. You can feel its chaotically slouched, sunnily cigarette-stained Old World atmosphere right through the TV screen. Like its home city, it’s eternal.

As you must have gathered from that first paragraph, play has begun in Rome. In fact, two full days have already have gone into the books while I’ve been watching and writing about Madrid. Before we fall any farther behind, here’s a look at the men's and women's draws, and what we might see in the week ahead. I’ll start with the men.

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First Quarter (ATP)

The first piece of news to report is that Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal have landed in the same half. They haven’t met in a semifinal since 2009, but that streak could be broken here.

Djokovic likes Rome; he’s won twice, and lost to Rafa in the final two other times. From what I remember, he has also been treated well by the fans, something he should appreciate after the whistles he heard in Madrid. He should also be sharper than he was last week, when he was still in recovery mode from his recent ankle injury. Novak starts with veteran clay dog Albert Montanes tomorrow and could get an intriguing match with Madrid finalist Stan Wawrinka after that. Nole beat Stan in the final here in 2008, and we all remember their classic in Melbourne in January. If they do play, we’ll get an early idea of how far Wawrinka may be able to progress this season. Djoko hasn't lost to Wawa in almost seven years.

Tomas Berdych is on the other side of this section. Can he recover from his last-second meltdown to Wawrinka in the Madrid semis? He lost to Nadal in the quarters here last year, and has landed in the trees this time around. Istomin, Anderson, and Cilic are the three players closest to him in the draw.

Potential second-round match to watch: Wawrinka vs. Dolgopolov

Semifinalist: Djokovic

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Second Quarter

Call this the déjà vu section: Nadal and David Ferrer are scheduled to play in the quarters, as they did on Friday in Madrid. Each should have a little extra motivation for this one. If they play and Ferrer wins, he locks up the No. 4 seed at Roland Garros; if they play and Nadal wins, and goes on to win the title, he’ll steal that spot from his friend Ferru.

Ferrer’s draw looks manageable. He’ll open against either Zeballos or Verdasco, and then should get Philip Kohlschreiber. Nadal, a seven-time champion here, starts with Fognini, a home favorite who will have the crowd behind him. That could be tricky for a bit, until Fognini realizes who he’s trying to beat. Also on this side is Ernests Gulbis, who took Nadal to three sets here a few years ago, and lucky loser Lukas Rosol. We know what he did against Rafa.

Third-round match to hope for: Nadal vs. Rosol

Semifinalist: Nadal

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Third Quarter

Clay hopefuls and unreliables—Andy Murray, Juan Martin del Potro, Nicolas Almagro, and Kei Nishikori—gather here. Neither Murray nor del Potro has had a good spring in Europe thus far. The Argentine, who pulled out of Madrid with an illness, has won a total of one match since his runner-up finish in Indian Wells two months ago. The Scot, despite much talk about his new focus on dirt, hasn’t fared much better, going out in straights to Wawrinka and Berdych in Monte Carlo and Madrid, and hardly looking more comfortable on clay while he was doing it.

But each has a decent shot at the semis in Rome. Del Potro opens against qualifier Andrey Kuznetsov and could see Almagro in the third round. Murray starts with Marcel Granollers and might get Nishikori after that. Who is going to finally come through among them? I’d like to say Nishikori has a shot, but he’s 0-7 in sets against Murray for his career.

Semifinalist: Murray

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Fourth Quarter

After his rusty clay kick-off in Madrid, Roger Federer will try to build some momentum in Rome, starting tomorrow night against Italy's own Potito Starace. Federer has reached the final here, and he made it to the semis last year, but he’s taken his lumps at the Foro as well, including an ugly upset at the hands of Ernests Gulbis three years ago. We’ll see what we get from him in 2013. A potential third-rounder against fellow father, and one-hander, Tommy Haas could be good.

Second-round matches to watch: Tsonga vs. Janowicz; Gasquet vs. Dimitrov

Semifinalist: Tsonga

*****

Semifinals: Djokovic d. Nadal; Murray d. Tsonga

Final: Djokovic d. Murray

First Quarter (WTA)

Serena Williams has won her last three tournaments; can she make it a fourth, as well as pull off the difficult Madrid-Rome double? It proved to be too much to ask, physically, in 2012, when Serena withdrew with a back injury before the semis at the Foro against Li Na. This time, seemingly in good shape after her straight set romp over Maria Sharapova on Sunday, she’ll start against Laura Robson tomorrow night. The two have never played, though Serena did watch Robson beat her sister, Venus, on Monday afternoon.

Not having to play Venus was a help for Serena, and, as if she needed any more, she also got some from No. 6 seed Angie Kerber, who withdrew with an abdominal injury. That leaves No. 11 Nadia Petrova as the next highest seed in this section. Petrova plays Carla Suarez-Navarro to start.

Surprise thus far: Melanie Oudin got her first main-draw win of 2013 on Monday, when Ekaterina Makarova retired against her down 2-4 in the third set.

Also here: Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova

Semifinalist: S. Williams

*****

Second Quarter

Li Na and Aga Radwanska: Remember them? Neither spent much time in Madrid—Aga was rolled in round one by Laura Robson, while Li got the same treatment from another teenager, Madison Keys. Now they’re scheduled to face each other in the quarters here.

Li, who was just a few points from the title in Rome last year, would seem to have the better chance of bouncing back, though she could have a tricky opener, against either Rybarikova or her countrywoman, Jie Zheng. After that, Li might play either Jelena Jankovic or Caroline Wozniacki. Meanwhile, Radwanska could face a challenge from Italian Roberta Vinci, who beat her at the U.S. Open last year, in the third round. If Aga loses that, she might begin to wonder if blondes really do have more fun.

First-round match to watch between players who could use a win: Caroline Wozniacki vs. Bojana Jovanovski. Caro lost first-rounders in Stuttgart and Madrid, while Bojo is 0-7 since the Australian Open.

Semifinalist: Li

*****

Third Quarter

Maria and Serena have had the field mostly to themselves the last couple of months. Isn’t it time for Victoria Azarenka to join them again? She earned one win, as well as a code violation for racquet abuse, in her first tournament back, in Madrid. This week Vika starts against the winner of Goerges and Hlavackova, and could play a resurgent—for the moment—Ana Ivanovic after that.

On the other side, No. 8 seed Petra Kvitova will open with what's sure to be a wild ride against Sabine Lisicki—it’s not often that the Czech faces someone more erratic than she is, but Lisicki might just qualify.

Also here: Sam Stosur, Rome runner-up in 2011. The Aussie won her first match of the European clay swing on Monday.

Semifinalist: Azarenka

*****

Fourth Quarter

Last year Maria Sharapova lost to Serena Williams in Madrid, and followed it with a title in Rome. Is a repeat performance possible? She’ll start against hard-hitting Spanish youngster Garbine Muguruza, and might see Sloane Stephens, another young player who could use a win, in the third round.

Scheduled to await Maria in the quarterfinals is Sara Errani. That would be interesting if it happens. Errani is a home favorite, she’s coming off a semifinal run in Madrid, and she tested Sharapova severely in Miami last month. The Italian will open against either Karin Knapp or Christina McHale.

Semifinalist: Errani

*****

Semifinals: S. Williams d. Li; Azarenka d. Errani

Final: S. Williams d. Azarenka

Madrid: Nadal d. Wawrinka

Sun, 12 May 2013 16:57:00 +0000

We’ve all seen that certain points, at not obviously crucial times, can have an outsized impact on the outcome of a match. We had one such point in today’s final in Madrid, in which a spectacularly determined and focused Rafael Nadal collected his fifth win in seven finals this year—this one his 23rd Masters title—with a convincing 6-3, 6-4, one-hour and 11-minute demolition of a game Stanislas Wawrinka.

We’ll get to that certain point later, because at the start of the match it seemed unlikely that there would be anything even remotely like an intriguing, never mind critical, juncture in this one. By the time the first game ended, Nadal had savored six break points—six more than Wawrinka would see on this day—and owned a 1-0 lead. And when he went out and held the next game and love and broke again, it looked like we were in for a replay of the WTA final of a few hours earlier. In some ways, we were—even though that match was a few minutes longer than this one.

Give Wawrinka credit, though—even in that rough early going, he stepped in and took his cuts. He seemed fully aware that to rally with Nadal and wait for opportunities was the equivalent of suicide. And while Wawrinka isn’t a nimble fellow, he’s got great power and a kind of heft, a bigness of game, that makes him a pleasure to watch. Time and again, he pulled the trigger on that roundhouse backhand; often, he threw his significant body weight into the inside-out forehand.

Errors? Sure, he made them. So what? It sure beat allowing yourself to get shot to tiny pieces by Nadal’s relentless consistency.

We also have to remember that Wawrinka had very little left in his tank, emotionally or physically. This was his ninth match in 10 days—he won the title on Oeiras last week, and survived demanding three-setters yesterday and the day before. But despite the long odds of vanquishing Nadal on his beloved clay in front of his adoring home crowd, Wawrinka made more of a match of it than the score suggests.

After a good hold for 4-1 in the first set, Wawrinka held his own—not least because he refused to play Nadal’s patient game, until Rafa served out the set.

That “certain point” I mentioned above played out in the fourth game of the second set, with Wawrinka showing a surprising ability to catch a second, third, and even fourth wind, despite everything. He had played an extremely strong hold game for 2-1 in the second set. Nadal then jumped to a 40-love lead with an ace—the 15th first-serve point he’d won in 16 tries—but he couldn’t keep Wawrinka from clawing his way back to deuce.

During the ensuing point, Nadal was drawn in to the net where Wawrinka, stationed right at the center of the court, fired three consecutive bullets right at Rafa’s face. The second of them was hit so hard that all Nadal could do in reaction was duck below the net while holding his racquet above it. Surprisingly, the ball caromed back, and Wawrinka drove his next passing shot attempt way long.

There followed the familiar sight of Nadal bellowing “Vamos,” and throwing the triumphal uppercut while he kicks up his knee like a Las Vegas showgirl. He returned to the baseline and promptly fired an ace to win the game. When he bolted to a love-40 lead against Wawrinka's serve in the next game, it seemed like things would end ugly. Yet Wawrinka found a way to blast his way out of trouble and won the next five points running, taking the game with a prodigious inside-out forehand winner.

Nadal held the next game at love, after which Wawrinka finally yielded to fate. At 15-all, he made a backhand error, then hit back-to-back double faults to surrender the critical break for 3-4. From there, Nadal bulled his way through his next two service games with the loss of but one point, and ended the match when he forced Wawrinka into making a running backhand error.

So that “certain point” turned out not to have a significant immediate impact; while it was a tribute to Wawrinka’s doggedness and determination, it served only to delay the inevitable.

Stat of the Match: Wawrinka never had a break point.

Madrid: S. Williams d. Sharapova

Sun, 12 May 2013 13:46:00 +0000

It’s quite clear that Serena Williams loves to play—er, make that beat on—Maria Sharapova. What’s most striking is that she does it in such a cold, merciless, tight-lipped fashion. You can almost feel the scorn dripping from Serena’s mind as she squints and stares across the net at Sharapova, as if she were some kind of bug.

There’s some poetic justice in this: It’s hard not to notice that this is very much like the treatment Sharapova inflicts on every WTA player but her nemesis, Serena. All of that makes Williams’ mastery of Sharapova that much more striking. How can someone who relies so much on intimidation be intimidated as easily as Sharapova?

We witnessed another classic example of the dynamic today in Madrid, as the younger and deadlier of the Williams sisters laid yet another contemptuous beating on Sharapova, dominating her in an hour and 18 minutes, 6-1, 6-4.

If you think I’m overstating the case here, just roll back the tape and check the post-match ritual handshake/air-kiss. Had Sharapova needed further motivation, keep in mind that she had worked her way close enough to Williams in the rankings to ensure that today’s winner would own the top spot tomorrow.

Right from the get-go, it was clear—yet again—that Williams was not only willing to hit the cover off the ball each time it came her way, but that she would hit it with particular relish when it was a service return. The combination of Sharapova’s often dodgy, double-fault prone serve and Williams’ untrammeled service return is deadly, and it really scripted the first set of this match.

Sharapova served first, won the first point, and promptly delivered an ominous double fault. Williams won the next two points as well, bang-banging out unreturnable returns that underscored perhaps the most striking of Sharapova’s vulnerabilities—after that somewhat erratic serve: She simply couldn’t react fast enough on a consistent basis to Serena’s sharp returns, partly because Sharapova has a slow first step, and partly because of the quality of those returns.

Thus, Sharapova found herself down two break points in the very first game. She saved one thanks to a Williams service-return error, but she was broken when she failed to stay in a brief rally and drove a forehand into the net. The rout was underway. In the blink of an eye, it was 4-0. Sharapova had won all of six points in the match.

The long fifth game was like the entire match-up between these two women compressed into single game, but for the most important detail—Sharapova managed to win the game. It featured game-saving aces, game-wasting double faults, and groundstroke errors by Sharapova, and bold service returns and placements by Williams. But after five deuces and a handful of perilous escapes, Sharapova finally got on the scoreboard, 1-4.

But the tough hold did little to improve her overall fortunes. After a lightning-fast Williams hold, Sharapova swiftly fell behind 15-40 and lost the game—and set—on a Williams forehand service return winner.

The second set began with an odd and telling twist. Sharapova came out, fresh and invigorated, and looked like nothing less than a different woman. She broke Williams swiftly and held her one serve with ease. After another Williams hold, Sharapova won a four-point service game. Then, in the fifth game, Sharapova threatened to add a second break that would virtually guarantee her the set—and us a match.

Williams, serving at 30-15, answered a Sharapova service return right down the middle with a desultory backhand into the net. Suddenly it was 30-all: Would Sharapova find a way to break, add to her confidence, and force a third set?

Not so fast, Williams seemed to say. The game went to deuce, and Williams managed the hold and stay within shouting distance when she won the longest—and finest—rally of the match with a down-the-line forehand winner. Failing to capitalize on that opportunity disproportionately disappointed Sharapova, it seemed, and that “new woman” disappeared as quickly as she’d popped up, replaced by the familiar woe-is-me Maria. She grimaced and struggled in the next game and broke herself with a double fault for 3-all.

Dead even, Williams wasted no time holding serve for 4-3. Playing from behind once again, Sharapova then survived a break point to hold, but Williams’ next service game flew by, and there was Sharapova, suddenly staring down the barrel again. A pair of wretched errors—one a double fault, natch—left Sharapova down 0-40, and she drove the last nail into her own coffin with a rally-ending, match-point error.

Stat of the Match: Sharapova won just 19 of the 36 first-serve points she dished up, a dismal 52 percent conversion rate for a woman whose serve is a major weapon despite her tendency to double fault.

Madrid: Wawrinka d. Berdych

Sat, 11 May 2013 23:37:00 +0000

They should throw a semifinal and not invite Andy Murray, Roger Federer, or Novak Djokovic more often, given the dramatic nature and pleasantly unpredictable outcome of today’s clash in Madrid between Tomas Berdych and Stan Wawrinka.

One moment, Wawrinka looked spent—for good reason, this having been his ninth match in 10 days—and ready to give up the ghost after losing his early grip on the match and falling behind in the third set, 2-4, 15-40. The next, Wawrinka had run off 16 of the final 20 points to walk off the winner in just under two hours, 6-3, 4-6, 6-4.

Wawrinka was playing not just for a place in the final, but a return to the ATP Top 10—which is now guaranteed, no matter tomorrow’s outcome vs. Rafael Nadal. He won last week’s event in Oeiras, Portugal, and is playing as well as he was when he hit No. 9 in 2008. Ranked No. 15, Wawrinka was still nine notches down the rankings rung from Berdych, but then the tall Czech shares a unique if not particularly happy distinction with ATP No. 2 Roger Federer: They are the only two men in the Top 10 who haven’t won a tournament this year.

I’m not sure anyone was looking for that to change this week—not with the way Nadal has been playing. And at the outset today, it looked as if Berdych wouldn’t even scoop up the honor of being Nadal’s next victim. He served poorly and played listlessly from the start, and was broken in the very first game via a nifty cross-court forehand volley. Wawrinka made the break stick and he was spared the task of serving out the set when Berdych double-faulted at 3-5, ad-out.

Wawrinka had finished his barnburner of a semifinal with Jo-Wilfried Tsonga at 1:45 a.m. this morning, and didn’t fall asleep until half-past three. Then he was up at 10 a.m., preparing for this match. The main question after the first set was, would Wawrinka keep up his energy and resolve? The men made it an interesting one, as Berdych began to mount a stirring comeback.

While Wawrinka had to work some to avoid trouble in his service games, Berdych suddenly developed a live arm and fresh legs at the start of the second set. He began to hold with ease, putting that much more pressure on Wawrinka’s serve. Wawrinka staved off the challenge for a while, partly with some terrific if erratic serving of his own. But he finally yielded to the onslaught in the ninth game of the second set when he punched a forehand into the net on Berdych’s second break point. Berdych served out the set, winning 15 of the last 20 points.

The real key to Berdych’s revivial was a combination of two statistics: He had gone from winning just 33 percent of Wawrinka’s second serve points (first set) to an impressive 59 percent. To make matters worse for Wawrinka, Berdych upped his success rate on his own first serve from 78 to a whopping 95 percent.

Wawrinka bounced back to stay level with Berdych for the first four games, but then he appeared to hit a wall. He fell behind love-40 in the fifth game, and blasted a wild forehand out after a brief rally to surrender the break. Emboldened, Berdych held the next game at 15 with three service winners and an ace. It was 4-2. When Wawrinka fell behind 15-40 on serve in the next game, he appeared doomed. Then we witnessed something like a tennis miracle.

Serving at 4-3, Berdych began to litter the court with errors, backhand as well as forehand. Wawrinka, who hadn’t seen a break point since the first set, now had two—and he made the second one count when he goaded Berdych into making a forehand error. We were back level at 4-all.

Three Berdych errors and a service winner to his opponents’ backhand allowed Wawrinka to hold the next game with ease, and suddenly all the pressure was on his clearly discombobulated opponent.

Berdych started that 4-5 game with a ghastly inside-out forehand error, smacked an ace, then blew a forehand approach and a rally forehand to give Wawrinka two match points. Berdych hit a service winner to eliminate one of them, but he had one more forehand error to donate to Wawrinka’s drive to get back into the Top 10 and magnanimously offered it up. It was an awful ending to one of the more surprising matches of the year.

Stat of the Match: What first serves Wawrinka put in the box were extremely hard to handle, but he undermined his cause by making just 52 percent of his first serves.

Fool Me Twice

Sat, 11 May 2013 15:08:00 +0000

I have a funny feeling that I know just what Thomas Hogstedt is not wanting to think, but thinking nonetheless, right now: “Okay, we’ve got her right where we want her!”

The “we” would be coach Hogstedt and his protégé, Maria Sharapova.

The “her” would be Serena Williams, who will play Sharapova in tomorrow’s women’s final in Madrid—with the No. 1 ranking on the line.

Hogstedt has good reason to feel cautiously optimistic, or to allow himself some wishful thinking. It wasn’t so long ago that Sharapova described herself as a “cow on ice” trying to play on the red clay. But over the past year-plus, Sharapova underwent a remarkable transformation. She’s taken disparate and once ill-fitting parts and cobbled together a clay-court game that is not merely serviceable (all she hoped for at one time) but nearly unbeatable. Including her 6-4, 6-3 win in the semis of Madrid today over Ana Ivanovic, Sharapova has won 17 straight matches on clay, and she’s 23 of 24 in her last two dozen.

But Willliams fans are already shouting from the rooftops, “So what? Serena is 12-2 against Maria. She’s clearly in Maria’s head. You have to blow the dust off the cover of the history book to find the last of those two measly Sharapova wins (it was in 2004).”

All true. And the only real retort to that may be that while Sharapova has been learning to master the dirt, Serena has been struggling to stay off the ice. True, she won Madrid last year—but that was on the experimental “Smurf clay,” the slippery, hard, blue stuff that caused such an outcry on the ATP side of the yard. Madrid is back on the slower red clay now and, believe it or not, it’s Williams’ first red-clay final since 2002—and just the fourth of her career.

Moreover, while Sharapova won the French Open last year on this same surface, Williams’ trip to Paris turned into a nightmare. She suffered the worst loss of her career, a first-round upset inflicted by French journeywoman Virginie Razzano. Williams has one French Open title to her name, the same number as Sharapova, but she hasn’t been past the quarterfinals in Paris since 2003.

Rome and Madrid are the two most prestigious clay-court tournaments after Roland Garros in the women’s game. Sharapova is trying for a three-peat in the Eternal City this year, and she hasn’t lost before the semis since her first try, in 2004. By contrast, Williams gave Li Na a walkover in last year’s Rome semis and lost at the same stage in 2010 to Jelena Jankovic. She’s never cleared the bar she set when she toppled red-clay icon Justine Henin in the 2002 final.

Suttgart? Where Sharapova won last weekend? The last time Williams even played it was in 2008, when she lost to Li in the second round. Her record in the German city is 4-4.

And the kicker: Sharapova is 26, Serena is 31.

Now, if you know anything at all about Serena Williams, or this rivalry, you can throw that record book and all these tale-of-the-tape facts right into the trash bin. After all, Williams knocked Sharapova silly on the blue Madrid clay last year (6-1, 6-3) and laid an even more painful beating on her at the London Olympics not much later, giving up a mere game. The bottom line is that Sharapova has looked like a real threat to Williams on various occasions (Stanford, 2011, anyone?) and various surfaces over the past few years—and each time the result was her humiliation. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice. . .

But you know how it is in tennis; Every day is a new day, and some day David Ferrer is going to beat Rafael Nadal, just like one day Andy Roddick beat Roger Federer. Can that day for Sharapova be tomorrow?

The evidence offered in the semifinals was not convincing either way. Sharapova had the easier match, with No. 14 seed Ana Ivanovic. The diligent and earnest Serbian lass was really no match for the tough and icy WTA No. 2. Among all the players who have won a major or been ranked No. 1, Ivanovic is—by far—the “softest.”

She showed that again today, despite going into the match playing some of her best tennis in recent years. When Sharapova, up a break, closed on winning the first set, Ivanovic was visibly disappointed. She’s susceptible to self-pity, and that’s one thing of which you can’t ever accuse Sharapova. In fact, on the changeover at 4-6, before Sharapova served for the match, Ivanovic’s coach Nigel Sears felt obliged to give his charge a pep talk, encouraging her to fight off her frustration.

Ivanovic, it turned out, wasn’t able to do that any more effectively than she was able to keep her generally useful forehand in the court. Sharapova won going away, but you couldn’t really describe it as a tour de force. For one thing, she was broken for 0-2 in the second set thanks to one of her six double faults. That kind of a goof against a player like Williams can be suicidal.

Sharapova’s winner-to-error ratio was an acceptable +4 (23 to 19) and her performance on break points was excellent; she converted five of the six she faced. The most accurate word to describe her match is “solid.”

Williams, by contrast, had the tougher semifinal opponent—Sharapova’s victim in last year’s Roland Garros final, Sara Errani. And that assignment was on the heels of a narrow escape against Anabel Medina Garrigues the previous day, when Williams lost the second set at love and was down 2-4 in the third. Williams later described her showing as “solid.”

So whose “solid” is more solid?

I’d have to go with Williams. A narrow escape against a legitimate clay-court threat like Garrigues followed by a relatively straightforward, 7-5, 6-2 triumph over one of the toughest clay-courters in the WTA is pretty good preparation for Sharapova. And should Williams need additional incentive, this match will be for the No. 1 ranking—Williams will have to hand it over to Sharapova should she lose the match.

“I look forward to it,” Williams said. “I feel like this whole tournament I’ve only played clay-court players from my first round to now, and everyone was also smaller than me. So I think tomorrow will be a really good match—a different game, more power obviously, but still a lot of the consistency. So I’m looking forward to it.”

Hogstedt and Sharapova may have Williams right where they want her but, as we’ve seen time again, that can turn out to be the worst place on earth.

Madrid: Ivanovic d. Kerber

Fri, 10 May 2013 17:24:00 +0000

When you’ve struggled as long and hard as former No. 1 Ana Ivanovic, working with diligence, patience, and—above all—faith, good things are bound to happen. That was the case today in Madrid, as Ivanovic looked trim, swift, confident, and near perfect in an artful, 56-minute deconstruction of the lefty game of world No. 6 Angelique Kerber, 6-3, 6-1.

If there’s a caveat to issue, it’s that Kerber went into a swoon early in this match and, looking pale, drawn, and at times downright disinterested, she put up little resistance to the flurry of Ivanovic first serves and pinpoint forehands that did the most damage for the No. 14 seed. (Often used in the classic one-two combination of wide serve in the deuce court, followed by the inside-out forehand to the opposite side.)

Both women were coming off exhausting three-setters in the third round. Kerber won hers, over Svetlana Kuznetsova, 3-6, 6-4, 7-5; Ivanovic went her one better by squeaking past Laura Robson in a decisive tiebreaker. Theoretically, the women ought to have been comparably fatigued, but Ivanovic looked fresh as a daisy throughout this match. Her footwork was especially impressive, while Kerber appeared sluggish and slow, and often more inclined to spectate rather than participate. A few times she gingerly touched the right side of her abdomen, as if she were suffering from cramps.

The more ominous cramps, though, were in Kerber's left arm when she was serving. She hit six double faults—not a huge number, but most of them were after Ivanovic had built a 5-2 lead and Kerber needed to up her game to stay in contention. And throughout most of the first and all of the second set, Kerber clearly was engaged in a game of chase-the-toss. Ironically, comparable service woes have been one of the major obstacles Ivanovic has had to overcome in her effort to remain a contender at major tournaments. She experienced no such difficulties today.

Ivanovic soon closed out the first set after a Kerber hold. The German wouldn’t win another game until her back was up against an 0-5 wall. She managed to break Ivanovic to avoid a total whitewash, but it was an unconvincing revival. Playing much like someone suffering from cramps, she just smacked at balls, moving as little as possible, and was lucky that they went in.

Ivanovic, though, was in no mood to add even a slightly bitter aftertaste to the win. Kerber double-faulted to start the next game, and Ivanovic's forehand down-the-line winner and a delightful cross-court drop shot in response to a dropper brought her to match point at 15-40. She wrapped it up with a forehand cross-court service return that Kerber didn’t even start for.

It’s been a year of wide swings for both women. Ivanovic continues to struggle with her confidence, and sometimes the toss with which she begins her otherwise surprisingly powerful serve. Kerber has absorbed some puzzling losses, but she made the semis at Indian Wells and a final recently in Monterrey. How both of them will fare in the coming weeks is an intriguing question; what we do know is that Ivanovic has to be feeling a lot better about her game than does Kerber after this one.

Stat of the Match: Kerber won just 16 percent of her second serve points (three of 19), which gives you a good indication of two things: How little confidence she had in her serve—half the time, she seemed surprised when it went in—and how aggressively and successfully Ivanovic attacked that vulnerable second delivery.

They Said What? Singapore Sling

Thu, 09 May 2013 18:51:00 +0000

“At the heart of the WTA are the ideals of inclusiveness; expanding women’s roles in sport and society; inspiration and connection to the community through sporting heroes; creating role models for youth and energizing the growth of the game through world class events. We believe this event will inspire our athletes at home and those in the region, as well as engage the community-at-large at our new Sports Hub.”—Lim Teck Yin, Chief Executive Officer, Singapore Sports Council.

There. That ought to explain things to those of you who wonder why the WTA decided move its year-end championships to Singapore for five years, beginning in 2014, after the event’s current sojourn in Istanbul ends. Clearly, the WTA passed on places where there’s less opportunity to flex those noble instincts, such as London’s O2 Arena (where those un-inclusionary ATP fellas hold their World Tour Finals) or, say, Madison Square Garden in New York.

Of course, economic factors, like the financial package put together by the SSC, might have a little something to do with this decision—but who wants to be crass and talk about money when you can talk about promoting diversity? Connecting with communities (It Takes a Village, and all that)? Creating role models?

But let me stop right here with a question. Singapore is the island country at the southern tip of the Malay peninsula. It’s a parliamentary republic dominated by the People’s Action Party and known for it’s no-nonsense approach to civic order and discipline—symbolized by the nation’s continuing use of that form of corporal punishment known as “caning.” Also, in Singapore, you can be fined—but not caned—for importing or using chewing gum.

So my question is: What if these highly disciplined, generally reserved, neat-nik Singaporeans are as appalled as so many other sports fans worldwide by the shrieking and screaming of certain WTA stars?

The WTA Championships will be held in the 7,500 seat Singapore Indoor Stadium, which is currently promoting an upcoming basketball game between the Singapore Slingers vs. the Indonesian Warriors, and upcoming concerts by singer/composer Jay Chou and Taiwanese rock band MayDay—with LED light sticks to be distributed.

Actually, the seating sounds ideal for a tennis match, at least as far as ticket-buyers go; it’s just half the capacity of a court famous for the “intimate” mood it creates, Wimbledon’s Centre Court. It will be interesting to see if Singapore can outdo Istanbul, where (presumably) the WTA’s same noble efforts at global brand awareness, along with a little incidental profit-taking, led to good crowds and a much more vibrant and credible event than some skeptics predicted.

Incidentally, if you’re contemplating attending the Championships but are concerned about the authoritarian streak that runs through Singaporean society, keep in mind that Singapore has the third highest per capita income on the planet, it’s the fourth leading financial center, and it’s known as one of the least corrupt nations on earth. To someone from scandal-plagued New York, that sounds almost like paradise.

Madrid: Nishikori d. Federer

Thu, 09 May 2013 17:39:00 +0000

Up until today, Kei Nishikori had beaten exactly one Top 40 player on clay. That was Mardy Fish—who was never accused of being a clay-court expert by anyone—whom Nishikori eliminated in Houston way back in 2011.

But today Nishikori earned some street cred in the dirtballing crowd by taking out a clay-court player of a higher order—defending champion and four-time French Open runner-up Roger Federer. The score of this third-round match was 6-4, 1-6, 6-2, and it will be memorable mostly to those amateur historians who set out to chart the gradual but inevitable demise of the 31-year-old all-time Grand Slam singles titlist.

This is the first time Federer has failed to make the quarterfinals or better in Madrid—in his entire career.

Nishikori is a gritty, tough, emotionally stable player who likes to grind but also counter-punch on hard courts. His problem on clay is that his serve is more vulnerable, and the relatively slow pace of play enables his opponents to stay in points longer and (often) exert their superior strength. Clay takes away the counter-puncher’s element of surprise and quick-strike capability, and that’s a lot to have to give up.

Today, though, Federer started sluggish and, despite a mid-match revival, finished slow—classic symptoms of an aging player who no longer wants to win in his heart, just in his mind; thus, he has to force himself to want to want to win. But credit Nishikori for taking advantage of the opportunity, for many ATP pros would still have been too star-struck to do so, especially after the way Federer came roaring back in the second set.

One of the first signs that Nishikori was up to the job offered him was the way he took immediate advantage of the first break point that either man saw, with Federer serving at 2-2 in the first set. After a brief rally, Nishikori smacked one of his many inside-out forehand placements to secure the break. It would be the only point of crisis until Nishikori reached set point in 10th game with another inside-out, unreturnable forehand. He won the set when Federer hit one of the numerous shanked backhands that characterized his day.

Nishikori had taken a big step, but watching him for a reaction, you wouldn’t have known it. There was no fist pump, no shout of “Come on!” or a similar exultation. But there was resolve, and Nishikori would need it.

Federer popped to life in the second set. Where earlier it appeared that he was just going through the motions—reluctant to attack, disinclined to grind, ignoring some of the most useful items in his toolbox—in the next set he began to pepper Nishikori’s side of the court with shots of varying pace and depth, including a flurry of drop shots and passing shots (after he’d lured Nishikori to the net).

Nishikori survived two break points to level at 1-1 in the second set, but after a quick Federer hold, the No. 14 seed lost concentration. He made three puzzling unforced errors, but then pulled himself together to sweep away the three break points, mostly through good serving. But at deuce, Federer delivered an unreturnable drop shot and secured his first break (on his sixth break point of the match) thanks to a Nishikori error.

For a while after that, we had glimpses of the “full-flight Federer” of yore as he closed out the set in 32 minutes.

Federer got off to a good start in the final set, too, hitting a pair of aces to level at 1-all. In the next game, he went up 30-love with a down-the-line backhand placement—and then his wheels fell off. Nishikori hit three consecutive serves to Federer’s forehand and never saw the ball come back in bounds. A forehand error lifted Federer to deuce, but a bang-bang service winner and backhand service-return error saved the game for Nishikori. It was one in which Federer was unable to return five of Nishikori’s generally returnable serves.

In the very next game, Federer sandwiched three errors around a service winner to face double-break point. He survived the first one with a service winner to the backhand, but then clubbed a forehand out off Nishikori’s service return to surrender a break. It was Federer’s fourth unforced error of the game that finally and irrevocably turned the tide.

After that brace of shocking games, the end seemed foreordained. The major question was whether Nishikori would choke, not an impossible scenario given the struggles he’s had on clay. But while Federer continued to spray balls all over the place, Nishikori kept his cool and ultimately secured the match—getting one last forehand error out of an oddly muted Federer at match point.

Stat of the Match: Federer won all seven points he played at the net. Why he didn’t attack more often, especially in light of his struggles off the ground, is a mystery.

Cracking the Shell

Wed, 08 May 2013 15:58:00 +0000

We may be in the process of something special, something we get to see in tennis once or twice in a generation—if we’re that lucky. We may be witnessing the emergence of one of “the Chosen,” that select group of players who are not just destined to eclipse their peers, but who have, almost from the get-go, seemed somehow different, somehow privileged and specially favored by destiny or genetics, with that always inexplicable dose of good luck thrown in for good measure.

I’m talking about the emergence—although “coming of age” might be the better term—of Grigor Dimitrov. Tracking him these past few weeks has been like watching the beak of a chick break through an eggshell from the inside. . . tap, tap, tap.

Yesterday, Dimitrov survived a long and, literally, bloody battle with world No. 1 Novak Djokovic to stun the Madrid crowd, and tennis fans worldwide, with a 7-6 (6), 6-7 (8), 6-3 upset. Once again, Dimitrov demonstrated what Djokovic showed us in 2011, and what Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer proved years ago: That if you hit the ball hard enough, close enough to the line, and with sufficient confidence and determination, you can beat anyone. And you can vindicate all those who had suspected that you were among the Chosen.

Dimitrov, who will be 22 in a week, was in serious danger of being written off as a Chosen player as recently as a few weeks ago. There’s a “use by” date on prodigies, and Dimitrov was beginning to push the limit. Although many liked to call him “Baby Federer,” it seemed like “Baby Safin” might end up being the more accurate monicker—the difference being that while Marat Safin earned the No. 1 ranking and won two Grand Slam events, he’s primarily remembered as a charming underachiever.

Dimitrov was barely inside the Top 50 at the start of the year (No. 48), and after he re-kindled hopes among the believers by reaching the Brisbane final (losing to Andy Murray) right off the bat, he appeared to crap out. He stumbled out in the first round of the next three tournaments he played: in Sydney (to Fabio Fognini), the Australian Open (to Julien Benneteau), and Zagreb (to No. 130 Ivo Karlovic).

Worse yet, among those who pay attention, was that Dimitrov was getting less press for his mediocre tennis than for his romance with Maria Sharapova.

But things took a dramatic, upward turn starting at the Rotterdam indoor event, where Dimitrov posted three quality wins before losing in the semifinals to Juan Martin del Potro. Dimitrov then put a first-set scare into Djokovic in the third round of Indian Wells before he bowed out, and he lost again in the third round of Miami, this time to Murray. But two of those three men won the tournament in question, and each one is a Grand Slam champ. Dimitrov was beginning to show a Chosen player’s requisite consistency.

Moving to clay, Dimitrov pushed Nadal to the limit in the quarterfinals of Monte Carlo before he succumbed, 6-4 in the third. By then, he was saying all the right things: “I think the toughest expectations are definitely from me. I don't have that pressure from the people around me or what everybody is saying, all this, all that. I think the most important thing is to have a good composure throughout all the weeks.”

Although Dimitrov lost to resurgent Tommy Robredo in the first round of Barcelona last week, he seems to have re-gained his momentum with this upset of Djokovic. The tantalizing question is, where does it go from here? Keep in mind, Federer himself was a slow learner, who didn’t win his first Grand Slam event until he was almost 22—which is right where Dimitrov is now.

It’s been quite some time since a young player embarked on a Grand Slam title quest with significant momentum, with his name on everyone’s lips. That’s always a special moment in tennis, and it’s exactly the type of electric event that’s been missing for a long time now, thanks mainly to the quality of the very top players.

All young players ought to pay heed to what Dimitrov is doing, because there’s another useful takeaway in his recent history. These glimpses and tastes of success seem to be making him more rather than less determined, more eager to play, rather than more likely to wilt under pressure. Something in this young man seems to have clicked, and the call and promise of greatness no longer seems intimidating, or perhaps illusory. It’s inviting, something he seems eager to embrace, as if the champion in him is crying out, “Let’s just get this done!”

In order to punch through in Madrid, Dimitrov may have to beat Murray, but he won’t need to take out both Federer and Nadal, as they’re both in the other, bottom half of the draw. But lest we get too far ahead of ourselves, keep in mind that there have been persistent doubts about Dimitrov’s dedication, if not his talent. His work ethic, if not his athletic ability. His temperament, if not his temper—he’s already been suspended once, years ago, for shoving an official.

Less than a month ago, Ivan Lendl made some remarks that now sound downright prophetic. It was on the heels of matches in which Dimitrov has really pushed higher-ranked players, including Lendl’s protégé, Murray. Lendl said, “If you train for five-hour matches, it gives you a lot of confidence. Take Grigor Dimitrov, who has played some great tennis against Andy and against Novak Djokovic this year. That guy comes out so hot, but we know, and so does Novak, he can’t sustain it. If he could he would be No. 1 in the world.”

Yesterday, Dimitrov cleared the Lendl bar. He demonstrated that he can “sustain it,” and against the individual who is, by definition, the standard against which all other players are measured. All that remains to be seen is if he is, indeed, one of the Chosen.

Madrid: Federer d. Stepanek

Wed, 08 May 2013 02:00:00 +0000

By the time it was over, one of Roger Federer’s twin girls was so bored that she was crawling all over her mother Mirka’s arms and lap, while the other was reading a book. I presume it was Brad Gilbert’s tome, Winning Ugly, because that’s not the kind of stuff she’s going to learn at the family hearth.

This match was a clash of two compromised men, Federer by lack of match play—it was almost exactly two months since he’d last fired a forehand—and Stepanek by the ongoing struggle to find his A-game. The Czech was sidelined for roughly 10 weeks after his third-round loss at the Australian Open, following neck problems that required surgery.

Federer had an 11-2 edge in their head-to-head, and a No. 2 to No. 48 advantage in present ATP ranking. But perhaps the more important numbers were 31 and 34, their ages. Federer is three years younger than Stepanek, and that edge ultimately seemed to play a significant role in Federer’s 6-3, 6-3 win.

Federer quickly showed that he hadn’t forgotten how to play tennis during all that time off, recording a break at his first opportunity in the fourth game of the first set. The break point produced a fairly long rally ending with a Stepanek forehand error.

Consolidating a break can be a challenge for all but the most dialed in and comfortable of players, and Federer ran into a little trouble on that score in the next game. But he needed to survive two break points, holding with the combination of a Stepanek forehand error and a game-ending service winner: 4-1 Federer.

Federer threatened to break again in the next game when, at 30-all, he tracked a Stepanek drop shot and fired off a cross-court backhand flick-pass just out of his opponent’s desperate reach. It was signature Federer racquet work, but Stepanek swept away the ensuing break point with a smash and went on to hold. Two holds later, Federer calmly served out the set.

The pattern was to repeat in the second set. Stepanek surrendered another early break at 1-1 despite building a 40-15 lead. Federer won four points running from that point, three of them on Stepanek errors set up by some aggressive probing by the Swiss star.

Often, sets that feature early breaks become somewhat tedious exercises. The energy level of the players appears to drop, as if inwardly they’re both thinking, Come on, who’s kidding who? This set is probably over. It’s even worse when the players in question, like these two, are seasoned veterans.

The pro forma nature of the game was only enhanced by the sense that Stepanek was running out of steam. He made more and more errors and attacked both prematurely and sloppily. Federer didn’t look particularly eager to get thing over with quickly, though, and his somewhat lackadaisical play almost allowed Stepanek to sneak back into the hunt.

The men held to 2-4, at which point Federer struck quickly and ably to bag an insurance break. But his ensuing match game, by far the longest and most competitive of the match, proved as slippery as an eel. Federer worked his way to match point three times, only to be denied on each occasion. For his part, Stepanek squandered three break points before he parlayed a botched forehand passing shot and rally backhand error into a break that kept his hopes alive at 3-5.

But Stepanek was gassed. He started the next game with a double fault. He tried to serve-and-volley on the next point, only to watch a forehand pass go whistling past. Now Stepanek was increasingly gasping for air. Then Federer drilled a backhand pass down-the-line to go up 0-40. Stepanek continued his reckless attack, dismissing two of those three match points, but he then converted Federer’s sixth match point for him, thanks to a silly inside-out forehand error.

While nobody would call the match an artistic success, it was good to see Federer back in action, and also to take what might be one of our last good looks at a guy who’s perhaps spent too much time in the shop and accumulated too many miles on the odometer to ever challenge the elite players again.

Stat of the match: Federer converted just four of 10 break points in an easy win. He needs to shake out the cobwebs, but the world No. 2 certainly had no trouble getting into Stepanek’s service games.

Gut, Grass, and Graphite

Tue, 07 May 2013 20:05:00 +0000

The major celebration of tennis in Spain is well underway now, and the relatively new clay-court Madrid Masters—can you even believe that for many years, Madrid was an indoor, hard-court event?—is a fitting tribute to all that the Iberian nation has come to mean to the sport, as well as an ideal showcase for the particular strengths of the fleet of players that one generation ago was dubbed “the Spanish Armada.”

Yet the intriguing question lurking beneath the surface these days is, “Is the Spanish era coming to a close?” David Ferrer and Rafael Nadal certainly are holding their own, respectively ranked Nos. 4 and 5. But Nicolas Almagro has slipped a bit (though still a highly respectable No. 12), and beyond that the fall-off is conspicuous. The next highest ranked player from Spain is—can you guess?—Marcel Granollers, followed by a resurgent Tommy Robredo.

Fernando Verdasco (career-high No. 7) and Feliciano Lopez (career-high No. 15), two pros in what undoubtedly will be known as the “Nadal generation,” are fading, quickly. Lopez is now No. 45, with Verdasco one notch below. So that’s seven players in the Top 50, but there’s a caveat. Three of those men are over 30 (Ferrer, Lopez, and Robredo), and Verdasco is just months shy of that benchmark age.

Nadal will turn 27 in just a few weeks, and he’s struggled with career-threatening injuries. Almagro is well on his way to 28 and Granollers, the baby in the bunch, is 27. Spain has 12 men in the Top 100, but not one of them is under 25, and players destined to contend for Grand Slam singles titles are usually identified by then.

So you have to wonder, is the sun setting on the dynasty Spain created over the course of two overlapping generations? (The earlier one featured Sergi Bruguera, Carlos Moya, Juan Carlos Ferrero, Albert Costa, Alberto Berasetegui and Alex Corretja—all Grand Slam champions or finalists.) Spain seems to be going the way of Pete Sampras’ USA and Bjorn Borg’s Sweden. That raises interesting questions about the nature of dynasty.

Many of you are familiar with the landmark work by Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel. This interdisciplinary study of why societies rise and fall is breathtaking in scope and filled with marvelous insights. Alas, there’s no such work—Gut, Grass, and Graphite?—to help us understand why the tennis fortunes of nations mysteriously rise and fall as well.

Dynasties in tennis (and perhaps most sports) accomplish exactly the opposite of what they would appear to be doing at their height. Instead of creating a tradition that continues to build upon itself, champion begetting champion, new fans geometrically creating new fans, new infrastructure encouraging more new infrastructure, tennis dynasties often leave a scorched earth. Theories are advanced for why that happens, but none of them can be proved, and none of them can be applied successfully from one case to another.

It’s been said that the Swedish dynasty, created by Borg and advanced by Mats Wilander, Stefan Edberg, Anders Jarryd, and Joachim Nystrom (all were ranked in the top 10 at one time) failed because the cool Swedish climate just didn’t allow for enough gifted young players to develop adequate games in a rapidly evolving and newly professional environment.

Some say that U.S. tennis advocates were unable to recruit enough hungry, great young athletes to follow in the spectacular footsteps of Sampras, Andre Agassi, and Jim Courier—owing mostly to the lingering perception that tennis is a niche sport, and still too full of snobbish connotations. So how do you explain that the sport did, in fact, lure those three?

The Argentines, rabid sporting nationalists, are hampered by too little team spirit. In fairness, the charge was also leveled at the generation of Guillermo Vilas, Jose Luis Clerc, and Martin Jaite—a group that may not even qualify as a proper dynasty, but certainly made enough noise to help launch one.

The truth may be that there’s nothing wrong with Swedish tennis, nor with the collective game of any nation. The very idea that dynasty can be sustained over multiple generations is probably a fiction created by the staggering success of the three Anglo nations that really took to tennis and laid the foundations of the modern game: the United Kingdom, Australia, and the United States. Those nations dominated tennis through most of its history, and that’s no surprise (the era ended abruptly, after nearly a century, with the advent of “Open” tennis in 1968). For one thing, those nations were the first to create a broad tennis infrastructure of courts and clubs, which ultimately found peak expression in the major tournaments. Right off the bat, domestic players in those nations enjoyed greater playing opportunities and something like an inbred sense of superiority and security, while visitors were often just glad to be part of the festivities.

More important, three of the four Grand Slams well into Open tennis were grass-court events in which players familiar with the surface enjoyed a distinct advantage. Although the British gradually dropped out of the elite triumvirate, the Aussies and Americans milked their advantage to the hilt. And they had the populations, favorable climate, and available space to do it.

The U.S. and Australia enjoyed one other enormous advantage that has been wiped out by the tides of history. They were well-developed and relatively prosperous democracies, free societies where the pursuit of individual excellence—even under the kind of collective mentality promoted by legendary Australian coach Harry Hopman—was not just possible, but encouraged. But Open tennis, with its promise of riches and fame, was a game-changer—especially in Europe. And so was the collapse of the Soviet Empire.

Ilie Nastase joined Borg as the Open era’s European superstars. Nastase had the good fortune to be the son not of a lawyer but of a groundskeeper at Bucharest’s elite tennis club, Progresul. How could he not be exposed to and learn tennis? The surface throughout most of Europe is red clay, and tennis can thank France for helping to open up the game by resisting any temptation to abandon the surface. The fact that the French Open was the fourth major gave the clay game great credibility, and that offered a pipeline of sorts into the pro game for players raised on the surface.

Since Open tennis, the fortunes of every nation have waxed and waned. Dynasties or near-dynasties rise, and they fall. That appears to be the natural order of things, at least where you have anything like a level playing field, and adequate access to the game.

My own feeling is that there’s also something like “excellence fatigue,” and everyone is susceptible to it. Dynasties have a lifespan in the public imagination as well as the standings and results tables. Nations whose dynasties have crumbled needn’t look for complicated theories for why this is so—for every nation that rues the lack of a government-funded development program, there’s one with such a program that isn’t really achieving the desired result. For every nation that wonders where all the great players went, there’s another starting to churn them out.

Enjoy it while you still can, Spain. And don’t beat yourself up if and when it comes to an end.

Racquet Guide 2013

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 18:35:00 +0000

The challenge to today’s racquet consumer isn’t that there are too few choices; it’s that there are so many. Go to Web sites of major retailers, and you can choose from more than 300 recent models, each with its own mix of specifications—from head size, shape, length and weight to balance, beam width and string pattern. Add in other key variables that affect performance and feel, such as string (according to the U.S. Racquet Stringers Association, there are more than 800 strings on the market) and tension, and the permutations are seemingly endless.

And that’s not even starting to consider the plethora of manufacturer technologies, which can alter racquets’ playability even further. While most companies this year are integrating existing developments into new makes and models, several racquet makers are unveiling new innovations in 2013. Head, for example, has re-engineered its latest performance racquets with a cutting-edge material called Graphene, whose lightweight, super-strong properties, the company says, allows for optimal weight redistribution and enhanced power and maneuverability. Wilson, meanwhile, as part of its Steam line, has debuted Spin Effect, an unorthodox 16x15 string pattern that, when paired with a monofilament, increases string movement and spin. And Tecnifibre says they’ve brought their T-Fights up to the standards of the ATP World Tour, namely by tightening manufacturing variances and injecting the racquets’ handles with vibration-damping silicone.

Indeed, navigating so much information makes hunting for new sticks daunting. Thankfully, this year’s racquet guide gets a handle on all this wealth of excess. That said, don’t purchase a racquet solely on the basis of our recommendation—treat the reviews as guidelines of racquets’ strengths and weaknesses, and demo those that are appropriate. If you’re in the market for a new stick, we suggest that you sample at least a half dozen potential candidates, then elect the frame that plays best. The notion of a “perfect” racquet is illusory. Even so, racquets are all different; some will undoubtedly mesh better with your game than others.

Finally, don’t underestimate how much string can affect a racquet’s playability. Beginners and others who hardly ever break strings would do best to use a soft, high-quality multifilament or, ideally, natural gut, both of which can go a long way toward improving comfort, reducing the likelihood of arm injury and maximizing shots’ power and depth. Fast-swinging players with Western grips looking for additional topspin might consider stringing with a monofilament (i.e., polyester) at low tensions (high 40s to low 50s in pounds). Compared to gut or multifilaments, monofilaments are generally harder on the arm—and so caution is warranted for players with a history of injury—but the increase in spin can be considerable. Talk to a knowledgeable tennis professional; he or she will be able to help select the string that’s right for you.

Happy hitting.

CLICK HERE FOR THIS YEAR'S REVIEWS

How We Test

We requested at least four samples of every racquet reviewed. Each model was strung with the manufacturer’s recommended string and tension to optimize the frame’s playing characteristics. Racquets were then distributed to playtesters based on their level of play. Tennis editors and recreational players participated in our evaluations, with Tennis’ racquet advisor Bruce Levine, manager of Courtside Racquet Club, in Lebanon, NJ, lending court time and expertise throughout the process. We also compiled quantitative data, such as racquet length, weight, head size, balance and beam width. That way, players can compare the frames’ specifications. (All relevant measurements correspond to strung racquets.)

We tested the racquets thoroughly, identifying possible matches for a variety of player types, ability levels and stroke styles—from short-swinging beginners who specialize in doubles, to intermediate power baseliners and advanced all-courters. Racquets were evaluated using a number of criteria, including power, control, comfort, maneuverability and overall playability. Each tester was encouraged to try a racquet for as long as it took to get a feel for its particular playing characteristics. In many cases, testers returned to a frame a week after they first hit with it just to be sure that they liked it.

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The Specs

To make it easier to compare racquets, we’ve filled this chart with all of the pertinent technical information. Head size is the area of the racquet head in square inches. The bigger the head, the bigger the sweet spot. Length is from the cap of the handle to the top of the head. Longer racquets provide more leverage on serves and greater reach on volleys and groundstrokes; shorter racquets are more maneuverable. Stationary weight is how much the racquet weighs when strung. A light racquet will be more maneuverable, a heavy frame more stable. Swingweight is a guage of how heavy the racquet feels when you swing it as measured by a Racquet Diagnostic Center; the lower the number, the greater the maneuverability. Construction refers to the extent to which the racquet flexes on impact. A flexible frame bends more and gives you additional control and feel, while stiffer beams offer more power but less control. By taking into consideration both RA measurements and playtesting experiences, we categorized frames as flexible, firm, stiff and very stiff. In the Balance column, HH stands for head heavy and HL for head light. Pt. stands for 1 point, which represents a 1/8th inch difference between the racquet’s balance and its midpoint. Beam width is a measure of the thickness of a racquet’s sidewalls. Some frames have a constant width (one number), while others taper from one width at the top of the head to another at the base of the head (listed as two or three numbers). Thick racquets are usually stiffer and more powerful, while thin frames tend toward greater flexibility and richer feedback. String pattern lists the number of main strings (up and down) first and crosses (side to side) second. The tighter a string pattern, the stiffer and more control-oriented the string bed is; the more open the string pattern, the looser and more powerful the string bed. Ideal swing is the type of swing for which the racquet is best suited. Typically, beginners have more compact, slower strokes and advanced players have longer, faster strokes. NTRP recommendations will help you target racquets that are appropriate for your skill level.

Bonus: Which Racquet is Right for Me?

This useful chart can point you to the frame best suited for your game.

CLICK HERE FOR THIS YEAR'S REVIEWS

Question of the Day: Tensioning Outermost Strings

Fri, 19 Apr 2013 13:24:00 +0000

TENNIS.com gear editor Justin diFeliciantonio and his technical advisers answer your equipment questions each day. Click here to send in a question of your own.

*****

Your recent piece about how to tie stringing knots was helpful, but it left me wondering how to tension final mains and crosses. For example, when pulling the last cross of a one-piece stringing job, right before clamping and tying off the knot, do you advise increasing the reference tension (in order compensate for potential knot-related tension losses)? Or should last strings be pulled at the same tension as all the others?—Bill V.

*****

On this question, Bill, I’ve seen stringers go both ways. Some will pull an extra few pounds of tension on those strings immediately preceding knots—so as to make up for lost tension when that knot is tied and the clamps are released—while others keep the tension consistent with the rest of the stringbed. Often, the stringer’s technique depends on the preference of the player he or she’s stringing for; many players don’t like their outermost mains and/or crosses to move, in which case a stringer will crank up the tension on those strings to keep them in place.

That said, the smartest approach to this question is, most likely, to not pull that extra tension. As the U.S. Racquet Stringing Association argues, with a good deal of persuasion in their Techniques Manual, “[We do] not recommend this procedure because shorter outside mains [and crosses] don’t require as much pull-tension to be as tight as longer, center [ones]…In short, we suggest normal tensions on tie-offs, which may result in some tension loss on the outermost main (or cross). If customers complain about this string being too loose, you can explain that these strings are far away from the racquet’s sweetspot. Also, mis-hits will actually be less jarring if outer mains are not tensioned as high as the center mains. Stringers who are intent on increasing tension on tie-offs should not go higher than 5 pounds above normal tension.”

In my opinion, it’s this last bit—on the positive correlation between high tensions and jarring mishits—that’s the most compelling reason not to overtighten outside strings. So keep your tension in a normal (i.e., consistently low) range. The next time you frame a shot, your arm will thank you.

Question of Day: Tennis in the Elements

Fri, 19 Apr 2013 13:23:00 +0000

TENNIS.com gear editor Justin diFeliciantonio and his technical advisers answer your equipment questions each day. Click here to send in a question of your own.

*****

I’ve always been interested in weather phenomena surrounding sports, especially their effects on competitions. What comes to mind when you think about this in tennis?—Tom B.

*****

Interesting, Tom. No doubt you’d agree that weather is the ultimate x factor in sports. It’s a variable that acts indiscriminately, playing favorites only in the sense that it reveals those athletes with, or exposes those without, the wherewithal to make adjustments. You only have to think back to last year’s blustery U.S. Open semifinal between Tomas Berdych and Andy Murray. After a morning full of rain, the wind picked up, and Berdych, as he admitted afterwards, couldn’t cope. His high toss became a liability, both technically and psychically.

Then there’s just the weird. I imagine most sports fans carry, somewhere in our minds, a repository of bizarre sports-weather lore. Most of mine grows out of stories told to me by my father, a Philadelphia native. I think about Eagles fans, in 1968, pelting Santa Claus with snowballs at half time. Also the Flyers losing their arena, in 1978, when high winds took apart the roof of the Spectrum. And finally, on an extremely windy day in 1976, there’s Mark Edmondson, ranked just No. 212 in the world, upsetting defending champion John Newcombe for the Aussie Open title.

For many, Edmondson’s victory remains the biggest upset since the inception of the ATP rankings, in 1973. (Edmondson was ranked so low, the story goes, that he had only months earlier taken a job as a janitor to fund his travels.) But surely, Ed. v. Newk. is also up there in terms of adverse weather conditions. As Randy Walker tells it, in his book On This Day in Tennis History, the players couldn’t take the court until half an hour after the scheduled start time, because of “45 mile-per-hour wind gusts and a temperature drop ‘from 104 degrees to 79 in five minutes.’” High winds persisted throughout the match until Edmondson sealed the win, becoming, to this day, the last Australian to win his native tournament.

Any weather-related memories of your own? Draft out a comment, and share them with us below.

Question of the Day: Cooked Racquets

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 15:55:00 +0000

TENNIS.com gear editor Justin diFeliciantonio and his technical advisers answer your equipment questions each day. Click here to send in a question of your own.

*****

I tend to stow my racquet bag in the trunk or backseat of my car while I’m at work. But as it’s getting hotter down here in the South—and even hotter in parked cars—should I be worried about the heat affecting my racquets’ and strings’ playability? Or is this not too big of a deal?—Peter J.

*****

This is common but important question, Peter, to which the answer is pretty straightforward: For the health of your racquets and strings, you should never stow your racquets in a car on a scorching day. Nor should you, for the same reason, check your racquets with an airline when flying. As the authors of Technical Tennis explain, “Ten minutes in a really hot car will drop the string tension by at least a few pounds, permanently. The string tension will rise a fraction in winter, or in a fridge, but it won’t rise back to the tension before you cooked the strings. If you travel overseas with your racquet, take it on board the plane with you (if you are allowed). Ten minutes on the tarmac will ruin your string tension, and it might even soften the frame.”

“In some of these cars,” says Hunter Hines, Dunlop’s Director of Product Development, “it can get to be over 150 degrees in the summertime, sometimes even hotter. It depends on the material and so forth, but as it gets hotter, it’s going to change the tension maintenance and elasticity properties of a given string. The other thing is, when you’ve got a racquet in a hot trunk, and there are strings in it under tension, those strings may loosen differently at different times. As a result, the frame can bend out of shape, compromising its structural integrity."

Question of the Day: Reducing Jarring Mishits

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 15:10:00 +0000

TENNIS.com gear editor Justin diFeliciantonio and his technical advisers answer your equipment questions each day. Click here to send in a question of your own.

*****

I’m a club-level player, 3.5 or thereabouts. I want to know how I can stop my racquet from stinging my hand on mishits. Not that I mishit all the time, but when I do, it is not a comfortable feeling. I currently use a Babolat Pure Drive strung with RPM Blast at 60 pounds.—Bert C.

*****

It’s never a fun day, Bert, when you’re mishitting the ball badly; not only do the resulting shots go awry and take on undesired trajectories, the impacts themselves can really jar the hand. It goes without saying that the best way to do away with this feeling is to improve your technique; learn to hit the ball on center, and the jarring will cease. As we all know, however, that’s easier said than done. So what’s there to do?

Consider the following: Lower your tensions. Physicists have established that, for a variety of reasons, stiffer (i.e., tighter) strings play a sizable part in intensifying “bad vibrations,” especially at the edges of the stringbed, where, due to the shorter lengths of the strings, tension can register even higher. Indeed, according to physicist Rodd Cross, in The Physics and Technology of Tennis, mishitting the ball with stiffer strings “cause[s] the handle to vibrate more and to slam into the hand at a higher speed,” in part because, compared to softer stringbeds, the ball rebounds more quickly.

What’s that have to do with anything? As Cross explains, when a tennis ball dwells on a stringbed for a longer period of time, it’s able to function as a gigantic vibration dampener, not just of string vibrations but frame vibrations as well. This is especially the case for stiffer racquets, like your Babolat Pure Drive.

Long story short: Try lowering your tension 10 to 15 percent. You may even want to experiment with natural gut or a high-grade multifilament string, as these tend to play much softer (i.e., less jarring) than poly blends like RPM Blast. Good luck.

Question of the Day: Basic Stringing Knots

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 14:31:00 +0000

TENNIS.com gear editor Justin diFeliciantonio and his technical advisers answer your equipment questions each day. Click here to send in a question of your own.

*****

I’m currently learning how to string. One topic I don’t quite understand is knots. What’s the best way to make a tie-off knot? If you’re stringing in two pieces, how do you recommend tying a knot that starts the crosses?—Peter S.

*****

These are important questions, Peter. Knots are a crucial endpoint when stringing. Incorrect technique can compromise a string job by causing it to lose tension. Moreover, in worst case scenarios, bad knots can even cause a stringbed to fall apart completely—not something you want to happen when you’re in the middle of a match.

So let’s start with your first question: Tie-off knots. For most stringers, these knots, which secure the ends of main strings and/or crosses downstream of tension, are best tied using a double half hitch. As the U.S. Racquet Stringers Association makes clear, “To tie a half hitch, remember the word ‘OUT.’ Thread the string Over, Under and then Through—then repeat the procedure again and you’ve completed the knot.”

Indeed, doubling up on the half hitch is important, as single hitch knot is liable to come unfastened or sink deep into the grommet, due to its simple configuration and small size. When installing a very thin string, like an 18 or 19 gauge, it may even be advisable to tie a triple half hitch—that is, three consecutive half hitches—just to make sure that the knot doesn’t slide down into the grommet hole.

Also remember, after tensioning the last main or cross, to leave yourself at least 10 to 12 inches of string to tie-off with. There’s nothing more frustrating than being unable to finish the knot, because you’ve clipped the string too short or measured the entire length of string incorrectly. To tighten the knot, the best approach is to use hand-held pliers. While some use the stringing machine to tension knots, if not done with care, the tensioner can place too much pressure on the knot, causing it to break. Finally, after the knot has been secured, clip the tail down below the racquet’s sidewall, so that it’s about 1/8th to 1/4th an inch long. Cut the length too long and leave it above the sidewall, and the tail may cut the player; cut it too short, and the knot may slip out of place.

As to your second question: A different knot, apart from the half hitch, is required when tying knots at the start of crosses. (These knots are only necessary, as you note, when working with two pieces of string.) Starting knots, unlike tie-offs, are designed to be larger to, again, prevent against slipping down into the grommet hole, as well as resist breakage upon first tensioning the string. (“A starting knot,” the USRSA explains, “does not place pressure on the anchor string.”)

Stringers, over the years, have devised a number of different starting knots. The “figure-eight” and “fishing” knots are two that are commonly used; the former is among the bulkiest, and is good for stringing racquets with big grommets, while the latter has the advantage of being, in USRSA terms, “free floating,” meaning that “it can be pulled against the frame without tying the knot to an anchor string [as] you’re tying it against itself.”

For diagrams of the standard tie-off knot, a.k.a. the double half hitch, as well as three viable starting knots, see the above diagrams, excerpted from the USRSA’s Racquet Service Techniques Manual.

Question of the Day: Posture Shirts

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 15:01:00 +0000

TENNIS.com gear editor Justin diFeliciantonio and his technical advisers answer your equipment questions each day. Click here to send in a question of your own.

*****

I recently have been suffering from some upper back and shoulder pain, which I think is affecting my tennis. In particular, I feel a bit hunched over when I serve, and have been losing velocity on that shot. I think this may be a result of extended time sitting in front of the computer at work. What are your recommendations?—Albert C.

*****

This is a complex question, Albert. Make sure that you meet with a licensed physician and/or physiotherapist. Understanding the etiology of your pain and how to treat it—including, but not limited to, practicing specific exercises that target the upper back and shoulders—should be some of the first steps you take. It also might be a good idea to cease tennis activity and rest your body for some time.

Having said that, one idea to consider implementing is a posture shirt. According to Todd Ellenbecker, a physiotherapist who works with the ATP Tour, hunching of the back or shoulders can be markers of scapular dysfunction and/or general shoulder debility. Interestingly, many physiotherapists believe that, in addition to daily shoulder exercises, posture shirts can help the upper body assume a healthier position, namely by forcing the shoulder blades back. (For more information about exercise and injury prevention for tennis, visit the USTA's Strength and Conditioning page here.)

As Ellenbecker described the shirts, in a conversation last fall, “Going on a diagonal from your shoulder back along to the middle of your spine, right over the top of the shoulder blade, there are these re-enforced, thicker fabrics. They’re relatively tight. So when you put the shirt on, they actually pull you back. If you’re sitting on a computer right now, chances are that you’re sitting in a slumped posture. Imagine putting on a tight shirt that makes you sit up straight and squeeze your shoulder blades together...Dr. James Andrews, in Birmingham, Alabama, actually did a research study that found that Little League throwing athletes who wore posture shirts increased their velocity by 1 M.P.H.”

One example of a posture shirt is the adidas Techfit Powerweb (MSRP $55; see above photo), a nylon and elastane compression top that, according to the company, is fortified over the scalpular for better posture and form.

Question of the Day: What is "Construction"?

Fri, 12 Apr 2013 13:39:00 +0000

TENNIS.com gear editor Justin diFeliciantonio and his technical advisers answer your equipment questions each day. Click here to send in a question of your own.

*****

In your articles, you talk a lot about racquets’ “construction.” What are you referring to?—Albert B.

*****

A racquet’s construction, Albert, is often used as a synonym for its flexibility, i.e., the extent of the frame’s rigidity—specifically, how far (and how fast) the frame bends and then springs back (or beyond) its original position on impact with the ball. In general, rigidity corresponds to beam width. Racquets with thinner beams (~19mm to 23mm) are more flexible; racquets with wider beams (~24mm to 30mm) are stiffer.

While there are exceptions to the rule, by and large, manufacturers tend to design flexible racquets for more advanced players and stiffer racquets for beginner- to intermediate-level players. Accordingly, compared to stiffer racquets, flexible racquets tend to be heavier, balanced more head-light, and have smaller heads, all of which make them, overall, less powerful and forgiving on off-center hits and harder to swing.

(Of course, in recent years, these categories have started to blur, as many touring professionals have taken a liking to racquets with thicker, stiffer beams. See, for example, Victoria Azarenka with the Wilson Juice, or Rafael Nadal with the Babolat Aeropro Drive, both very stiff frames.)

Product Profile: Lock Laces

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 12:32:00 +0000

MSRP: $7.99, pair; $19.99, three pairs

Website: locklaces.com

Facts
Made from the same elastic material as bungee cords, Lock Laces are water-resistant, long-lasting shoelaces designed to provide a secure and comfortable fit beyond that offered by typical cotton or nylon laces. The company claims that, due to its spring-loaded, easy-to-adjust drawstring construction, Lock Laces do not come loose during competition, training, and/or everyday wear, reducing the chances of lace-induced spills. Lock Laces also provide sustained compression across the foot, increasing oxygen flow and athletic endurance, according to the company. Of use to runners as well as tennis players, the laces come in 13 different colors, from black and brown to cool gray, hot pink, and orange creamsicle. Each retails for $7.99 per pair.

Impressions
Lock Laces, for all intents and purposes, look to be comfortable and convenient on and off the court, blending the easy appeal of slip-on shoes with the additional security of conventional laces. They’re also easy to install: Thread them through your shoes, pull through a cord lock, adjust with scissors and snap a clip on the end, and voila—you’ll never have to tie that pair of shoes again. What’s more, the wide spectrum of 13 colors makes it easy and fun to complement the colors of your shoe collection. While great for high-performance athletics, L.L.s are also a good fit for kids, seniors, and individuals with limited dexterity and/or special needs.

Question of the Day: Illegal Racquets

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 20:18:00 +0000

TENNIS.com gear editor Justin diFeliciantonio and his technical advisers answer your equipment questions each day. Click here to send in a question of your own.

*****

I was reading your piece about illegal racquets. I’m curious how this applies to tournament match play. For example, say we played a sanctioned league match, you won, but I found out afterwards that you’d used an outlawed racquet—like the liquid-filled Dynaspot—would you have to forfeit?—Jeremy B.

*****

Although it’d be in bad taste, Jeremy, given you discovered the illegality after our hypothetical match concluded, I wouldn’t be required to forfeit the win. See Comment 4.1, in the USTA’s rulebook, Friend at Court. As it reads:

What happens if it is discovered after play has begun that a player has been using an illegal racket or an illegally strung racket? All points played stand. The player must find another racket before continuing play. A player is subject to code violations for delay under the Point Penalty System. If the discovery occurs after the match is over, the match still counts.

This is in keeping with one of the central tenets of tennis, namely that all points played in good faith stand. Technically speaking, it’s illegal to dole out penalties to a player who used illegal equipment post hoc.

Note, however, that the above shouldn’t be read as encouraging the use of illegal racquets. It wouldn’t be in good taste, or good faith!

Overture in Carolina

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 14:44:00 +0000

CHARLESTON, S.C.—The breeze blows, and the air is tinged with salt. You can just taste it, stinging the tongue, the balmy off-gas of mud and silt, which run in rich brown striations across the brackish waters of the Cooper River, tidal feeder to Charleston Harbor and the Atlantic out and beyond. The breeze pushes north in saline currents, hopping up above the shore, skipping against auto windshields and along the rainbow bends of I-526, now finding its way toward these very confines, here, on Daniel Island, flowing above mazes of parked cars and clustered sponsor demos, tussling with flaps and sleeves and masses of hair, swirling lazily around the madeleine-shaped tops of corporate entertainment tents, and right now cascading over the stadium's tiers, permeating Billie Jean King Court, where it undulates in soft sighs the skirt of Serena Williams, defending champion, who’s just walked through the stadium’s tunnel into the applause of 7,000-odd people. She’s standing on the court’s periphery, along with Jelena Jankovic, her Serbian opponent, waiting for ESPN’s signal to crunch across the ground’s pulverized, green-marine stone toward her chair, to contest the final of South Carolina’s premier WTA tournament, the Family Circle Cup.

Look up, and the sun is beating down in the mid 70s, through a bright blue sky that’s just barely smudged, here and there, by a few wispy, cotton-lint clouds. The temperature isn't disagreeable, but the sun is patently Southern, the light like someone’s turned the contrast knob way up, taken the grey monochromatism of the Northeast winter and bathed it in a palette of glistering orange. The light’s so incredibly bright practically everyone in the stadium, excepting the players, has given up trying to see it. Its solar intensity, unmediated, wastes unprotected ciliary muscles and sends eyelids into squint-induced seizures.

I’m sitting down courtside—in Box 39, in front of a small placard, named for the presently absent “Pink Panthers”—just completely immersed in a sea of white folk, hats everywhere. There are caps that say Gamecocks and Prudential and College of Charleston—the patrons’ tickets stuck to the brims—visors in green camouflage embroidered with Bass Pro Shop, up-side-down baskets with big straw brims fit for golfing at Augusta National, and women in sun hats all over. They expand into geriatric fields, these sun hats, their circumference and floppiness seeming to correlate positively with the wearers’ age and lowcountry allegiance.

It’s just now past 1 p.m. Back on the rubico court, the contenders are still standing by the player tunnel, taking turns telling an ESPN anchorwoman that she plans to “just go out there and play my game.” Both stand very still. They stare out at nothing, stoic, like veteran runners before a long race, anticipating trial and pain. Finally, the TV people give the signal, and the players receive another loud but polite applause as they start the march toward their chairs—actually, plush sky-blue couches—built from a sturdy-looking, mahogany-colored wood.

Upon each step, the players' quads contract into taut, thewy rectangles. Alongside them walks a hairy man of average height, shouldering a camera and trailing an assistant with lengths of cord. The man films mere feet from the faces of Williams and Jankovic, which remain natural and expressionless and afford these men the gravity of gnats. Photographers, facing the players from the chair’s far side, snap shutters through lens attachments the size of traffic lights, generally forming what looks to be a series of ginormous periods, as we all shift glutes in our seats and reach into pockets for camera phones.

The players finally arrive at their chairs, then drape towels over and sink back into their cushions. They root through their bags with a kind of efficient nonchalance, futzing with waters and plastic bags and racquets wrapped in plastic bags, putting straw around their little courtside nests. Another set of cameramen, their long, telescopic Canon DigiSupers not shoulder but swivel-mounted, work on the outer wings of each player’s nest, filming the futzing. These men sit in black-leather office chairs, typical fare from Staples, which they kick around in tight semi-circles like a 10-year-old kid in daddy’s office. The one closest to me, a white-bearded Jerry Garcia look-alike, wears call-center headphones and one those safari, neck-flap hats, color tan. He looks Cyborgian, hands and eyes conjoined to the machine. He never steals a glance outside its view.

Jankovic and Williams now meet across the net for proceedings with Kader Nouni, today’s chair umpire. A coin flips. Williams wins the toss, elects to serve. They about face toward the baseline, handbags at dawn, and begin the warm-up. It’s striking, Serena’s expression: It’s somewhere between indifference and boredom, formed downstream of zen-like concentration, or perhaps calculated intimidation, or maybe even a certain competitive hatred. I can only guess. She wears a neon orange top with elbow-length sleeves that pops in the sun and clings tight to her chest and bra, as well as a dark blue skirt that covers most of her bum, while still. Her brown hair, headband-secured, frizzes out toward her shoulders like overhanging Spanish moss. Jelena is in a peony pink dress, her own hair drawn back ghastly tight into a ponytail. It's like her hair’s painted onto her forehead, it’s so tight, exacerbating the atypical longness of her face. In between rallies, she fiddles her strings and exhales from little mashed-potato cheeks.

Ball girls become mechanical pitching arms, bouncing balls to the players, and soon they’re rallying, jumping rope with their feet. Their shots’ speed and trajectory are similar, but not their strokes. Serena’s groundies proceed in stages—her racquet, a Wilson Blade 104, prepares early and pauses a moment at the motion’s apex, before sweeping through the ball—while Jelena’s, while not exactly more fluid, are more continuous; her Prince, in blacked-out cosmetics, traces uninterrupted circles through the air. Both hold their racquets with Western forehand grips and employ two-handed backhands, the present custom on tour, but Serena’s strings ping a few decibels higher on impact than J.J.’s, marking differences in tension.

Nouni, donning 80s-style stunner shades and a short-cut Afro, sits up in the chair—a kind of children’s car seat, made from white plastic—and calls “time.” His voice is deep and gravid with occasion; it’s James Earl Jones with a French accent, that’s his timbre. The players thump the backstop with a few more serves, and then futz around some more with various implements at the chair. Soon after, they’re back out on court, ready to “play.”

Wizened ushers rush to rope off entrances, as Jankovic positions herself behind the baseline, smoothing out the clay like an infielder before the first pitch. Williams receives balls from various feeders and sashays back to the line. The crowd grows susurrus. Jankovic bounces in place, her hair swinging back and forth like a clock pendulum on speed. Williams, palm down, now dribbles the ball with her racquet, loses it, and then starts dribbling another.

It’s 1:13 p.m. Jankovic is crouching forward, Williams too, tights exposed. Williams sets herself to serve, waits a moment, and then lifts the ball in the air, a spin-less yellow glob. A heartbeat later, and the ball's gone, at its peak velocity this point, smacked into play. In its place appears a poof of stone, which soon dissolves from view, scattered by the wind until settling back into the grit below.

Question of the Day: Managing Pain with Cold Therapy

Tue, 09 Apr 2013 13:56:00 +0000

TENNIS.com gear editor Justin diFeliciantonio and his technical advisers answer your equipment questions each day. Click here to send in a question of your own.

*****

What are your thoughts on managing pain, particularly knee pain? I’ve had reoccurring pain on my right patella during and after matches, but I’m reticent to start relying on anti-inflammatory medications. (I’m visiting the doctor soon.) Do you have any ideas that I could implement immediately?—Jerry L.

*****

Before considering my advice, Jerry, ensure that you meet with a licensed physician or physiotherapist. Professional consultation, to understand the etiology of your pain and how to treat it, should be the first step that you take. Further, assuming you’re still playing, and depending on the pain’s severity, common sense dictates that you should hold off on tennis for some time and rest your body.

That said, if you’re adamant on continuing to play, you should consider adopting cold therapy—i.e., icing. Consult any medical professional, and he or she will relay to you one of the truisms of injury prevention and treatment: RICE, an acronym that instructs players to Rest, Ice, Compress, and Elevate the affected areas. As Todd Ellenbecker, a physiotherapist with the ATP Tour, explained to me last fall, applying ice and compression to an injury doesn’t just reduce swelling; by reducing tissue temperatures, it increases local oxygen and blood flow, which is key to decreasing inflammation and acceleration recovery. The most effective time to ice a problem area is immediately following competition, for at least 20 minutes. But it also can help to ice at various times throughout the day, especially when the pain starts to become more apparent.

The traditional, cheap way to RICE is familiar to most athletes: Find a plastic bag, fill it with crushed ice, and place it on the injured area, preferably using some type of plastic wrap for compression. (Another route, albeit a nearly unbearable one, is to immerse your entire leg, up past the knee, in a bucket of cold ice water.) However, today, there are a number of products on the market that claim to provide an even easier and more effective way to RICE.

One such product is Hyperice, a high-tech ice pouch that allegedly works much better than the freezy packs or the ol’ plastic bag. According to the company, Hyperice prevents air pockets from building up between the ice and the affected extremity, maintaining compression and increasing the effectiveness of the treatment. The company says the product is currently being used by a number of players on tour, such as John Isner, Agnieszka Radwanska, Kevin Anderson, and Serena Williams. There are Hyperice wraps for multiple body parts—including the knee, as well as the elbow, hand, shoulder, and back.

Question of the Day: Switching Grip Sizes

Mon, 08 Apr 2013 14:07:00 +0000

TENNIS.com gear editor Justin diFeliciantonio and his technical advisers answer your equipment questions each day. Click here to send in a question of your own.

*****

I have two racquets with different grip sizes. One is a 4 and 1/8th, another is 4 and 3/8ths. Is there any harm in playing with different grip sizes (tennis elbow, etc.)? Also, if I just added an extra replacement grip to the 1/8th, to build it up toward a 3/8ths, would I lose any feel with that racquet?—Anthony

*****

There shouldn’t be any physical harm in switching between racquets with different grip sizes, per se. (Other than possible harm to your match play, due to the jarring change in feel that a broken string in one racquet and the transition to another might occasion.) That said, it is generally acknowledged that smaller grip sizes, all else being equal, can present additional risks for injury. Interestingly enough, they can also present unique performance benefits.

As I wrote last year, on the advantages and disadvantages of different grip sizes, a smaller grip allows a player’s wrist greater range of motion during her swing. This can be positive, especially for skilled players with Western-style games; extra wrist flexion, coupled with good technique, can translate into accelerated racquet pronation while serving and a faster, freer wrist on groundstrokes, both of which can increase pace and spin. It’s no wonder that many top players, Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal included, choose to play with grips that are narrower than the standard, 3/8ths circumference.

However, at the same time, tiny palettes like your 4 and 1/8, by allowing the wrist all that extra movement, can stress the wrist and other tendons throughout the arm, including those that contribute to tennis elbow. This is why racquet technicians instruct sufferers of tennis elbow, along with other advice, to use a thicker, softer grip.

As for whether building up the 1/8th to a 3/8ths with extra grip will cost you “feel,” it really depends on how you understand the term. If feel, as tennis physicists Rod Cross and Crawford Lindsey define it, is the “combined effect of the shock force on the arm plus vibrations of the racquet frame,” then, yes, a thicker grip will reduce feel, as it dampens the sensation of impact. (In this sense, leather grips, as I’ve written, heighten feel, because they allow vibrations to pass relatively unimpeded from the racquet through the grip and into the hand.)

But on the other hand, if your sense of “good feel” is playing with a bigger, rounder grip, then logically the change will be for the better. Personally, I think of good feel as my ability to discern the handle’s bevels, or edges; in my experience, playing with additional replacement grips and/or overgrips is a bad recipe for good feeling, as a thicker grip mutes those edges. But that’s just me.

As you decide on your grip size, don’t forget the obvious: A grip should be comfortable, and it should fit your hand. If you have gigantic, Ivo Karlovic-type hands, obviously you’re going to need to bump up the grip size. Conversely, players with petite digits shouldn’t struggle to hold onto an oversized grip for fear of injury. (For more information on finding the correct grip size, click here.)

My final recommendation would be to consult a knowledgeable racquet technician in your area. He or she should be equipped to effectively build-up your grip, whether with extra grips or a heat-shrink sleeve. Depending on the racquet and the technician’s competency, it may even be possible to switch out the handle for another that’s more to your liking.

Question of the Day: Lightweight, Flexible Racquets

Fri, 05 Apr 2013 12:02:00 +0000

TENNIS.com gear editor Justin diFeliciantonio and his technical advisers answer your equipment questions each day. Click here to send in a question of your own.

*****

Does anyone make "women's racquets” anymore? By this I mean a lighter racquet with a flexible frame. Currently, I use a Head Microgel Extreme Team strung with Wilson NXT Tour at 55 lbs.—Penny Maag

*****

While I understand the thrust of the question, Penny, I have trouble conceptualizing what “women’s racquets” would really feel and play like. Among women, just as there are a number of different playing styles and ability levels, so too are there a number of diverse racquet preferences. Yes, women, as a whole, do tend to use lighter racquets than men, recreationally and on tour. But doubtless, not all women enjoy flexible constructions; the popularity of certain stiffer, game-improvement frames attests to this.

That said, you’re right that lightweight, flexible racquets are a minority in today’s market. This is due to the fact that, for the most part, manufacturers make lighter sticks stiffer. Why? In part because, on off-center hits, light frames vibrate more than heavy frames, and stiff constructions are better than flexible ones at muting those vibrations, as the former bends less on impact. (Note, however, that flexible frames, not stiff frames, are superior at decreasing excess shock, which bears more responsibility for arm injuries than excess vibration.) If you’ve played tennis enough, you know that an awful mishit can really sting the hand; the culprit here is bad vibes. Filtered down through a stiffer racquet, that sting feels more like a bump.

(Of course, the best way to increase power, maximize comfort, and reduce the likelihood of injury is to regularly hit the sweet spot. As tennis physicists Rod Cross and Crawford Lindsey explain, in Technical Tennis, “The ball speed off the middle of the strings doesn’t depend on racquet stiffness because frame vibrations are not generated for such an impact. Thus, when you hit in the middle of the strings, there is no difference in power between a stiff or a flexible racquet.”)

Nonetheless, if you’re partial to a flexible response, and are looking to replace the Extreme Team with a frame from the same neighborhood, demo the Head YouTek Graphene Speed Rev. The Rev—though half an ounce lighter and a few points more head heavy than your current spec.—plays with a great deal of “give” in the hoop, which you should enjoy. (If the spec. difference is a problem, you or a racquet technician could easily add lead tape to the Rev’s handle, which would increase its weight and balance it more head light.)

However, if head size is an issue—the Team and Rev are 107 and 100 square inches, respectively—consider the Pacific X Force Comp, which measures 105 sq. in., is flexible, and weighs in below eleven ounces.

Question of the Day: Preventing Late-Match Burnout

Wed, 03 Apr 2013 12:55:00 +0000

TENNIS.com gear editor Justin diFeliciantonio and his technical advisers answer your equipment questions each day. Click here to send in a question of your own.

*****

I’m a 3.5 player, baseliner, lots of topspin. I’m comfortable in practice, but playing a USTA match has always been a challenge. I usually start relatively strong, but my play fizzles at the tail ends of matches. Because of this, I have trouble closing out opponents. It’s like I get slightly tighter and out of sync as the match progresses. Any insight into how to stop this trend?—Bill S.

*****

Without a doubt, Bill, learning how to adjust mental and emotional states during the heat of battle is no simple matter. Not only does mental-skill development require practice; it requires strategies. In past columns, I’ve offered two different tacks to improving match focus: One, on the performance benefits of journaling regularly, and another detailing on how mental imagery practice can help curb on-court anxiety. Consider these approaches.

But for the sake of interest, let me offer a third, and perhaps more apt, approach to your late-match nerves: Physiological awareness.

In Mental Training for Peak Performance, author Steven Ungerleider, through a chapter on tennis, interviews Dr. Jim Loehr, a sports psychologist who’s coached Pete Sampras, Gabriella Sabatini, and a slew of other touring pros. One of Dr. Loehr’s major points is that, to maintain a positive mental and emotional approach over the course of a match—and by extension, high-level play—a player must allow his or her mind and body to recover not just during changeovers, but between each and every point. Intuitively enough, the primary marker for this recovery is heart rate. As Ungerleider explains,

Dr. Loehr says that if the heart rate stays high between points (during the resting and recovery zone), then the player is overstressed and headed for early burnout in the match. “The optimal condition between points is a stress/recovery balance, such that the heart rate is typically falling between points, the player is relaxed biomechanically, and breathing returns to normalcy,” he says. “Otherwise, if the EKG is up, the body will be tense, and that translates into tight muscle-reflex action and some bad tennis.”

Indeed, Bill, this kind of stress may be at the root of the problem: By remaining “hyped-up” between points and not getting adequate intervals of rest, you may be tiring mentally, emotionally, and physically as the match progresses, worsening your play.

Which raises the obvious question: How to relax? How to allow yourself a proper between-point recovery? The first step is simple awareness. When the point ends, notice your heart rate, and take deep breaths with the intent of slowing it. Additionally, re-instill belief in your abilities through positive self-talk and relaxed, confident body language. Between points, “[if] you hold the [racquet] too tightly or your jaw is clenched and you are ruminating about the last point that you messed up,” as Ungerleider notes, “then your muscles and emotional memory will contaminate the next series of points,” preventing your heart rate from dropping into that critical resting zone.

(One cool idea: To increase awareness of your match behavior, have someone video tape your actions between points. Says Dr. Loehr, “I want my young, old, amateur, and pro tennis players to see this sequence so that they can experience firsthand their emotions during this in-between-point period…If we can get them to rid themselves of those 3 1/2 seconds of negativity, hold their heads high, achieve new self-confidence, and prepare for the next point with a clean physiological and emotional slate, then we have done good work in our training.”)

All that said, as you put this training into practice, don’t neglect to exert yourself during points. Achieving this balance is tricky, but relaxing when the point ends doesn’t preclude playing hard when it begins. Good luck.

Child’s Play

Tue, 02 Apr 2013 15:03:00 +0000

These five junior racquets are light, forgiving, and appropriately sized. Designed to allow the games of young players to develop and flourish, each measures 25 inches, the maximum legal length for USTA ten-and-under tournaments. (For more information about selecting the right racquet for your kids, click here.)

*****

Babolat Pure Drive Junior 25
Price: $69
Length: 25 in.
Head size: 100 sq. in.
Weight: 8.1 oz. (strung)
String Pattern: 16 x 20

The Babolat Pure Drive Junior features the same cosmetic as the adult Pure Drive. With its light weight and mid-plus head size, the P.D. Junior is a good choice for eight to ten year olds (50” to 55” tall) who are just getting into the game, but are nevertheless serious about developing their swings. The racquet is also available in a 23-inch length—for children six to eight years old (45” to 49” tall)—as well as a pink cosmetic.

*****

Dunlop M3.0 Junior 25
Price: $79
Length: 25 in.
Head size: 98 sq. in.
Weight: 8.6 oz. (strung)
String Pattern: 16 x 19

The Dunlop M3.0 Junior is a good fit for children aged eight to ten. Like its adult-sized, 27-inch iteration, the M3.0 features a graphite construction, which, relative to aluminum frames, offers superior performance and feel. What’s more, the stick is available in a 26-inch length, which, while not compliant with USTA 10 & Under regulations, suits children aged 11 and up who are not quite ready for an adult-sized frame.

*****

Head Speed 25 Comp
Price: $50
Length: 25 in.
Head size: 102 sq. in.
Weight: 8.5 oz. (unstrung)
String Pattern: 16 x 19

Head’s offering for eight through 10-year-olds is the Speed 25 Comp. Also legal for tournament play, the graphite stick is light and agile, and features a sharp black-on-white graphic. It’s also sold in a 23-inch length for kids six and seven years old.

*****

Völkl Junior Organix 6
Price: $60
Length: 25 in.
Head size: 100 sq. in.
Weight: 8.3 oz. (strung)
String Pattern: 16 x 19

USTA eligible, the Völkl Junior Organix 6 is designed to jell well with green juniors in the midst of skill development. Völkl says the 6 features a graphite construction, lending the stick additional stability, as well as the Optispot vision system—highlights in the three and nine o’clock positions that provide points of reference to the sweet spot, thus helping players connect with it.

*****

Wilson Steam Junior 25
Price: $109.99
Length: 25 in.
Head size: 98 sq. in.
Weight: 8.3 oz. (strung)
String Pattern: 16 x 16

The new Steam Junior features a lightweight, maneuverable design, as well as a unique, 16 by 16 string pattern. According to Wilson, this symmetrical string pattern offers additional spin potential and power, much like the 16 by 15 patterns built into the adult-sized, Steam 99S and 105S models. The Steam Junior also comes in 21-inch and 23-inch models for smaller children.

Question of the Day: Flared-Out Grips

Mon, 01 Apr 2013 15:03:00 +0000

TENNIS.com gear editor Justin diFeliciantonio and his technical advisers answer your equipment questions each day. Click here to send in a question of your own.

*****

I've read that some touring pros like Stanislas Wawrinka, Robin Soderling, and Michael Russell prefer a grip with a built-up, flared butt cap. What would the benefits of a larger, more flared butt cap offer versus a smaller, more tapered one?—James

*****

Good observation, James. A number of touring pros, like the three you mentioned, custom build their grips to “flare out” at the very bottom, lending the handle a kind of bell-like shape. (For a photo of Soderling’s racquet, click here. Also see Richard Gasquet’s flared palette here.) Today, there are even a few stock frames that employ the effect, like the Wilson Juice, though the level of flare is much less obvious.

So what’s the point? Why not just stick to a standard circumference? I had the chance to ask Russell this very question during an interview last fall at the U.S. Open. In Russell’s mind, the flared-out grip offers extra leverage, as well as security against slippage, especially when hanging the hitting hand off the edge of the butt cap. As he told me then,

I do build up the butt cap a little bit with athletic tape [before the grip goes on]…It’s kind of like a hockey stick, you know, kind of like that nub on the bottom. I hold the racquet quite low on the handle, and I pull against it on my serve and my forehand. If I didn’t have the athletic tape, then my racquet would probably go flying half the time. Because I also sweat, like, ridiculous.

Stability, tact, leverage: Those seem to be the objective reasons for a flared-out grip. But as with any equipment preference, there’s also a more subjective component, i.e., “feel.” In the past, I’ve tried a few sticks with hockey-like palettes; and without a doubt, that shape changes how the grip rests against the palm of the hand. (I wasn’t too thrilled about the feeling, personally.)

Still, I’d encourage you to experiment with the style, not so much because reputable pros use it, but just for your own sense of feel. There’s undeniably an element of mystery to why certain racquets, strings, and grips are comfortable to some players but not to others. And while this can be frustrating to those of us who want to uncover universal truths about taste, it’s also one of the more interesting facets of the game—as a player, you continually define your own sense of feel. Regardless of your ability level, through enough trial and error, you’ll have that aha! moment, when suddenly you think to yourself, This feels really good. From now on, I’m playing this way.

Question of the Day: Wood’s Last Gasp?

Fri, 29 Mar 2013 15:02:00 +0000

TENNIS.com gear editor Justin diFeliciantonio and his technical advisers answer your equipment questions each day. Click here to send in a question of your own.

*****

Who was the last pro player to win a tournament with a wood racquet? I know wooden racquets were viable in the early 80s, but did anyone win anything with one in the ‘90s?—John M.

*****

Nobody ever won big with wood in the ‘90s, John. But Slovakian player Miloslav Mecir—coolest nickname ever: The Conjuror—came close twenty years ago, in 1989, at Indian Wells. According to Randy Walker’s On This Day in Tennis History, Mecir was “the last player to win an ATP tour event with a wooden racquet when he [defeated] Yannick Noah 3-6, 2-6, 6-1, 6-2, 6-3 in the men’s singles final at the Newsweek Champions Cup.”

More specifically, Mecir took home the title with a Snauwert composite, which combined a graphite laminate with a wooden interior. Composites, because they included wood, generally were heavier and less powerful than full-on graphite frames, which had pretty much come to dominate the tour by the end of the 1980s. That said, composite racquets were supposed to offer a more "traditional" feel, retaining a feedback profile similar to old-fashioned wood.

Any readers who onced played with a composite? Please comment. I've never played with one, and would be curious to know more about the experience.

Also, to those interested in the IW match, take a look below.

Question of the Day: Tennis Shoes for Extra-Wide Feet

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 16:19:00 +0000

TENNIS.com gear editor Justin diFeliciantonio and his technical advisers answer your equipment questions each day. Click here to send in a question of your own.

*****

Do any companies other than New Balance manufacture tennis shoes for wide feet? I have a very wide foot type, and finding appropriate shoes has gotten to be a problem.—Krueger

*****

Unfortunately, Krueger, New Balance is the only brand we’re aware of that offers men’s and women’s tennis shoes, in the U.S., specially for extra-wide feet—specifically, in 2E and 4E sizes. All other brands only offer shoes in the standard D-size width.

Still, if you haven’t already, give a pair of New Balances a try. One shoe I’d recommend you demo is the New Balance 996. (Read our profile of the 996 here.) Unlike many of the company’s more conservative, club-level shoes, which they’re known for, the 996 is built for light-weight performance. The men’s version weighs in at 12.5 ounces (in a size 9.5), the women’s 10 oz (in a size 7), and both feature Probank technology, support near the front of the shoe that New Balance says increases lateral stability. Further, the 996 has a 12-month outsole guarantee—among the longest in the business.

Because we’re still putting the 996 through our weartesting process, I can’t render any judgments about the shoe as of yet. (A review of the New Balance 996 will appear in Tennis Magazine’s 2013 Shoe Guide, in the May/June issue.) That said, there are two other, albeit older, New Balance models you might want to consider: the 1005 and the 1187, both of which we reviewed in the 2012 Shoe Guide. (Read complete reviews of 1005 and 1187, respectively, here and here.)

As I wrote in a blog post last year, “At 12.6 ounces in a men’s size 9, the 1005 is relatively lightweight, but is only appropriate for neutral foot types; the 1187, on the other hand, is appropriate for all foot types, but is almost two ounces heavier than the 1005.”

(To access our 2012 Shoe Reviews, click here.)

Question of the Day: Sourcing Racquet Specifications

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 16:33:00 +0000

TENNIS.com gear editor Justin diFeliciantonio and his technical advisers answer your equipment questions each day. Click here to send in a question of your own.

*****

I want to know, with respect to your racquet reviews, where do all the specifications come from? Do companies provide them to you? Or do you take the measurements yourself?—Jim S.

*****

In our reviews, published on TENNIS.com and in Tennis Magazine, we source racquets’ specifications directly from manufacturers, specifically asking them to provide us with strung measurements. (Compared to its unstrung state, a racquet with string, for obvious reasons, tends to be heavier, have a higher swingweight, and be balanced more head heavy.)

In short, the reason we list manufacturer’s specs. instead of taking our own measurements is so that we can best account for variances in each racquet’s production. One thing you should know is that, when a new batch of certain model ships from the factory, the racquets aren’t all the same; within a certain quality-control range, set by each company, some of the sticks will be lighter or heavier, others will be balanced more or less head light. So when it comes time to write reviews, we list each frame’s “official” median specifications; because we generally receive no more than six of each model for testing, our sample size just isn’t large enough for us to take measurements and say, with complete confidence, that x spec. is at the center of y manufacturer’s factory variance.

Delray Beach: Gulbis d. Roger-Vasselin

Sun, 03 Mar 2013 22:45:00 +0000

The red Porsche parked in the corner of the court hadn't cut him off at the baseline, but Ernests Gulbis glared like a man on the verge of road rage staring down set point at 4-5 in the Delray Beach final.

Gulbis downshifted his anger into action. Stepping up toward the baseline, he ended a crackling 12-shot rally slamming a backhand winner down the line to save set point and spark a surge of seven straight points.

In a match that tested his mind as much as his reconstructed forehand, Gulbis tamed whipping winds, a tricky opponent and tempestuous emotions to score a 7-6 (3), 6-3 victory over Edouard Roger-Vasselin and capture his third career title in as many finals. The 109th-ranked qualifier won his second Delray Beach title in the last four years.

The talented and sometimes volatile Latvian craves the rush of driving fast, but grinded through an arduous course to take the title. Gulbis fought back from an 0-4 third-set hole to topple third-seeded Sam Querrey, 6-4, 4-6, 7-6 (4), and saved eight of 10 break points in beating second-seeded Tommy Haas, 6-3, 4-6, 7-6 (2) in the semifinals.

Flapping flags smacked around by the wind, which actually knocked one flag completely off its perch, could be heard on the court below as Gulbis broke for a 2-0 lead. Roger-Vasselin stood his ground in a rapid-fire net exchange, punching a forehand volley winner to break back for 1-2.

The son of 1983 Roland Garros semifinalist Christophe Roger-Vasselin, the 29-year-old Frenchman can do a little bit of everything. He showed his guile in downsizing mammoth servers Ivo Karlovic and John Isner en route to his first final. Roger-Vasselin is light on his feet, but doesn't hit as hard as the explosive Gulbis, who sailed a double fault deep to donate the break and fall into a 4-5 hole.

Serving for the set, Roger-Vasselin saved a second break point with a stinging ace down the middle before earning set point on the strength of a solid backhand approach. Before Roger-Vasselin served the set point, Gulbis stopped and briefly complained about sounds during play — it was unclear if he was talking to his opponent or chair umpire Fergus Murphy — before declaring "Come on!" and smacking his Wilson racquet against the soles of his shoes to punctuate his point.

Festering anger has erupted into rage and consumed Gulbis in the past; this time he channeled it with that match-changing backhand winner that reverberated in the minds of both men.

"I had a set point, but he hit an unbelievable backhand winner," Roger-Vasselin said afterward.

Gulbis's compact two-handed backhand and his roaring serve are his signature shots; he's fiddled with his forehand for a while and currently starts that stroke by extending both arms, like a surfer seeking balance as he rises on the board. Though it looks cumbersome compared to his taut two-hander, Gulbis made it work in the breaker. He smacked two forehand winners and a forehand down the lien to set up a forehand volley winner for 3-1. Serving at 4-3, Gulbis crunched a forehand winner crosscourt followed by a blistering serve into the hip for set point, closing when Roger-Vasselin spread a slice backhand wide.

Though he can blow up points with sheer power, Gulbis scored the key break of the second set with exquisite subtlety, guiding a sharp-angled drop shot that landed about two feet over the net as he broke for 4-3. Gulbis won eight matches in all and is projected to roar up to No. 52 when the new ATP rankings are released tomorrow, but he was still thinking about the road ahead after the match.

"I hope I get the Porsche this year," Gulbis joked to organizers. "I didn't get it last time."

Dubai: Djokovic d. Berdych

Sat, 02 Mar 2013 17:43:00 +0000

Organizers rolled out the red carpet before the trophy ceremony in Dubai; center court must look like a welcome mat to Novak Djokovic at this point.

Covering the court with the exuberance of a man completing a homecoming, Djokovic won 11 of the final 15 games to defuse big-hitting Tomas Berdych, 7-5, 6-3 and capture his fourth Dubai championship in the last five years. Fans serenaded the world No. 1 with a celebratory chant of "Nole! Nole!" as multi-colored confetti showered the court. It was the 18th consecutive victory for Djokovic, who raised his record to 13-0 on the season, continuing his career-long mastery of Berdych by collecting his 13th win in their 14 meetings.

Big Berd rarely looks up to opponents—only a handful of men in the Top 100 are taller than the 6’5” Czech—but he can't seem to shirk Djokovic's sizable shadow. A day after fighting off three match points in an electric three-set semifinal win over five-time champion Roger Federer, Berdych drew first blood in the final.

Stretched wide, the third seed extended the point with a one-handed slice backhand, streaked to the opposite sideline then lifted a running forehand pass crosscourt that eluded a lunging Djokovic as the fist-pumping Czech broke for a 3-2 lead. In the sixth game, the weight of a Berdych forehand drive nearly knocked Djokovic backward, like a man whose rib-cage was rattled by a medicine ball hurled into his mid-section. A slashing inside-out forehand from Berdych helped him consolidate for a 4-2 advantage.

Two penetrating shots — a thunderous first serve and his bold two-handed backhand down the line — helped power Berdych to the lead, but Djokovic never blinked. He's seen this script before and has a clear idea of how the story ends.

This is a comfortable match-up for the six-time Grand Slam champion because he's the more agile athlete, he's quicker around the court, a better ball-striker on the run and shrewder at changing up the spins on his shots, which gives him access to angles the flatter-hitting Berdych can't consistently produce. Though Berdych has scored significant doubles victories in leading the Czech Republic to the Davis Cup, he often looks averse to the front court and is prone to playing clunky volleys under pressure. It cost him when he hammered a backhand down the line to open the court, but bungled a routine high forehand volley, slapping it into net to drop serve for 4-all in a deflating donation.

Djokovic stumbled after a return blast from Berdych, banging up his right toe in the process, but couldn't catch up to the blistering shot facing a third break point in the ninth game. An effective slice serve out wide set up a crackling two-hander crosscourt as Djokovic denied the break point, eventually holding for 5-4 after 41 minutes of often explosive play.

The Berdych backhand that was so vital in erecting the lead proved critical in eradicating it. Sailing a pair of backhands beyond the baseline, Berdych fell into a double-set point deficit and succumbed to the pressure, double-faulting deep. Djokovic won eight of the final nine points in seizing the first set in 51 minutes.

Snapping off successive aces, Djokovic held at 30 to open the second set; Berdych responded with a three-ace game for 1-all. Digging out of a 0-30 hole in the seventh game and exploiting his advantage in running rallies, Djokovic worked over the Berdych backhand diligently drawing errors and winning four straight points to hold for 4-3.

Pressure-induced cracks in the eight game expanded into a full-blown break when Berdych mis-hit a forehand long to face a break point. Djokovic curled a clever lob into the corner that forced Berdych to wait for the ball to bounce, he slid an overhead wide handing Djokovic the crucial break and a 5-3 second-set lead. The top seed played the pivotal points with more care: Djokovic converted three of four break-point chances; Berdych was one of five on break-point opportunities.

Towering flat-ball hitters have learned that trying to hit through Djokovic is as effective as slamming your head against a sand castle wall. Djokovic is a combined 27-4 against three of the hardest hitters of recent years — Berdych, Juan Martin del Potro, whom he swept in the semis, and Robin Soderling.

The world No. 1 whipped an inside-out forehand to convert his second match point and wrap up an impressive one hour, 34-minute conquest. Realizing his latest red-carpet moment with some timely trips to net and an enduring sense of calm, Djokovic rolled to his 36th career title without surrendering a set.

Marseille: Berdych d. Gulbis

Wed, 20 Feb 2013 19:45:00 +0000

It doesn’t take much to make people hopeful about Ernests Gulbis again, does it? Coming into Rotterdam last week, everyone’s favorite lackadaisical Latvian was ranked firmly in the triple digits and had just one victory on the year. Brandishing a strange new forehand, though, Gulbis emerged from qualifying to reach the round of 16 and gave eventual champ Juan Martin del Potro a decent run for his money there. Even better, Gulbis claimed that he was going to cut back on the drinking and smoking. Fans wondered, not for the first, second, or even the third time: Was the 24-year-old Ernie, who has beaten Roger Federer and challenged Rafael Nadal on clay, and who is still the owner of a world-class serve, ready to turn things around at last?

We got our next piece of evidence today, when the 118th-ranked Gulbis faced top seed Tomas Berdych in Marseille. While Gulbis lost 6-4, 6-7 (10), 6-4, and that strange forehand failed him many, many times, this wasn’t a match that should make anyone write him off again just yet. Gulbis had upset Berdych in the first round at Wimbledon last year, and the Czech admitted today that he doesn’t like to play him: ‘You don’t know what’s going to happen,” Berdych said. Gulbis has the ability to take the racquet of a player’s hand, and Berdych, a power player himself, isn’t used to that.

What happened in the first set of this match, though, was fairly predictable. Gulbis earned two break points at 2-2, went for big forehand returns, and missed both of them. The two players then held until Gulbis was serving at 4-5. At 30-30 in that game, Gulbis drilled a backhand into the net. Down set point, he drilled a forehand into the net. What had been a close set was suddenly over.

The real surprise in this match wasn’t from the Gulbis side of the net; it was the fact that Berdych couldn’t close out the second set, and never looked comfortable on the court. After trading breaks in the middle of the set, the two went to a tiebreaker. Berdych saved two set points, only to squander three match points, one with a shank on a makeable forehand volley. Worse, he dumped a tentative forehand into the net at 10-10, and lost the set on a Gulbis forehand winner on the next point. Berdych really doesn’t like to play Gulbis; the Czech looked as tight trying to close out No. 118 as he does when he’s trying to close out one of the Big 4.

But he wasn’t tight enough to lose it. Berdych broke at 2-2 in the third, when Gulbis double-faulted and missed a forehand badly at break point. From there, Berdych held out, but it still wasn’t easy. He lost two more match points at 5-4, before kicking a nasty second serve into Gulbis’s body for the win, on his sixth match point.

Berdych advances to play the winner of Julien Benneteau and Jerzy Janowicz, and could be a tough out after surviving this one. As for Gulbis, I can’t say I like the new forehand. It involves a huge swooping motion with his left arm; by the time he gets around to swinging, he’s often on his back foot, and can look something like a tilting scarecrow as he hits.

If there’s going to be a Gulbis resurrection, it won’t be his forehand technique that leads the way. It will be, as it is for every player, how he deals with the psychological ebbs and flows of a match. Today he hung in when he was behind, saving five match points. But he didn’t deal with success all that well. He squandered his own break points, and when he finally broke Berdych at 3-3 in the second, he immediately gave his serve back. Gulbis seemed bothered by having the lead, slamming a towel to the ground and jawing with his father in the stands.

That was nothing compared to what Gulbis did with his racquet in the third set. Down a break at 3-4, he threw it to the court, watched it bounce high in the air above him, then threw it down again and shattered it. The sound was loud enough to force chair umpire Cedric Mourier to cover his ears. When Gulbis saw him do that, the two shared a laugh, a laugh that continued even as Mourier gave him a warning for racquet abuse.

Hey, maybe it’s a sign of progress: At least Gulbis cares enough these days to crush his racquet. The smash and the laugh, after all, are part of what fans like about Ernie, and why they get their hopes up about him so easily.

Viña del Mar: Zeballos d. Nadal

Mon, 11 Feb 2013 00:35:00 +0000

Rafael Nadal arrived in Viña del Mar seeking to shake off the rust from his injury-induced seven-month absence from the sport. But as the copper-colored clay swirled around in Sunday's final, Nadal couldn't create separation from Horacio Zeballos and his dust-busting forehand.

Stepping into the court to smack his forehand with ambition, the 73^rd-ranked Argentine delivered a stunning, 6-7 (2), 7-6 (6), 6-4 upset of the seven-time French Open champion to capture his first career ATP title and spoil the fifth-ranked Spaniard’s comeback tournament.

Nadal carried a 15-match clay-court winning streak and commanding 36-4 record in clay-court finals—only Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic had beaten Rafa at that stage—into the title match against Zeballos, who was contesting his second ATP tour-level final. All this, combined with the fact that Nadal had not surrendered a set in the tournament—and the reminder than he permitted just seven games to Zeballos in their lone prior meeting at the 2010 French Open—combined to create an atmosphere of impending coronation among fans, many of whom waved and wore the Spanish flag.

None of that mattered much to the 27-year-old underdog, who opened the year winning the Sao Paulo Challenger and looked poised playing the role of party crasher. Zeballos played boldly at crunch time, winning eight straight points to close an improbable victory.

The first ATP all-lefty final since the 2010 Monte Carlo Masters saw both men attack with their forehands throughout a tight opening set. Nadal opened a 5-1 lead in the first-set tiebreaker and struck an inside-out forehand winner for set point. Anticipating Zeballos’ wide serve, Nadal was off the doubles alley when he blasted a backhand return winner down the line to snatch the set with a fist-pumping flourish that brought the crowd to its feet.

Zeballos packs his pony-tail in a bun beneath his baseball cap, reminiscent of compatriot Gaston Gaudio, and unloads a sweeping swing on his forehand that recalls fellow Argentine left-handers Guillermo Vilas and Franco Squillari. Though Zeballos has 10 Challenger titles to his credit, consistency has been a challenge: He did not surpass the second round of an ATP event last year. Zeballos saved the only two break points in a second set that escalated into another tiebreaker.

Zeballos’ forcing forehand and a biting serve brought the Argentine to set point at 6-4 in the breaker. Then, after fending off a barrage of heavy forehands, Nadal short-circuited a crackling rally with an angled backhand drop shot. Grunting himself into gear, Zeballos ran it down, but flicked a full-stretch forehand out, then proceeded to press a ball against his temple like a man pained by a bruise—and worried into might swell into something much worse. When a backhand of sailed wide on the next point, it was six-all.

But this time, with Nadal serving, Zeballos sat on the backhand return and slammed his one-hander down the line—a master strike that recalled Rafa’s backhand return winner in the first set breaker. It earned Zeballos another set point, and this time he didn't blink. Opening the court with a punishing inside-out forehand, Zeballos waited for Nadal to make his move, then struck a sweeping forehand behind him to force a third set. It was the third tiebreaker Zeballos won this week—he beat Albert Ramos, 7-6 (6), in the third set of the quarterfinals, and defeated Carlos Berlocq, 6-3, 7-6 (4), in the semifinals.

When Nadal broke at love to open the third set, it appeared order had been restored. But the former No. 1 did not consistently produce the depth on his groundstrokes and paid the price. Nadal saved two break points in the very next game, but blocked a forehand drop volley into the top of the net to immediately drop serve.

A brilliant backhand stab volley from Nadal helped him erase a break point and gut out a hold for 4-4. But rather than rue that lost opportunity, Zeballos was strengthened by the struggle. He slammed an ace wide to hold at love for 5-4 and ratchet up the pressure on Nadal, who was drifting a bit too far behind the baseline in prevent-defense mode.

Zeballos exploited Nadal's court positioning with a forehand drop shot winner, then curled a gorgeous running forehand cross-court to shockingly earn triple match point. When Nadal found the net to end the two hour, 46-minute struggle, Zeballos fell flat on his back, collapsing to the court in a combination of exhilaration, relief, and disbelief. Some members of the crowd looked so astonished by the result that the initial reaction was a bit more muted than one might expect, but when Zeballos rose, his white Fila shirt caked in crushed red brick, the realization of the win struck all.

“It's a dream for me,” said Zeballos afterward. “To be able to play a final against Nadal was already good enough for me. It's a moment that will stay in my memory for the rest of my life.”

Zeballos never shook the clay that streaked his shirt or the smile plastered across his face, while Nadal must know the bulls-eye on his back grows larger after a stunning loss like this. Still, his game will grow sharper with each match.

Doha: Gasquet d. Davydenko

Sat, 05 Jan 2013 18:12:00 +0000

When he stepped to the line to serve at 4-3 in the second set against Richard Gasquet today, Nikolay Davydenko had not been broken in Doha all week. He’d held 43 consecutive times. Two more and he would have his 22nd career title. He didn’t hold.

To that point, a Davydenko win had looked like a foregone conclusion. As he had the previous day in his demolition of top seed David Ferrer, the Russian had controlled the action against Gasquet. He had broken in the second game of the match, taken a 3-0 lead, and with little trouble had held out for the set, 6-3. Davydenko was standing on top of the baseline and punishing Gasquet with his customary lasers to the corners. After all of that offense, the Russian had closed the set with a sparkling bit of defense. Facing a break point at 5-3, Davydenko tracked down a brilliant Gasquet forehand and shot back a surprisingly hard slice that handcuffed him.

As for the Frenchman, after an early flurry of promising play at the net, he had been unable to fight his away anywhere near the baseline during most rallies. He settled for heavy topspin from deep in the court, and when he did have an opportunity, he became even more passive. Gasquet earned a break point in the second game of the second set, only to step back and let Davydenko connect on an easy forehand winner. When Davydenko held, and then broke Gasquet at 2-2 on an ill-advised serve and volley foray from the Frenchman, this one looked done and dusted.

It looked even more so one game later, when Davydenko earned two break points for a chance to go up 5-2 and serve for the title. This is when Davydenko, after being so dominant all week, finally lost that laser-like accuracy. He hit a backhand long on one breaker, and an easy forehand into the net on the next. Gasquet escaped and, in the next game, broke serve for the first time to level the set at 4-4.

Gasquet and his coach, Riccardo Piatti, had talked this week about his improved fitness, and that’s a big part of what won him this match. Yes, he spent much of his time deep in the court, but he eventually made that tactic, such as it was, work for him. He improved the depth and height on his shots as the match progressed, and watched as Davydenko imploded with 21 unforced errors in the second set, and 57 for the day.

If the body is willing, the mind will often follow, and that’s the way it was for Gasquet, who was grittier than normal this week. At 4-4, 30-30 in the second set, he hit a an ace and a forehand winner to hold. He served well in taking the second-set tiebreaker and closed it with a confident smash. He managed to keep his head after Davydenko took a nine-minute injury timeout at the start of the third set after tweaking his hip. And he did what Davydenko couldn’t do in the second set, secure an insurance break, with a dynamic scrambling pass. After a nervous hiccup trying to serve it out at 5-2, Gasquet secured the win after one last backhand error from Davydenko, 3-6, 7-6 (4), 6-3.

A winding, tiring, and ultimately surprising Doha final ended with Gasquet’s eighth title, rather than Davydenko’s 22nd. Both will be players to watch in Melbourne.

Brisbane: S. Williams d. Pavlyuchenkova

Sat, 05 Jan 2013 10:31:00 +0000

For four games, it looked like a match, potentially a very good match. It’s hard to remember now, but both Serena Williams and Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova came out firing the ball in their final in Brisbane today. They split the first four points, all on winners, and each of them closed out their service games with aces. Williams powered through all of her strokes as expected, but Pavlyuchenkova stood her ground at the other baseline and powered them right back. At one point, she even forced Serena to go to her left hand, Sharapova-style, to retrieve a ball. It all looked a little improbable from the Russian’s perspective. She’s talented, but were her hands really that fast?

They weren’t, it turned out. The first cracks in Pavs’ armor showed at 2-3, and they only grew wider from there. In that game, Williams hit three solid forehand returns, and the Russian threw in a double fault. Serena had her break, and Anastasia never got close to breaking her back—Williams lost just eight points on her serve over the course of what would be a 51-minute, 6-2, 6-1 win for her 47th career title, and first of what could be many more this season. Serena hit aces to each corner and winners with ease. To say it was “convincing” would be the understatement of the season thus far.

Pavlyuchenkova’s last and only chance came when she saved two break points at 0-1 in the second set. Serena looked a little tight on a netted forehand, but she came right back to win the game with a nicely anticipated forehand angle volley—even Serena looked impressed with herself after that one. In the next game, Pavlyuchenkova came back from 30-0 down to 30-30 on Williams’s serve, but she shanked an easy backhand off a second ball and was never in the match again. She’s now 0-4 against Serena. It's better to be able to move, rather than just hit, when you face the American. Pavs will always be a hitter first.

Still, with her wins over Angelique Kerber and Petra Kvitova, this was a strong week for Pavlyuchenkova, a former No. 1 junior with a big game who has struggled mightily to live up to her potential. She looks fitter, and her consistency has improved, but there wasn’t a whole lot she could have done tonight. Williams hit winners seemingly without risk, and was lethal and efficient in equal measures. But the most interesting stat to me was her first serve percentage: 55. That’s not even that great.

"Not even that great": You never would have known it from watching.

Doha: Davydenko d. Ferrer

Fri, 04 Jan 2013 17:32:00 +0000

If today in Doha is any indication, you can forget that Rafael Nadal is on sick leave and focus on a Big Four consisting of Novak Djokovic, Roger Federer, Andy Murray and ... Nikolay Davydenko.

Alright, so Davydenko is ranked a modest No. 44. He’s 31, and has won just two titles in the last three years. Last year, he never even made a final. But if you saw the way he demolished world No. 5 David Ferrer in the semifinals, 6-2, 6-3, you might be more inclined to pencil him in over the Spaniard as next in line for that No. 4 ranking that Nadal is about to surrender.

Davydenko routed one of the most combative, gritty, and consistent players of the past decade in a match that barely lasted an hour (officially, it was 1:04). Ferrer didn’t see a single break point, and he made 26 unforced errors to Davydenko’s 17. He also hit just six winners compared to the Russian’s 18.

The word we’re looking for is one very rarely associated with anything Ferrer: “Blowout!”

The most notable feature of the match was Davydenko’s ability to take care of his serve. It’s been a theme for him all week in Doha. It may be hard to believe, but the 5’10” veteran hasn’t dropped serve yet, and the book on him has always been that you can get into his service games and undermine his confidence.

But truth be told, both of these baseliners turned the conventional wisdom on its ear today, relying on their serves as if they were natural-born attackers rather than defenders. Davydenko scored the first break with a one-two combination of a pretty backhand down-the-line winner followed by a tricky backhand that pulled Ferrer up to the net; it forced a volley error. That led to a 3-1 Davydenko lead, which threatened to become a two-break edge when Ferrer next served and fell behind 0-40. But Ferrer hit his way out of trouble, delivering three consecutive service winners to hold for 2-3.

Davydenko followed with an impressive serving display of his own to hold quickly, and Ferrer wandered into danger again in the next game. Once again, he fell behind 0-40 as Davydenko unloaded a dazzling array of relatively flat and lethally angled groundstrokes to keep Ferrer on the run. Ferrer gamely fought off the first two break points but succumbed to the third following a nifty combination of groundies that brought Davydenko up to the net to claim the break with a volley winner. He then held with ease to take the first set in 28 minutes.

You could be forgiven for groaning at that point and thinking, “We’re in for a long one...” But Ferrer, now in panic mode, began a campaign to break Davydenko’s momentum by playing a lot of slice. That didn’t work out so well—he had to save two break points just to survive the first game of the next set. The next five games rolled by quickly; the way Davydenko was clubbing the ball, it was clear we weren’t going to be watching a lot of long rallies. That, by the way, offers a clue to the question, “How do you beat Ferrer?”

Davydenko made his final, critical breakthrough in the seventh game, once again rolling to a 0-40 lead on Ferrer’s serve. He didn’t allow Ferrer to sneak back into this one, though, slamming the door with a Nole-worthy inside-out forehand winner. Did Davydenko, ordinarily a shy and self-effacing type, really puff out chest and glare at the spot where the ball landed with that “Who’s the man?” glint in his eyes?

All Davydenko had to do then was keep his nerve. He accomplished that with ease as a dispirited Ferrer allowed yet another hold, then fell behind 30-40 on serve. Davydenko converted the match point when he ended a rally with yet another, final, backhand winner.

I’ve always like Davydenko’s game better than that of Ferrer, and this match demonstrated why. When you can take the ball early, hit relatively flat, scamper around the court nimbly and pick your angles, even a grinder extraordinaire like Ferrer can be rendered powerless.

Now let’s see you do it again, Kolya.

Brisbane: S. Williams d. Stephens

Thu, 03 Jan 2013 11:11:00 +0000

There is a tendency to compare Sloane Stephens to Serena Williams, and it’s understandable: Both African-Americans have enjoyed success in the pros at a young age and can overpower opponents with blistering shots. The two are close off the court as well, with Serena serving as a mentor to her Fed Cup teammate.

But the comparison falls short in one respect: The way the two express themselves on court. There’s no guesswork needed to figure out how Serena’s feeling—just watch her facial reactions, listen to her points, and take note of how hard she’s hitting her returns. Stephens, on the other hand, exhibits a quiet confidence, all the way down to the way she strikes her shots, which have more spin than splat. It served her very well today in Brisbane, even in defeat. For although Serena prevailed, 6-4, 6-3, Stephens’ demeanor and determination made this quarterfinal into a memorable, high-quality contest that often brought out the best in both women.

Stephens did a little tightrope-walking early on, despite matching Serena’s service holds through eight games. The 19-year-old got away with some soft second serves—once paying homage to Agnieszka Radwanska with a “squat shot” winner—and managed to snag points she was seemingly out of. But although some of this could be chalked up to Serena errors, Stephens’ poise must be commended. She can reset rallies with looping, accurate groundstrokes, then use those shots to create advantageous angles. Many of Serena’s errors came when she was on the run, but it was Stephens who forced that movement. That put the elder countrywoman into some pressure-filled situations, including facing a break point at 3-3. Serena wiped it away with an ace.

Like her attitude, Serena’s serve can sometimes come across as cavalier, but no matter what you think about it, it’s the biggest difference between herself and her opponents, and Stephens was no exception. The most powerful shot in the WTA made life difficult for Stephens as she returned—though Serena rarely got through service games unscathed—and put added importance on the teenager’s own service games. Up 40-15 while serving to stay in the first set at 5-4, Stephens made the cardinal sin of not finishing off Serena when she could. Four points later, the set was over. Serena made it so with smart second-serve returns, eschewing power for placement.

Power was never far from reach, though, for both women, and Stephens’ continuous improvement in the first set suggested that she wouldn’t fade away. And had she converted a break point in the opening game of the second set—earned with a clean forehand winner up the line—Stephens might still be out on the court as I type this. But as we’ve seen so many times, both today and in matches past, Serena’s serve came to the rescue, and it was 1-0 with a hold. The pattern was established once again.

Serena was hardly automatic in this match, but she methodically built up her score with more powerful shots, while Stephens countered with an astute performance that belies her young age. Her quiet confidence was evident in the second set, perhaps her best of the two despite winning one less game. You saw it on Stephens' face, how she carried herself, and even when she challenged a fault call on her first serve—naturally, it was reversed.

But the pattern from the first set did not disappear, and after a light first serve in the eighth game, Serena earned a break point, which she won at net for a 5-3 lead. A big “Come on!” cry followed the winner, just as it did at one instance in the first set, something Stephens called “disrespectful” during a chat with her coach. It was another illustration of the difference between the two, but in Serena’s mind, Stephens and her will have another similarity soon enough: After Williams held serve for the win, the former No. 1 declared that Stephens “can be the best in the world one day.” That’s a pretty confident statement.

Davis Cup Final: Stepanek d. Almagro

Sun, 18 Nov 2012 19:18:00 +0000

Could Czech fans have felt confident about their team’s Davis Cup fate resting with Radek Stepanek? The 33-year-old is best known for the belly-flopping post-match celebrations he once offered up, not that he ever got to show off The Worm all that often. He’s won only five singles titles in his long career, all at minor tournaments. One of the reasons for this limited success is obvious enough: Stepanek is the player that time forgot; he’s held onto a flying, whack-and-attack style that went out of fashion with the mullet.

But Spanish fans probably didn’t feel any better about having to rely on Nicolas Almagro. The 27-year-old Spaniard, ranked 11th in the world, has loads of talent but has never known quite what to do with it, especially in big matches. He’s reached just three major quarterfinals in his career, all at the French Open.

Old Man Stepanek, with his Mick Jagger lips and rock ’n’ roll showmanship, had to be considered the favorite coming into the match, for Almagro is a claycourt guy to his core and Prague’s O2 Arena has been playing like a bowling alley. Stepanek delivered in the decider, scoring a 6-4, 7-6 (0), 3-6, 6-3 victory to clinch the Davis Cup for the Czech Republic.

Of course, Davis Cup is as much about emotions and guts as it is about match ups. So it was no surprise that both players were tense and nervy early on. Stepanek clanked his groundstrokes repeatedly in his first service game. Almagro gave up two doubles faults in his. But both men held and settled in for the long haul.

Stepanek made the first move, going for outlandish winners from the baseline and picking volleys off his shoes. He earned the first set point at 4-5 with a brilliant series of checkerboard moves, sending Almagro sprinting to and fro at oblique angles until the Spaniard simply ran out of court. The Czech then nailed down the set with a thumping backhand service return that Almagro couldn’t handle. Stepanek marched off the court, fist held high, biceps and lips plumped to the bursting point.

It was clear how much this meant to the combatants: two second-tier players in the deciding rubber of a Davis Cup final. They both recognized that this match could be key to how they’ll be remembered in their sport -- or if they’ll be remembered.

True to the stakes, the match immediately proved highly entertaining, far more so than the David Ferrer-Tomas Berdych match that set it up. The difference early on was Stepanek’s variety: on a good day and up against a player outside the Top 10, he can make you believe serve-and-volley tennis really does still have a place in professional tennis. But most of all, he moved exceptionally well, hitting his forehand on the dead run with a muscular flick of the wrist, and scrambling for every shot. Almagro, on the other hand, sometimes looked like he was on Heathrow’s moving walkway, easing toward the ball with an odd, glassy-eyed detachment.

To be sure, Almagro’s sleepy countenance can be deceiving. After struggling to hold serve early in the second set, the Spaniard came alive with a whiplash down-the-line backhand winner. He turned the momentum by breaking Stepanek and then quickly holding for a 4-2 lead. Just like that, it no longer felt like a fair fight. Watching Almagro bang down huge serves and unleash that wicked one-handed backhand, you can only wonder why he hasn’t had more success on hard courts.

The thing is, as soon as anyone starts thinking such thoughts about Almagro, he starts missing shots by half a foot. Stepanek cleverly drew the Spaniard forward on a break point and then used a he-man forehand-backhand combination to level the match at 4-all.

The battle raged on into a tiebreak, but Stepanek was willing to leave more of himself out there, including skin and blood after diving for a volley. The Czech hit hard, flat groundstrokes that often skipped the net, and he carved angled volleys to within a breath of the lines. The intensity from across the net proved too much for Almagro. The Spaniard stepped back onto the moving walkway and watched the tiebreak pass him by, 7-0.

That should have been the end of Almagro. In any of the majors, it would have been the end of him. But this was Davis Cup, and Stepanek was playing his third best-of-five match in as many days. In the third set, Almagro hardly looked like a man on the ropes. He served big and hit out when he had to, and Stepanek let him do it. The set quickly went to the Spaniard, 6-3. Was Stepanek, looking increasingly bedraggled, suddenly in trouble?

Nope. He just wanted to make things a little more interesting. After scoring an early break, he continued to swoop forward, knocking off volleys straight out of a dog-eared copy of Rod Laver’s “228 Tennis Tips.” The Big Game is still a beautiful thing, and it can still rattle an opponent — especially a claycourt specialist on an indoor hard court. The mood became a little testy in the 4-2 game when partisans in the crowd decided to get into the line-calling business and Stepanek’s forehand started looking a little tight. But the Czech veteran held, pushing Almagro’s back right up against the wall. In Stepanek’s next service game, he smacked two big serves to reach match point. The end came with Almagro dropping a backhand into the net, giving the Czech Republic its first Davis Cup title as an independent country and Stepanek a secure place in tennis history books.

Davis Cup Final: Ferrer d. Berdych

Sun, 18 Nov 2012 15:05:00 +0000

We all knew from the start that Tomas Berdych was primed to be the hero of this Davis Cup final. Eleven-time major champion Rafael Nadal, who bested Berdych in the 2010 Wimbledon final, decided to stay home to rest his knees a while longer. And the tie was being played in Prague on what Spanish captain Alex Corretja called “the fastest surface of the year.”

But high expectations at home can be rough in this competition. Just ask Ilie Nastase, who famously called his team a “10:1 favorite” when Romania had home-court advantage against the U.S. in 1972. Or Juan Martin del Potro, whose Argentinian team faced Spain in Mar del Plata four years ago. Romania and Argentina still haven’t won the sterling silver trophy.

Sure enough, Berdych struggled against Nicolas Almagro on Friday, needing five sets to beat a player who’s never reached a tournament final on anything but clay. After that rubber, which leveled the tie at 1-all, Corretja floated the idea that Almagro’s four-hour loss was all part of the plan, that Spain was using the rope-a-dope on Berdych. Let the 6’5” Czech punch himself out in the first two days (he and Radek Stepanek beat Marc Lopez and Marcel Granollers in four sets yesterday in doubles), so on the last day diminutive David Ferrer could score a knockout against the Czech Republic’s number-one player and spark a comeback for the visitors. Which he did, to the score of 6-2, 6-3, 7-5.

Nerves and fatigue certainly appeared to be a factor right from the start as Berdych, after drifting three feet behind the baseline, lofted a backhand long to give Ferrer a break in the second game. The “ice rink” court at Prague’s O2 Arena started to look like a bad choice for the Czech Republic, which was going for its first Davis Cup as an independent nation. (Ivan Lendl, in the arena today, led Czechoslovakia to the crown back in 1980.) Spain might be a clay-loving country, but Ferrer had beaten Berdych more than once on fast, hard surfaces. And here he was, cranking inside-out forehands and down-the-line backhands, crouching into each stroke as if taking a gut shot at close range. He went up 3-0 in a matter of minutes and cruised to a 6-2 first set.

The match remained utterly without tension in the second set, with the only question being whether Ferrer would run away with the match. Horns blared and cheers erupted with every Berdych point, but the crowd didn’t really seem up for willing their man to victory. This couldn’t have been a surprise to any serious tennis fan. Like Lendl before him, Berdych has never been all that lovable. Defensive about being kept just outside the Grand Slam winner’s circle year after year, the glowering, big-hitting 27-year-old often comes across as self-satisfied and harried at the same time, like Harry Lime up on that Vienna Ferris wheel.

Ferrer has handled his own perennial bridesmaid status much better. Undersized and floppy-haired, the 30-year-old Spaniard is a natural underdog and uses it to his advantage. The small Spanish contingent in the crowd was behind him, and the Czech fans, though certainly not for him, weren’t against him. That was enough for the world’s fifth ranked player. Whereas Berdych was sluggish and out of synch, Ferrer was an unwavering electric current. When he dug out a beautifully angled inside-out forehand from Berdych and followed it with a forehand winner to break early in the second set, no one had any doubt about the outcome of the match. Ferrer easily took the set 6-3, offering up only four unforced errors.

The third set offered more of the same. Berdych fought on for hearth and home, even earning back a break for 4-all, but it was just for show. Ferrer broke again and served at 6-5. When Berdych dumped a forehand in the net to send the tie to a fifth and deciding rubber, Ferrer dropped to his knees in joy. His opponent, meanwhile, stared vacantly into the mists as he headed to the sidelines.

Berdych won two rubbers at this Davis Cup Final, but he wouldn’t be the final-day hero.

Davis Cup Final: Berdych d. Almagro

Sat, 17 Nov 2012 00:00:00 +0000

See what a little trash talk in tennis can do? That’s probably what Tomas Berdych was thinking, and lamenting, as he watched Nicolas Almagro play inspired tennis against him for five sets and nearly four hours in front of a piercingly loud Prague audience today. Earlier in the week, Berdych had called Almagro Spain’s “weak link,” the man whom his Czech team would “build its victory around.” Berdych did build his own win over him today, 6-3, 3-6, 6-3, 6-7 (5), 6-3, but by making it go as long as it did, Almagro may have done more for his own team in the long run. Berdych will most likely have to come back and play doubles tomorrow afternoon, and then the first reverse singles against a rested David Ferrer on Sunday. Judging by how the Big Berd looked at the end of the fifth set today, that could be difficult. He won the last two games in part because he was too tired to do anything but stand and let his shots rip.

Otherwise, personal rivalry aside, this was Davis Cup as usual—a sprawling, sometimes-heroic, sometimes-nervy mass of great shots, plot twists, team love, audience misbehavior, and a terrible, kazoo-like soundtrack. While Berdych tried to use his superior power to rush the clay-loving Almagro on this quick hard court, the Spaniard countered with hooking angles designed to get his taller opponent moving. The two players traded runs and lulls all evening. Berdych, the favorite, kept threatening to slam the door with his intimidating pace, while Almagro kept getting off the mat and grabbing command of the rallies back.

Berdych came in with an 8-3 record in their head to head, and once his teammate Radek Stepanek lost to Spain’s David Ferrer in the opening rubber, it became essential for him to win. But Ferrer’s straight-set victory had sapped some of the energy and anticipation from the crowd. While Berdych had the upper-hand in the early going—he broke Almagro at 4-3 with a curling crosscourt pass and won the first set—the Spaniard hit the ball well and kept his attitude upbeat. He only got better in the second, as he began to dominate from the baseline; Almagro's one-handed backhand, which he hit with as much authority you’ll ever see from him on a hard court, was the aesthetic highlight of the day. He broke Berdych with a brilliant forehand-backhand crosscourt combination to make it 4-2, and held out from there.

In general, though, Almagro had to play better than his norm to stay with the higher-ranked Berdych, and the Spaniard fell back to earth again in the third set. The turnaround came in the first two games. Almagro reached break point on Berdych’s serve—the big man appeared to be staggering—but hit a crosscourt backhand that missed by a few inches. Berdych, smiling with relief, held. Almagro double-faulted to be broken in the next game, and the Czech ran out the set from there. When Berdych opened the fourth with a love break, and followed it with a love hold, it appeared that there would be no comeuppance for the Bad Berd.

But the “weak link” refused to snap. Almagro broke for 2-3 after a couple of nervous misses by Berdych, and they held to 5-4. At that point, the charged atmosphere got another jolt, when the two players went chest to chest as they walked to the sideline for the changeover—neither wanted to give way. Fittingly, the set went to a tiebreaker, and just as fittingly, Almagro, sailing on his third wind of the day, won it 7-5 with an ace. We were all even.

Both players fought as valiantly through the decider. Berdych held off break points in the opening game with two service winners, and broke with a gutsy backhand return at 3-2. But the Czech, growing weary, couldn’t sustain it. He made two unforced errors to give the break back. As I said, though, that weariness helped Berdych in the end—it relaxed him; all he could do was hit big. At 4-3, he cranked two huge forehands to reach break point, and broke with a backhand winner. At 5-3, he opened with another forehand winner, followed it with a volley winner, and shut the door with two big serves.

When these two played in Australia this year, Berdych had refused to shake Almagro’s hand after the Spaniard had drilled him with a forehand. This time Almagro didn’t return the gesture. After four hours, he walked to the net, stuck his hand out to Berdych, gave the Czech coach a wink, and his Spanish supporters a thumbs up. Almagro may yet turn out to be the weak link on Spain’s team this weekend, but for tennis fans he something else today: a class act.

Berdych created more pressure for himself with his words, so credit him for withstanding it. Now there’s not much time for rest. He finished this match around midnight, and he’ll be out to play doubles with Stepanek tomorrow at 2:00 Prague time. The Bad Berd could still be the hero. Or he could look like the weak link himself—for helping inspire Almagro to exhaust him.

Davis Cup Final: Ferrer d. Stepanek

Fri, 16 Nov 2012 19:04:00 +0000

For a while there, David Ferrer looked like a man chasing his wind-driven fedora down the street. A guy trying to poke a bolt through a hole that he can’t see. A hipster struggling to get into a pair of freshly-laundered pipestem jeans, or jeggings.

Before the second set of the opening rubber of the 2012 Davis Cup final was over, Spain’s lead singles player and world No. 5 had been gifted no fewer than 20 break points by his opponent, the Czech Republic’s Radek Stepanek. But Ferrer had been able to capitalize and earn breaks on only of two of them—and one through no great play of his own, as it was a Stepanek double fault that gave the Spaniard his first break.

Still, it was hard to fault Ferrer. He was rarely in danger today, while Stepanek, buoyed by a home crowd and with the notorious Davis Cup nerves in play on both sides of the court, came up with numerous excellent shots and saves to keep the match close—if not quite as close as the final score in favor of Ferrer suggests: 6-3, 6-4, 6-4.

Making full use of the fast court (although not “incredibly fast” as some pundits suggested, thanks to ITF rules that limit court speed) in Prague’s O2 Arena, Stepanek played fine, often heroic attacking tennis—he won 37 of a whopping 64 forays to the net, for a 58 percent success rate. But a few key elements in the match-up and some problems in his execution ensured that Stepanek was fighting a rear-guard action all the way. It was a great demonstration of a player digging in his heels and refusing to yield to the inevitable.

The problem for Stepanek was that he served poorly, especially in the early going. He hovered around the 50 percent first-serve conversion rate for most of the first set, and finished at 56 percent. His forehand, always an assailable shot, couldn’t consistently keep him in rallies. And perhaps most important, Stepanek has a versatile backhand (both a one-handed slice and two-handed drive) but was reluctant to go down the line with it, no matter the variety. Given the extent to which Ferrer loves to sit back on his heels in his own backhand corner and dictate with his inside-out forehand, not having to worry about a Djokovic-esque down-the-line backhand blast surely made his life in this match much more comfortable.

Still, there was that pesky fedora. . .

Or, that pesky, unfamiliar attacking style. . .

In the first set, Stepanek started well but got into deep trouble in the sixth game, which he served. That game went on for a full 24 minutes, and featured seven break points and 11 deuces (and that wasn’t Rafael Nadal out there, bumping up his on-court time as if he were getting paid by the hour). Ferrer couldn’t convert any of the break chances, and when Stepanek held it appeared that he might have the momentum to win the set.

But after dropping the first point on his serve, Ferrer ripped off the next four, and suddenly the arm-weary, 33-year-old Czech found himself having to serve again. It was hardly surprising when he delivered three double faults and dropped serve to go down 3-5. By that point, Stepanek had five doubles; he would serve only one more, but that first flurry cost him disproportionately. Who cares if you throw in a double when you’re behind by two sets and a break?

Ferrer served out the first set and had two break chances in the opening game of the second set before converting on his third attempt. He made the break stick and almost added an insurance break when he had break points 16, 17, and 18 in the fifth game. But Stepanek held and—surprise, surprise—took advantage of a huge lapse of concentration by Ferrer to break for 3-3.

This would be Stepanek’s best (and last) chance to significantly alter the course of the match, and he hung in there for the next two games. In the ninth game, serving at 4-5, he saved break points Nos. 19 and 20, but couldn’t handle a Ferrer backhand service return winner on No. 21. Ahead 5-4, Ferrer banged out an ace on his third set point.

Given that Stepanek will be 34 later this month, and that Ferrer is the long-lost twin to the Energizer Bunny, it was not just unlikely but impossible that Stepanek recover and significantly extend the match. Ferrer went up an early break in the third set, and added an insurance break that came in handy when Stepanek broke him while down 2-5.

The Czech kept things undecided, if not necessarily interesting anymore, with a hold in the next game. But the inevitable came to pass in the next game when Ferrer forced a backhand volley error to end it.

World Tour Finals: Djokovic d. Federer

Mon, 12 Nov 2012 23:38:00 +0000

The margins are slim at the top of the men’s game these days. We’ve heard it many times over the last few years, but it was borne out again in the semis and the final at the ATP’s year-end championships. Yesterday I began by saying that each set between Roger Federer and Andy Murray had the same theme—a lead by Murray that was erased, seemingly from out of nowhere, by an opportunistic Federer. Twenty-four hours later the roles had changed: This time is was Federer who went up an immediate break in each set, only to watch Novak Djokovic steal both of them from him at the end. It was a fitting end to 2012, as the season’s No. 1 player edged its No. 2, 7-6 (6), 7-5—96 total points to 95.

The strange thing is that, for most of the match, it was No. 2 who had the upper hand. Federer, the master of the one-minute opening hold, out-did himself this time by closing his first service game with an easy forehand volley winner at the 55-second mark. Djokovic, by contrast, was completely unsettled to start. He was broken at love in his own opening service game, a game that featured a mishit volley from him and a routine backhand sent 10 feet long. Federer went up 3-0, and when he started the following game with an imperious forehand winner, it looked like we might see a repeat of the first-set bagel that he served to Djokovic this summer in Cincinnati.

Again, though, the margins are slim, even between a 6-0 set and one that goes to a tiebreaker. Yesterday it was Murray who failed to secure an insurance break when he had a chance; this time it was Federer. He reached deuce at 3-0, as Djokovic began stretching his back in discomfort. But Nole held with a forehand winner to get on the board. The blowout was averted, but only just. His back got better.

The key point in the set was the next one, though not for the reasons we first thought. In it, Djokovic forced Federer to scramble, only to have him come back and smack a forehand pass by him. It looked like one more highlight-reel moment in Federer’s march to a first set win, but it ended up helping Djokovic more. He ran a lot in that point; after it, he relaxed, loosened up, and left his early discomfort behind. He also found his famous return of serve, putting one on the baseline at break point, which eventually led to a Federer ground stroke going long. After all of the Federer fireworks, they were back on serve. The match had turned, and the Swiss’s forehand wouldn’t be the weapon it was early on—he finished with eight winners and 24 unforced errors from that side. Djokovic went, in the blink of an eye, from being lost at sea to very much in his running, defending, counter-punching element along the baseline.

But Djokovic was far from home free. Serving for the set at 5-4, 30-0, he got tight and made three unforced errors, including one at set point, before being broken. The two went to a tiebreaker, and neither could shake the other through the first 10 points. Djokovic took a lead at 6-5, and seemed to have a forehand pass by Federer for the set—that’s when the fun began. Roger lunged and managed a perfect drop volley; Novak somehow tracked it down and flipped it past Federer, seemingly for the set again. But Federer reached back and found a forehand crosscourt angle for a winner. Djokovic could only put his hands on his hips in disbelief as the crowd rose to its feet. A very good set had reached its peak.

After the climax—there was the anti-climax. At 6-6, Federer made a strange shot choice, trying to go down the line with a topspin backhand from deep in the court. He shanked it badly, and Djokovic closed out the set with an inside-out forehand winner.

It had been a whirlwind set, and neither players nor fans seemed quite ready for another one right away. Federer opened it by persisting through an 11-minute game, with virtual silence in the arena, to break Djokovic’s serve. The quality of play became less spectacular and more rugged as the set wore. Federer again had a chance for some insurance on Djokovic’s serve at 3-1, but again his forehand deserted him at break point. Still, when Federer served at 5-4, it looked certain that the set would be his. He built a 40-15 lead and snapped off a first serve. Djokovic, as he tends to do at these moments, snapped it right back. Federer, rattled, made two errors, went down a break point, and watched as Djokovic hit two lines to win the game.

There were hints, in Djokovic’s back-to-the-wall chutzpah and Federer’s staggered response, of the end of their fabled 2011 U.S. Open semifinal. Those hints grew harder to ignore when Djokovic hit a big crosscourt forehand at 30-30 in the next game and held for 6-5, and Federer opened his following service game by sending a shanked forehand long. After another forehand miss for 30-30 and a backhand long for 30-40, we had, very suddenly and somewhat incredibly, reached championship point for Djokovic.

Federer went up the T with his serve; Djokovic was there. A few short balls from Djokovic later, Federer approached with an inside out forehand. Djokovic was there again, with this year’s version of The Shot—a lunging backhand pass winner. Federer, who had found the perfect balance of aggression and margin against Murray, had lost it this time. He may have been guilty of not coming forward and using his chip approach enough; he may have gone crosscourt with his forehand too often; he certainly missed it too much. Djokovic was the better player when it mattered. He kept the score close when he wasn’t playing well, he tightened the ship at the end of each set, and he played brilliantly, as always, with his back to the brink.

If there were any questions as to who the Player of the Year for 2012 was, they were answered with Djokovic’s final backhand. In a year when each of the Big 4 claimed a major, and when Federer and Djokovic each had two wins against the other, it was that bullet pass, which just cleared the net and just ducked under Federer’s outstretched racquet, that provided the clinching margin. As always these days, it was a slim one, but it was enough.

World Tour Finals: Federer d. Murray

Sun, 11 Nov 2012 22:59:00 +0000

The first set of Roger Federer’s semifinal win over Andy Murray today in London was close, the second one wasn’t. But they shared a similar plot: A lead by Murray that Federer snatched away, seemingly from out of nowhere.

Federer started slowly. In the first game, he made four unforced errors and was broken, and his forehand seemed to be drawn magnetically into the net. ESPN commentators Patrick McEnroe and Brad Gilbert believed that the unsteadiness was caused by Federer’s fearful desire to counter Murray’s new, Lendl-era aggression, but it could just as easily have been a generic slow start. Either way, Murray was more proactive than normal in the early going, and it worked for him. He stepped into his backhand and went after his forehand return. On the latter shot, though, I thought he was too aggressive, and that it cost him.

At 2-0 and 3-1 Murray had opportunities to go up a double break. In the first of those games, at deuce, he smacked a low-percentage crosscourt forehand return that landed just wide. In the second of those games, up 3-1, 15-30, with a look at a second serve, Murray went for broke again on his forehand and missed by a few inches. Both times Federer went on to hold and keep himself in the second set. Overall, Murray’s determination to attack was the right one, but that doesn’t mean you can’t also play to the situation—“being aggressive” shouldn’t mean “being aggressive with every single shot.” At that stage, Federer was still getting settled and making errors. That was probably a moment for Murray, no matter what his long-term game plan was, to make Federer play a few balls. As it was, he knocked on the door, but couldn’t blow the first set open.

If Murray wanted a lesson in how to attack situationally, how to pick his spots, he didn’t need to look far. Federer showed his mastery of that skill again today. By 3-4 in the first set, he had found his range. He had stopped the errors, neutralized the Murray attack, and punctuated a forehand winner with his first “Come on!” of the evening. Now it was 3-4, 30-30, and Federer felt comfortable taking the initiative. He chipped and charged the net. The ball sat up for what looked like an easy pass. Except that there is no such thing as an easy pass in the semis of the World Tour Finals against Roger Federer. Murray pulled up and sailed a backhand long. When Federer came in again, with a brilliant inside-in forehand approach, to break on the next point, the momentum had turned for good.

The first set went to a tiebreaker, and Federer saved his most well-measured shotmaking for it. He opened with a forehand winner, and hit another to make it 3-3. In perhaps the match’s biggest point, at 4-4, he came forward, hit a swing volley, and dared Murray to pass him. Murray gave his forehand a rip, straight into the net. At 6-5, Federer finished the set with a surprise serve up the T in the ad court and a deep forehand that drew another error from Murray. The London crowd, firmly in the Swiss man’s corner, roared. It felt like a great escape, and a long climb back for Murray.

That feeling never changed. Federer fed off the positive energy, while Murray sagged visibly and quickly appeared out of ideas. The key was another blown lead by the Scot. Up 40-0 on his serve at 1-1, Murray grew passive, let the game get back to deuce, and sliced a backhand limply into the net. Federer pounced again, breaking with another inside-in forehand. When Murray ended the following game by half-heartedly slicing a forehand drop shot into the bottom of the net, he appeared gutted and at sea. The fiery attack of the first set was long gone. At 4-2, Federer put him out of his misery with another chip and charge off of a second serve, and a sharp crosscourt backhand pass to break. Federer’s 7-6(5), 6-2 win was soon complete, and he was off to his third straight final at the 02 Arena.

Two stat stand out: Murray’s percentage of points won on his second serve (37), and the number of returns Federer missed on second serves (0; he was 34 for 34). Against most of today’s two-handed baseliners, Muzz can get away with a no-bite, middle-of-the-box second delivery. But Federer made him pay for it, both with his lack of errors and his ability to come forward at strategic moments. It’s not too much of a stretch to say that Murray’s second serve is the biggest liability of any shot among the Big 4.

Still, the story today, as it so often is, was Roger Federer. This time it was his sixth sense for what tactic to use at what moment, for when to attack and when to be safe, for keeping the score close before seizing his opportunity, for taking what's given to him, that was on display most prominently. Federer showed that it’s not enough to have an aggressive “mindset,” which is what Murray has spent the season developing. You have to use your mind to make it work for you from one situation to the next.

The next situation for Federer is Novak Djokovic. Their final tomorrow will be a fitting end to 2012. Each has a major and two wins against the other. One is No. 1 and the other No. 2. The winner may be the Player of the Year. Neither wants an up year to end on a down note.

World Tour Finals: Djokovic d. Del Potro

Sun, 11 Nov 2012 17:54:00 +0000

Novak Djokovic staged another brilliant comeback to reach the last day of the World Tour Finals for the first time since winning it in 2008, outlasting and ultimately mastering Juan Martin del Potro 4-6, 6-3, 6-2.

Appropriately for this London setting, “keep calm and carry on” seems to be Djokovic’s motto these days. Even as he raised his game in the second set, he played within himself enough to have energy and concentration to spare for the crucial third set. It was gripping from the start. Saving two break points in his first service game with a strong serve and a series of rock-solid forehands while refusing to be pushed back off the baseline, del Potro quickly hit on a couple of plays that yielded consistent dividends — judiciously-timed drop shots followed by passing winners, and smoothly redirecting the ball down the line to close cross-court exchanges. The latter play earned him 15-30 on Djokovic’s serve at 3-3, then the Serb hammered a smash into the net and it was Djokovic’s turn to save two break points in style.

There was almost nothing to separate the two, but del Potro was playing with fewer unforced errors than Djokovic, whose forehand when stretched wide was looking fragile. Del Potro unerringly targeted that spot and earned the break, serving out the set to love to finish with a 70% first serve percentage and a fist pump. He picked up right where he left off, opening the second set with a lob winner over Djokovic’s head, then getting to 15-30 after another lob which Djokovic could only unsuccessfully attempt to return between-the-legs. Although Djokovic fought off three break points to hold, at 1-1 del Potro effortlessly absorbed everything Djokovic threw at him in a 33-shot rally to break with a fine combination of forehands.

He looked all set for a return to the finals — and then it went, as it sometimes can, horribly, inexplicably wrong. Djokovic played his finest shot for a while for 15-15 and whether a consequent seed of doubt or an excess of confidence was to blame, del Potro made a rash of unforced errors to hand back the break. It was a crash back to earth heard round the world and after Djokovic held, del Potro played another terrible service game to be broken and shanked a forehand long to surrender the set, 3-6.

The smart money always has to be on Djokovic in a third set these days, and he didn’t disappoint. Suddenly fleet of foot again, he stopped trying to disrupt del Potro with slice and instead concentrated on moving him around, stretching him out wide to the backhand wherever he could and going back behind him when he couldn’t. It worked beautifully and Djokovic broke immediately to lead 2-1. With del Potro not moving well enough to control the middle of the court behind the good shots he did manage to land, it was Djokovic’s turn to mercilessly carve up his opponent with his own forehand, not blasted but repeatedly perfectly weighted and measured on to the lines. Just such a forehand on to the back of the line broke del Potro again for 5-2 and Djokovic served out the match without a thoroughly demoralized del Potro being able to put a return in court. I’d call it a stunning reversal of fortune, were it not that Djokovic has made such comebacks look almost routine.

World Tour Finals: Ferrer d. Tipsarevic

Sat, 10 Nov 2012 22:18:00 +0000

Throughout the week, the players have been at one in insisting that despite the round-robin format, they’re not thinking about qualification scenarios or mathematical permutations, but just about winning the match in front of them, as professionals, as competitors. It’s difficult to believe, to be honest, but David Ferrer at least seems to mean what he says. Already eliminated from the tournament in a particularly painful fashion — superseded in the group by del Potro, whom he beat earlier in the week — no one would have blamed Ferrer for essentially taking his ball and going home, especially with the imminent prospect of leading his team in the Davis Cup finals next weekend, especially when he lost the first set 4-6. Instead, he rallied for no particular reason other than pure competitive cussedness (money and points probably helped), defeating Janko Tipsarevic 4-6, 6-3, 6-1.

Tipsarevic, too ill to practice earlier in the week, has been more notable for gallows humor off the court than his performances on it, getting just four games in each of his round-robin matches against Federer and del Potro. With tonight’s match (aside from the aforesaid money and points) the last of his season and deciding nothing but the semifinal match-ups, it was a bizarre yet somehow fitting moment for Tipsarevic to find some manic energy — if not finesse. Ferrer started understandably flat and erratic, making 13 of his total 27 unforced errors in the first set, and Tipsarevic raced to a 4-0 lead with Ferrer a step slow and scrambling behind the baseline.

It was the best it would get for Tipsarevic, really. A hold to love for Ferrer steeled the Spaniard and serving at 4-1, Tipsarevic put himself in trouble with two unforced errors. It was all the encouragement Ferrer needed, breaking after another backhand error from the Serb, and Tipsarevic found himself mired in an exchange of breaks with the rapidly improving Ferrer. He did well to serve the set out 6-4 with a fine combination of forehand winners, but was broken to love at the beginning of the second set and somehow it was Ferrer now who was playing up on the baseline for the majority of the points while Tipsarevic was scrambling three or four feet behind it.

Still, Tipsarevic had his chances to get back in the match. In the second set, a terrible off-forehand blasted out of the court handed him the break back, and in the third, he fought his way to a break point as Ferrer served at 0-1. He couldn’t maintain the former or capitalize on the latter; handed a short ball, he tried for a backhand angle that was far too acute and did not hold serve again, broken for the match shortly afterwards.

The last big tournament played in London ended with Murray beating Federer and del Potro beating Djokovic. There will be no medals on the line this time, but there’s a big title to win and evolving rivalries to contend. It should be anything but a gloomy Sunday.

World Tour Finals: Del Potro d. Federer

Sat, 10 Nov 2012 17:38:00 +0000

After suffering six defeats to Roger Federer this year, some of them excruciating, Juan Martin del Potro gained his second measure of revenge, backing up his triumph in Basel with a 7-6 (3), 4-6, 6-3 victory to claim his place in the semifinals of the ATP World Tour Finals.

There’s no getting away from the fact that, due to the round-robin format, the stakes for the two players on the court today were heavily lopsided: del Potro had to win to avoid getting on the plane home, while Federer had already qualified for the final stages by virtue of two wins already this week. Still, there’s no question that del Potro was better and more clinical than his erratic opponent, finishing with 20 unforced errors to Federer’s 42.

It was a staccato, serve-dominated affair in which Federer’s range on his groundstrokes seemed to drift in and out of focus. Throughout the match, Federer struggled to deal with del Potro’s fearsome cross-court forehand, clearly unwilling to be drawn into the long cross-court exchanges favored by the Argentine but unable to consistently or effectively redirect the ball up the line. Still, it was the six-time champion who made the first move, earning three break points on del Potro’s serve at 3-4. The first two were saved by del Potro with an ace and a forehand right on to the baseline, but it was the third that would prove to be a troubling omen as Federer, with a strong position in the point, sent a forehand long.

It was symptomatic of the strange absence of Federer’s usually-reliable killer instinct and it came back to haunt him again in the first-set tie break. With del Potro’s forehand firing relentlessly, Federer made consecutive forehand errors, then had a backhand down the line winner overruled by the Argentine’s Hawkeye challenge. Trailing 1-6, Federer protected two set points with strong serving, but even having what he thought was a service winner for the set overturned by Hawkeye when he was already walking to his chair didn’t disturb del Potro, returning to the baseline and serving another to close out a 53-minute set.

It would prove to be the most closely-contested, with the second and third sets much quicker and decided by a single service break either way. Del Potro blinked and Federer played his best return game of the match to take a 1-0 lead in the second set. While it was enough to even up the match, the interruption to del Potro’s service rhythm proved only momentary and it was early enough in the set that del Potro did not start the third set reeling. Quite the contrary: after holding to love, del Potro pummeled Federer’s forehand for two errors and 30-30, then made a clean backhand pass up the line as Federer’s approach was not nearly testing enough. It was only one break point, but it was all that del Potro needed.

Del Potro’s service percentage climbed into the eighties as Federer’s plummeted, and with the match bedeviled by bizarrely poor line-calling (the umpire overruled only once, and that wrongly) the defending champion was frustrated enough to shout at himself by the end of the match. On his first match point, del Potro found himself scrambling at the back of the court as Federer came in but still made a shot testing enough to elicit a volley into the net which sent him into the semifinals.

World Tour Finals: Murray d. Tsonga

Fri, 09 Nov 2012 22:53:00 +0000

On the brief changeover after Andy Murray took the first set from Jo-Wilfried Tsonga today at the Urch (a.k.a. the O2 arena, which resembles a giant sea urchin), the Scot asked chair umpire Mohamed Leyhani to confirm what most everybody but himself seemed to know: that by winning that set, he qualified for the second semifinal place (right behind Novak Djokovic) in Group A at the ATP World Tour Finals.

Leyhani should have ignored the question. Remaining in ignorant bliss might have enabled Murray to make shorter work of a match in which he almost blew the the second set (Tsonga had a set point with Murray serving near the end) before he nailed it down, 6-2, 7-6 (3).

The match wrapped up a perfectly dismal World Tour Final for Tsonga, a finalist in this event last year but winless in 12 matches against Top 8 players this year. It’s back to the drawing board for Tsonga, but at least now he has the help of new coach Roger Rasheed for 2013.

Murray looked sharp at the start; he surely knew that all he needed to do to qualify for the single-elimination finale was win a set. He broke Tsonga in the very first game when the hulking Frenchman made a backhand passing shot error. It was just the beginning of Jo-Willy’s problems. Murray held, then ran off four of the next five points to record his second break.

In the blink of an eye, it seemed, it was set/qualifying point for Murray. He converted it when Tsonga overhit a forehand second-serve return.

For all of his talent as a spectacular shotmaker, Tsonga is not a player designed for the kind wind-sucking, warp-speed, angle-busting rallies in which Murray and Djokovic traffic. He’s much better off applying his power and using his energy discreetly, interspersed with those sometimes gloriously athletic episodes in which he specializes.

The problem for Tsonga is that his shot selection is still sometimes baffling, which tees it up for quality opponents, and his backhand is significantly less threatening than his forehand. Murray found that backhand often today, and it almost always ended badly for Tsonga.

Tsonga made one significant adjustment after he was bombarded in that first set. He began to play more aggressively, especially when he had opportunities to move forward to the net. For the match, Tsonga was successful on 19 of 27 trips to the forecourt. I’d guess that 20 of those forays were in the second set. That’s the kind of thing Tsonga needs to keep doing to fully exploit the advantages of his height and power—it also conserved valuable energy that ends up wasted if he repeatedly engages in long rallies that his backhand keeps him from winning.

Much like his round-robin match with Djokovic, Murray was in firm control for a good set and a half. He led Tsonga by 4-2 in the second (and had yet to face a break point), but he appeared to relax while the Frenchman suddenly seemed determined to make a fight of it, even if the effort was a day late and a dollar short.

Murray clung to his one-break lead until the eighth game, when Tsonga reached 0-40 following the longest and perhaps best point of the match, a spirited exchange that featured a little bit of everything and ended when Murray hit a defensive lob just out. Tsonga broke him immediately to get back even at 4-all. Tsonga got to set point in the 12th game, but Murray dispatched that with a convincing inside-out forehand after a brief rally and went on to force the tiebreaker.

From there, it was Murray all the way. Yet another backhand error gave Murray a mini-break for 3-2. After two holds, Tsonga made a forehand error that left him down 2-6. Murray converted his second match point with an ace.

World Tour Finals: Djokovic d. Berdych

Fri, 09 Nov 2012 16:57:00 +0000

Novak Djokovic beat Tomas Berdych in two very different but equally familiar ways today. In the first set, he did what he usually does against the bigger, stiffer Czech. Djokovic played more flexible defense, returned serve presciently, kept the ball deep and Berdych off the net, and controlled the rallies with seemingly little strain. He won that set 6-2. If you were wondering why Djokovic’s head-to-head record against Berdych was so one-sided—10-1 coming into this match—that set likely answered any remaining questions. In it, Berdych, a power player, managed just three winners and won just 31 percent of points on his second serve. In his earlier matches, against Andy Murray and Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, Berdych had been able to take his ground strokes inside the baseline and finish points at the net. Not so against Djokovic’s speed and depth.

This was Djokovic the efficient baseline machine, the tennis clinician. In the second set, we saw his other side, the tightrope walking daredevil who needs to be pushed the edge before he can relax and play his best. That guy showed up when Novak was serving, up a break, at 2-1. He hit an easy backhand long for 0-30. He let Berdych get in for a winning volley for 15-40. He was broken for the first time. It might have been the fact that with his first set win, Djokovic clinched a spot in the WTF’s semifinals, but he lost just enough concentration to give Berdych some unexpected hope. Now it was the Czech who was stepping in and dictating the neutral rallies.

The set progressed that way, with no breaks, until Djokovic served at 5-6. Berdych snapped off a backhand pass to reach 15-30. The crowd roared more loudly than it had all day; a third set looked possible. It probably looked that way to Berdych as well, because he chose that moment to make two bad unforced errors with his more vulnerable shot, his forehand. Djokovic hit an ace to hold. It was a harbinger of the tiebreaker to come.

Berdych opened the breaker with two volley winners. When he connected for a forehand winner to make it 5-1, a third set looked more than possible. But old habits, and characters, never really die in tennis, and both Berdych and Djokovic quickly reverted to familiar form. The Serb, playing fast and loose with his back to the wall as always, found his crosscourt forehand and his mind-reader's return. The big point came with Berdych leading 6-5; here was his last chance at the set. Djokovic anticipated his serve up the middle, pushed Berdych back with his return, and watched as he tried to do too much with a backhand, got his body twisted up, and blasted the ball into the middle of the net. At 6-6, Berdych’s forehand deserted him again, as he hit an inch wide. On the next point, Djokovic wrapped it up with a service winner, for a 6-2, 7-6(6) win and a ticket to the semifinals. The top seed advances with a 3-0 record and just one set surrendered.

Advice for Berdych: If the score is tight, don’t go for all-out winners on your forehand. Advice for Djokovic: If it's allowed, forfeit all of the points until you're down break point, or set point, or match point, or 1-5 in a tiebreaker. Today, when Djokovic went down by that score, it really did look like he believed he had Berdych right where he wanted him. He was almost flawless from there, while Berdych panicked.

Take your pick, clinical first set or Houdini-esque second set, now you know why Novak Djokovic owns Tomas Berdych.

World Tour Finals: Del Potro d. Tipsarevic

Thu, 08 Nov 2012 22:11:00 +0000

By the end of Juan Martin del Potro’s 6-0 first set win over Janko Tipsarevic this evening, the only question worth asking seemed to be whether the loser should have bothered showing up at all. Tipsarevic has been sick; he defaulted late in the third set against Jerzy Janowicz in Paris last week due to a virus, and was run off the court by Roger Federer on Tuesday in London. He could have pulled out and let Richard Gasquet play this one. By the start of the second set, the fans at the 02 Arena, who had paid to see this singles match and no other singles match, seemed like they wished he had. Their cries of “Go Janko” sounded half like cheers and half like heckles. Tipsy himself couldn’t blame them. Afterward he said, “I’m playing worse than horrible.”

But while Tipsarevic would lose the second set as well, 6-4, he made it respectable and, for a point or two at least, entertaining. He even seemed to gain energy as he went. At 2-4, he came up with a nice reflex forehand volley to hold, and in the following game made a stab short hop get that dropped neatly into the corner for a winner. At 4-5, when he opened with his best backhand of the day, a crosscourt winner, the crowd was fully behind him. But Tipsy’s next forehand caught the tape and refused to go over. That was as far as he would push, but it was farther than we would have thought a few minutes earlier.

I was curious to see this match mainly because I wanted to see del Potro’s form. He’s coming off a big win over one of his nemeses, Roger Federer, in Basel a couple of weeks ago, but he had succumbed yet again to another, David Ferrer, in his first match in London. While it’s hard to take too much away from today's match, del Potro did have his vintage cannon-shot forehand going from the start, he kept Tipsarevic shuttling from one corner to the other, and he backed up his second serve well—del Potro won 71 percent of those points. He also didn’t lose his concentration, even when he appeared to think that Tipsarevic was going to retire after the first set. And just when Tipsy seemed to be taking heart in the final game, del Potro came up with perhaps his best shot of the night, a flicked backhand down the line for a winner.

That’s how Tipsarevic’s season will end. As for del Potro, if he beats Federer on Saturday, he’ll go through to the semis. In most other scenarios, though, he’ll be eliminated and Ferrer will advance. It’s fitting that del Potro, who has already played Federer seven times this year and lost six of those matches, will have his season come down to one last meeting with the Maestro.