A Fine Day	11/30/2009 - 12:37 PM

Greetings, everyone. I'm hustling today, with telephone interviews booked with Caroline Wozniacki and Andre Agassi, so this will be brief. I just finished a post for ESPN on the judgment the ITF handed down in the Serena Williams case - two years probation and a $175,000 fine, of which roughly half will be rebated to Serena if she doesn't violate the terms of her probation.

It's a fair and sensible response to an ugly incident that was unprecedented in the women's game, and rare even at the worst of times in the men's. I guess the closest thing to it was that incident that occured about 25 years ago, when a livid Jimmy Connors tried to shake an umpire out of his high chair.

I had very mixed feelings about the Serena incident, which took place during her semifinal match with Kim Clijsters at the US Open. You can read those initial reactions if you click on the US Open 2009 tab in the categories bar on the right. But basically, I thought it was a terrible call made at the worst possible time, and once again it illustrated how capriciously and arbitrarily the foot-fault role is enforced. At the same time, Serena's response was unacceptable, because it took protest to a different, unsavory level. You simply can't have players threatening officials with bodily harm, end of story.

A part me me wonders if we've heard the last of this. In this litigious society, would anyone be surprised if the linesperson in question turned up two years from now, filing a $25 million civil suit, claiming that Serena's outburst was so traumatic that it's ruined her life? How hard is it to get a psychiatrist to testify that you've been complaining about having nightmares and feeling depressed and despondent for two years?  You can criticize Serena's behavior on many fronts, but one real mark of how downright stupid it was is that it left her exposed to something like the scenario I just outlined. And her arrogant, initial refusal to apologize to the linesperson didn't do anything to quell the potential repercussions of her ill-considered act.

I'll have a few things to say about the Barclays ATP World Tour Finals tomorrow, too.  But that's it for now. You can read more on my reaction to the ITF decision at ESPN when it goes live, which should ve shortly.

-- Pete

Grand Slam Hangover	11/29/2009 - 9:45 AM

Good mornin', everyone. We're in the throes of preparing for my son Luke's 7th birthday here today, so this will be brief, but I'll be back on the job tomorrow, with further thoughts on the Barclays ATP World Tour Finals. For now, let me ask: Who thought, just a few years ago, that Juan Martin del Potro (or Nikolay Davydenko, for that matter?) would be the man to beat for the coveted year-end championships?

Davydenko, I can understand. He's a known factor - a veteran with a healthy opportunistic streak and enough experience to take his chances when he gets them. This is a round robin, and we all know the format encourages strange twists and turns, and is particularly friendly to sub no. 1 players. The image of Andy Murray working an abacus to see if he's in or out of the semis ought to be the official logo of all round-robin tournaments, because it frames the shortcoming of a round robin quite nicely.

I think del Potro's berth is more significant. Here's a guy with a Grand Slam hangover, and a disturbing, recent habit of having to quit matches for fitness-related reasons. Yet he's found a way to get the job done in London, and now stands on the brink of establishing himself not just as a factor at the top, but perhaps the factor at the top. A win today backs up his performance in the US Open, and it could wipe out doubt in anyone's mind - first and foremost his own - that the win in New York was some sort of fluke.

And again, who had guessed that this would be the main theme of the WTF?

Anyway, enjoy the match, see you all tomorrow.

Unsurprising Surprises	11/28/2009 - 8:00 AM

by Pete Bodo

Howdy, everyone, I hope  you all had a great Thanksgiving and a less than sinister Black Friday; the only thing I bought today was a simple glass and steel desk for Cowboy Luke, who's now going to have to start doing his homework in his own room. I say it's empowering - he says he dont need to do no stinkin' homework. The little shaver's been begging for a Wii for his birthday (on Monday) for two months now and I'm wondering what I'm going to do starting Tuesday, when I can no longer holler: If you want to have any shot at getting a Wii, you'd better take the cat out of the washing machine - NOW!

I did manage to catch some of the tennis action these past few days though, and I'd say this tournament has been full of unsurprising surprises. Is anyone shocked that Nikolay Davydenko has found a way to sneak into the semifinals through the back door? Maybe I'm prejudiced, but that just seems a very Kolya thing to do.

One thing I love about the guy is that he's a little bit like Monica Seles  - acutely aware of his earning opportunities, and taking every advantage he can to exploit them. Nothing wrong with that, in my book. Players who are driven to earn don't tank matches or waste chances, because every one of them has a dollar sign attached to it. I get the feeling that he's going to end up one very rich bald little dude - the opposite of someone like, oh, Marat Safin (a moment of silence, please), who I can see at some not too distant juncture broke, happy - and about 60 pounds overweight. Like his old running buddy, Yevgeny Kafelnikov once was.

Did you catch the way Roger Federer handed Juan Martin del Potro that critical match the other night - the one that enabled del Potro to advance to the semis? Oh, we'll see Federer at his best again, maybe even this weekend. But the theme is developing as expected; the fire in Federer leaps and dances now, it's no longer a steady flame. He just doesn't seem to want it badly enough at the natural, gut level. It happens to every great player who sticks around long enough to decompress from his most intense peak. Even a gourmand reaches the point where he can't cram yet another truffle down his throat.

And I feel genuinely sympathetic for Rafael Nadal. His year ended on a really dissonant note, and whatever he said in his press conferences, I don't think his heart is in it. I think he wants his heart to be in it; he's enough of a competitor and a sufficiently principled guy to feel that way. But at around the time that he's unwrapping his new Wii, his new Maserati, or whatever he gets for Christmas from his girlfriend, he's going to get knocked in the head by a thunderbolt: Where was my mind? Where was my game? What the hail happened, these last few weeks?

Which means, I reckon, that he's going to blast out of the gates in January as if propelled by a jet pack. A Jet Boy pack.

By the way, while I'm glad to see such terrific crowds and apparent media and fan interest in the Barclays ATP World Tour Finals, I confess that unless the problem is the broadcast values and technology of Tennis Channel, I find the general ambience of the 02 Arena somewhat depressing. It seems awfully dark, and too blue, too much like some stupid nightclub. But maybe I'm just too conservative, and wedded to the idea that tennis is a game best played in the sunshine, and even indoors against a visible, colorful backdrop of. . . people.

I guess the atmosphere is meant to be "dramatic," but if I want that I'd just soon go see an Edward Albee play in some off-off-Broadway theater. What next, Rafa holding aloft a skull before the men's final and mourning, Alas, poor Yorick, I knew thee well, no? 

Have a great weekend, everyone.

The Deuce Club, 11.27	11/27/2009 - 6:07 PM

By Jackie Roe, TW Social Director

• Federer finally winning that French Open title. Made all the more gratifying after a frustrating hard court season and incessant "He's through!" talk.
• Another historic and dramatic Wimbledon men's final, just one year after the Greatest Match of All Time (whodathunkit?!). The quality of tennis wasn't comparable, perhaps, but I was at the edge of my seat - and of sanity - the entire time. That's how you want to feel watching a Slam final, right?
• Clijsters's remarkable comeback. A former champ making a much-touted return only to fall flat on his/her face isn't my idea of fun, so I'd hoped we'd witness the opposite ... but certainly didn't expect it. Yet that's just what we got! What an incredible feel-good story. (And while I'm on it, I'm thankful for Henin announcing her return, too. If she can shake things up like Clijsters did, we're in for a wild 2010 season.)
• Being able to attend three tournaments this year - Indian Wells, Cincinnati, and the U.S. Open - and sharing all of the experiences with you here in the DC. Which goes hand in hand with ...
• Meeting loads of TWibers at all of these events. The trips wouldn't have been nearly as enjoyable had I been on my own or even with my "real life" friends; there's something about being around TW folks in a tennis context that makes one feel ... safe. You guys just get it. It's ironic, really, considering we're essentially strangers to one another. But maybe it's that inscrutability that makes this coming together so rewarding - and so memorable.
• Pete for continuing to trust me with this DC space! I count my lucky stars that I get to be a member of this illustrious TW crew.
• Most of all, I'm thankful that I belong to the TW community and have the chance to get to know such interesting, clever, thoughtful, and supportive people. Truly, you guys rock.
  

Now it's time for you to tell us what you're thankful for as it related to tennis and/or TW. If you'd rather just list those things you're thankful for in general, that's fine, too!

One last thing:

We plan on handing out TW Awards again this year. For those of you who haven't been around for very long, this is when we award our fellow TWibers with a variety of honors. Here's how it'll work: Please take a moment and think of some creative awards, including which TWibers should win them, and send me your ideas here. I'll be collecting your submissions over the next few weeks, then Pete and I will look through 'em and make a final call on the awards list, to be posted hopefully before the end of the year. If you're in need of some inspiration, check out last year's award ceremony here. (Some examples of last year's awards are The I'm Trying to be Reasonable, but it Takes Some Effort award, The I can't help it, the exclamation point key is stuck! award, and Poster most likely to elicit an LOL.) Any questions, just holler. Thanks, everyone!

Black Friday YEC CC	11/27/2009 - 10:27 AM

Morning, all.

1st Singles in YEC London is underway; Rosangel may be here later.  You can use this as a placeholder for conversations about today's tennis.

-- Andrew Burton

Knives at Dawn	11/26/2009 - 10:00 AM

By Andrew Friedman, TW Contributing Editor

This being Thanksgiving Day here in the U.S., Pete graciously invited me to pop in and say a few words to the Tribe about my forthcoming book Knives at Dawn  (Free Press, 2009; hardcover, 320 pages), which tells the story of the US team that competed for the Stars and Stripes at the 2009 Bocuse d’Or, sometimes colloquially referred to as The Olympics of Food.  (Fans of the show Top Chef might have seen the Bocuse-themed episode that aired a week ago.)

The rules of the game are deceptively simple: an organizing committee assigns the meats and fish, to which the competitors can add whatever ingredients they like, so long as they work from scratch.  On judgment day, the teams cook for five and a half hours, then present two eye-popping  platters (one fish and one meat) that are paraded before an international jury, then plated and served to the individual judges.  It all takes place over two days, before a stadium packed with rabid fans, not unlike a Davis Cup match, only with twelve countries present instead of two.

The narrative of Knives at Dawn is pretty straightforward: Despite our growing reputation as a culinary leader, the U.S. has never medaled at this event, in part because our candidates haven’t had the same resources as frequent champions like France and Norway, whose teams are so well funded that the teams often take months off from their regular jobs to rehearse their kitchen choreography—all five and a half hours of it—scores of times. 

In 2008, the top two chefs in America—Daniel Boulud and Thomas Keller—along with Bocuse’s son Jerome, who owns and operates Les Chefs des France restaurant at Epcot, decided to try to change that. You get to be a fly on the wall as this triumvirate comes together to field a team, then watch as that team—a sous chef and a commis (assistant) from The French Laundry—develops and practices the culinary routine it took into battle last January in Lyon.

Cooking is also a solitary pursuit. Books like Kitchen Confidential (of which I am a huge fan), have created the impression that the kitchen is one big playpen, where rough-talkin’ guys and gals swap raunchy jokes while they sling hash, then hit the town and binge drink until sunup.  That might be true for some, but the road that gets even those cooks to the stoves is a profoundly long and lonely one—year after year of slowly working their way up—their days and nights spent executing a handful of tasks, or cooking an assigned roster of dishes, over and over, until the brain shuts down and the muscles and instincts take over.

Knives at Dawn opens with a description of “The Dance,” a phrase Keller and his cooks use to describe the highest state of kitchen being.  Timothy Hollingsworth, the French Laundry sous chef who headed up Team USA, likens it to the quintessential image of a running back “spinning and weaving his way around or through an onslaught of defenders,” but he could just as easily have compared it to a tennis player, tracking the ball, making lightening quick decisions, and executing strokes honed by a lifetime of repetition.

The cast of characters in Knives at Dawn are training for an international competition, but the irony is that they’ve been training (and in some ways competing) their whole lives. The book shares back stories of all the major characters, from superstars like Thomas Keller to Hollingsworth to his assistant, Adina Guest, a seasoned culinary competitor at age 22.

Each of these people came to the kitchen via his or her own distinct path, but they all have something in common: they sacrificed mightily to get where they are today. One great difference between cooks and tennis players is that there is not—at least not to my knowledge—such as thing as a “cooking parent.”  Cooks are cooks because they want to be cooks; more often than not, at least until very recently, their parents would prefer that they did anything else.

If a young man or woman elects to leave home, travel to Europe, and work in a Michelin-starred restaurant for little or no money, he does it for the love of cooking.  It’s unimaginable to me that you will ever pick up a chef’s autobiography and see the equivalent of Agassi’s Open mantra, I hate cooking.

Keller’s mentor, Certified Master Chef Roland Henin (no relation to Justine except, perhaps, for my metaphorical purposes), was the coach of the American team, and he shares his personal story in Knives at Dawn.  Henin discovered the kitchen in his late teens. A falling out with his father led him to move out of his family’s house and take a job in a local patisserie where he fell instantly in love with cooking.  He found the ability to transform flour, water, and butter into flaky pastries almost magical, and he would often stay at the shop late into the night, after his job was done, just to watch the chef make chocolate, soaking up whatever knowledge he could, even though it meant cleaning up the master’s marble when he was done.

Now in his sixties, Henin still vividly recalls waking up in the wee hours to go to work, pushing open the windows of his apartment to see his old school chums headed home from their nightly bar crawl.  The moment illustrates one of the essential truths of any chef’s life: he is almost always at work while others are at play.

The Losers: Greenwich CC 26/11	11/26/2009 - 9:43 AM

Feddy Krueger	11/25/2009 - 2:42 PM

by Pete Bodo

So what was that we were saying about Rafael Nadal surging in London to unexpectedly snatch the year-end no. 1 ranking out of Roger Federer's hands?  We aren't even in the semifinal stage at the Barclays ATP World Tour Finals yet, and the one thing we can say about that story line is: It ain't gonna happen. Period. 

Granted, that's a fairly harsh way to put it; I feel for Nadal and his fans. But let's look at it from Federer's perspective. For years now, Nadal has been The Guy Who Won't Go Away. . . Yet even when the worst-case scenario for Federer came to pass in that regard (at Wimbledon, in 2008), it was more plot twist than surprise ending (to Federer's dominance). In that regard, the events of the past few days in London have an almost symbolic cast, painful as it may be for as game and good-natured a manchild as Nadal.

Coming into the WTF, Federer appeared vulnerable, and not just to a Nadal assault on his ranking. He made the final in Basel, but lost that to Novak Djokovic; he was knocked out in his first match at the BNP Paribas Masters. Meanwhile, Djokovic appeared to be on fire, Nadal seemed (at times, at least) his old swashbuckling self, and Andy Murray played on everyone's mind (I'm Andy Murray - that's what I do!) , what with that gaudy 6-3 head-to-head record against Federer.

So what happened? Nadal flamed - or is it sputtered? - out. And today, Djokovic played a match so listless that I heard the gerund, "tanking", flung around, and Federer - well, he merely went out and, after a shaky start (even mere plot twists ought to be properly set up), he spanked Murray. Yes, The Mighty Fed still has a forehand. And he appears to have more competitive lives than the slasher-movie icon, Freddy Krueger.

Granted, Murray could wind up joining del Potro in the semifinals, leaving Federer out in the cold. But in handling Murray he reasserted his sovreignty. The real prize for Federer this week isn't the title, although he might find it satisfying to win the WTF for a fifth time. The real trophy is the year-end no. 1 ranking, and he's already got it.

And if Federer does advance to the semis -odds are that he will - he may have another encounter with the gift that keeps giving, Robin Soderling (who's already assured a spot in the semis). Federer has squared off with Soderling on a statistically outlandish three occasions this year in majors - their fourth encounter was at a mere Masters Series event.

So far, Federer has lost just one set to the man who's purpose-driven life is summed up in two words: Beat Nadal. But let's add an asterisk: five of the 10 sets the men have played ended in crap-shoot tiebreakers. That ought to give Soderling fans reason to hope, despite the fact that the career head-to-head is ugly: 12-0 to Federer. It makes you think that at some point, Soderling sat down with himself and decided:  Hail, I can't beat Federer, let me try the next best thing. He's now 2-3 against Nadal. Make of it what you will.

Have a Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. I'll have a special surprise holiday post for you tomorrow from a frequent TennisWorld contributor who's publishing a new book next week. So drop in to say hello.

Moody Blue: 25/11 WTF Crisis Center	11/25/2009 - 8:28 AM

Hi everyone. I'm here for the Wednesday action in North Greenwich. First up in singles are Monday's winners, Novak Djokovic and Robin Soderling, and in the evening the losers, Rafael Nadal and Nikolay Davydenko, take the court. Please use this post to discuss the day's tennis, including the doubles.

To begin, here is yesterday's selection of pictures from the event. As always click on any picture to enlarge, and use the arrows to page through. There was a fair amount of 'roaring' going on yesterday evening, which is of course de rigeur for ATP players these days; Messrs Federer and Murray both do particularly good open-mouthed aggression (as well as the picture to the right, also check out the one of Andy Murray on page 7 of the gallery). Perhaps the ATP's next campaign promoting up-and-coming players should be called Young Lions? From what I saw of the juniors at Wimbledon this year, players begin work on their tonsil-flashing technique quite early on.

As a number of people have already remarked, there's something extremely blue about this event, and I'm not referring to the mood of fans of Fernando Verdasco, Rafael Nadal or Nikolay Davydenko, each of whom has yet to record a victory this week (OK, Group B have only played one match each so far, but one of Monday's losers will be a double loser tonight). The lighting in the O2 Arena isn't just blue - at times it's virtually indigo. The lighting falling on the crowd makes the mass of people come up in pictures like a massive canvas soaked in blue-black ink. As I have sorted through my images of the past two days, they're full of shadows across the players' faces, often making it difficult to discern expressions. I've told myself some of them might look quite artistic, even though it began by being totally unintentional on my part, and have processed some of them by emphasising the lines and shadows. Yesterday, after reviewing Monday's pictures, I started seeking out the shadows. It's a rare week when the players wearing dark colours are the easiest to photograph, but this week it's definitely the case for me, even though skin tones mostly look quite vampiric unless I do a little fiddling with the colours.

One very good thing about the event, however, is that it's full of people, and from the conversations I've overheard, both inside and on the way to the venue, quite a few of them are knowledgeable and passionate fans. The atmosphere for last night's evening match was electric, and not everyone was supporting Murray, either.

I may not have time to sit in on this afternoon's press conferences for the TWibe, because I'm hoping to meet up with one of TW's long-term friends, poster (and tennis coach) skip1515. He's not the only friend here - yesterday I was delighted to see another friend (and TW contributor) Miguel Seabra in the media centre. However, I will try to sit in and log comments here about the press conferences after the evening singles, unless I'm about to miss the last train home. I'm not sure whether that might help Nadal or Davydenko supporters to feel less blue, but I'll do my best to make it there.

As always, enjoy the day's tennis.

-- Rosangel Valenti

Tuesday Dome Crisis Center	11/24/2009 - 7:27 AM

Morning, all. I'm on my way out to The Dome again for the third day of the Barclays World Tour Finals, so I'll make this brief for now; later today I will take some additional time to give you some impressions from yesterday in this space. I'll also do my best to do again what I did yesterday - to provide some live feedback in the comments section while the players' post-match press conferences are under way.

I have a few pictures to share from yesterday - some pictures from the first singles match (hint: none of them are of the winner, as I didn't take any that I was content to publish) and also several here from the second singles match featuring Novak Djokovic and Nikolay Davydenko. As usual click on any picture to enlarge.

Please use this space to discuss today's tennis.

-- Rosangel Valenti