Yesterday evening, I took part with a few other reporters in an interesting conference call with John Isner, the 22-year old recent college graduate who reached the Washington final (lost to Andy Roddick) last week and has a wild-card into the Cincinnati Masters next week.
Isner (say Izz-ner) had just come off a court in Tampa. Fla., where he is training at the Saddlebrook Academy. Tampa and Saddlebrook are shaping up as The Alamo of American tennis. A whole pile of American players, including Mardy Fish and James Blake, are making it their base of operations, and Isner told us that the resort is also a magnet for many players at his level - or lower. That is, guys none of us has heard about.
I wonder if there's something conscious and specific going on at Saddlebrook when it comes to US tennis. Are those folks down there trying to rally the troops, the way the general of a beleaguered army might fall back and try to re-group? Maybe somebody from Saddlebrook, or that group of players, will jump in and comment here. Whatever the case, I like the idea that all these kids are getting together, more or less on their own. It's like they're waking up to a fact many of us learned long ago: if you want to get something done, roll up your sleeves and do it yourself. If you're James Blake and you want to help salvage American tennis, you get word out to guys like John Isner that everyone is welcome to join him at the Alamo - which was exactly how the Texas did it at the Alamo. BYO ammo.
Isner seemed a pretty thoughtful guy, which may or may not have had something to do with the fact that he attended and finished college (University of Georgia, where he led the team to a 32-0 2007 season and the NCAA team title; Isner himself lost in in the tournament's singles final). Here's what Isner said about the benefits of playing college tennis, rather than leaping into the Futures and Challenger fray of the ATP Tour:
I think for me, I've really matured in college. College was obviously the right choice for me. I got a lot stronger in college. My game improved so much because I had such great coaching there for four years. I got really, really used to winning. I won a lot in college, which really helped the transition from college to a pro and eventually to the ATP, just helped the transition go real smoothly. I was real confident coming from college because I won so much and I knew, you know, going for four years prepared me the best as possible because, you know, I went there and I got stronger, my game just kept on getting better and better.
The underlying message here is something in that I buy, lock, stock, and barrel. The best training in the world is winning, period. Playing competitive matches against challenging competition and winning. That's all the training you need. It reminds me of something Billie Jean King once told me, and I'm paraphrasing: Everybody always talks about learning from a loss, but actually, that's wrong. It drives me nuts to hear it. The only thing you learn from losing is how to lose. You do almost all of your real learning from winning. Changing something that enables you to win, getting through a tough moment when you could blow the match, figuring out a favored opponent's game and beating her - that 's learning.
Isner elaborated in response to a follow-up question:
If you're a superstar, beating guys in the top 100, top 50 at 17, 18, obviously not going to college would be the right choice. If you're not tearing it up that well, you need to go to college. For someone like me, I was pretty good as a junior. I never thought about turning pro out of high school. My game got so much better in college. It's only going to get better. . .
I've taken a lot different route than many of my peers. A lot of my peers my age decided to forego college and turn professional right out of high school. Yeah, obviously for me I'm a little bit older. I'm not 18, 19. I'm new to the Pro Tour, but I'm not 18 or 19. I'm 22. I think I'm more mature at this stage. Hopefully I can set up a different path for people to go through, which is four years of college. At least two years in college, I think. Like I've said, I've taken a different path than a lot of my peers have. I've only been out here for two months and I'm ranked just about the same as a lot of them, so. . .
Okay, then, Isner is an unproven quantity. We need to see how he does over the next few months to really know whether or not Cincinnati was just serendipity - Isner catching a high, serving out of his gourd, and rolling through a few guys thanks to something that was unknown to tennis through most of the game's history, the "tiebreaker."
But Isner's story isn't all that different from James Blake's. He too took a different path, less because he chose to than because he had to: let's remember that neither of these players was counting coup on ATP-grade players at age 17 or 18, in the manner of an Andre Agassi or Pete Sampras. They went to college because it seemed the best all-around option, but that doesn't diminish what they have done since.
Blake has shown that you can develop your game slowly, with the help of college tennis, and become a Grand Slam contender and Top 5 caliber player. If Isner can do the same, we may be ready for a paradigm shift, although it's unlikely that the most promising juniors ever will go to college anymore. And keep in mind that none of Blake's weakenesses - so vividly on display these days - has anything to do with going to college, or the game he developed there. Transplant Roger Federer's brain and heart into Blake and you probably have two, maybe there Grand Slam titles.
However, it is also possible that those extra years spent in college subtly mute a player's long-term expectations (in relative terms, of course). If you go to college these days, just making it as a tour journeyman is a feat, and there is something of the self-fulfilling prophecy about that. College players need to think they can attend college and come out and win Wimbledon, not just earn enough on the tour to buy a Hummer. But you still get around the fact that neither Blake nor Isner was ready to play the pro tour, except to impersonate a punching bag, at 17 or 18, period. There is, after all, a natural limit to everyone's ability and potential. They key is fulfilling what potential there is - and keeping the faith long enough for that to happen.
Isner is at an interesting juncture, where something other than the quality of his strokes or footwork comes into play. I decided long ago that the most important muscle in the tennis player's body is the heart, and his most vital organ is his mind. Isner made a big statement at Washington, and he's now in a position to take a big career shortcut. If he can win few matches in the next few weeks, he will have established himself as a Top 100 pro (at least), which means that other players are going to perceive him with a certain measure of respect and fear. If he struggles, he'll become just another guy who had a good run, and a few hundred guys in a position comparable to his own will go out thinking they can, and should, beat him. They will believe that when crunch time comes, they can survive and prevail. And that difference - fearing a player or regarding him as an equal - is the point of separation between consistently successful players and the guys pleasantly stuck on the W-L-W-L-W treadmill.
Isner has one big asset going into the next few weeks, that serve. As I wrote the other day, in Washington he hit more aces (144) than anyone ever has in a sub-Grand Slam tournament since the ATP began keeping records. He hit one serve at 141 MPH. He has a weapon, and the weapon he has is the most under-utilized and least appreciated in the game today. In the past, I've written about what a shame it is that the serve, the stroke around which the entire game is built (why do you think it is that you can't win a set without breaking serve?), is in such neglect in these days of merry baseline bashing.
One of the defining elements in this era, to me, is a striking lack of great servers, which accounts for the dearth of players who have even a prayer against The Mighty Fed. If - make that IF - Isner, or someone like him, can break that psychic spell, the landscape could change quickly. It might change no less abruptly if tournament promoters and the ATP and ITF decided that it would be fun to have some big servers around, and gave them suitably fast courts to ply their trade. But that's a discussion best left for another time. Let's get back to Isner's serve. I asked him if he had served unusually well in Washington; was it a fluke, or business-as-usual? He said:
Yeah, I served well in that tournament. I'm not going to lie. I've served like that a bunch, but I did follow it up each day after. I don't know, I just felt real comfortable out there out in D.C. The surface helped me. It was a little bit of a slick surface. I felt like I was popping the serve real well. I've been working a lot on my strength and my legs. I actually have been working on my serve a little bit to make it a little bit better, getting down a little bit lower with my knee bend, getting my shoulder stronger. I definitely don't think it's a fluke. I know I can serve like that on a consistent basis. I think I can do that. Hopefully I can just keep it going.
Well, anybody - especially someone 6-10 - can have a big serving day, or a few big serving days in a row. But great serving isn't about bombing the aces and hitting the hard, flat one to overpower people, although doing that does the soul a lot of good, too. Great serving is about things like spin selection, placement, and the kind of return options you give our opponent. When I brought that up, Isner's response was intriguing. He said:
Yeah, you know, I can hit my hard flat one. The hard flat one I usually unless it is an offensive return, blocking it back, I like to come in with the forehand. [He means that on a good first serve, he is looking for the opponent to just block back the ball, which sets Isner up for a forehand] Really what helped me in D.C. was my second serve. I was consistently hitting my second serve between 120 and 127 miles an hour. I was placing my second serve real well. I was following it up with a volley, which is what I like to do. I've had a lot of people tell me that my second serve is more dangerous than my first because it's coming in with more spin, not as fast, and it kicks higher. It eats a lot of players up.
This, folks, is music to the service conniseur's ears, and that quote contains the most important bits of information you're likely to glean about Isner's game. If what he says is accurate and he can execute the implied strategy, day-in, day-out, he will win bucketloads of tennis matches. No question in my mind.
And just think how sophisticated the approach it is, and how much it tells us about how the game has changed in recent years. Isner is saying that he hits a huge first serve and stays back, and hits a spin second serve and comes in. This turns upside-down the received wisdom of 100 years of serve-and-volley tennis, but it sure sounds good to me - in fact, it's exactly the kind of intriguing analysis I've been going through with Pete Sampras these days as we write his autobiography together.
For example, Pete (who is the closest thing Isner has had to a tennis "hero") believed that Goran Ivanisevic had a better serve than he did; he was willing to concede him that, at least at Wimbledon. But he just had a better first serve, and the narrative of their epic Wimbledon encounters alternated between being a saga of first serves - and a tale of second serves. Guess which story line prevailed?
Next week, we'll see if Isner can build on his breakthrough performance in Cincinnati. Of Washington, he said:
You know, I knew I was capable of winning matches against guys in the top 100, top 50. To tell you the truth, I'm not going to lie . . I did surprise myself. I beat five guys all ranked very high. I beat them in such dramatic fashion. I never would have thought I could have done that. I went into the tournament confident that I could win one or two matches, put up a good show, make a little bit of a name for myself. I never would have thought I would have made such a big splash like I did. After each match I won, I'm getting more and more confidence, kind of like a snowball effect. After each match I won, I'm looking at my next opponent, I'm like, Why can't I beat him? That's really what happened and what led to my success there.
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PS You may remember that critical overhead that Isner blew in his match with Roddick. Well, guess what? Tribe member Chris Nugent caught it on film, and he sent me the shot - check it out, below. You can actually see the dent the ball made in the tape! Does the Tribe walk the walk, or what?
