25 posts categorized "November 2011"
by Pete Bodo
The WTA year is long over, and the ATP provided us with plenty of fodder for thought over the past few weeks. And we still have an intriguing Davis Cup championship tie coming up — one that I wouldn't concede to host Spain quite as easily as some other fans or pundits. But let's use this slow news day to pass out some Thumbs Ups/Thumbs Downs based on the entire WTA year.
The other day, some comment posters took exception to the fact that I characterized Rafael Nadal as a "loser" in 2011. I understand their complaint; perhaps I should have noted that I was using that term in a relative way — anybody who wins a major or has a Top 10 ranking (never mind No. 1 or 2) is, by definition, a big winner. Still, Nadal started the year as No. 1 — and a dominant One at that — but he fell, fast and hard. He dropped to No. 2 and lost all six of his meetings with the new No. 1, Novak Djokovic. And Rafa kind of disappeared after the U.S. Open. We won't even get into the negativity and disillusionment that so often filters through his recent comments. So in the big picture, Nadal had a tough, sobering, unexpectedly problematic year, and he lost a lot more ground than he gained (or held).
Keep that in mind as we dole out these "awards." They're not based on overall performance against the rest of the field but on our legitimate expectations and the players' own natural desire to progress, fill in the blanks, plaster over the holes, and maximize their talents. We'll do them in order of ranking, starting with the No. 1, but leave out some players about whom not much needs be said.
 No. 1 Caroline Wozniacki — She's become the spokesperson for that offshoot of the Occupy Wall Street movement — Occupy No. 1. For the second year in a row she finished No. 1 without having won a Grand Slam title. And that hasn't happened ever before. Look, her consistency is admirable and not all that common a virtue these days in the WTA. Also. Wozniacki earned her ranking the clean, hard way. So give her credit for that. But this year she just added credence to the argument that she's No. 1 mostly be default, rather than through gift and grit. And it's not just that she hasn't won a major. That's not really a deal breaker in and of itself. It's that she's failed to lift her game to the appropriate level (of a No. 1) at the majors.
 No. 2 Petra Kvitova — We all knew what kind of talent she had, so her bolt to the top is hardly surprising. Shy, reticent, and gangly, Kvitova barely turned 20 when she beat Maria Sharapova to bag her first Grand Slam title — Wimbledon, no less. But what I liked even more was the way rebounded from the shock of winning that first major to close the year in a way that invites comparison with the effort Roger Federer recently mounted. I believe she demonstrated that she's in it to win it. Every week. Gut feeling here is that she'll be No. 1 by the time the early hard-court season is over.
 No. 3 Victoria Azarenka — This is a very tough call, because Azarenka was extremely steady through the year, and isn't all that far behind Kvitova in the hunt for the No. 1 ranking. She's in a position similar to Wozniacki (or, if you prefer, Andy Murray). But one big difference is that unlike Wozniacki — and like Murray — Azarenka lost to an impact player at every Grand Slam (in order, beginning in Australia: Li Na (eventual finalist), Li again (champion in France), Kvitova (Wimbledon champion) and Serena Williams (U.S. Open finalist). However. . . Azarenka came up small against Li (in Australia) and Williams, failing to win even a set in either match. The much-anticipated breakthrough never happened.
 No. 4 Maria Sharapova — She's not the player she once was. That serve has become so unreliable as to be almost Dementieva-esque. She can stink out any stadium in the world when she starts shrieking and drilling balls in to the net, or fence. But despite all that, she's always in the hunt — always game and ready to take her best shot and to hail with the rest of it. If she could bottle some of that competitive desire and drive, Wozniacki would — or ought to be — right at the head of the line to buy it.
 No. 5 Li Na — It's funny, but the top men are always saying that the Grand Slams are their main focus, and the rest hardly matters. Yet Li (and Serena Williams, of course) are the only players whose results reflect that sort of mentality. As woeful as Li often looked between majors, that near-miss final in Australia and her subsequent triumph at Roland Garros were bold and artful. In Paris, she won her first major on a string of really impressive wins (in order, starting with the fourth round: Kvitova, Azarenka, Sharapova, defending champ Francesca Schiavone). Azarenka and Wozniacki need to find a comparable way to elevate their games. And we all know what it meant for tennis to finally see an Asian Grand Slam champ.
 No. 6 Sam Stosur — What are the chances that a 27-year old, renowned head case can slash her way to the U.S. Open final, look Serena Williams in the eye, and in effect say: No way, Serena, I want this one. Stosur put on a remarkable demonstration of cool nerves, quality play, and emotional stability to bag her first-ever major.
 No. 7 Vera Zvonareva — She was oh-so-close to becoming a Grand Slam champ in 2010 (year-end ranking: No. 2), but instead of mounting a charge she called a retreat in 2011. After making a semi in Australia (l. to Clijsters), she never got past the quarters at any other major. The train has left the station, it seems.
 No. 8 Agniezska Radwanska struggled with injuries and was a disappointment at the majors, but she won three events in the late summer and fall (Carlsbad, Tokyo and Beijing) and cracked the Top 10. . . No. 9 Marion Bartoli played 4,544 matchs in 345 tournaments as well as Fed Cup and a couple of exos; as the song says, "She works hard for her money" and I like that. . . No. 15 Sabine Lisicki gets enormous credit for sucking it up and playing ITF events as she tried to recover from injury. She made a great push to get back into the Top 20. . . No. 18 Dominika Cibulkova started the year outside the Top 30, but had wins over Wozniacki (twice, including a shocker at Wimbledon), Svetlana Kuznetsova, Maria Sharapova, and Schiavone. . .No. 22 Ana Ivanovic is a former No. 1 and French Open champion who just keeps trying and trying. . . and trying to recapture the magic. It was nice to see her win the Bali, aka the Tournament of Also-Rans. She must have felt like she'd just won Wimbledon.
 While I appreciate the hardships that No. 12 Serena Williams endured before she returned to the fray at Wimbledon, she kind of made a mess of it after she won those two summer hard-court events and just dropped from view after her controversial U.S. Open final loss. . . Always mercurial No. 19 Svetlana Kuznetsova leaves us wondering if those familiar resurrections aren't a thing of the past. . . if anyone ever figures out No. 26 Yanina Wickmayer, let us know — it wasn't so long ago that she was considered the latest Belgian "It" girl. . . No. 29 Nadia Petrova fell 14 ranking place this year but maybe it's all about her age (29); after all, her girlhood rival Elena Dementieva is long retired, and the days when Petrova was a Top 10 staple (circa 2006) seem like the distant past now. Perhaps she has one more push left, for 2012.
 by Pete Bodo
At this time last year, Novak Djokovic was on the cusp of an accomplishment that served as a catalyst for his brilliant 2011. He was about to lead Serbia to the Davis Cup title, much like Rafael Nadal is poised to lead Spain—or Juan Martin del Potro is about to lift Argentina—to the same year-ending triumph.
The emotional boost and confident enthusiasm Djokovic took into this year from that win should not be overlooked, nor should it be ignored that Djokovic will not have that form of rocket fuel in just a few weeks time in Australian, when he begins the quest to defend, well. . . everything.
It seems a good way to put his upcoming year into perspective, and not just because of what happened toward the end of 2010. It's also because of what happened at the end of 2011, in a way that has nothing to do with the season-ending tennis event, the Davis Cup final.
The intriguing and somewhat surprising element in the career year Djokovic just put together is how the wheels fell off after he won the last major of the season (and his third of 2011) at the U.S. Open. In some ways, that mid-September Grand Slam finale remains the end of what all but die-hard tennis fans tend to think of as the "tennis season." Yet the tour goes on and the tennis establishment (including the players) have worked overtime to extend the action and promote a final, year-end playoff. The problem for Djokovic is that when it came to that segment, he just plain ran out of steam. Or health. Or desire (a loss of appetite easily obscured by the very real injury issues Djokovic faced).
Djokovic still went 70-6 on the year for a .921 winning percentage—that .900 number being the baseline for "great" as opposed to merely terrific or excellent years. (See a pre-2011 Top 10 list here.) Percentage-wise, Djokovic tops the .906 mark Bjorn Borg hit in 1977 with a 76-8 record, and the Serb is just a shade behind Ivan Lendl's 1982 winning percentage of .922—on an iron-man mark of 106-9.
If you're wondering how Lendl was able to win so many matches, it was because there were two competing tours at the time (World Championship Tennis and the standard Grand Prix, the precursor to the ATP tour). Lendl, both durable and money-hungry, played them both. But what's most noteworthy is that despite all those wins, Lendl played just two majors in '82 and won neither. He lost in the fourth round at Roland Garros to Mats Wilander and in the U.S. Open final to Jimmy Connors.
In this discussion, it's more relevant that Lendl is the only man on the list to win more more than 100 matches in a given year, while Djokovic made the .900 club with fewer wins than any of his peers. Roger Federer, the only player who appears in the .900 club three times (with the third, fourth and eighth best-ever winning percentages), won four more matches (74) than Djokovic did this year in the "weakest" of his three .900-or-better years.
Of course, when you take into account that Djokovic retired in two matches, gave up a walkover in yet another (to Tsonga, at the Paris Masters), and seemed physically impaired (shoulder) in still another (loss to Nishikori, semis of Basel), his record looks that much more impressive. And Djokovic looks even better when you factor in his record at the majors.
We saw that Lendl didn't even win a major in one of his best years. In another (1985, good for sixth on the list at .930 on 80-6) he won only one. And when John McEnroe posted the all-time best winning percemtage of .965 (on 82-3) in 1984, he won only two majors (Wimbledon and U.S. Open). He skipped the Australian Open, as did many top players over the years in that era, and he was runner-up at the French Open (losing to Lendl).
Jimmy Connors' second-best all-time-best winning percentage of .957 (on 89-4) in 1973 gets an enormous asterisk because he skipped Australia, lost his first match at the French Open, and couldn't get beyond the quarterfinals at the two other majors. More to the point, Connors avoided the elite WCT tour and fattened up that record on a rival albeit much smaller tour run by his manager, Bill Riordan. Connors may not have bagged a title in London or Paris in '73, but he emerged triumphant in Hampton, Virginia and Paramus, New Jersey. Whoop-dee-do!
In fact, there isn't a three-Slam man until the No. 4 position, and it's Federer (why am I not surprised?). In 2006, The Mighty Fed went 92-5 for .948—just a few ticks on the scale below his 2005 mark of .953, which remains third-best in the Open era. The fifth best was Connors' overpowering 1974, during which he won three majors (he was banned from the French Open because he insisted on taking advantage of the big World Team Tennis paydays). So the only members of the .900 club who won three majors during their qualifying year(s) were Connors, Federer, and Djokovic.
If you value the majors as much as I do, you may agree that the three best years were the ones in which those men did their most Grand Slam damage, and that Federer was one match better than Djokovic to claim the top spot (Federer lost in the 2006 Roland Garros final to you-know-who, while Djokovic lost int he 2011 French Open semifinals to you-know-who No. 2).
But when you look at how durable the other members of the .900 club were—physically, mentally and emotionally—you have to wonder what the future holds in store for Djokovic. In 1984, McEnroe went 13-1 after he won the U.S. Open (that solitary loss was in Davis Cup play) with two titles. In 1974, Connors went 20-1 with three titles after his triumph in New York. And in 1985, Lendl went 28-1 after he won the first of his many U.S. Open titles.
Right about now, some of you might be thinking that this is a different era, with different demands, greater pressures, and a higher general level of competition—all of which are subjective, maybe/maybe not judgments. After all, the overlapping Connors-Borg-McEnroe-Lendl years were easily the equal of the present Federer-Nadal-Djokovic-Murray era. Had the Australian Open been worth playing all those years since the early 1970s, those older players would have amassed far more hefty Grand Slam stats. But even if we accept that this era is more demanding, how do you explain Federer's fall of 2006? He went 22-0 with four titles, including the season-ending championships.
Djokovic's collapse (he went 6-4 after the U.S. Open) suggests that all bets are off for 2012. Even if he starts the year in perfect health, the notion that he's really transformed himself into a Lendl-like iron-man is shot. Sure, he may re-convince us, but the reset button has been hit, the fear factor may no longer be on his side. And don't think that Rafa, Roger and company aren't thinking and/or hoping that they may have weathered the Djokovic storm—leaving them free to contemplate payback.
But Djokovic can still take comfort in the fact that it's awfully hard to burn out a player on a roll. Following his remarkable 1974, Connors started the following year on another tear—he was 43-3 going into Wimbledon, and he was defaulted in New York in a final for one of those three losses. In his back-it-up year of 1986, Lendl was 26-0 before he lost his first match (to B. Becker, in Chicago). And Federer embarked on 2007 with 12 straight wins (including one that earned him the Australian Open title).
So for all the speculation about the pressure a .900 clubber may face the following season, the sampling suggests that the men pick up where they left off with relative ease—perhaps even with replenished enthusiasm and determination. This still begs the question, how will the dramatic tailing off by Djokovic in 2011 affect his future? It's not like he closed 2011 as powerfully as those aforementioned men did.
That, even more than "What can Novak Djokovic do for an encore?" (to which the only answer can be "not a danged thing") is the major question looming on the horizon for the new year.
by Pete Bodo
In years to come, pundits and students of the game will be justified in asking, as they look back on 2011, "Was this the greatest year, ever?" A few weeks ago, that question would automatically would have been taken to mean, Did Novak Djokovic have the greatest season of any tennis pro in history? But today it has a much broader, deeper resonance.
Roger Federer won the ATP World Tour Finals yesterday, surviving Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, 6-3, 6-7 (5), 6-3. (Read Steve Tignor's Racquet Reaction on the final here.) In the span of just af few weeks, he also transformed the putative Year of Novak into, if not the Year of Federer (not that he hasn't had plenty of those), the year of. . . tennis itself.
Meaning that it might have been the most exciting, unpredictable and competitive year in tennis history. And it was something for which Federer gets most of the credit, and something which he could not have pulled off without the help of three men who until just days ago were, technically speaking, his betters: Djokovic, Rafael Nadal and Andy Murray.
Was this the best year in tennis history? It's a legitimate question. But in order to appreciate the argument you have to set aside your preferences and prejudices. It would take a novelist of the first rank—and one with a healthy streak of perversity—to come up with the narrative that played out in 2011. It would take someone adequately heartless and wickedly clever to so move the human pieces around on the chessboard.
The year was full of surprises of the unsurprising kind. Meaning, the "surprises" were credible—as opposed to shocking or unlikely, which would be the case if, say, Donald Young had won two majors and become No. 1. And after the surprises played out, we were left thinking: How could I have been so stupid, of course it was going to play out like this. The signs were there all along.
And like some great, sprawling, historical novel, this year produced big winners (Djokovic, Federer), aptly rewarded (or punished) minor characters (Murray, Tsonga) and gave us a lovable loser (Nadal). Much as it pains me to say it or for you to read it, this has been one tough year for Rafa. Djokovic struck an enormous blow with those two big wins over Nadal in the Madrid and Rome finals. After that, the Spaniard's admirably frank comments and analyses opened windows on his soul, and mainly revealed that it was a troubled one. But we're already getting way out in front of our story—something easily done if you pick up almost any one of the narrative threads established this year.
At the outset of 2011, it was all about Nadal, who had wrested the No. 1 ranking away from Federer and was clearly in command following year during which he had completed his career Grand Slam and boosted his Grand Slam title collection to nine. Wasn't it just 11 months ago that the buzz was about the likelihood of Nadal surpassing Federer's take of 16 major titles, and about whether or not Rafa was just plain better than Roger—as was suggested by his 14-8 edge in head-to-head meetings?
Tennis was also still mainly about the Federer-Nadal rivalry back in January. Yet by the time they met for the last time this year, in the round-robin portion of the World Tour Finals, it seemed almost like a nostalgia match. That was because nobody had anticipated that Djokovic would emerge as so formidable a force in the game, starting with his win over a Murray in the Australian Open final—a match that, at the time, had about it the whiff of battle of the also-rans. Some shrugged and said it was an interesting respite from what had become a steady diet of Nadal vs. Federer.
Would anyone have dared predict that Djokovic would end the year 10-1 against Federer and Nadal (6-0 against the latter, all in finals)? Yet even as Djokovic tore through the first half of the season, we witnessed a bit of foreshadowing: Federer ended Djokovic's 43-match win streak on the red clay of Roland Garros—a splendid achievement that was very quickly overshadowed by the inevitable loss to Nadal in the French Open final. Call it a terrific example of "misdirection."
As it turned out, to the surprise of many, that French Open final would in one critical way be wasted—Nadal was unable to use it regain his confidence (remember that despite Djokovic's nearly flawless record at that point, both men had won one major after Paris). Nadal's failure against Djokovic a few weeks later at Wimbledon cemented the winner's superiority, even as Federer's unexpected collapse there to Tsonga further diminished his own credibility as a legitimate challenger to the new, Serbian alpha dog.
When Djokovic won the U.S. Open, beating Federer and Nadal in back-to-back matches, the narrative suddenly streamlined. By joining that elite group of men who had won three majors in one year (and with that remarkable 10-1 record over the two icons), Djokovic's drive to complete the greatest year ever became the dominant story—one that lasted all of a week, or until the Serb had to be helped off the court during a Davis Cup loss to Juan Martin del Potro in Belgrade. Djokovic would not play again until the end of October. He didn't win a title after the U.S. Open, and complied a lackluster 6-4 singles record, clearly suffering from injury (back and shoulder) and general fatigue.
At the same time that Djokovic was going cold, Murray was getting hot. He went on a tear (28-3 from mid-August until he pulled out of London last week), but a groin injury ended his year prematurely. As for Nadal, well, he was unable to capitalize on the absence of Djokovic during the Asian tour, or on the No. 1's vulnerability when he did return for the last three events of the year. Nadal looked nothing like his former self from mid-year on, and any delusions that he would mount a late season charge evaporated early on at the World Tour Finals.
Enter, Federer. And it wasn't like he came in from left field. There were signs aplenty that Federer remained a force to be reckoned with. That's "signs," as in Federer ending Djokovic's winning streak at the French, and coming within one swipe of the racket—twice—before bowing in the U.S. Open semis.
All along, Federer shrugged and conceded that Djokovic had been playing great tennis, and the former No. 1 always knew and sometimes hinted that the question left hanging was, "How long can it last?" And in that regard, Federer showed admirable patience and confidence; he may not have been roughed up by Djokovic as badly as Nadal, but he was just plain cooler and smarter. His experience and maturity, at age 30, certainly helped. And it didn't hurt that Djokovic had unnerved Nadal; that, combined with Novak's assorted ills, provided realistic hope.
Federer kept his own counsel and quietly laid his plans. His hiatus from the tour after Djokovic's massive win in New York allowed Murray to leapfrog the Swiss in the rankings, an event that at the time seemed to add further impetus to the theory that Federer is slipping. But any notion that he was, like Nadal, just treading water until the end of the year was blown away when he emerged during the indoor stretch in terrific form. He won 16 consecutive matches after his loss to Djokovic in New York, and rolled into London for the World Tour Fina;s confident, dialed-in, and rested. Federer hammered Nadal, 6-3, 6-0, in their round-robin encounter. It was a fitting comment on the state of each man's game, and mind.
There was one more delicious twist in the plot of 2011: Federer had to play Tsonga in the final match of the World Tour Finals, and Tsonga is the player who had inflicted perhaps the most damage on Federer—and his reputation—this year. That was back at Wimbledon, where Tsonga recovered from a two-set deficit to stun Federer and knock him out of the quarterfinals. It looked for a while yesterday like Federer would win going away, but the year got what it deserved when Tsonga survived a match point in the second-set tie tiebreaker and extended the match to a decider.
Hats off to Novak Djokovic, the three-Slam man of 2011. Condolences to Rafael Nadal, blind-sided and seemingly still in a state of shock. Kudos to Andy Murray, for his resurrection from a dismal start to the year. But raise your glass to Roger Federer, the last man standing in 2011.
by Jackie Roe, TW Social Director
Hi gang! Those of you in the States—how was your Thanksgiving? Tell us how you spent the holiday. (With family? Watching tennis (or football)? Eating yourselves into a tryptophan-induced stupor?)
And how about today? Did anyone brave the Black Friday crowds? I’m a wimp and holding out for Cyber Monday.
This is the time of year when we reflect on what it is we’re thankful for, and for me, this exercise isn't complete without an acknowledgment of everyone here at TENNIS.com and TennisWorld. Though I’m not around as much as I’d like to be, I still think so fondly of this community and have an endless appreciation of all that this website offers to tennis fans. Thus, I feel compelled to bring something to your attention that could affect our experience here (and elsewhere on the Web). This is a departure from the usual Deuce Club fodder, but its relevance to us is transparent, so I couldn't help but give it some air time. Read on . . .
A proposed new bill called SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act), intended to combat online piracy, may actually create a system for Internet censorship, crippling businesses and free expression on the Web. Here’s how it works:
If a website is accused of committing copyright infringement—which, under SOPA, is a felony—the site’s domain name and IP address could be blocked. Search engines wouldn’t be able to link to the website and if you linked to it yourself, you could be accused of abetting a copyright infringer. The allegation would be sufficient to stop advertisers, ISPs, and payment processors from continuing to fund the alleged infringers or risk liability for aiding the infringing website. The website being accused of copyright infringement could explain in a letter that no such offense was committed, but if the accuser deemed the letter insufficient, the website would have to prove its innocence in court in order to re-establish its online presence and unfreeze its accounts with payment processors. All in all, an arduous process.
But what constitutes copyright infringement, and how does this relate to us? According to the current language in the bill, a website could be punished for hosting anything considered "unauthorized" copyrighted material, including streams, video, music, images, and text. So, for us, that means posting a link to a tennis stream could result in the entire website being taken down. Ditto if someone here in the Deuce Club posted a link to a YouTube video that’s “piracy-friendly”—e.g., a music video, a film clip, even just a home movie with a copyrighted tune playing in the background. Think of our YouTube series . . . we would be compromising the website if we continued those posts. Or those RG karaoke clips? Linking to those could create a huge problem, too. Basically, so much of what we take for granted in our communication online could have the unintentional effect of endangering the very platform that allows us to connect with one another.
Tech giants like Google, Yahoo, AOL, and Facebook have already criticized SOPA, and just this week the Business Software Alliance, which represents Apple and Microsoft, did an about-face and pulled its support of the bill. Ron Paul and Nancy Pelosi (strange bedfellows) also oppose the legislation. Yet it still has steam thanks to lobbyists associated with MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) and RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America), as well as a list of congressmen and women. Moreover, the recent SOPA congressional hearing wasn't promising, with five people speaking in favor of it and only one against. The House will vote for SOPA on December 15, and as President Obama has not spoken out against the bill, it’s not clear he will veto it. We've still got a ways to go. At the end of the day, no one wants copyright infringement to occur, but we need a better approach to the problem.
So what can we do? If you feel as strongly about this as I do, considering its potential impact, I encourage you to get the word out, write to your congressperson, sign a petition, or simply click on the links below and learn more about the issue. Every little bit helps!
(More info here, here, and here. Petition you can sign here.)
Thanks for hearing me out, and you're welcome to share your thoughts about this in the comments. If this isn't your cuppa tea, feel free to continue chatting about this weekend’s WTF action. I don't know about you guys, but I can't wait!
Have a wonderful weekend, TWibe.
 by Pete Bodo
It was a pleasure listening to one of my favorite announcing teams this morning as I watched Tomas Berdych crawl back from the brink of extinction to beat Janko Tipsarevic in a third-set tiebreaker (after the alternate Tipsarevic had a match point) and thus keep alive his own hopes of qualifying for the semifinals of the ATP World Tour Finals. The team was Leif Shiras and Jimmy Arias, who labor for Tennis Channel and in my eyes are the most underrated duo in the business.
Shiras is the straight man, the play-by-play guy, while Arias has the plum "color" job. Both men played on the pro tour; Arias, a whiplash baseliner, got as high as No. 5 in 1984 while Shiras, a serve-and-volleyer who's five years older than Arias, maxed out that same year at No. 31. These guys are seasoned pros who have walked the walk as well as talked the talk.
The other day, when Ted Robinson (whom I also really like) and Arias were the TC team, a discussion on the court speed in London, and how much Roger Federer likes it, led to Arias remarking that the really critical issue was height-of-bounce (as opposed to the speed at which the ball goes through, which is usually what "court speed" is taken to mean). Robinson seemed to scramble, eager to demonstrate that he knew that as well—it seemed the kind of defensive reaction you get from someone who, for all his acquired expertise, research, and due diligence, just doesn't have the relaxed, self-confident attitude of a former pro.
Anyway, it's been a pleasure to listen to Arias' take on things. He's excellent at looking beyond technique and the minutiae of real-time tactics and strategy to shed light on those larger, subterranean issues like how and why momentum shifts, or where those shifts really take place (sometimes, at 15-love, 1-all in the second). After Tipsarevic held from exactly that juncture today, Arias observed: "That was an excellent game for Tipsarevic to get out of trouble. You could feel the momentum shifting a little but he held in spite of that."
Arias knows his X's and O's as well, of course. When Tipsarevic put away a forehand approach shot from the middle of the court midway in the third set, Arias remarked: "That wasn't as easy a shot as it looked. There wasn't much angle, and he decided to go with the inside-out, with spin, getting it up and down in a hurry (necessitated by being so close to the net). . . He didn't have an angle, he made one."
It occurs to me that some of you might not know Arias' history in the game so I'll tell the short version because it's fascinating. He's a native Buffalo, NY, where the NFL's Bills rule. To say that tennis is a minor sport in those parts is an understatement. It's still the land of the mullet and acid-washed blue jeans, and the fashion statement favored by many at Bills games in the suburb of Orchard Park is grease-stained Carhartt coveralls. Although you'll see a fair amount of camo, too—Advantage Realtree edging out Mossy Oak by a hair in the popularity department.
But Jimmy's dad was a tennis teacher and his son was good enough that Nick Bollettieri eventually took Jimmy under his wing. In fact, he was one of Nick's very first success stories, and it was big news when, at just 18, Arias turned pro. Although he was a mere 5' 9" and weighed barely a buck-fifty, his forehand was so big that his game could be considered the great granddaddy of the style that now dominates.
Jimmy reached as high as No. 5 and he was in the Top 10 for two years. It was a remarkable feat, and Arias pulled it off because his exquisite timing gave him an edge in the waning days of the wooden racquet era. Back then, most pros still played the standard-sized rackets and sought to control, rather than liberate, their swings. But Arias' timing was so superb that he lashed out at the ball off both wings—and the ball, loaded with wicked topspin, stayed within the court. I'm not sure Jimmy ever hit a shot, forehand or one-handed backhand, with even one of his feet planted on the ground from backswing to follow-through. He was all about racquet-head speed.
But technological innovation soon raced through the game like a prairie fire, and before long everyone was using mid-or-oversized racquets made of exotic materials and strung with increasingly specialized strings. I simplify, of course, but a long time ago Jimmy told me that he felt he lost a big advantage when technology leveled the playing field. From one minute to the next, every Tom, Dick and Harry was suddenly taking huge cuts and getting good results—without having the timing that made Arias' game unique, and impossible for most players to attempt. Jimmy came along a few critical years too late and thus he got caught up in the gears of change—but he was just in time to point the way to the future (with an assist from his lifelong friend, Bollettieri).
What bitterness Arias might once have felt over all this has long gone, and he seems a happy-go-lucky guy. At one point in the booth today, a ball Tipsarevic hit inspired the two commentators to drift naturally back to their playing days. They played just once, at Delray Beach in 1985, where Arias won in three sets.
"I tried to go around your forehand," Shiras admitted, acknowledging how foolish it was to attack that wing.
"You tried to go around the whole baseline," Arias remembered. "It was all serve and volley."
"Yeah, but you had a little hole on that backhand side."
"Oh yeah, I remember. . . " Arias replied, in a resigned tone.
I hoped that the modest exchange between those two old pros brought a smile to more than one face. Arias never won a major, but for a brief period he was a major force in the game, and he remains an asset to it today.
 by Pete Bodo
Most of you know Yannick Noah. He was the first Frenchman to win his nation's title (and one of the four pre-eminent Grand Slam events) in 37 years, and the only one to do it thus far in the Open era. That was just a launching pad for Noah, who went on—improbably, as such things go—to be an authentic pop star.
If you have any doubts that Noah has become a transcendant celebrity, just look that the remarks he made a few days ago about doping in tennis. They were so speculative and irresponsible that only a bona fide celebrity could have gotten a platform for making them, along with the subsequent attention. You can read his ruminations on how "magic potion(s)" have helped Spain become dominant in a variety of sports, most notably tennis, by clicking on the above link.
The most striking thing about Noah's comments was his absolute lack of evidence or knowledge of the situation, despite the reference to the disturbing Fuentes case, which is by now pretty old news. But hey, the guy's a pop star. Why should he have to keep up with the game the way a Mats Wilander, John McEnroe, or even Guy Forget has done? All he knows is that when he was playing, the Frenchmen were pushing those wimpy little Spanish dudes all over the court. Ergo, Spain is EPO Nation.
I just don't know why Noah suddenly decided to run with this issue. It's almost like he went to hang out at a sports bar (see the reference in the linked story) and got all fired up when he heard some barflys express dark suspicions about Nadal and company. Noah shouted "Eureka!" and ran to Le Monde and told the editors of that newspaper that he wanted, in the words used by all amateurs, "to put in an article!"
Being part of the opportunistic media, Le Monde must have been all too happy to publish such sensational and controversy-generating remarks. The effect could be ruined if you had to, say, subject Noah to the same standard the paper might have applied if it were said disgruntled French sports bar habitues who wanted to broadcast their views on doping in Spain in one of France's leading newspapers. I don't know if tennis has a doping problem or not; I do know that leaping to conclusions about it based on the appearance or competitive superiority of a player is insulting and deeply unfair. And that publishing such speculative clap-trap is just a provocation.
Here's something else that's hard to understand. How could Noah make such a sweeping generalization about the entire body of Spanish players? Are David Ferrer and Rafael Nadal both dopers (after all, both of them are ranked higher than any Frenchman)? If so, Ferrer is certainly getting less bang for the buck; the guy looks positively weedy. How about Feliciano Lopez? Fernando Verdasco—yeah! Have you seen the guns on him? But if that's the case, how come Feli and 'Nando are both ranked well below presumably clean Frenchman Jo-Wilfried Tsonga? Isn't there some kind of "money-back guarantee" on that EPO stuff?
Well, you can have a lot of fun with this one, which is what I wish the Spanish players had done. All they had to do is roll their eyes and sigh: Poor Yannick, he's really out of touch . . . Or, Wow, I can't believe a guy so popular and successful could be so dumb! Taking the high road would have made Noah, who really is a good guy when he's not doing this kind of stuff, look absurd.
Instead, former Wimbledon champ Manolo Santana, seemingly unaware or unmindful of the fact that Noah is already famous, said: "When people want fame, the only way to have it's messing with a person or an entity as large as Spain in sport." Ferrer got a little personal, noting, "Your son [Joakim Noah of the Chicago Bulls] plays in the NBA, where there are no doping controls. This is not the best person to talk. . ." And Rafa Nadal even suggested that Noah should be banned from commentating in the media.
Those reactions were altogether too hurty and defensive, if understandable. But perhaps the best and most appropriate reaction/rebuttal of all was the one issued by one of the leading French players, Michael Llodra. He apologized to Nadal and his coach/uncle, Toni Nadal. According to Spanish radio station COPE, Llodra said Noah is "stupid" and suggested with a hand gesture that perhaps the French star and former Davis and Fed Cup captain had been drinking.
Ouch.
Either that, or perhaps Noah was just exercising his unwritten right to take advantage of his celebrity and pop off with no regard for the import or potential repercussions of his words—words that I'll bet Noah himself now wishes he'd never uttered. But they won't go away, and that's the flip-side of being a celebrity and letting your opinion rip.
 by Pete Bodo
We're closing in on the start of the ATP World Tour Finals, so let's take a look at the "elite eight" contenders, rate what they have going for—and against—them on the eve, and hazard a guess as to how the group standings will ultimately shake-out. We'll start with Group A, with each man's season record and number of tournaments won included.
Novak Djokovic (69-4; 10 titles)
Going For: Can you say "confidence?" Djokovic has lost just four matches this year, two of them engagements he couldn't complete because of injuries—shoulder (vs. Andy Murray in Cincinnati) and back (Juan Martin del Potro, in the Davis Cup semifinals). Djokovic's record this year speaks for itself, and he likes the indoor-hard surface in London's O2 Arena. Also, I'll bet some readers will be surprised to know (or remember) that Djokovic won this event in 2008, and the only other player who comes in as a former champion is Roger Federer (who is tied for the most titles ever in the year-end playoffs, with five).
Going Against: Can you say "fatigue?" In fact, you can insert the second sentence from the above paragraph here as well. Oddly, though, other players who have posted the top 10 winning percentages in the Open era won significantly more matches. Seven of the top 10 winning percentages of the Open era incorporated at least 80 match wins, including Ivan Lendl's whopping 106 victories in 1982. So fatigue may not be as much of a menace as it may seem—until you include the toll (mental, emotional, and physical) of the injuries Djokovic has been carrying around. If he's looking for an excuse to have a mediocre tournament, he's got it.
Andy Murray (56-12, 5 titles)
Going For: Murray has been on fire since the middle of the summer. Since way back in Cincinnati, he's compiled a record of 28-2. Given the way Murray imploded after losing the Australian Open final to Djokovic back in Februrary, you had to wonder if he would manage to stay in the Top 5, never mind replace Roger Federer as the No. 3 ranked player, which Murray did a few weeks ago. Murray's game is also well-suited to this surface.
Going Against: Let's face it; while Murray acquitted himself well at the final three majors of the year (he lost in the semis at each of them to Nadal), he's had trouble sustaining and stepping up his game when it's most necessary at big events. He also seems to have an almost coquettish relationship with a British public that's dying to see a British subject win something/anything big.
David Ferrer (56-17, 2 titles)
Going For: Ferrer is steady, with a versatile if workman-like style. There are no holes in his game, so it's difficult to come up with a game plan beyond recognizing that you really need to keep the ball in play and not allow Ferrer to start pushing you around in baseline rallies. In that sense, Ferrer is a great litmus test for determining whether your game is at an appropriately high level. In 2007, Ferrer did something at the World Tour Finals (then called the Tennis Masters Cup) that he's been unable to match at Grand Slams; he beat a succession of superior players (in order, Djokovic, Nadal, Richard Gasquet and Andy Roddick) to make the final—which he lost to Federer. He'd love to recapture that magic.
Going Against: Ferrer qualified for the season-ending championships last year as well, but in the round-robin portion he failed to win even a set against Federer, Robin Soderling, or Murray. He went three and out. That has to be fresh in his mind. Any player who has power and a slightly higher aggression-quotient (which isn't hard to do, given Ferrer's defensive mindset) can shut him down.
Tomas Berdych (51-21, 1 title)
Going For: This Czech native has played well since he had to retire in the third round of the U.S. Open against Janko Tipsarevic. He won Beijing (d. Marin Cilic) and upset Murray in Paris before he lost to Federer in the semifinals. He likes indoor hard courts, and can really power through opponents when he's on his game and mentally focused. At No. 7, Berdych is just one ranking place below his career best, and although he's failed thus far to make the breakthrough so many have predicted for him over the years, it's not too late.
Going Against: When it comes to big tournaments, Berdych just isn't a closer. And at 26, he's been around long enough for that to have become a real issue. Somehow, he'll come up short and you can't put that entirely down to the fact that the other guys are just. . . better. If you look at the match wins and tournament titles Berdych (and Ferrer, for that matter) have accumulated and compare their numbers to those of, say, Murray, you can see why Murray can be called a closer while they cannot.
Group Outlook: A whole lot more than usual is going to depend on Djokovic's state of health. It's hard to envision Djokovic failing to get out of the round-robin stage, though. Murray is the obvious choice to join him in the semis, but Berdych could play the spoiler—especially after his win in Paris over Murray.
Group B:
Rafael Nadal (66-13, 3 titles)
Going For: When you look at his stats, it's clear that No. 2 Nadal has had an excellent year (it included yet another triumph at the French Open). But that 0-6 record against Djokovic (including losses in the finals of Wimbledon and the U.S. Open) appears to have distressed the Spaniard and wiped out much of the joy he might otherwise take from a solid year. Nadal did not have a great Asian swing, and he decided to get away from it all for a month before the upcoming London final. He'll be well-rested and, presumably, fresh of mind.
Going Against: Nadal is taking a big chance going into the World Tour Finals without having had any competitive matches in a month. Also, Nadal seemed genuinely hurt and stunned, while remaining realistic, by the way Djokovic manhandled him this year. He's needed to get his emotional equilibrium back, but this isn't exactly the ideal venue for achieving that. Indoor hard is the most problematic of surfaces for Rafa, and his failure to have won even one year-end championship is telling.
Roger Federer (59-12, 3 titles)
Going For: Federer has won his last 12 matches (he won the Basel and the Paris Masters titles). In retrospect, his decision to skip the Asian tour and focus his late-season efforts on maximizing his preparation for the World Tour Finals seems clever. It also suggests that Federer values this event more highly than do some of his peers. The world No. 4 also benefits from his terrific history at this event, and in the O2 venue, where he's the defending champ. The surface likes his game. Those are just a few of the elements that point toward a strong finish by Federer—after a very up-and-down year.
Going Against: Roger is 30; no tennis player would choose to be 30. At his age, inexplicable losses and failures of focus lasting games and even sets start to become an issue. He also has two men in his group (the next two) who are capable of overpowering anyone they face.
Jo-Wilfried Tsonga (52-22, 2 titles)
Going For: Tsonga undeniably has a big game, but the real plus may be that he's been injury-free. He hasn't retired mid-match since he gave it up in the semis of Montreal (l. to Djokovic), and in many places that's cause for celebration. Tsonga collected both of his titles (Metz and Vienna) after the U.S. Open, and he ended his fall campaign on a high note, making the final in the Paris Masters (l. to Federer). His big serve, facility with the volley, and generally aggressive mentality are well-served by the ideal ambient conditions at indoor events. He could come up big in London.
Going Against: Like Murray, Tsonga hasn't always been able to lift his game to the required, and reachable, heights at the big events. Players who have been able to stay even with him often have been able to wear him down.
Mardy Fish (43-22, 1 title)
Going For: In a conference call the other day, Fish jokingly said that the only hole he saw in the draw was. . . the one made by his name. So why is this a positive? Because Fish is under no pressure, and he can go out there to swing from the heels and have a good time. If he's on his game, that could spell trouble for anyone. His big serve and willingness to attack and volley will be useful assets on the indoor hard court.
Going Against: Fish has a long history of underachieving, despite the much-heralded makeover he underwent in 2009 and '10. All those years of losing matches he could have won, or not paying adequate attention to his fitness, may be too much for Fish to overcome, given that he feels—appropriately—that making the elite eight is already a significant reward for having found religion.
Group Outlook: Federer will ride herd over this group, so for me the big question centers on Nadal. Just how determined is he, and how well prepared and hungry will he be? If he's unable or unwilling to catch fire, you have to like Tsonga to take his place as the other semifinalist. Hail, even if he catches fire, Tsonga could come through to join Federer in the semis.
by Jackie Roe, TW Social Director
Evening, TWibe! How is everyone doing? Counting down the hours until the start of the WTFs? For those of you in London, Jewell has arranged a small WTF TW gathering on Sunday evening; please stop by if you can! Here are the details:
Date: Sunday, 11/19
Time: 4-5 PM
Place: Outside Starbucks at the main O2 entrance
I hope all attendees have a great time, both at the get-together and at the actual event. And as always, I’m happy to post reports or photos from the experience, so feel free to pass them along (just e-mail them here).
Let's step away from the tennis for a moment (it’s what we do best here in the DC, after all) and take in another All About Me TWiber profile. I haven’t posted one of these in ages . . . hope you guys aren't too rusty with the guessing game . . .
Who am I?
Gender: Female
Age: Mature enough to acknowledge greatness
Birthday: Same as Leo Tolstoy
Zodiac sign: See above
Hair color: Now? Ash blonde is all the rage.
Shoe size: I’m blessed—5.5
Occupation: Multi-tasking 24/7
Siblings: Two lovely and caring sisters
Last album you listened to: Back to December by Taylor Swift (that was a while ago)
Last film you saw: Tree of Life
Do you have a significant other?: Yes
Crushes: Not since I was a teenager.
Favorite musician: If I have to choose one above all, Bach.
Favorite film: Bambi (It’ll never get old), Out of Africa (locations and the interpretation of two old GOATS)
Waiting for release: War Horse
Favorite TV show: The last I finished watching until the ultimate end is Forbrydelsen. I love most of the old comedy shows though.
What you like to do on the weekend: Escape to the country or countries.
Favorite color: Giotto’s color palette in the Scrovegni Chapel
Favorite food: Anything prepared with love and attention to health and presentation—Japanese, French, Italian, some Spanish.
Favorite sport: Tennis, basketball, rugby
Most memorable experience: Standing in front of Taj Mahal against a background of a dark gray and very ominous sky and a rainbow arch framing this monument. Astonishing!
Favorite vacation spot: It depends on so many factors like age, company, and season. I love city trips for culture, entertainment, and shopping. For outside locations actually every country has great potential to become a favorite vacation spot.
Pets: Yes, thank you. (“Don’t be afraid, little one. You are safe with us here. Grant lives many miles away from you.”)
Favorite number: Every one has its uses.
Favorite day: Ditto.
Best feeling in the world: To see (my) children laugh.
Worst feeling in the world: Impotence to make things right.
Love at first sight: I thought so but I was very young. A few years later with the needed mileage and added experiences I found the real one. Forever and it feels like that up until this very moment.
Death: Under certain circumstances, death is something to be welcomed. Normally it comes too soon.
School: Yes and available to everybody in the world.
Long distance relationships: I have relatives and friends all over the globe. Some of them are very welcome when they visit us.
Where do you want to live?: I’m flexible. It’s more a question of where I’m most happy with my loved ones.
Fears: I don’t want to talk about them. Anti-jinx.
Allergies: To bullies and drama queens.
Do you believe in heaven and hell?: Heaven is for those who suffer at the hand of evil people. Hell must exist or otherwise everything that's been promised is a sham.
Do you believe in aliens?: I’m surrounded by them. I swear.
What do you do that makes your friends mad?: Not calling them back immediately. Apparently they don’t have anything else to do.
Bad habits: Yes
Talents: My husband tells everybody who wants to listen that I’m the fastest at packing for travels. FWIW, packing a suitcase is a strategic exercise in maximizing space and minimizing wrinkles. And experience.
Favorite restaurant: How much time do you have?
Most prized possession: My mother. Alive, kicking, and very active at a very old age.
Most embarrassing thing you’ve ever done: For your eyes only, Jackie!
Hard liquor or beer?: Not really
Chicken or turkey?: Seafood
Love or lust?: Lust at first sight. Love is at a different higher level.
What are you thinking at this very moment?: I’ve been thinking for an hour about answering this question. Nothing comes to mind. Pathetic.
Favorite kinds of clothes: Casual. I have to dress formally (and business like) for a living and sometimes it’s a drag.
Have you ever cried in public?: Many times, especially at weddings, funerals, and tennis matches. It’s contagious.
Something you want to do before you die: Watch the northern lights (Aurora borealis) in all their splendor. I've tried already with very little success.
What do you hate: Incivility. I loathe people who abuse power in any shape or form.
What makes you angry: Stupidity shown by the stupidest of the clever but lazy people.
Who would you want to meet?: Pandora. In the ancient Greek mythology she was the first woman to ever walk on earth. It’s said that her curiosity changed the fate of mankind. I blame her husband Epimethius for leaving her home alone. I would love to ask her if Athena’s gift (Hope) is still placed in the urn. It wasn’t a box, FYI.
Who do you miss?: My father. He was charismatic and a natural born leader.
The last person to make you smile: My son coming from holidays tanned and rested and asking if I had missed him. Oh, to be young and carefree!
The last dream you remember: It was a nightmare, so I’ll spare you.
Personal quote: “Being happy doesn't mean that everything is perfect. It means that you've decided to look beyond the imperfections.”
What is the meaning of life?: Waking up every day and making something of it.
Fantastic responses, mystery poster. So, TWibe, who do you think this is? (The photo is also a clue.)
Programming note: Make sure to stop by next Friday for a special post—after all that turkey and shopping, you’ll be primed for some DC fun, right?
Have a terrific weekend, everyone!
 by Pete Bodo
The ATP's year-end championships (officially the Barclay's ATP World Tour Finals, but that's for now; the name of the event has changed too often for us to feel it's a settled issue) is about to get underway, and one thing we know about this event is that some years it seems more significant than others.
This edition may fall somewhere in the middle on the scale of significance. It will not decide the year-end no. 1 ranking (which is the ultimate, best-of-all-worlds outcome of this tournament for the ATP). Novak Djokovic has that all locked up. And No. 3-but-still-Slamless Andy Murray cannot leapfrog ahead of No. 2 Rafael Nadal, no matter what happens (thank God for small favors, right?).
But the tournament could decide the year-end No. 3, as that ranking was snatched out of Roger Federer's hands by Murray a few weeks ago. Federer is presently No. 4 but carrying a 12-match winning streak and a great history at this event into London (he's the defending champ and a five-time winner of the ATP post-season championships). If he has a great tournament and Murray underperforms, Federer could wind up No. 3 at the 11th hour. Or, 11:59 pm, more precisely.
However, there's very little advantage to being No. 3 instead of No. 4 when it comes to playing-field issues, with the way the seeds are drawn instead of automatically placed these days. So we're hoping a a more compelling story line will emerge once the tournament gets rolling.
In my time, the championships produced numerous memorable moments, starting with the 1975 Grand Prix Masters clash that created a historic first: Two men, Arthur Ashe and Ilie Nastase, lost the same match. Here's the link to my my 2009 retrospective on that one. John McEnroe's 1978 win over Ashe in the Grand Prix Masters at Madison Square Garden was also unforgettable. At the time, McEnroe was just 19 and his radical style elicited a comment from Ashe that remains a gem of a line—and a vivid, nutshell sumnation of McEnroe's game. Ashe compared McEnroe to a guy who brings a razor rather than a knife to the fight: "A nick here and a cut there and pretty soon you've bled to death."
Incidentally, if you want to see how much things change—yet still remain the same—read Curry Kirkpatrick's excellent piece on that Masters tournament (courtesy of the Sports Illustrated vault).
The 1996 ATP Tour World Championships at Hannover produced one of the greatest matches in tennis history—a clash between Pete Sampras and Boris Becker. Sampras was at the peak of his powers, and Becker was ranked No. 6. But the match took place in Germany and the electric atmosphere (Sampras still says it was the most intense and exciting atmosphere he ever experienced on a tennis court) ensured that Becker—a master at finding inspiration under pressure—would give Sampras all he could handle. Sampras finally won it, 3-6, 7-6 (5), 7-6 (4), 6-7 (11), 6-4.
In 1998, it looked for all the world like the season-ending championships would decide the year-end No. 1 ranking. Marcelo Rios, a Chilean who displaced Sampras as No. 1 in March of that year, and fought over the honor the rest of the year, did not win a Grand Slam event in '98. But he rolled into the year-end event in a position to finish the year on top if he won it all.
Meanwhile, Sampras was determined not to let that happen—mainly because he set his mind to finishing as the year-end No. 1 for an unprecedented sixth consecutive year. Sampras took two weeks off after his semifinal loss to Pat Rafter at the U.S. Open, then played pretty much straight through to the year-end championships. He struggled through six events, so exhausted and stressed out that he was losing his hair in clumps by the time he arrived at the finale (in Hannover). But the anticipated clash for the year-end No. 1 ranking never materialized. Rios pulled out of the tournament with a bad back (it would prove a career-ending injury).
Two years later, the tournament established a high water mark that it has yet to equal. By then, it was traveling under the third of four names, Tennis Masters Cup, and it was held on indoor hard courts in Lisbon.
Going into the event, Gustavo Kuerten (the French Open champ) and Marat Safin (the U.S. Open champ) were both in a position to end the year with the No. 1 ranking. Kuerten lost his opening round-robin match to Agassi, and basically faced the prospect of having to run the table to keep Safin from finishing with the top ranking—even though the court surface was more suitable to Safin's game than to Kuerten's. But Safin ran afoul of Agassi, a fair hard-court player himself, in the semifinals. That meant that if Kuerten could put together back-to-back wins over Sampras and Agassi, in the semis and final respectively, he would finish the year No. 1.
In one of the greatest examples of grit, determination, and grace under pressure, Kuerten improbably beat both American hard-court experts to win the event and secure the year-end no. 1 ranking. It's awfully hard to call a tournament "perfect," but this is as close as I've seen one come. The stakes were critically important for a number of players, and the outcome was somewhat improbable yet satisfying, dramatic, and unsullied by circumstances or asterisks. It was as beautifully clear-cut as it was unlikely.
Not to end on a bummer or anything, but we ought to add the 2005 tournament to this list of memorable playoffs, partly because the defending champ we'll see at work this week was a main figure in the stunning result. On the eve of the '05 final, Federer was on-track to equal McEnroe's remarkable single season record of 1984, when Mac went 82-3 for a .954 winning percentage (the best in Open-era history). Federer was 81-3 before he played David Nalbandian in the last match of the year, but Nalbandian played out of his gourd, coming from two sets down to bushwhack Federer—7-6 in the fifth—to take the title and hang that critical, extra loss on the Swiss.
Federer, of course, went on to win the season-ending championships three more times, and as I write this he's hoping to surpass all his historical and active rivals with a successful title defense that would give him an unprecedented six titles. His attempt to do that may become the dominant story line of this final, and lift it to a place in history that it might not deserve through any other sequence of events.
by Pete Bodo
It's both perilous and easy to draw comparisons between various sports, even while understanding how different they are and how deceptive the parallels may be. Still, every once in a while you come across a story, issue or development that seems to resonate across the boundary lines, separating and defining different sports. A football story I read in the New York Post yesterday instantly made me think of tennis and brought a smile to my face.
I don't want to confuse readers from outside the U.S. who have no understanding of our game of football and the National Football League—although it does occur to me that it's just payback for the way some of you have bewildered me with the sport of cricket. Some of the terminology that follows may be mystifying, but I think you'll get the general idea. The story I'm referring to was an advance on tomorrow night's game between the loudmouth New York Jets, who talk the talk but cannot walk the walk, and the Denver Broncos. You can read the full story here.
The gist of it is that the Broncos, trying to maximize the abilities of their quarterback, Tim Tebow, are using the option offense—a scheme still vastly popular in the collegiate game but long since determined to be ineffective in the NFL for two main reasons: The quality of the pro-level defensive players and the physical toll the option offense can take on a quarterback. That latter is an issue because the quarterback often holds onto the ball and runs with it, or gets hit and piled up, even if he pitches it to one of his running backs. The option offense is basically a running offense: On Sunday, Tebow threw just eight passes and completed only two, the first when the game was already nearly three-quarters over. Still, the Broncos beat the Kansas City Chiefs, 17-10.
It struck me, reading the story, that you could substitute "serve-and-volley tennis" for "option offense." Both are thought to be passe, but the big difference is that the Broncos have a player who makes the option offense viable in Tebow. If tennis had a Tebow cracking the serve and successfully attacking the net, a fair number of those swing-from-the-heels baseliners living off the fat of the baseline land would be forced to tread just a little more carefully. But before going on, I want to emphasize that both components—the style of play and the character of the player—are of critical importance in this discussion.
Just to put Part B of that formula into perspective, this is what Jets head coach Rex Ryan said of Tebow: "You can go back and look when people asked me about him (before the pro draft). I thought he was a great competitor. . . I thought he was a winner. That's what he's showing right now. Are there prettier passers than him? Yeah. Absolutely. But again, I'll just try to find a way to beat him."
When was the last time you heard something like that said about a serve-and-volley player? Not since the days of Pete Sampras and Pat Rafter.
So what I'm suggesting here is that attacking tennis isn't dead; it's just less viable than it was throughout most of tennis history and, more important, it hasn't been the style of choice for a player who has all the other ingredients required to be a big winner and a great champion. I imagine that, should the right kind of athlete and competitor come along (think of John McEnroe, but three inches taller and with a more rugged frame), he'll be able to take his place at or near the top despite toting what most people think of as an archaic game.
The game is begging for someone like that to emerge from the camps, academies, clubs or public courts of the world. Someone whose combination of power and touch is matched by his competitive ability. Someone like a McEnroe, a Rafter, or a Sampras. Someone who could stand across the net from a Roger Federer and convey the message, I can rough you up and expose you as a middleweight. Who can squint at a Rafael Nadal or Novak Djokovic and say, I'm going to smother you, and make you play with your feet planted. Someone with no back-up in him; he's coming after you and will continue coming until the issue is settled.
Part of the problem today is that that guys who are playing serve-and-volley tennis just aren't good enough going in. Take Michael Llodra. I admire him for pursuing the "big game," but he just doesn't have the skill set to pull it off. Llodra is bold and adventurous, but he puts himself in positions where he has to do things that are beyond his ability. It's tempting to think that Llodra might have been extremely successful in an earlier time, but I don't think that's true. He would have been lost in the shuffle among so many quality attacking players.
Also, a guy like Llodra is actually helped by the fact that most of his opponents yield the attacking option to him. He's not called upon to defend as skillfully as someone who is attacked as well as an attacker. He doesn't have to make shots, including passing shots, with his poor groundstrokes. He's left to take what he can get with his big game. When he's on a good run, he can do some damage. But never all that much.
So just for fun, let's take a look at some of the other players who are—or were—fair candidates to pursue the big game, but just didn't—or couldn't—go there with big-time success.
Roger Federer: Early in Federer's run as a Wimbledon champ, even before the "slow grass" narrative fully matured, Sampras asked Federer why he didn't attack more, or regularly follow his first serve to the net. And Federer gave the best answer of all: Because he didn't have to.. .
Federer knew that he could win from the rally, especially in an era where the emphasis was increasingly on the baseline game and courts everywhere were getting slower and slower. As well, the idea of getting to the net ASAP was somewhat foreign and perhaps even illogical to Federer, given his training on clay courts. His mindset also ensured that his serve, while excellent, did not have to function as a not-so-secret weapon (which is standard practice for the attacking player). Instead, the serve is beautifully integrated into that versatile, all-around game.
I also don't believe that Federer has the ideal physical features to be the kind of serve-and-volley player called for in today's game. He's not as big and, in a general way, as physical as a guy would need to be in order to flourish today as an attacking player.
Tomas Berdych: Many of you saw how successfully Berdych attacked the net against Andy Murray during the Paris Indoors. This guy had real potential as a serve-and-volley player and, who knows, he might have become even more successful had the attraction been sufficiently powerful. It's easy to say his background and training (on clay) ruled out Berdych being a big-game guy, but just look at how Stefan Edberg bucked convention and tradition in Sweden to become one of the outstanding serve-and-volleyers of all time. Berdych is a head case, you say. Well, yeah. But all that tells you is that he's not well formed, or incomplete. Can it be that his style reflects those shortcomings?
Mardy Fish: This is another guy, like Berdych, who may have suffered from the idea (as opposed to the reality) that the serve-and-volley game is a thing of the past. You just know that, were Fish playing two decades ago, he'd be charging the net behind every serve and every sliced backhand. However, he would have been hurt then (as now) by his issues as a competitor.
Contrast Fish's history with that of Rafter, the ultimate example of a guy whose aggressive, attacking game was the natural expression of his ambition. Rafter had an appetite for combat, and he was willing to take risks. He was a superior competitor. The difference between guys like Fish (and Berdych) and Rafter are to some degree a matter of ambition. Rafter's desires led him to the place where his unique set of skills and shortcomings were tempered and honed to the point where they were used most successfully. He ended up with a deadly serve-and-volley game.
Robin Soderling: This guy is a paragon of today's passive-aggressive era. His peers and rivals are lucky that doesn't have the sufficiently adventurous spirit required to embrace the attacking game.
Andy Roddick: The most interesting thing to me about Roddick is the way the way the various pieces of his game just don't fit together all that well. He has a huge serve, but he looks woeful when he tries to play the big game that comes so much more easily to men with a similar first strike. That's unusual.
If you roll old film of, say, Stan Smith, you can see where it doesn't take a tremendous amount of touch or even great movement to play successful, smothering serve-and-volley tennis (or it didn't, during Smith's era). How a fella with as big a serve as Roddick's and as serviceable a forehand ended up so ill-suited to the attacking game is something I'll never understand—and a tribute to complexity and the infinity of variations possible when you marry man and racquet.
Gael Monfils: Although he's a little on the lean side, this is the guy I'd probably take if I could choose the clay from which to create a big-game player. He's explosive, limber, tall. . . this is a player who, under the right conditions, could really get in the faces of opponents and dictate. Why he chooses merely to play center field and seems content to make the crowd go "ooooh" and "aaaah" with his acrobatic gets is beyond me.
John Isner: Although he's so big at 6'9" that his size actually works against him—in terms of movement and his general quickness, including racquet manipulation—Isner has the perfect mentality for the big game. He keeps it real simple: Rock the other guy with your serve, end the point as soon as you can; when receiving, take your chances, because all you usually need is one break. Isner can smother anyone, which is why a runner like Nadal has always been so wary of him. I'd like to see Isner lean on his opponents even more than he does, but he's not a naturally aggressive person or player. I think that hurts him.
Feliciano Lopez: Give him high marks for trying to play the big game the classic way—something that comes a little more easily to a lefty with a terrific serve. Granted, that forehand can get a little erratic, but he pays a price for his apparent lack of self-belief, or perhaps it's ambition. He's a good example of the guy who just isn't a great competitor, which in an odd way makes his present success even more surprising.
***
Now here's something: All of these men are ranked in the Top 20 (in descending order), and together represent nearly half of that august company (eight of 20). Their gifts and skills are valuable ones, even if they aren't applied the way they might have been at one time, or if they have other shortcomings that prevent them from playing the big game. Each of them has attained a degree of success that is only possible if you follow, understand, and maximize your talent—which is another way of saying that none of them were cut out to be that mythical (in our time) beast, the serve-and-volley champion.
Well, it's fun to kick these ideas around. And don't get me wrong, Tebow may not be able to drive that Denver option offense to the Super Bowl; within weeks, the Broncos could fade into something of a curiosity, at which point the critics will join in a chorus of "I told you so. . ."
But there's always hope, and in the end isn't it nice to know that the options remain open?
|
