Articles by Peter Bodo

Rome: Berdych d. Djokovic

Fri, 17 May 2013 19:17:00 -0400

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: Sharapova d. Stephens

Thu, 16 May 2013 18:01:00 -0400

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 17:13:00 -0400

“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.

Rafatigue

Wed, 15 May 2013 13:49:00 -0400

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.

Madrid: Nadal d. Wawrinka

Sun, 12 May 2013 12:57:00 -0400

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 09:46:00 -0400

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 19:37:00 -0400

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 11:08:00 -0400

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 13:24:00 -0400

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 14:51:00 -0400

“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 13:39:00 -0400

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 11:58:00 -0400

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

Tue, 07 May 2013 22:00:00 -0400

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 16:05:00 -0400

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.

The Rally: The life and legacy of Brad Drewett

Mon, 06 May 2013 14:45:00 -0400

In this special edition of The Rally, senior writers Steve Tignor and Peter Bodo remember the ATP's Brad Drewett, who passed away late last week at 54 after battling motor neurone disease.

Pete,

Brad Drewett's death at 54 has to be one of the cruelest twists of fate imaginable. He spends his life playing and working for the ATP, an organization that by all accounts he loved; he gets the top job and has immediate, and frankly surprising, success there improving the financial lives of his players; and he's cut down after one year, when it looked as if he was just getting started. The whole merciless saga has left a lot of people in the game stunned.

I also feel a little guilty. I was at Drewett's first, introductory press conference, at the Australian Open last year, and like a lot of people there I wasn't too impressed. It's hard to remember now, but there had been some disappointment when he was named. On the surface, Drewett looked a safe hire, a company man, somebody who might lack the vision needed to lead the ATP at that moment. At the time, many players were so fed up with the way the game was run, and the lack of revenue that was coming back to them, that they talked openly of boycotting events and starting their own union.

I can remember watching Andy Roddick at the 2011 U.S. Open talk about how hard it was to get the players together on any topic, how each of them had his own individual interest to consider. Roddick's words were dire enough to make me think there would never be any real change for the better in tennis, that the sport was just too divided and chaotic. When Drewett made his first, rather hesitant speech as the new ATP CEO in Melbourne, I had even less hope. I was looking for a slick salesman who would lead the tour in a new direction, and Brad, as well as he knew the game, didn't seem to fit that role. It turned out I was looking for the wrong thing.

Some insiders who knew Brad better than I did said to give him time, that he would surprise us, and boy were they right. The fact that he was a former player and ATP lifer turned to be just what the tour needed. Drewett quickly realized the opportunity he had with today's top players, that the Big 4 wielded unique power and leverage, and that they were willing to use that leverage to help the rest of the tour. And that's what happened in the series of pay raises that Drewett and the players negotiated with the Grand Slams over the last year. I think Brad trusted the players and helped give them a voice, and the combination worked. Sometimes being a company man helps, because you know your company better than anyone.

What did you think of Brad Drewett, Pete? Does his success tell us anything about what might work in tennis in the future? You probably knew him better than I did, though I do have one instructive story that I can share about a conversation I had with him a few years ago, well before he was in line for the top job.

*****

Steve,

Well, now you have me really intrigued by your reference to an "instructive" moment with Brad. You're probably one of the few people, certainly among journalists, to experience something like that—not least because of some of those hidden virtues of Brad's that you referred to above.

As you suggest, it was extremely easy to underestimate Brad. I did it myself, but for somewhat different reasons. It pains me somewhat to admit it, and it's a difficult thing to say at the moment when the loss of this very solid man is still so fresh, but I doubted that Brad had intellectual horsepower or the persuasive personality to head an organization as large and complex as the ATP. I say complex less because of the nature and structure of the organization than because of the position it's in vis a vis the Grand Slam tournaments—as both partner and competitor—and the inevitable tensions within the ATP constituency, mainly the difference between the needs of the top players and the rank-and-file.

My doubts about Brad were planted, significantly enough, by impressions I formed during his career as a player. Brad was a very quiet and unassuming guy—both a "true-blue Aussie" and a man who didn't invite or draw attention to himself, even in the wake of some of his greatest highs as a player. He wasn't a great quote or a guy who jousted or joked around with the media. That he was a hard-working, diligent pro was obvious, but you know what gets you in the media sweepstakes—a label as a boring guy. It may sound a little crazy, but I think the real key to Brad's personality, or the part of it that has had such a broad, positive and powerful impact during his short tenure at the helm of the ATP, was his playing style.

Brad was a big, thickly-built guy, with quads like propane tanks. He wasn't a particularly good mover, but he played a serve-and-volley game in which finesse played an enormous role. True to his Aussie roots, he had a wonderful volley distinguished by gentle touch. So I had to smile when I read Roger Federer's quote this morning: "He (Brad) was always very nice to work with. Very honest. Very nice. Gentle. I've really enjoyed every step of the way working with him."

You know, one thing that struck me in the official statements that the movers and shakers issued right after Brad died was how many of them were, first and foremost, personal in nature—comments on the man and his nature, not his accomplishments. WTA CEO Stacy Allaster referred to him as a devoted family man in the very first line of her statement. Speaking in Madrid earlier today, Novak Djokovic said: "We remember him as a very calm, composed and intelligent man, who loved this sport with all his heart, while he was playing, coaching and then as the president of ATP. So I wish his family all the best and to be strong in this sad moment."

Clearly, that gentle touch wasn't confined to his work at the net.

As the comments about Brad suggest, he was a man who humanized the office he held, and that quality shouldn't be underestimated. I believe it was absolutely central to the way that Brad teamed up with the top players over the past year to present the Grand Slams with a united front. I know what you mean when you mention having qualms about Brad because he seemed too much the "company man." But it's easy to forget that for all the changes in the game in the past few years, one thing that still seems to be true is that so much of the game, at every level, is relationship-based. This is something often forgotten in the rush to grow the sport, but before I get into that, tell me about that experience you had with Brad.

*****

Pete,

Thanks for the description of Brad as a player. I never saw him play or knew much about his game, but you can usually tell something about a person from how they approach the sport. It sounds like he made the most of what he had, which is all an Aussie audience has ever asked.

My "instructive moment" with Brad came when he was head of the ATP's Asian wing. The tour had decided to designate Shanghai as its fall Masters event on that continent, continuing its long, slow push into China. Watching the tournament that year, which came right after the smaller ATP event in Japan, I wondered whether choosing China hadn't been too blatantly motivated by sponsor dollars. Yes, there was Rolex and Heineken signage in Shanghai, but there were also far fewer fans than there were in Tokyo. Japan is still, as they say, a more "mature" tennis market. I got in touch with Brad to ask him whether this was a concern—would China ever pay off?

The first thing to note was that he called me back, from Shanghai. I hadn't really expected the personal call from over there; whatever I wrote, it wasn't going to be on the front page of the New York Times. The second, and more important thing, to note was that Brad listened to what I had to say and answered without annoyance or aggression, and in something other than corporate-speak. He knew what I was saying, but he felt like China was the future, even if it was a long-distance future, and that the ATP's ultimate hope was to have a men's version of Li Na someday. Drewett came across as down to earth, but not afraid to think big, and think long-term. I'm not sure I came away 100 percent sold on the idea, but I felt a lot about who was in charge of implementing it. And as the years have gone by, Shanghai has begun to develop its own personality as a tournament. You can't deny the enthusiasm of the fans who do show up.

As you said, Pete, there was reason to wonder if Drewett has the "intellectual horsepower" to run a global organization. Maybe he was a pioneer in his own quiet way, proof that an ex-jock could hold his own at the highest executive level. And you're right, the remembrances of him were strikingly personal and emotional, and overwhelmingly positive. It makes me wish I'd had a chance to get to know him better.

*****

Steve,

I think your anecdote about Brad highlights a very important component in his success and personality—he was a very patient man. That's one of the unsung qualities that often underpin success, perhaps increasingly so in this driven, fast-moving, Twitter-and-text world we now inhabit. One of the major challenges for any former pro who would succeed in business is cultivating the kind of patience Brad possessed. You more than most know just how much tennis is a game of immediate rewards and punishments, of morphing from hero into goat from one day to the next. But somehow patience seemed part of Brad's DNA, and he exploited it fully.

Not much has been said or written about Brad's experience in what we commonly think of as "small business." It wasn't a sexy line-item on the résumé he ultimately developed, nor as glamorous as his status as a former Top 40 ATP pro and junior Australian Open champion. But Brad developed and managed a number of health and fitness-related businesses and, frankly, I wish I knew more about that. It seems to me that the hands-on experience he gained before he moved into the world of tennis politics must have been good preparation for the challenges he would face as he moved up in the ranks of ATP management. Those of us who aren't primarily in business often don't understand how challenging—and, frankly, scary—it can be to start and develop a business, how much risk is involved. Among other things, it's also a quick study in human nature, your own as well as that of your partners and or employees.

This points toward an interesting and ongoing issue in tennis management. For almost all of their histories, the ATP (as well as the WTA) has been torn about where to recruit its leadership—do you recruit from outside the sport, or develop your leadership from the inside (as in the case of Brad)? The "outsiders" have almost always come out on top. Somehow, the pro leadership just can't seem to resist going for the former CEO "looking for a new challenge," or the marketing whiz who's got the spreadsheets and flow charts to show that he or she increased cat litter revenues by 18 percent in the critical southeast Asian market. These Harvard Business School types can be very persuasive—as well as very good at what they do. But what they often are not good at is connecting with and winning over players, and understanding the key role relationships have always played in tennis. If you really want Rafael Nadal to work with you on a prize-money structure that benefits the entire tour, it's a good idea to understand Rafa's needs and desires, to make him comfortable with you, and to win his trust and confidence. That, too, can take patience.

Admittedly, "insiders" like Brad aren't a dime a dozen. But I'm hoping that one takeaway from Brad's tragically early demise is the realization that if you want to do a lot for the game of tennis, get someone who knows, loves, and cares about the game of tennis. Someone like Brad Drewett. He'll be missed, Steve, and just think of all the great work that he might have gotten done.

Brilliance and Buffoonery

Sun, 05 May 2013 07:15:00 -0400

One of the four has been compared to Luke Skywalker and recently “warmed up” for his match with Rafael Nadal with a meal consisting of an entire pizza and a platter of ham. Another of them only gave up smoking recently, but insisted that many players ranked above him at the time “Can’t play tennis.” The third got into a shoving match with tour veteran Mardy Fish at, of all things, an exhibition, and the fourth member of this quartet has a tattoo of Grumpy (of the Seven Dwarfs) on his hip.

And if these guys keep playing the way they have been this year, it could be a very interesting and undoubtedly amusing clay-court segment ending at Roland Garros.

The men mentioned above are, in order of appearance, Benoit Paire, Ernests Gulbis, Grigor Dimitrov, and Fabio Fognini. Each of them seems poised to make a breakthrough, although their peers and rivals might just put that down to the media once again crying, “Wolf!” For you could have whittled a lot of toothpicks out of raw limber waiting for Gulbis to fulfill his potential, and the “Baby Federer” nickname bestowed on Dimitrov hangs as much like an albatross as an endorsement.

Still. These are four of the most entertaining players on the planet, and they represent a renaissance of the class of player commonly referred to as the “head case.” Eccentric, charismatic knuckleheads have been well-represented in tennis over the years, some of them have even won Grand Slam events and/or hit No. 1 in the rakings (Ilie Nastase, anyone?).

But a funny thing happened in the wake of the era dominated by the likes of Ivan Lendl and John McEnroe. The game took a sharp conservative turn with the emergence of Pete Sampras and then Roger Federer in successive generations. Sampras suddenly made it cool to be cool-headed and professional once again. Federer and even Rafael Nadal advanced that tradition, to the extent that even Jimmy Connors’ endless carping about the rules and regulations taking the “personality” out of the game began to strike a chord in many observers.

Has tennis become too sedate? Too corporate? A little. . . boring? Not if these four attractive nut jobs have anything to say about it, so let’s take a quick look at their pasts and prospects, in order of age starting with the youngest — and perhaps most promising:

Grigor Dimitrov (age 21): 2012 year-end singles ranking: No. 48; currently, No. 29.
“Dimitrov hasn’t been just another player since 2008,” my colleague Steve Tignor wrote way back at the Australian Open of 2011. “That year he won junior Wimbledon and the U.S. Open back to back, turned pro, and was promptly pushed into the pole position among the contenders for Next Big Tennis Thing.”

The funny thing is that Dimitrov has had trouble getting his engine started, and has remained sitting in the pole position for much of the time since. Things might be different now, as he’s carved almost 20 nubs off his ranking this year, and has been a finalist (Brisbane), a semifinalist (Rotterdam) and a Masters 1000 quarterfinalist (Monte Carlo). That those tournaments are on three vastly different surfaces tells you something about Dimitrov’s versatility — an all-around game that he freely admits he modeled on that of his childhood idol, Federer.

But Dimitrov sometimes seems a little too comfortable with having been anointed the vaunted Next Big Thing, and often acts as if the thought were the reality. Also, he’s a hothead — as evidenced by his suspension in the fall of 2010 for shoving an official during a Challenger event in Helsinki. About that, he said, “It’s something that happened, it will never happen again.” Then it almost happened again, at the Hopman Cup in 2012 (this time, the antagonist was Fish).

Has Dimitrov channeled that fiery temperament in a more positive, consistent way? His recent results suggest that’s the case, and his big game seems to have matured. Let’s remember that at one point in 2009 he dropped out of the Top 200; he now looks like a player who can remain in the Top 30 with very little effort or commitment.

Dimitrov has a taste for celebrity and the spotlight (he’s been romantically linked with Maria Sharapova), but until recently he hasn’t had a taste for the hard work that most Top 10 players embrace. As Ivan Lendl remarked a few months ago, after Dimitrov appeared to run out of steam in matches against his protégé Andy Murray as well as Novak Djokovic: "If you train for five-hour matches, it gives you a lot of confidence. . .That guy comes out so hot, but we know, and so does Novak, but he (Dimitrov) can’t sustain it. If he could he would be number one in the world.”

Benoit Paire (23) 2012 year-end singles ranking: No. 47, currently No. 32.
Paire’s former coach Jerome Prigent once said of him: “He’s the Jedi of Star Wars. For me he’s like Luke Skywalker when he started. I need to take him over to the good side of the Force. The only difference is that his role isn’t to save the world, but to make the most out of his potential. . .Which is huge.”

It turns out that Prigent couldn’t quite fulfill his mission; that task would require a regular Obi Wan Kenobi, or even a quick call to Yoda, for the whippet-lean 6-foot-5 Frenchman Paire is some piece of work. He’s got style out the wazoo: as one observer remarked, he’s the only guy in the history of tennis to use the drop shot as an offensive weapon (and he might be onto something there, especially on grass). But Paire is also a head case who’s reluctant to walk the straight and narrow:

“I don't want to change my personality,” Paire told the media in Monte Carlo. “I am the way I am.”

Paire’s latest shocker? At the Miami Masters 1000 he engaged in an ugly (or was it merely hilarious?) war of expletives with countryman Michael Llodra, who’s no angel himself. The incident left Paire sworn never to speak with Llodra again. So much for the storied solidarity among the French men.

But Paire insists, “I've been working very well with my coach (Lionel Zimbler) for the past three years and I think what we achieved is exceptional. At the time nobody thought it would be possible. People were telling [him], ‘You will never be able to control him.’”

The jury is still out on that one, if not on Paire’s game. He’s pretty much got everything, including a big serve, grooved backhand, excellent mobility for a man of his size, and that value-added, artistic touch.

Ernests Gulbis (24) 2012 year-end singles ranking: No. 136, currently No. 47.
Is it possible to be an “elder statesman” among head cases? If so, this is your man, even though Fabio Fognini is chronologically a little older. It’s largely a young man’s game, this head case or “bad boy” business, and Gulbis was hanging in there beautifully as recently as this February, when he made those stunning remarks about the less overtly talented members of the Top 100 (a group he was not among at the time).

Now, on the heels of a 13-match winning streak, including an eight-match (through qualifying) march to the Delray Beach title, pundits everywhere are wondering if this talented ball striker is finally about to fulfill his potential. The last time the question was posed Gulbis had just hit No. 21 (February, 2011), after which he abruptly segued into “party mode” and more or less vanished into the mist of the disco smoke machine.

Gulbis fell so far in the rankings that at the end of last year his own mother Milena, an actress of some repute in Latvia (now you know where the Gublis drama gene comes from), suggested that he quit the game. Like most boys, he did the opposite of what his mother advised and hired a new coach (Gunther Bresnick, a former coach of Boris Becker). Bresnick helped Gulbis re-shape his game and shored up his powerful but often erratic forehand with some changes of technique. The payoff has been obvious.

Among the four head cases under discussion, Gulbis is the only one who’s won a main tour title (he has three), and he may be the best bet to win one in the coming weeks and months.

Fabio Fognini (25) 2012 year-end singles ranking: No. 45, currently No. 25.
At a smallish 5-foot-10, the Italian Fognini is dwarfed by his fellow head cases. But when it comes to pitching a fit or playing the drama queen, he stands as tall — nay, taller — than any of them.
Fognini, whose swashbuckling good looks makes female fans go weak at the knees, went on a 30-minute spree of verbal abuse in the French Open locker room after his 2010 match with Gael Monfils was postponed due to darkness at a critical point late in the match (“At the cloak rooms he insulted everybody for 30 minutes,” Monfils dutifully reported, after Fognini returned the following day to clinch a dramatic 9-7 in-the- fifth win).

Earlier this year at Indian Wells, Fognini lost the first set to Novak Djokovic 0-6 — then threw such a wild celebration when he won his first game in the second set that he went on to take the set before he finally buckled. Expressive, eye-catching, emotional, Fognini can also play against the drama-queen type with drama-queen flair. While setting the record for being called for the most foot faults in a winning effort (12 in all, including two consecutive ones that cost him a point outright), Fognini merely turned and smiled at the line judge each time he called the goofs.

Fognini undeniably has star power — probably the most of any player in this group. But before, it was all he had. Now, he’s shown that he can play as well. While not explosive or especially powerful, Fognini has a dangerous forehand, he’s not afraid to go down the line with the backhand, and he’ll liberally use the drop shot — and any other off-speed temptation — any time, any place. He’s extremely clever, and has been likened to now retired Fabrice “the Magician” Santoro. All that, plus the tattoo of Grumpy on his hip. . . What more could a girlfriend (or a tennis fan intrigued by colorful characters) ask?

Since mid-February, Fognini lost to either No. 4 David Ferrer or No. 1 Novak Djokovic in every tournament he entered — until he fell to Pablo Carreno-Busta in the Portugal Open quarterfinals last week — and early this year he beat fellow head case Dimitrov 6-3, 6-1.

All in all, these four men promise to make the coming weeks more interesting — and unpredictable — than it's been in a while. Somewhere, Ilie Nastase is smiling.

Venus and Serena: The Movie

Fri, 03 May 2013 13:29:00 -0400

New York — It’s always good to see tennis reaching over its own well-constructed walls and out of its insular society to connect with the outside world, which is why John McEnroe and Billie Jean King were standing outside the Independent Film Center theater in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village last, night arm-in-arm with a pair of movie producers, while paparazzi lit up the gritty Gotham evening with flashbulbs and puzzled passers-by muttered, “What’s this all about?” or “Who are those people?”

That some of them needed to ask underscores my point, as did the reason so many of us gathered at the theater to watch a screening of Venus and Serena (Magnolia Pictures), the new film by aforementioned producers/directors Maikin Baird and Michelle Major. Nobody has taken tennis outside the walls and among new people more thoroughly than the sisters who are the subject of this documentary (it’s widely available on Demand, and in theaters starting May 10; you can see the trailer here:

The evening began with a cocktail party hosted by Graydon Carter (Vanity Fair) and Anna Wintour (Vogue) at Carter’s Beatrice Inn, a popular spot with Manhattan swells and celebrities. It was loaded with sharp-dressed men and skinny blonde socialites in black velvet ankle boots. Not really my scene, but then along came John McEnroe and his wife, singer Patty Smyth. I’d not been introduced to Patty before, but within a minute I felt like I’d known her half my life; she’s just one of those really open, warm people.

John was on hand, along with Billie Jean, mainly to proselytize on behalf of the movie — to do, in the words of McEnoe, “whatever it takes” to broaden the appeal and reach of tennis. Could anyone foresee that McEnroe would become this evangelist, back in those halcyon “pits of the world” or “you cannot be serious!”days?

My, how times change.

And that was evident in the movie itself, which began to roll shortly John and Billie Jean made some fairly lengthy introductory remarks. McEnroe has also become quite the persuasive public speaker.

The movie is excellent (full disclosure: I was interviewed extensively for it, and some of my comments are in the final cut), and surprisingly — and admirably — fair in light of the fact the Baird and Major had the blessing of the Williams family in making it.

Often, that “authorized” imprimatur translates to puffery, either because the principals have editorial control, or the filmmakers/writers are seduced by their co-operative subjects. But Baird and Major did a great job resisting the gravitational pull of the Williams family, and made themselves central enough to their lives that at one point Richard tries to shoo them away, complaining that they’re like an “ex-wife.” The documentary gives the viewer an all-access pass but into the real world of the Williamses, not Candyland.

There are plenty of sweet, heart-warming moments — not all of them built around the easy sympathy and pathos generated by footage of Serena laid out on a hospital dolly, or injecting herself with medication. The scene where the sisters engage in some spontaneous karaoke would make a grump smile, as do the scenes where Serena rolls out her dating preferences (white men, or black?), or where Venus and Serena are asked to number their brothers and sisters.

But the sound bites sometimes have teeth, too. Venus and Serena’s sister Isha bridles when asked about “half-sister” Yetunde, who was shot and killed some years ago in (presumably) a case of mistaken identity. “She isn’t our half-sister,” Isha immediately insists. “We don’t do that half-sister thing. We’re black.” Yet one of the more interesting things about this film, and its subjects, is how small a role race, and racial issues in general, play in the daily lives and actions of the sisters.

The most race-conscious comments in the movie are made by one of the extra-familial “experts” from outside the tennis community, the comedian Chris Rock — and his comments don’t really bring any fresh or new insight to the story. In general, the filmmakers may have relied a little too heavily on the commentary of high-profile “experts” whose names and visages are more memorable than their insights: mainly, former U.S. President Bill Clinton, Anna Wintour, and Rock. But those voices are also great advertisements for the film, and if you can’t get people to come see it, or sit up and take notice when they’re watching it, why make it?

One of my favorite scenes is the almost surreal, tense conversation Serena has with hitting partner Sasha Bajin while she’s running on a treadmill in the U.S. Open players’ workout room. Serena accuses him of not playing well enough against her, implying that her struggle with her game at the tournament is partly his fault. Sasha pushes back and stands up for himself, with vigor, while Serena stubbornly keeps repeating her simplistic mantra: “You need to get better.” And in a related scene, she imperiously and almost perversely dumps a mess of practice balls off her racquet and onto the court instead of transferring them to Sasha – it’s as convincing a diva moment as you’ll see, and there’s not a word uttered in the scene.

The replays of those two terrible U.S. Open Serena moments (the infamous foot fault and “Come on” incidents) are well — and freshly — handled, and the filmmakers showed great restraint in not over-emphasizing or over-complicating them. Some of my favorite clips are Oracene moments. Venus and Serena’s mother comes off looking great, and she handles questions about her former husband Richard with a delightful combination of resignation, humor and dignity. Oracene doesn’t seem to say much, but when she says anything – it counts. And that’s even true about the two or three coaching tidbits she delivers (see, who said she’s not their “coach?”).

What really shines through in this movie is the closeness of Venus and Serena — the powerful sisterly bond that has numerous implications and provides untold fodder for the amateur psychologist. Will the women really be content to keep living together and playing tennis, as Venus threatens to do, into their 40s and even 50s? Would either of them ever marry and move out of the house they share, or will there be another film for Baird and Major to shoot in the distant future — something more along the lines of “Grey Gardens?”

That time flies is a given, although you wouldn’t necessarily know it from the way Venus and Serena are immersed in what has now become a routine so routine that it isn’t even recognized as such. Some of the most charming footage in this movie is of the girls as adolescents, hitting tennis balls on that infamous court in Compton, Ca. - a neighborhood not unlike hundreds of others across the country, but become iconic for its history and legacy of crime and violence.

You look at those two fresh and beaming faces, those Pepsodent sister-smiles, those beaded braids. My, how times change. But perhaps not all that much in the ways that count most.

They Said What? Seeing Doubles

Fri, 03 May 2013 07:47:00 -0400

“What people forget is that we (my partner Peter Fleming and I) played ten Grand Slam doubles [finals] and we won seven. Before they start telling everyone how great Bryans brothers are, look at some of those numbers. It’s like people think we’d be afraid to go out there with them, that’s what’s weird about it.”—John McEnroe,in a conversation with me,on the greatest teams to compete in doubles.

As is often the case, McEnroe is using a bit of hyperbole to make his case—in this event, the case that doubles statistics are almost useless. The vast majority of elite, Open-era singles players never played frequently enough to take their rightful place in the record books, while the “doubles specialist” has become a staple of the ATP Tour.

McEnroe is more than qualified to make that argument because, he finished number one in doubles for five consecutive years, 1979-83, and held that ranking for 269 weeks—trailing only present-day double specialists Bob and Mike Bryan, and them not by very much at all: At the start of this year, Mike had been No. 1 for 308 weeks, and Bob for 299.

But also consider this: For three of those No. 1 years (1981-1983), McEnroe was also the top-ranked singles player. “Hey,” he told me, half in jest, “Combine all my weeks at number one and I can give Roger (Federer) a run for his money!”

You can debate the value of doubles and the credibility of the rankings until the cows come home (even McEnroe suffers in that exercise; because some of his great rivals, including Borg and Lendl, rarely doubles), but is there any doubt that McEnroe proved himself the most versatile player in the history of tennis—and by a country mile? He won 77 singles titles—and 78 in doubles.

That great singles players are automatically as good in doubles is beyond dispute. Federer has a doubles gold medal, but only a silver in singles. Nadal never played Grand Slam doubles, but he’s 3-0 in Masters 1000 doubles finals. Connors won 19 doubles titles as a part-timer, and even Bjorn Borg managed to bag four.

But McEnroe is the only player among the 10 most prolific Open-era Grand Slam doubles champs to even make a major singles final. The only player among that top 10 to even crack the vaunted Top 5 in singles (aside from McEnroe) is Sweden’s Andres Jarryd, who played just one Grand Slam semifinal (which he lost) and won just eight singles titles. His career-high singles ranking was No. 5, but he also hit No. 1 in doubles and won eight major titles.

Not a single top singles player since the heyday of McEnroe has made a significant impact in doubles (Stefan Edberg reached No. 1 in singles and doubles), and that’s all well and good. Two types of tennis may be one too many for mass public consumption, as interesting and downright enjoyable as the doubles game is—and as challenging but remunerative singles has become. And give all the credit in the world to the Bryans for not only their spectacular success, but for what they’ve done to keep the game of doubles in the forefront of the public imagination.

But that superior winning percentage of McEnroe and Fleming—70 percent vs. the Bryans' 56.5 percent, on a 13 of 23 record in majors—makes a pretty compelling case for McEnroe and Fleming as the best if not most prolific doubles team of all time.

As Fleming said when he was asked to name his choice as the greatest doubles team in tennis history: “John McEnroe and anybody.”

Amen to that.

Four By Four

Wed, 01 May 2013 23:54:00 -0400

Tennis passed an interesting milestone when Novak Djokovic won the Australian Open last February. The win represented the 35th Grand Slam singles title gathered by the group commonly known as the “Big Four”—Djokovic, Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, and Andy Murray—which is one more than the number of titles gathered by another four-man collective that remains as storied today as it did over a quarter of a century ago.

I’m talking about the four champions and rivals who turned Open tennis into wide-open tennis: Bjorn Borg, Jimmy Connors, John McEnroe, and the human bridge between these two Big Fours, Murray’s coach, Ivan Lendl.

I suppose it would make sense to wait until the current Big Four is safely finished to draw sweeping conclusions, but my curiosity got the better of me. I’ve taken a pretty long look at how the two groups compare to this point, and found some of the statistical details compelling. We already know that the second wave will finish with more Grand Slam titles than the originals, but just how thoroughly did any of the individuals dominate—then or now?

One of the widest statistical gaps in all the data I sifted was in the individual Grand Slam title-winning percentages. Borg simply stands head and shoulders above all—the Big Eight, if you will—having won 11 of the 27 Grand Slam tournaments he entered for a winning percentage of 41. His closest rival in that department is Nadal, whose 11 wins in 33 events is good for a winning percentage of 33. (Incidentally, I counted only Grand Slam events in which the players were entered and posted an official result. And as usual, feel free to double check my math; I do my best, but I’m a writer, not a mathematician).

The only other player whose winning percentage at the majors is nearly as high is Federer, with 30.9%. That’s very close to Nadal’s success rate, and it underscores the extent to which Rafa and Roger have dominated their group with impeccable numbers. Surely these numbers will change, but Djokovic’s winning percentage is 18.1 (six of 33), while Murray’s is a dismal 3.4 (one of 29). In the original foursome, the three below Borg were bunched together fairly tightly—Connors and Lendl tied (quite remarkably) at eight wins in 57 tries (15.7%), with McEnroe at 15.5% (seven wins in 45 events).

A few notes on these numbers: Borg’s winning percentage is greatly enhanced by the fact that he walked away from the game while at his peak; surely it would be lower if he had a more typical career, a la Federer or Connors.

But this is the most astonishing and significant difference: Today’s Big Four have combined to miss just eight opportunities to win majors once they began to post results at that level. And Nadal is responsible for six of those DNPs (did not play). The original Big Four missed fully 66 Grand Slam opportunities, including a whopping 43 Australian Opens. That’s because for most of that era, the Australian Open was a major in name only; the event was held at the end of the year, on dodgy grass, at an outdated facility.

Now, if you apply the collective winning percentage of the group to the number of missed majors, you can make the case to add another dozen titles to the take of the original Big Four—not to mention significantly increase the title count of three of its members (Lendl only missed the Australian Open four times). But of course, that’s pure speculation.

In any event, even with the drag of Murray, the present-day Big Four has a significantly better group title-winning percentage than its predecessor: 23.3% to 18%. That suggests that today’s Big Four dominates to an even greater extent than those storied icons of the 70s and 80s. We’ll just have to see how these numbers are affected as the careers of the present generation peak and/or wind down.

Of course, even for the likes of Federer or Connors, it isn’t all about winning. Consistency also counts, even if it’s less sexy. So also I took a look at the Grand Slam match-winning percentages. Seven of the men under discussion here are on the top 10 list (Murray is the lone absentee). You’ll find the other three at the bottom of this post if you can’t guess who they are.

Again, the best winning percentage belongs to Borg, who was 141-16 (89.9%) at the majors, followed surprisingly closely by Nadal (157-22) at 87.7%. Nadal’s numbers benefit tremendously from his 52-1 French Open record, but that also serves to make No. 3 Federer’s stats that much more impressive. Federer is just a hair behind Nadal at 86.9% (252-38) on a much more evenly distributed record.

The lowest of the seven in this ranking is McEnroe, at No. 8 overall. He was 168-38 (81.5%) despite having posted the highest single-season winning percentage in tennis history. Remember, McEnroe didn’t win a single major in the final eight years of his career.

Of course, making Grand Slam finals, no matter what happens in them, is also a telling stat. Federer leads in that department with 24, followed by Lendl, who played for 19 major titles. Borg and Nadal are tied for fourth with 16 finals apiece, while Connors is tied with one outsider—Andre Agassi—at 15 finals, four more than McEnroe.

One of my favorite stats is winning percentage in Grand Slam finals, and that’s one category in which we have a telling upset: Federer’s 70.8 winning percentage (17-24) outshines even Borg’s 68.7% on 11 of 16.

One area were today’s Big Four is unlikely to ever catch the original group is in total singles titles won (across all events). The most prolific champion of all is Connors, with 109 singles titles; his nearest challenger is Lendl, with 94. The original Big Four won a total of 344 titles.

Today’s Big Four are unlikely to match that output. The leader is Federer, with 76 titles, trailed by Nadal with 54. But Djokovic and Murray fall off sharply; their 63 combined titles is still one shy of the least prolific man in the original quartet, Borg, who owns 64. But keep in mind that in the early years of the Open era, a less-organized game sometimes featured competitive tours and circuits that created more chances to play than today’s players are offered.

As I wrote above, the numbers for the current Big Four will change, perhaps dramatically. But they will change for the worse (winning percentage) as well as the better (number of titles). One of the big takeaways from this little exercise is that Murray better get busy, quickly. At least he’s in good hands with the man who once occupied a similar rung in his own generation’s Big Four.

P.S. The other men with top 10 Grand Slam match-winning percentages are Pete Sampras (No. 4), Agassi (No. 9), and Boris Becker (No. 10).

Doing the Dirty Work

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 18:00:00 -0400

To borrow a familiar phrase, Maria Sharapova made her money the old-fashioned way last week in Stuttgart: She earned it. While she only needed to win four matches to secure the Premier-level title (as the top seed, Sharapova received one of the four byes), she had to fight tooth-and-claw through the three that preceded the final.

Sharapova is now a perfect 8-0 over the past two years in Stuttgart; her victims include Australian Open champion Victoria Azarenka (back when she was No. 1), former Wimbledon champion Petra Kvitova, former U.S. Open champion Samantha Stosur, and former French Open champion Li Na.

That’s a Rival Slam, and it’s a fitting comment on how far Sharapova has come as a clay-court player—even if the indoor environment in Stuttgart gives an advantage to a precise game like hers.

Is this the same Sharapova who won Wimbledon at age 17 in 2004, but lost in her first two Italian Opens to Silvia Farina Elia and Patty Schnyder? The same player who had been to the semifinals of the French Open just twice in nine tries before she won the tournament last year? The answer to this clearly is “yes”—and “no.”

One of the more intriguing stories churned out by the WTA over the past few years is how Sharapova has morphed into perhaps the best clay-court player afoot, a transformation even more intriguing when you examine it in light of her record at Wimbledon.

In the past five years, Sharapova survived the fourth round at Wimbledon just once, in 2011, when she lost the final to Kvitova. So right now, the evidence fairly shouts that Sharapova is a better player on clay than on the grass she professes to love. As an aside, I’d add that Sharapova’s best chance—by far—of earning a much-needed win over Serena Williams at a major has for some years now been in Paris. Don’t for a moment think that hasn’t occurred to Sharapova, if not Williams.

A number of elements probably are at work in this radical makeover, starting with one that may not be so obvious. Sharapova was obliged to undergo shoulder surgery and miss ten months ending in May 2009. She has four major titles, but the only one she’s won since that lengthy hiatus was the French Open, in 2012.

I get the feeling that Sharapova consciously or unwittingly hit the “reset” button on her career during all that time off. She certainly returned to tennis with (quite naturally) greater maturity, an undiminished work ethic, a measure of doubt and anxiety that must have enhanced her determination, and perhaps even a new appreciation for chance to play professional tennis. All this suggests that she’s learned a thing or two about patience—and is there a greater virtue when it comes to doing the dirty work than getting good on clay?

Maturity is a complex issue and has many facets—not all of which are necessarily good. Tennis history is littered with players who just couldn’t sustain their youthful mastery as adult pros, either physically/technically (Donald Young) or mentally and emotionally (Andrea Jaeger or even Jennifer Capriati).

When it comes to her game, Sharapova has crossed the threshold to adulthood beautifully. But her body is different; she’s filled out and has greater strength, and that’s bound to have an effect. The Sharapova who won Wimbledon was a stick figure with excellent power, reach, and youthful flexibility. It might have been easier for her to win on grass back than it is now, now that she’s a 6’2” adult who’s wider at the hips and whose “official” weight in the WTA media guide is 130 lbs. (no comment).

This leads to that subtle conversation about the difference between fast and slow courts in tennis, and how surface speed works for or against different kinds of players. The discussion has changed somewhat in recent years, owing to the increasing paucity of surfaces that can be called anywhere even near “fast.” And one of the more significant changes on that front was the eradication of some of the properties of traditional (pre-millennial) grass courts.

Sharapova won her title at Wimbledon at a time when the courts were already “slower”—really, though, it was less about the speed of the ball off the surface than the height of the bounce. But the ball still comes off the turf quickly, and players are still subject to bad bounces (most of them undetectable to the spectator on hand, or at home). And that demands adjustments that not all players can make.

One of the big misapprehensions about Wimbledon is that it was always inordinately tilted toward “attacking” or, way back, “serve-and-volley” players. But that isn’t really true. What the tournament favored all along, and still does, is the mobile, flexible, quick athlete.

I don’t think anyone would suggest that Sharapova, whose mobility has always been mediocre, is quicker these days. Forcing her to hit while she’s rushed, or on the move, is still a good play against her. But the clay helps her in that regard. She’s one of the players who really benefits from the extra time a clay court gives to prepare and execute—even against an effective counter-puncher like Agnieszka Radwanska (Sharapova is 2-0 against the Polish baseliner on clay). At her best, when she can rip the ball into the corners or at extreme angles, Sharapova is afforded the time to take offensive and fully exploit her ability put the ball away on the red surface.

And finally, Sharapova has really shown tremendous discipline in having the guts to really go for her shots, something clay doesn’t invite you to do. Sure, it can be a cop-out to take a big cut and hope for a winner, but that’s not Sharapova. She builds a game plan around fearless ball striking, and half her energy seems to be spent resisting the pressure that constantly tempts a player to play it safe, to take a little off, instead of putting a little more on.

To win that internal battle is a feat in and of itself, but it’s not the first—nor is it likely to be the last—battle that this Spartan competitor Sharapova will find a way to win.