54 posts categorized "July 2009"
By Jackie Roe, TW Social Director
 Evening, TWibe! This week we'll be taking a break from the YouTube series, but worry not, it's far from over. (Just keeping y'all on your toes.)
First, some business: In a little over two weeks, I'll be at the Cincinnati Masters; I'm covering the first few days of the men's event (8/17-8/19), and I'd love to meet up with any of you who also plan on attending. If you're going and are up for a TWibe gathering, holler in the comments! Today's photo is brought to you by greenhopper, who was in the audience for last night's Jankovic/Lisicki match in Stanford. Isn't it fantastic? From 'hopper: This is one of my favorite photos from yesterday's match. JJ was super fun to photograph with her different facial expressions throughout the match. Smiling JJ is a total win. Now on to today's topic ... As everyone knows by now, I check into Facebook pretty regularly, and it seems like these "about me"-type quizzes are all the rage right now. (By the way, are all of my fellow Facebookers aware of our TW group, TennisWorld > Real World? If not, be sure to request to join!) The one quiz I've seen the most is something called "The 3s of Me." The way it works is you complete this quiz, which asks about your habits and preferences, and then you "tag" others. Tagging is basically selecting those you wish to see your responses and to respond in turn. It's a fun way to get to know one another, so I thought we should try it here! First, I'll share my "3s" (I never got around to doing it on Facebook, so I'm glad to have this opportunity), then all of you should consider yourselves tagged. That is, you'll have to follow suit and take the quiz yourselves. Got it? The 3s of Jackie Favorite hobbies and/or interests
1. Watching sports, particularly tennis and wrestling (wait, does wrestling count?)
2. Listening/singing/dancing to music
3. Writing these Deuce Club posts! Three jobs I have had in my life 1. Salesperson at a department store - Horrid. Fortunately it was only for a summer.
2. Teaching Assistant - While in grad school, I taught an introductory writing course to college freshmen. I miss my students ... but not the grading.
3. Market research - My job now. Three places I have lived 1. Illinois
2. Illinois
3. Illinois
[I'll get out someday, right? Not that I don't love it here ... but boy, I could use a change of scene.] Three favorite drinks
1. Water
2. Green tea
3. (tie) Smoothies and Knudsen's cranberry spritzer
[I know I'm boring, but that's what happens when you're a teetotaler.] Three TV shows that I watch
1. WWE RAW/SmackDown - Different shows but both wrestling. And both pretty disgraceful.
2. Most anything on the Food Network. Special nods to Throwdown, Ace of Cakes, and Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives.
3. Roseanne reruns
[Programming alert: We'll definitely do a TV DC in the near future, so don't exhaust all of your favorites here ... just tell us which shows you're presently watching.] Three places I have been
1. One international spot - Sicily
2. One U.S. spot - Sedona, AZ
3. And a tennis-related spot - Cincinnati Masters (another shout-out!)
[Rather vague, no? I could've answered with anything - from my bathroom to Disneyland to Ocho Rios.] Things I am not looking forward to
1. The end of the weekend.
2. Going grocery shopping tomorrow. I'm just fine once I'm in the car, but it's getting to that point that's the problem!
3. Stressing out about tennis again - or maybe I am? Three places you would visit on vacation if you had the money and time off (Jenn added this question!) 1. The Maldives - If it's good enough for Rog and Mirka, it's good enough for me. (But really, I'll go with any island. Sun, sand, peace.)
2. Switzerland - More of Rog's influence. To be fair, it is one beautiful country.
3. Wimbledon - Favorite tournament, after all. Three of your favorite all time albums (Jenn, did you add this, too?)
1. Any Beatles album. If I had to pick, I'd go with A Hard Day's Night or Help. (Switching it up from a more popular pick like Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.)
2. Ten by Pearl Jam - "Oceans," "Black," Even Flow," "Alive," "Jeremy" ... most artists can't produce that many hits in a lifetime, let alone in a single album (and a debut one, no less).
3. Fumbling Towards Ecstasy by Sarah McLachlan - I think this was actually my very first CD purchase, so it's close to my heart.
Now let's hear about your 3s! A few things to keep in mind:
- If
you've already completed this on Facebook, I hope you'll still find it
enjoyable and a good conversation-starter! Feel free to reproduce your
Facebook responses here.
- You need not provide answers to all of the questions/categories - in fact, I left some of the originals out, too.
- You're welcome to split up your responses in different comments. I actually encourage it, so the comments don't become unwieldy.
- Have fun!
 by Pete Bodo
Mornin'. Packing day today, so this will be the only post until Jackie-Oh publishes the Deuce Club. She's done an amazing job as TennisWorld's social director, and I'm looking forward to more highly interactive sessions like we had week ago with those music videos.
I should have post up soon at ESPN, in which I riff a little on Swiss Davis Cup and Roger Federer confidant Severin Luthi's recent suggestion that Roger will be playing in the Switzerland vs. Italy tie (September), which the Swiss must win to remain in the "big league" World Group. I crunched some numbers to show just what Federer has been up against for most of his career as a Davis Cup performer. The stats suggest that while it's great for Davis Cup fans (like me) to call on Roger to play, it's neither accurate nor fair to accuse him of blowing off Davis Cup duty simply to accumulate greater individual glory (is that still possible for this guy? But that's getting ahead of ourselves. . .).
Federer, who's still got some tread on the tires, has already played one more Davis Cup tie than Pete Sampras (The Mighty Fed has played 17, by my count; anyone care to fact check?). But Sampras played in four finals, two of which earned the U.S. the giant birthday-cake- impersonating Davis Cup. In the first of those successful efforts (1992 vs., ironically, Switzerland), Sampras played only doubles. In the other final, Sampras wrote his name large in Davis Cup lore and legend by almost single-handedly sweeping Russia, on a very slow clay court in Moscow. He won both his singles (he had to be carried off the court, cramping, at the end of one of them) and he paired with Todd Martin in the winning doubles. It was an epic performance and, by Pete's own account, one of his career highlights.
Now look at Federer - he's played more ties than Sampras, but has never been able to carry Switzerland past the semifinals. The real killer stat, though, is that Federer is 35-11 in Cup play, including a brilliant 25-6 in singles. Sampras, by contrast, was 19-6 (15-8 in singles). To me, the key detail here is that Federer has already played 21 more matches than Sampras did in his entire career. And that a lot of tennis.
Granted, Sampras was no McEnroe when it came to Davis Cup play (Mac's career record: 59-10), and he had the luxury of beng part of a stable of great players who more-or-less shared the DC duties. But the numbers here underscore how much work Federer has already done in what has amounted to little more than wheel-spinninig by the Swiss. It used to be that no matter what Federer did, he simply didn't have adequate support to give the Swiss a realistic shot at the Cup. But with Stanislaus Wawrinka having emerged as at Top 10-level player, the scenario changed.
It might be a smart move for Federer to raise Davis Cup higher on his list of priorities, now that the no. 1 ranking isn't of paramount importance and he's secured the Grand Slam singles titles record. I don't think Federer "needs" to perform Davis Cup heroics to add to his legacy, but I do believe it a shame that a guy of his towering ability should be denied the satisfaction of a successful Davis Cup campaign - despite the investment it requires.
The company is pretty good in Davis Cup Valhalla - all of the guys who are spoken of in the same breath as Federer have carved out comfortable niches there, even Bjorn Borg, whose situation vis a vis supporting cast was similar to Federer's. Borg led Sweden to a Davis Cup triumph that helped put Swedish tennis - and Borg - on the sporting radar. The lore and legend of Davis Cup is incomplete without a Federer chapter, and Federer's own resume has that one, irritatingly puzzling blank spot that Davis Cup distinction would fill.
Of course, even if Federer decides to prioritize Davis Cup, this isn't anything like a slam-dunk. Wawrinka, while capable of beating anyone, has always seemed a little prone to freezing up under pressure, and there's no greater pressure than the kind you face in Davis Cup. Just yesterday, Wawrinka was upset in the Swiss Open by no. 119 Thomaz Bellucci of Brazil, despite (or was it because?) Federer was not playing in their home championships. It was a great opportunity for the top-seeded Wawrinka. but he apparently choked it away (and will now fall out of the Top 20 to boot).
Federer might be better off with a less gifted and/or highly ranked player (but still a viable no. 2) who's got sand when it comes to facing pressure. Oh sure, Federer and Wawrinka won the Olympic games gold medal in doubles, but that was doubles, and if you can't step up and play like you deserve to win with Federer as your partner, you might want to contemplate changing to a more sedate occupation.
Don't think that Roger Federer isn't aware of these details as he contemplates what, if anything, to do about this Davis Cup thing.
Have a great weekend, everyone - I'll have a Your Call up tomorrow morning.
 Good mornin'; everyone.
It looks like Maria Sharapova got a welcome break from her struggles; her beatdown of Nadia Petrova at Stanford should help her confidence. She won 1-and-2, and made this trenchant observation afterward: “I was aggressive the whole way through. I didn’t have many letdowns and even when I made unforced errors I stayed with it." That's the key to playing 'Pova's type of tennis: keep pressing, and don't get rattled or retreat into a more conservative style if a few forehand happen to fly into the fence, or smack the net cord. It takes a measure of composure to stay the course (gosh, I can't help but think of poor Andy Roddick at Wimbledon every stinkin' time I write those words!).
And how about our pal Marat Safin, who's in the midst of what my colleague Tom Perrotta quite brilliantly dubbed The Magical Misery Tour? Ernests Gulbis may be struggling these days, but the 6-4 in the third win for Safin had to be encouraging - dare we think Safin still has one significant statement to make before he drifts away to retirement? Inspired by our poet laureate, Madame Highpockets, I've been toying with the idea of writing an Ode to Marat. You may stop laughing. Now.
Actually, maybe we'll have a general Marat Appreciation Day, where you can all direct your tributes (or throw various undergarments) his way, in verse or otherwise. Let me think on it and feel free to post your suggestions below.
I like this idea of being a poet. it seems to give you license to drink like a fish, punch out people who irritate you in bars, seduce your best friend's wife, and descry the philistines of this world - all without having to pay a price. BTW, one of my favorite books is a comic novel about the misadventures of one Samson Shillitoe, a poet; it's a little-known gem called A Fine Madness.
I'm distressed to see the book is no longer in print, or at least not available at Amazon.com. But the movie version is pretty good and I recommend it highly if you'd like to pick up some tips on how to live a hugely self-centered life and earn sympathy for it. The companion piece to this book is The Horse's Mouth, brilliant Irish novelist Joye Cary's equally hilarious tale of Gulley Jimson, a brilliant, amoral, scheming painter. Cary is a great stylist who employs stream-of-consciousness, but not the wordy, tiresome Joycean kind. His sentences are clipped, brief, and imagistic. I may have mentioned these volumes before, but the readership here changes, and is a lot bigger, all the time.
I've got a busy day here at the office, and over the next week or so. We're moving, and you don't want to know how excruciating a process it is to buy and/or sell an apartment in New York (we're doing both), and by next Thursday, by which time we'll theoretically be homeless, Cowboy Luke and I are going to light a shuck for Montana, and the Milk River Country. We'll be going down with our friends, the Aagesons, to the Hays pow wow in beautiful Mission Canyon on the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation (home of Gros Ventre and Assiniboine tribes). Luke will get his first taste of native dancing, singing, crafts and horsemanship demonstrations. Perhaps I'll purchase him a nice little war club, or scalping knife.
Of course, I plan to have Your Call posts on the days I'm away (we return on the 11th). Anyway, we have a few days to go before then, and you know what to do below.
-- Pete
 by Pete Bodo
Yesterday I wrote about how Roger Federer is at a significant career crossroads, and one of the more interesting subplots in this plot-rich rivalry Federer enjoys with Rafael Nadal is that the same could be said for Nadal. And if the events of the last 12 months in Federer's life have been unpredictable and surprising, constituting a narrative of the kind on which Hollywood thrives, with all that Journey of the Hero baloney they teach in film school, Nadal's own trials have a decidedly Biblical flavor.
This is a case of life imitating art, because there's a measure of verisimilitude in those comparisons. Federer is tennis's version of a fabulous leading man in the old-school tradition: he's sophisticated, he bears his enormous gifts lightly (but without ever abusing or betraying them), he enjoys wearing $3,000 suits and feels no obligation to proclaim his manliness. He prefers a good fashion show to, say, deep-sea fishing. Mostly, though, his career has been distinguished (generally) by an extraordinary ability to make the difficult appear easy, and a penchant to let everyone else do his worrying for him. He's like a Swiss James Bond; they don't do gun-play, bedroom romps, and potent cocktails all that well there.
By contrast, Nadal is all grit, glistening biceps, and unruly hair. He's boyish; the second impulse many women feel in his presence is a profound desire to give him a motherly hug (that this is vastly different from the first impulse is a subject we'd better leave for another time). It's easy to picture Rafa as an extra in The Ten Commandments, although a more profound analogy might call upon a comparison of Nadal with the subject of the Book of Job. Only Nadal's relative youth keeps that one from hitting the bulls-eye, but with Federer unlikely to vanish from the tennis scene soon, even that qualifier might have to be discarded.
Nadal's accomplishments have been glorious, already. But a more intriguing and volatile story-line was placed over his developing record, like one of those transparent panels containing various body parts in a biology textbook. And that was the theme of Nadal's pursuit of Federer - an unavoidable theme, given the Spanish youth's ambitions. It's probably time to peel back that panel, because anybody who thinks that a primary goal of either man's career is bringing down the other is just plain nuts. That the accomplishment of either man's stated goals inevitably includes having to triumph over the other is more of an accident of the way the game is structured than a motivational force for either Federer or Nadal. Rivalries are not just wonderful, they're pre-ordained. And has any comparably riveting rivalry so conspicuously lacked what we would call "bulletin board" material?
Just as the tribulations of the past 12 months have tempered Federer, we can expect to see a different Nadal emerge from his recent, enforced absence from tennis. Already we see a more sober, muted champion than the one to whom those great prizes - a Wimbledon title, an Olympic games gold medal, the no. 1 ranking - were something to strive for, a job into which to put his back with blinkered eyes. In the coming months, Nadal will face challenges parallel to the ones Federer surmounted this summer; but the theme won't be catching Federer any more than derailing Nadal was a preoccupation for Federer. It will simply be getting back what he once possessed - health, stamina, and those cherished ATP ranking points. For Federer, this past year was largely a psychological call to arms; for Nadal, it will be a physical one, although we all know that the two are intimately related.
The news these days out of Manacor has been slightly disconcerting as well as puzzling. If you read the interviews and articles closely, you might also detect an undercurrent of doubt and perhaps even sadness in Rafael Nadal's remarks about the status of his knees. For example, did you note how he emphasized the need to learn how to "overcome difficult situations or face them with a positive mindset and learn to enjoy suffering. . . [it is] is a virtue that I’ve always had, I like to suffer, I have learned to enjoy suffering and I believe that is what helps me."
We needn't make too much of this; a taste for suffering is an attribute of of many great athletes, in all sports. The more alarming quote from Rafa was his simple explanation for why he pulled the plug instead of defending his Wimbledon title. "I decided it was best to stop and recover because you lose the drive to go back to train and compete, because you are not with the same energy, little by little it destroys you."
This is not just dramatic; it's also a sad if unflinchingly realistic assessment coming from the mouth of the 23-year old. And if the observation can be construed as a threat to Nadal's career, it's chiefly in an area related to his love of the game - a theme we worked over pretty well yesterday. It's hard to love playing when doing so is downright painful, and the source of stress and anxiety. Nadal will have two major issues to deal with when he does return: the physical state of his knees, and the mental drain of worrying about those knees.
My own feeling, though, is optimistic. Nadal is a fighter, and he knows as well as anyone else what's at stake in the next few weeks. He's always done his heavy lifting for the year by the end of Wimbledon, which has hampered his enthusiasm and effectiveness at the U.S. Open. Soon, he'll embark for the first time on the quest for the American national title with a hard-court major in hand and plenty of rest. He could meet Federer's ante and complete his own career Grand Slam in 2009, which would certainly make this one of the most extraordinary of years in tennis.
Great players tend to see challenges as opportunities rather than daunting tests - witness how Federer took extra care to prevent Roland Garros from slipping away from him. One reason Nadal has seemed a little down lately may be less alarming than it may appear - the kid probably just misses playing. Pete Sampras was comparably bummed out when he was forced to miss the U.S. Open of 1999 with an unexpected back injury, and he's spoken eloquently of how depressed he became in the subsequent weeks. But he returned soon enough, and made the finals in New York for the next three years running (winning once).
Brushes with mortality, especially for the young, are never easy experiences.
Perhaps there will be an up-side to the time Nadal's had to spend away from tennis recently, although it would have to be a whopper to make up for having to miss Wimbledon and being forced the yield his no. 1 ranking without a fight. The time off has given Nadal ample opportunity to assess where he stands; the ways in which his career is no longer about achieving the typical goals that any great young player sets himself. In this next stage, Nadal needs to forget any distracting sub-plots and focus on what he wants out of the game, and his long-term source of motivation.
Sometimes it seems like the only two people who aren't especially interested in defining Federer and Nadal through each other are. . .Federer and Nadal. So, if you can see things through their eyes, Federer's accomplishments during Nadal's absence are not just irrelevant to the coming weeks (except in the sense that Federer will be a more confident player), they have liberated Nadal to adopt the role he knows best, and which has thus far defined his career thanks to the parallel excellence of Federer - that of the determined, hard-working underdog. But now he'll be motivated by a desire to recoup what's been lost, rather than to merely hang on to what he's earned, or add another title to his collection.
Unless his knees prove troublesome, Nadal may find himself in a much better place mentally once he gets out on those hard courts and starts smoking the forehands and belting those returns.
 Mornin', folks. I feel obliged to write a Rafael Nadal post a little later, because he too is at a crossroads, and where his crossroads intersects with Roger Federer's crossroads you're likely to hear a screeching of brakes followed by the sound of glass exploding and metal crumpling like paper in the hands of a lover jilted the old-fashioned way. So watch for that later.
In other news, I was glad to read that Roger Federer may be playing Davis Cup in September, against Italy. Actually, in all the talk about how Federer has scaled all the peaks, it's easy to forget that he simply doesn't have the Davis Cup record of most of his fellow superstars. Some of this is a result of Federer's nation, Switzerland, not having had a realistic shot for lack of a solid no. 2 singles man - a handicap that's been alleviated by the emergence of Stan Wawrinka. It would be great to see Roger now move Davis Cup honor higher on his "to do" list, and in some ways the timing for such a decision is perfect.
John Isner is up to the same tricks that catapulted him into the limelight at the Legg Mason event in 2007, where he served his way through a succession of tiebreakers to reach the final. Yesterday, he beat Benjamin Becker in a pair of tiebreakers in Los Angeles. The scuttlebutt I've heard is that Isner simply didn't work as hard as he might have after making his debut in Washington, and that's left him spinning his wheels and unable to rely on much beyond the hope that a hot serving hand will earn him enough Ws to keep his career on track. That's a big gamble, but hey - it's his life, right?
And Svetlana Kuznetsova will be missing next week's WTA event in Carson, having withdrawn with a foot injury. Not much to say about that one, so without futher ado, I'm turning it over to you. Enjoy the tennis. Back later.
-- Pete
 by Pete Bodo
Roger Federer stands at a career crossroads, a babe in each arm (his wife Mirka gave birth to twin girls a few days ago), and one of two forks to take: one path goes downhill on a pleasant hike to retirement as the greatest Grand Slam singles title collector of all time. The other path goes uphill, over some potentially rough terrain, toward a private Valhalla with splendid views all around - and not a neighbor in sight.
Which way will Federer go?
It's an intriguing question, now that Federer has completed what might be the greatest 12-month period in his career - a time of triumph and vindication, pure and simple. But even deeply satisfying feats ought to carry a warning label, as top players often discovered. One Grand Slam champion who didn't read the label was Mats Wilander, who competes these days on the ATP Champions Tour.
In 1988, Wilander won three majors (which Federer is on track to do at the U.S. Open), the piece de resistance was a stunning upset of Ivan Lendl in the U.S. Open final. Wilander's performance was all the more critical because the no. 1 ranking was on the line (as it might be at Flushing Meadow in a few weeks) and Wilander had never held the spot.
Unfortunately, the three-major year, as well as his ascent to the top spot, left Wilander burned out and on the brink of what would be an enormous letdown. As he told David Law of the ATP Champion Tour the other day, “It wasn’t that easy (to recover from the effort) and it didn’t just go away in one day. It was more than a 'beer hangover' so to speak. It was deflation - you pump up the balloon so much and eventually it just exploded.
“I still loved to play tennis afterward, but I did feel like there was something just a little bit different when I was playing. I was hitting shots that didn’t have a purpose and that was very difficult for me to handle because up to the US Open finals in ’88, every ball I hit had a purpose. To then suddenly to start hitting shots for no reason was tough and it ended up being very deflating to my character on the court.”
It's ironic that so many Federer fans are loath to forgive Wilander a few crude remarks he made about their idol a few years ago, because the two men have much in common as players and personalities - starting with their respective reputations as "great guys." One big difference, though,is that Wilander's U.S. Open performance of 1988 was the culmination of a career-long striving, nearly a decade of dancing like a moth around the flame of ultimate success. By contrast, the career Grand Slam and Grand Slam singles title records Federer bagged this year seemed less the product of super-human effort than the inevitable, crowning touches on a flat landscape of nearly unimaginable excellence.
No matter what happens at the U.S. Open, we don't really know the extent to which Federer's already epic 2009 will leave him sated, or drained. But it's unlikely that he'll react the way Wilander did in 1988 (he never won another major, and his ranking slid precipitously over the ensuing months). After all, Federer has spent the past few years bulldozing and leveling the terrain of achievement, and making the heroic or epic appear quotidian. Why should 2009 be any different from any other year?
All of this makes it easy to forget that a year ago, the bulldozer temporarily hit some seriously compacted rock. Suddenly, the question arose, "Is Federer in decline?" The critical error the pundits made was failing to differentiate between decline and crisis; the former is an irreversible natural process; the latter is a temporary state (except for those who thrive on crisis, a class of person from which we can safely exclude The Mighty Federer).
Pundits, including former players and top-notch analysts, were suggesting that Federer hire a full-time coach; that he work on his fitness; that he hire a sports psychologist to help him "figure out" his nemesis, Rafael Nadal, along with a score of other rising stars who were nibbling at the edges of his greatness, and seemingly taking out larger and larger chunks on a nearly daily basis. A year later it's clear that Federer was anything but finished. And it turns out that there was nothing wrong with Federer, beyond the inadvertent "error" he'd made by raising the bar of expectation to unprecedented heights. He set a personal standard that was as unsustainable for him as it was inconceivable for most of his rivals.
That Federer himself didn't feel and experience that period of obvious turmoil as a crisis has nothing to do with it (although I'm not suggesting that he did not); like supreme gladiators or the gunfighters of yore, Federer - rightly - considered himself the most lethal man in town - until he wasn't. That's how it always is with the warriors; they're the last to know.
Apologists for Federer could claim that he suffered lingering effects from his bout with glandular fever, or that his back was out of joint. They can concoct any number of justifications or rationalizations for Federer's loss of form, but that's all just bar-stool talk. What mattered, and the only thing that ever matters is results. And those suggested that Federer suddenly was vulnerable and out of sync - a state that was described most eloquently by Federer himself on that sunny day in Miami when, in the course of absorbing a beating at the hands of Novak Djokovic, he smashed his suddenly disobedient racquet on the court.
Everyone should watch that clip again, just to remind himself of what it was like for Federer until, basically, Roland Garros in June of 2009. And those who were present at his post-match press conference that day in Miami will remember how withdrawn, evasive and introverted Federer appeared; it was like watching a felon mumbling his incantations with his shoulders hunched, hugging his own torso, the duck bill of his trademark RF cap tucked so low that you couldn't see his eyes - and probably would have turned away from them if he hadn't made danged sure you wouldn't see them anyway.
Federer's transformation these past few months has been extraordinary, even if he caught a bit of luck when Nadal was beaten in Paris. But just as the rationalizations of Federer's "slump" are irrelevant, so is any complaint that Federer just got "lucky" when Nadal lost at Roland Garros and withdrew from Wimbledon. I got news for you: one of the main reasons all of these top players are where they are is good luck, and it would take all the fingers and toes in a medium-sized city to tally up the number of players who, presented with good luck, found a way to make nothing of it. As amusing as the subtexts and backstories are to information hungry fans, this is the nub of it: When Federer most had to produce and halt what was clearly a slide, he found a way to do it.
Federer answered the only questions that he could possible reply to - those that were put to him on the court. In the course of the one-month period that matters more than all the rest of the tennis year, he not only won the two majors, his triumphs sealed his legacy. In the span of four weeks, he completed a career Grand Slam and shattered the Grand Slam singles title record. Apart from everything else, those achievements represent the single greatest response to pressure that I've ever seen. And they upped the ante for Nadal, a player whose own ability to rise to the demand of an occasion rivals that of Federer's.
So what's it going to be for Federer, a casual victory lap at the U.S. Open, where he'll be defending his title for a fifth consecutive year? What's it going to be for Federer in the "long term" - if that's the right word for the next two or three years - as the currents carry him toward the rocky beach of retirement?
I think the key lies in that wonderful quote by Rod Laver, a man with neither the temperament nor ability to engage in circuitous speculations and tortured analysis. At Wimbledon, Laver said: "Well, you know, you've got to be in the game and enjoy the sport to be able to do something like this (shatter the Grand Slam record). . . (you can't do it) if you don't respect the game and enjoy it - (If it's not) a thrill for yourself to get out there and play. That's the one thing that Roger has that I think is admirable for tennis."
The comment seems so anodyne. . . so obvious. It's just that nobody I know of ever bothered to make the observation, and the more I think about it (for that quote has stayed with me), the more I appreciate the role that the simple love of playing - win, lose or draw - figures into Federer's success. That kind of love may not save a player from feeling pressure, stress or having mental or emotional meltdowns, but it certainly helps keep those powerful irritants in perspective. Roger Fedrerer must have experienced a lot of stress and pressure in the past 12 months and they may have succeeded in overriding his love for the game, as symbolized by that terribly disfigured racquet in Miami. But over time, the love won out. It returned in the spring, which is the right season for that kind of thing.
Federer has always borne pressure with great dignity and grace; it's hard to imagine the events of 2009 effecting a major transformation of the kind Wilander experienced in 1989. At the same time, this happy time in his life, now the life of a young family, which is very different from any other kind of life, will certainly have some impact on the decisions he makes, his degree of focus, and those vital tools of the supreme competitor: the killer instinct, the burning desire to win, the sense that the game is perpetually unfinished business until the day you quit, when it becomes the marginally interesting business of others.
But if Federer could be forgiven for wondering, "How many times do I really have to do this?" during some portions of the last year, he now knows the one, true answer to the question: As often as it please me to do it. . . Oh, he'll learn what it feels like to hit shots that, as Wilander so trenchantly put it, "have no purpose" simply because he'll play more and more matches that can be said to have no, or little, purpose. But that will be a function of the time and place, because for a Roger Federer, there is always a purpose at Grand Slam events; that's in the DNA of a tennis champion.
Federer has often said he enjoys the tennis way of life, but that will change somewhat now that he has a family. My guess is that he'll find a way to play fewer events, or ones that are more convenient to his way of life. But it's hard to imagine that basic love of playing evaporating in Federer's heart; it's been there a long time. More likely, it will just have to make room for other things. And it may have helped him enormously to experience the first and what may be the only serious crisis of his career. He knows what he's made of; he knows when to panic (never) and when to dig in and fight (when the stakes are sufficiently high).
“I think if Federer keeps playing the way he is now he’s going to run away so far that nobody will ever catch him in terms of Grand Slam titles,” Wilander said. "Of course, he has to stay physically healthy but he has introduced a new, stronger mindset to his game. Suddenly it’s more fun to play tennis for him. Roger has taken the sport to a different level. He now shows up on the court thinking he’s going to beat his opponent not only in terms of physical strength but also in the mind. I wish him all the best and I really hope he wins 20 Majors.”
Nadal and company may have something to say about that. On the other hand, their ambitions just might help keep Federer around a little longer, because the kind of love he knows best isn't easily satisfied.
 I'm a little late posting today's Your Call, so I'll be brief here and come back later with a red-meat post on an interesting dimension of Roger Federer's career. Meanwhile, here are some odds and ends to contemplate if you can't watch tennis today, and are just doing furtive TW peeks at the office:
- Tim Mayotte has been added to the stable of official USTA national coaches. For a while, Tim was a neighbor of mine in Manhattan, and I bumped into him fairly frequently and had dinner with him and his ex-wife on one occasion. I guess Tim will be moving down to the USTA/Evert Academy in Boca Raton, Fla. to fulfill his new obligations. I think Mayotte will do a fine job, and he'd be particularly well-suited to working one-on-one with a kid who might need some good advice and guidance - a Big Brother figure. It's hard to put my finger on exactly why I feel that way - it's just a gut reaction, but those are usually pretty reliable.
- Jesse Levine tops Bobby Reynolds in Los Angeles. Am I the only one to whom this headline seems like one that pops up every few days? Or am I mistaking Bobby for Robert (Kendrick) and Jesse for some other young, struggling American player? Whatever the case, it does seem like these young Americans fighting to shed "journeyman" status are constantly beating up on each other. That's life in the pit, far below the peaks and plateaus occupied by U.S.'s leading players, Andy Roddick, James Blake, Sam Querrey, Robbie Ginepri. . . The bright side is that beating up on each other is probably good for all these young guys.
- The WTA is in Isantbul. I would be very curious to know how that enterprise is working out, and plan to get some details. I wonder if the girls are drinking that Turkish coffee, which is an exquisite treat for anyone like me, who likes coffee that has the consistency of sludge and, if consumed with sufficient gusto, can power you through a long day of pretty much anything at all.
You know what do to - back a little later.
--- Pete
 by Pete Bodo
There must be a higher purpose in Dinara Safina's life than serving as part of Serena Williams's fitness regimen (Safina has been her heavy bag, to borrow from the sweet science), or the object of scorn and derision that might be better directed at the WTA computer-ranking system. For as most of you know, and Safina is never allowed to forget, she earned the No. 1 ranking in April without having bagged a Grand Slam title, and she hasn't let it go despite two majors - won by others - having played out in the interim.
You might say that Safina hasn't advanced her own cause by failing to bag any of this year's majors, or enhanced her credibility with the way she lost in them: She was simply crushed by Williams in the Australian Open final, fell prone to anxiety in a severely disappointing loss to Svetlana Kuznetsova in the championship match in Paris, and Safina was humiliated by Venus Williams in the semifinals of Wimbledon.You'd think the poor girl can't play, and at times on major occasions that suspicion is abetted by Safina.
On the other hand, the last WTA No. 1 (Jelena Jankovic - surely you remember the name?) blew herself up just minutes after earning the No. 1 ranking; by contrast, Safina is an Amazon-grade warrior. I can think of a few players who wouldn't exactly mind being in her shoes - two Grand Slam finals and a semi in the last three majors.
Safina won again on Sunday, in Portoroz. She beat Sara Errani in a three-set roller coaster ride after losing the first set tiebreaker. After winning, she recited an all-too familiar script: "After losing the first set, I started to play exactly how I had to. But then when I was up 2-0, 30-0 in the third set, suddenly I lost my game. I got tight. That's why it was so complicated. When I won the match it was a relief. I really wanted it. These tough matches give you confidence and I hope with this I can go to the States and play my best tennis there."
Three words Safina should have engraved on her forehead (for our benefit), or on her wrist for her own: It's a process.
That is, taking a place at the top of the game and holding it is a process for anyone not named Williams, or Roger Federer, Chris Evert or John McEnroe. Champions who mature relatively late (think Martina Navratilova, Patrick Rafter, even, in some ways Ivan Lendl, Andre Agassi and Justine Henin) can tell you that unless you're blessed with a combination of extraordinary drive, surpassing talent, and a level head, the key ingredient in becoming a Grand Slam champion is steady nerves - more precisely, the ability to keep your level extremely high while resisting the chorus of critics who suggest that winning a major is one task too many for you to handle.
So the more sanguine way to look at Safina's adventures since the end of 2008 is that she's been "gathering information." And everything we know about Safina, from her earliest days on the tour, suggests that she's had an awful lot of information to gather, beginning with the intelligence on how to emerge from her famous brother Marat's shadow to achieve stardom, while lacking some of the natural advantages he enjoyed. Those advantages include a game that even in proportionate terms is much bigger than Dinara's, a dangerously effective indifference to the so-called "pressure" of expectations, and a type of personal charisma that somehow greases the skids of life.
I mean, it's probably much easier to play second-fiddle to a stud like Marat, while no pony-tailed little hottie can be very pleased to suffer a bludgeoning at the hands of beady-eyed and often downright gawky Dinara. Sometimes those kinds of things count, although they probably shouldn't.
There's a flip side to Safina's poor defense of her No. 1 ranking in those train wrecks dressed up as major finals. She's endured those terrible whippings without spiraling off into deep depression or chucking her racquets into the Thames and entering a nunnery. Something Marat said in a teleconference the other day is pertinent here: "She's really competitive and really tough girl. She wants to crack it down (win a major), it just takes a bit of time."
Time, of course, is the one thing that nobody wants to grant any player who seems to perform below the standard of his or her ranking. This, partly, is what made life so difficult for Jankovic in 2009. The table was set for her personal banquet in Melbourne, but when she showed up - so bent on proving herself a worthy No. 1 that she over-trained - she was so nervous she couldn't lift the fork to her mouth. Over the ensuing months, she got a lot of food of food on her shirt and lap, but she's been no more capable of finding her mouth than an infant in a high chair.
Safina's history has been dramatically different. She's recovered from those notionally devastating losses by holding on to what she has - confidence, drive, attitude and even ranking-wise - as she continues to gather information. This is something that only destined champions seem able to do, and it suggests that despite the momentary, bitter disappointments, her wounds are like those of a teen-ager who mildy mutilates herself out of boredom, or anxiety. This is a common rite of passage, as any reformed Goth princess can tell you.
And as much as the pundits and critics enjoy denigrating a talented or highly ranked player who chokes away significant opportunities (and trust me, it can be an exquisitely pleasurable if downright mean indulgence), a player is only broken by himself. The players who stay the course almost always prevail. And in tennis, staying the course means winning. For winning begets winning. Safina may have struggled in Portoroz against Errani, but she won. Again. Maybe having won despite struggling against the over-gunned Errani, instead of tacking up another routine 2-and-3 win, will be of greater long-term value to Safina.
Patience is an especially handy virtue for someone in Safina's shoes, and she seems to have it. Consistency is another key to long-term success. This she has as well, and it's of a different order of magnitude than the consistency of all those perennial semifinalists and finalists who hover around the upper reaches of the Top 10. Safina wins tournaments consistently, and that neutralizes to some degree the uncomfortable fact that her most formidable rival isn't able to grind the heel of a stiletto into Safina's heart often enough to break her spirit. Safina may never beat Serena, but she's beaten some comparably unnerving demons and goblins and they're always a bigger enemy. One rival at a time.
When Marat was asked if his sister needed to make any major changes, or change her way of thinking in order to bag that elusive first major, he replied: "It's more that it just takes some time. She been unexpected the No. 1 in the world, because not many people really believe that she would become one day, and finally she became. But the next step, maybe she was not really ready for that, now she's been through a few finals and she's more experienced and the next one will be hers. I'm pretty sure sooner or later she gonna make it. Once she gonna crack one down, first one, and then much more will come."
Given Safina's relative youth (she's 23) and the volatile state of the WTA Tour, it's hard to argue with that sober analysis. Marat doesn't even mind the sniping that's gone on, saying of Serena's recent comments:
"It's okay. It's a girls' matter. It's just girls talk. Well, they're two big players. Serena is more experienced and she been on tour much more time. She been out there for much longer time. My sister, she's a new one, basically new No. 1 in the world. The rivalry, the next time they're gonna play, it's gonna be a nice match. Serena, she is a nice girl, but it's her own fault (that she's not No. 1). They are tough actors, and it's what happens. But I think it's good to see that it happens on the tour that they are fighting for No. 1 and giving a little bit of trouble to each other, but without any harm to each other."
In other words, Marat thinks his sister is a big girl, who's capable of taking care of herself. And apart from the hardship Dinara's had clearing the final career hurdle in her path, Safina's been proving him right.
 Mornin', everyone. Well, the time machine effect kicked in this weekend, with Nikolay Davydenko and Robbie Ginepri winning titles. They may seem like minor titles, but remember that while Indianapolis has seen better days - and better draws - Hamburg [won by Davydenko] is, historically, a blue-chip title. And it may eventually rebound from the upheavals that led to Hamburg's demotion from the Masters Series and change of date. Hey, Hamburg is the German Open - surely that counts for something (in fact, it counts for a lot, but I'll delve a little more deeply into that in the near future).
Hamburg had a pretty good draw this year, or at any rate a better one than Indianapolis. But forget about that for now, and embrace and savor the simple, beautiful power of winning, and what it can do for a man or woman's confidence going forward. Don't ever forget that players of the kind who won yesterday are competition and victory junkies; I guarantee that if you got a Davydenko or Ginepri out on that cracked-asphalt court behind Lex Luthor High School in the sweltering heat tomorrow afternoon, either man would come at you with hunger in his eyes and malice in his heart. You don't want to see what you would look like when it was all over.
So while nobody is going to confuse Hamburg or Indianapolis with Wimbledon, each of these struggling men is walking with a lighter step today, and will be feeling a little more sharp and eager when he picks up a racquet to practice again. Winning has an afterglow that can linger and open the gateway to greater glory.
Winning. It's a beautiful thing. And it has more therapeutic value than ground-up rhino horn, or anger management-counseling.
 Ed McGrogan is on vacation this week, so this is the faux Monday Net Post, and if you like to collect your McGrogan's Heroes bubble-gum cards, add Ginepri (gotta love the towel fluff in the scraggly beard look above) and Andrea Petkovic (who won her first WTA main tour title at Bad Gastein on Sunday) to your collection. Call them Bodo's McGrogan's Heroes. I'll also be doing a post on Dinara Safina and her dilemma later today (her brother Marat made some interesting remarks about her the other day in a telephone interview), so make sure to check back.
Happy Monday. As if there were such a thing.
-- Pete
 Hi everyone - and here's today's post for talking tennis or anything else that occurs to you. It might be best to take advantage of this quiet time to go off-topic, because soon enough we'll be back in Crisis Center mode - the Masters event in Montreal begins in less than two weeks, and the U.S. Open is only five weeks away.
I've not been around TW much for the past week or so - lack of T.V. coverage of any of the current tournaments being the main reason. It's unfortunate, because when the chance arises, it's a pleasure to watch some of the smaller events, which frequently showcase players we don't see in action too often. This time last year Juan Martin Del Potro was building up a head of steam with several tournament wins in succession, which proved to be the springboard for a U.S. Open quarterfinal, and reaching his current status in the game.
I've tried using the internet to watch tennis, but really can't get into staring at those tiny windows containing unreliable livestreams all the time (for me, that's mainly the tour's official subscription site, tennistv.com, not the obscure sources that many of you are familiar with). I suppose that until the quality improves, which appears to require a faster internet connection than I can achieve, I'll only look at them for must-see matches. I don't know how some TWibe members manage it. Can any of you estimate how much time you spend peering at your computer screen in pursuit of your regular tennis fix, as opposed to watching on T.V.? Had it been televised, I probably would have been watching that Davydenko-Mathieu showdown in Hamburg earlier, because it's a tournament that I've enjoyed seeing over the years, but its T.V. coverage here in the UK vanished along with its Masters status.
Pete will be back in action tomorrow. Meanwhile, enjoy the rest of the day's tennis.
-- Rosangel Valenti
Note: Master Ace has kindly provided us with the following timechecks (U.S. Eastern Standard Time) for today's finals:
WTA: Bad Gastein at 6 AM - Andrea Petkovic defeated Ioana Raluca Olaru, 6-2, 6-3
ATP: Hamburg at 9 AM - Nikolay Davydenko defeated Paul-Henri Mathieu, 6-4, 6-2
WTA: Portoroz at 2 PM - Dinara Safina vs Sara Errani
ATP: Indianapolis at 3 PM - Sam Querrey vs Robby Ginepri
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