5 posts categorized "Injury Report"
One of TW’s favorite Aussie reporters, Richard Hinds of the Sydney Morning Herald, on the prospect of Alicia Molik playing the U.S. Open. Molik, you may remember, was really getting her Big Game together early this year when she was sidelined by a bizarre ear infection with two debilitating symptoms: dizziness and lethargy. It’s going to be great to have a representative of an endangered species (a serve-and-volley player of either gender) back on the tour!
Alicia Molik was on fire late last year, her serve-and-volley skills blossoming as she grew into a more consistent, aggressive, physically tough, and mentally imposing player. Her momentum carried over into 2005. At the Australian Open, her home championships, she reached the quarterfinals, positioning herself for a potentially great run on the fast and hard surfaces this summer. Then she was laid low by puzzling ear infection that produces symptoms as incompatible with playing tennis as you can imagine. Here's an update. Let’s hope she can play at Flushing Meadows.
Andy Roddick and Rafael Nadal both backed out of their next scheduled tournaments citing knee injuries. Nadal had been scheduled to play at Umag; Roddick was expected to turn up in Los Angeles. The money quote from this report: “Roddick didn’t mention the injury in his post-match news conference. He did, however, complain about the demands of the ATP tour’s crowded calendar.”
“This is ridiculous, the schedule we’re expected to play, year in and year out,” he said. “The last two years, I overcame it; this year, I didn’t.”
I don’t know the specifics of either of these cases—Nadal certainly has rolled up the mileage this year on clay courts, and the hard courts Roddick prefers are not user-friendly. But the real issue here is scheduling, and the demands on top pros—meaning the ones who get beaten up all week, most every week, while journeymen have scads of weeks when they play a match—maybe two—then have nothing to do but practice until the next tournament.
So now tennis fans are between a rock and a hard place; the players they most want to see are increasingly hurt, or reaching for the ever-convenient doctor’s excuse to get out of playing compulsory events.
The system stinks. It encourages players to lie, and sustains a crazy calendar in which a large market like Chicago, or Dallas, has no tournament, while Indianapolis and Cincinnati (a tournament I love, otherwise) take place just a week apart. And, in effect, they’re protected from competition because the ATP has control over who gets tournaments—meaning who gets a slot in the calendar to put on a tournament. At the very least, I think, there should be a lot more free time on the calendar for players to either rest or take part in low-key events that bring pro tennis to towns that presently don’t have it, like Pittsburgh, Denver, Portland, et al.
Like I’ve said before: It’s time to think of blowing it up and starting over.
It’s official: Andre Agassi is out of Wimbledon. Here’s the skinny. Fans of women’s tennis will be at least as upset by the news that Alicia Molik of Australia also has withdrawn. She’s one of the few women with enough moxie to play serve-and-volley tennis, and she’s been improving steadily over the last year. This is a real pity. It may send a chill down your spine when you read the symptoms that cause her to bypass the major at which she would have been a contender.
It looks like Lleyton Hewitt is out of the French Open. I’m sorry to hear this because I’ve always felt that Hewitt has a few great French Open performances in him. Don’t bother writing to tell me about how his counter-punching style works better on faster surfaces, or how his serve is that much more vulnerable on slow clay. I know all that. But the guy is the ultimate grinder, and he’s a model of patience and focus. Guys like that do well on red clay, and while his struggles at Roland Garros can be rationally explained, I still think Rusty is a much better claydog than he’s shown.
By the way, did you know that Hewitt’s squeeze, Aussie soap star Bec Cartwright, is said to be pregnant?
|
