Hi everyone, Pete here. It was pretty crazy last night; by the time I finished writing up my last post it was around 2 am, and then I drove a few colleagues back to Manhattan, filed the Tennis.com US Open evening report, and drifted off to bed at 4:30 am. I was up at 7, because this week I have to get the little Cowpoke to school in the morning before heading off for the USTABJKNTC. No pity party here, though, I could be putting up drywall.
Anyway, I'm putting up this post because my pal Martin Blackman, director of the The Junior Tennis Champion's Center, in College Park, Md., encouraged me to invite the TWibe to a special event - a jamfest featuring the Bryan Brothers Band, along with Wayne Bryan and Murphy Jensen, tomorrow night at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Manhattan. In fact, if you go to the JTCC home page, you'll see that you are invited as my special guest to this event. If your invitation says Sept 9, don't worry about it; it was an error that should be fixed to reflect the correct date, Sept 5th (tomorrow night) at any moment. All you need to do is click on the invitation, and when it opens in a new window, print it out and bring it along. Present it at the door to gain admission at the Crowne Plaza. I will be there after dinner, probably a bit on the later side. I hope to see and meet some of you there.
The JTCC has a fantastic facility and program, and a number of you - led by Ruth - have contributed to the ongoing effort at this tennis academy that puts heavy emphasis on character-building, leadership skills, and academic performance as well at top-level competitive tennis. I hope to see you there!
PS - Note that the date on the invitation to the jamfest is presently wrong; it says's Sept. 9th, but takes place tomorrow night, Sept. 5th.
Howdy. Well I'm not entirely fired up by the ongoing ATP or WTA events. Champagne Kimmy Clijsters is playing her little guts out for promoter Bob Verbeeck at the Proximus Diamond Games (it may sound like the tournament masterminded by Ernst Stavro Blofeld, but to our Kimmy it's nothing less than the Belgian Grand Slam!). I'm sort of interested in how it goes for Alexandra Stevenson in St. Paul, and am trying to set up a call with her, just to find out what she's been doing. Bangalore? Have fun, girls!
The pickings on the men's side is pretty slim, too. Marseilles? Pffffttt! I'm hoping Gustavo Kuerten starts a major comeback at the Brasil Open, but it's just too early to tackle that one. San Jose should heat up pretty soon - tonight, in fact, as young Sam Querrey goes up against Andy Roddick. This is one of those happy coincidences that resonates with generational and national if not international significance. When I spent some time with Andy in December in Florida, I was impressed by his level of interest in, and knowledge about, Querrey.
One of Andy's best qualities is his team spirit, and that's something he shares with Roger Federer, although neither of them makes a big deal out of it. We all know about the long-standing friendship Roger has with his Davis Cup doubles partner,Yves Allegro (and how The Mighty Fed has made it known that Allegro is his preferred doubles partner). I'm told Roger has kept close ties with another Swiss player who has never made a pro breakthrough, recent Davis Cup hero Marco Chiudinelli. This means that when all the other factors come together, Switzerland will have a real team to vye for the Davis Cup, not just TMF and four guys he wouldn't recognize if he ran into them in a bus station. File that away for future reference.
While visiting with Roddick, he made one call to try to organize a hotel room for the son of a childhood friend - and former junior rival - from Texas. The kid was playing the Orange Bowl, and operating on a tight budget. Andy also told me that he was taking an active interest in Querrey, who has a stylistic and physical profile comparable to Andy's own. A big, raw-boned kid, Querrey relies on his thunderous serve, a scary forehand, and youthful appetite for competition. His biggest weakness, Andy told me, is a lack of Big Match experience. Apparently, Querrey just didn't throw himself fully into the cauldron of junior tennis, and has required some seasoning.
Querrey appears to be a quick study, though: he won three Challenger titles last year, and became the fourth-youngest player to crack the Top 150 when he jumped more than 600 spots to to end up ranked 127.
He's off to a good start this year, too. By all accounts, Querrey has the competitor gene and that's a huge asset that will make tonight's clash pretty interesting.
Whatever the outcome of that one, it seems to me that Roger and Andy, operating with very different styles, both have an admirable awareness and willingness to help their countrymen negotiate the difficult terrain of the pro tour. That's something big stars don't always do.
Also, today I received this interesting vidclip. I've been corresponding with Lawson Silva, the father of Jan. He's got an interesting story to tell and I'll share it with you all tomorrow. Have a good evening.
Howdy. Well, the final countdown to Christmas is underway. This morning, Cowboy Luke and his entire Weekday School (it's a small outfit) staged their Holiday Tableau, an annual event for the parents. It's a re-enactment of the Nativity story, in which the kids play the part of various characters in the saga. I like the fact that the Weekday School, while affiliated with the Baptist Riverside Church, celebrates Christmas and Hanukkah, instead of neither. I guess it's a multi-denominational school, rather than a non-denominational one. Bring on the holidays!
Anyway, the tableau was enacted on a big stage in the RC auditorium, before three or four hundred people.
Luke and his classmates in 717 drew the part of shepherds (since the costumes were more-or-less homemade, they ended up looking more like Bedouin tribesmen, which may be what the shepherds were anyway). Their job was to sing Noel. Two of the girls in his class, Renata and Kayla, stepped up and took the lead when it was 717s turn.
Staci, a therapist/child development specialist who works with Luke, reported that he sang along. We were seated too far back to see much except the strawberry blond top of his head.
Anybody want to go off-topic? Here's my entry for favorite Christmas movie: National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. It makes me feel like a philistine, placing it ahead of those sentimental, heartwarming classics, like Miracle on 34th Street or A Christmas Carol. But I am more deeply in touch with my inner Knucklehead than my inner Nutcracker. I defy you to watch NLCV and not laugh at loud.
The holiday season is all about the kids, right? So I want to get back to some of the discussion launched by my last post. One of the most frequent criticisms of the academy system that Nick Bollettieri popularized is based on a misconception - that kids get sent there by overly ambitious parents, and that the kids are welcomed with open arms (and eyes fixed on the parents' checkbook). Why, many of you wondered, would the parents of a six-year old like Greer Glodjo ship their child off to an academy, or re-focus their entire family's priorities on a long-shot tennis development plan for a child, when doing so may prevent that child from enjoying a "normal" life?
The answer is that the children in that position are not normal - not any more than chess or music prodigies. And while some parents try to paste their ambitions on a child and goad or force him or her to conform to their dreams, it doesn't really work that way. And the attempt to do that almost always dies on the vine, long before it can even become controversial. Imagine trying to ramrod an kid with no talent for music into an advanced prodigy program at Julliard. First, the school will quickly tell the parents that the kid has no talent. Second, even if the parents somehow beg or buy their way in, the kid won't last a New York minute.
In broad terms, this is also true of tennis. Nobody can explain why some children have an extraordinary facility and appetite for ball games any better than they can tell you why some kids are musical or math prodigies. It all starts with a specific gift - and its one that blind-sides parents as often as it falls upon them as some kind of answered prayer. My own son, for example, shows absolutely zero interest in ball games. I often took him to the tennis courts at Central Park (we basically live across the street from them), and he was aware of what the people were doing on those courts. He knows what I do for a living. I've taken him out with his youth racquet and a nerf ball, just for something to do (as well as out of curiosity), and I'll try to teach him the game at the right time. But right now, there are lots of things he'd rather do, and that may continue to be the case.
By contrast, here's how Greer got involved in the game. She received a tennis racquet as a birthday present (this is all according to her mother, Dr. Deidre Collette and father Arman Glodjo). She and her older sister went out to bang the ball against a garage wall, and within five minutes Greer was pounding away, and warning her sister to stay away from "her" game. Greer's parents then asked her if she wanted to take lessons. She said "yes!" Some time later, seeing how responsive the child was, the parents took a one-week vacation at the IMG Nick Bollettieri Tennis Academy.
During their stay, they asked Nick if he wanted to have a look at their daughter, because they felt she was exceptionally talented and drawn to the game. Nick evaluated the child, and he immediately told the parents that she was unusually gifted - so much so, that he was willing to train her intensively, as long as she responded happily and made progress This essentially meant that the Glodjos would have to uproot and move closer to the action (the family officially resides in Bermuda), which they decided to do. Clearly, Greer responded to this opportunity; it was obvious and undeniable to me that she loved playing the game. The "team", in consultation with experts in the sports development field, then went about designing a specific, unique, child-friendly schedule for training.
Of course, all kinds of unexpected things can happen between here and Wimbledon - including a loss of interest or even a more serious case of burn-out. But it seems to me that this is a chance worth taking, simply because it's better to be pro-active and eager to provide a prodigy with every opportunity than to somehow hold back a willing - and willful - child, especially if the restraint is idealogical. That is, predicated on pre-conceived notions about what childhood ought to be like. All individuals are unique, it seems to me; it's probably better to follow and nurture the emerging longings and interests than to focus on the potential down side, or fret over where they may lead in worst-case scenarios.
This isn't a blanket endorsement of high-level early training. But we do know that the paths of development for great players have been as diverse - and in many cases, unlikely - as the personalities of those players. This we know for sure: There is no "one size fits all" solution to the challenge of development. Therefore, how can we rule out any approach, unless it's been shown to be disastrous?
Great responses to the last (but one) posts by Steggy and me. I was just telling her the other day that I'm always a little torn writing myself or my family into the posts; a part of me asks, Does anyone really care, at all, about this personal stuff. . . or. . . isn't this going to sound self-involved at best, crushingly boring at worst?
In fact, I almost always feel a touch of dread when I hit the "publish now" button (kind of like when you just can't resist sending that email to a certain guy, or girl. . .) and brace for the worst, which is indifference. But it's amazing how enthusiastically so many of you respond to such posts. I don't want to get into Sally Fields territory here, because I can't think of anything that would be more mortifying. But this does make me think that the greatest asset of TennisWorld' is the site's ability to create authentic, valued relationships, even in this severely limited context. Sometimes, I think that's the most signature of human traits, the yearning for relationship.
Uh-oh. Here's that touch of dread again. . .
On the PTP (Psycho Tennis Parent) issue that we've been bandying about, I have two things to add: Melanie Molitor named her daughter Martina Hingis after a tennis player. One from her own native land; one of her contemporiaries. With that start, is it not a miracle that Martina survived to become a Hall-of-Fame-grade pro? That she did suggests that the Molitor/Hingis pairing is one of a great examples of the willing seller/willing buyer principle in tennis. It just so happened that the willing seller was very shrewd and wise parent/coach.
Just think of how outlandish this all is: You name your kid after Martina Navratilova, clearly hoping she will become a great tennis player. Then she does it. Makes me think I should have named Luke after Abraham Lincoln or something. . .
But the thing to remember is that there were probably about 3,456 ways that Melanie could have really screwed up the program, even with the kind of hellcat she had in little Martina. But she didn't. Surely that counts for a lot.
The late Karolj Seles was another person in Molitor's league. Because he was omnipresent at Monica's matches and tournaments (along with Monica's mom, Esther, and her brother, Zoltan), everyone tended to lump him together with all the other PTPs. But it was Karolj who got me to question the conventional wisdom about PTPs, and in a way that I didn't really address in the last post. So here goes.
Karolj's English was poor, and the Seleses were ethnic Hungarians. So when they first showed up on the scene, I introduced myself to Karolj (I'm still fluent in my mother tongue, despite my parents having been ardent assimilationist's), who was glad to have someone who could answer some of the inevitable questions that a person might have in an alien culture (or on the pro tour, for that matter). In fact, when Monica first won the French Open, Eurosport asked Karolj to sit for an extensive interview. Panicked, he asked if I could accompany him, to translate. I did.
Anyway, while sitting with Karolj in the player lounge at the U.S. Open one year, I made some fairly innocuous comment about how proud he must be the extraordinary degree of success Monica had achieved, so quickly. He responded with an extraordinary confession of his basic ambivalence - bordering on antipathy - toward the pro tour. It's been a long time, so you'll have to settle for the paraphrase:
I don't know, this life is so crazy! I worry a lot, I worry that Monica is going to turn into a neurotic by the time she's 25 . . . that she'll drive herself too hard and have some kind of breakdown. . . that's she'll never settle down and lead a "normal" life. . . I don't know what to do. All these years, I've been trying to get her to slow down, but she wants this - she's focused on this like crazy. All she wants to do is win at tennis. I'm just hanging on to her tail, going along for the ride. But what can I do? I am her father, if she needs me to be there with her, I must go. It isn't that easy for us, doing all this traveling, having no real home. It's very hard on my wife, too. But we have no real choice about this. I am Monica's coach and father, I need to be with her every step of the way because she needs me, and she tells me she needs me. It's not because I want to, or because I love being around tennis tournaments all my life.
I suppose it's possible that Karolj was making all this up, trying to play down the rumors - or, in many cases, assumption - that he was a Psycho Tennis Parent. But I don't think so. I trusted the guy. As Hank (Dunlop Maxply), Steggy, and others have suggested, you don't necessarily have to drag your kid, kicking and screaming, to tennis; in fact, it's possible that your kid(s) will drag you - kicking and screaming, and you end up on CBS, caught gnawing on your fingernails while your kid lays a whuppin' on Rafael Nadal or Roger Federer in Arthur Ashe Stadium.
That conversation - and doesn't its contents really confirm some of the things we're apt to overlook about the complexity and unpredictability of human nature? - made me re-think the entire PTP mythology. There are Psycho Tennis Kids (this time, we mean it in a good way!) out there too, and I imagine that they're a well-represented group on the pro tour.
Maybe all the top pros (and we're talking Top 100, men and women) weren't as stubborn, willful and independent as young Monica. But I believe very few - if any - were unwilling buyers of what their parents - or surrogate parents (as in national team coaches) - were selling. It's just too hard to imagine them having become so adept and successful without having a deep, abiding passion - no matter how coy they may want to be about it. And that's also where things sometimes get interesting.
There is a kind of vanity that some people with a gift possess, and it often leads them to repudiate or rebel against the gift. For when a tennis player - whether it's the young Andre Agassi, or Serena Williams - is busy screaming, Look at me, I am much more than a tennis player! he or she is often just throwing a little jealousy tantrum directed at his or her talent.
I am much more than my tennis, look at me, the essential me, not my stupid talent! There's a terrible sort of insecurity about that demand (I mean, isn't it tacitly agreed that we value - or ignore -people for who they are, not what they do?). There's an overpowering narcissism, too. How oblivious and egotistical do you have to be to so blithely ignore or reject the gift of talent, especially when talent is just a gift. An outrageously unfair, undeserved, unearned, gift. And you thought it was unfair that some people got great looks?
Anyway, that's a bit of a digression meant to explain why so many players will not step up and admit how much or how deeply they actually love the game. They don't really want the game to upstage their selves; they would rather be seen as pretty than as having a pretty tennis game. It's only human nature. In the long run, though, I believe that very few - if any - players who don't, at some overt or disguised level, love to play ever make it in tennis.
More housekeeping issues (itty-bitty stuff) later.
Jim Courier is the executive producer of a documentary about junior tennis that’s being shot this year (through September), and the Kalamazoo Gazette got him to talk a little about it during the junior nationals last week. We’ve been aware of this project at TW since its inception, but Jim specifically asked us not to write a great deal about it until the film was done and we happily obliged. If you want to know more about it, here's an even more extensive feature on the flick. My hope is that with Jim in such a prominent role, the documentary will take a really balanced look at the lives of young pros, rather than try to manipulate all the information to fit some pat, preconceived idea (junior tennis players are the product of evil tennis parents! Junior players have no real lives!) about the sport.
Wouldn’t it be great for the game if one or more of those high-profile film festivals acknowledged the documentary?
Maybe I’m getting soft in my old age, but ever since I wrote the last post on the boys’ results from Kalamazoo, I’ve been feeling a little guilty for ignoring the results in the same hard-court championships for girls. It’s an easy thing to do for two reasons: First, while plenty of potentially great boys are still playing in juniors at 17-years-plus, many of the most gifted girls of that age have already embarked on pro careers. Second, “the Zoo” is a storied event with a rich history and tradition—it ranks right behind the junior Grand Slams and Orange Bowl as a coveted title for U.S. players. The same can’t be said for the girls hard-court nationals, which are held in San Diego.
Still, let’s congratulate Mary Gambale of Billerica, Mass., winner of the girls’ 18-and-under in San Diego. Just like Donald Young, the King of the Zoo, she gets a wild card into the main draw of the U.S. Open. The doubles winners in the girls’ 18s were singles runner-up Alexa Glatch and Vania King.
If you want the full rundown of winners from the hard-court nationals, just click here. And a hat-tip to Marcia Frost, editor of a website dedicated to covering the junior and college games.
The winner of the Boys’ 16s at the Zoo was not, as I reported, Scott Schnugg—it was his brother, Nate. Also, in my hat-tip to Colette Lewis, the hardest-working woman in the junior-tennis business (Seena Hamilton will now kill me), I fancifully wrote that Colette had been in Kalamazoo all week. While technically true, it creates the impression that she’s from somewhere else, which is not the case. She’s a Zooian, through and through.
If you’re a little kid who wants to be the next Pete Sampras, or a big kid who knows the only thing he’ll ever have in common with Sampras is a back-of-the-lantern bald spot but still likes to know what’s happening in the junior game, visit our friend Colette Lewis’s excellent junior tennis weblog.
Colette’s on the case, and posts enough of the time to make repeat visits well worth it. Also on the junior front, we have good news for tennis nuts in Canada, that vast, frozen land north of here that some say is a nation. Rogers Television, a major Canadian cable provider, has entered into a partnership with Tennis Canada to broadcast the final of the Canadian Indoor Junior Championships. The telecast will air from the Mayfair Racquet and Fitness Clubs in Markham, Ontario, this Saturday starting at 2 P.M. Eastern.
And, if you’re a horror-movie fan, you can act quickly and sign an online petition to force Rogers to add the “Horror Channel” to its offerings. Insert bad Tennis Channel joke here.
Hi everyone, Pete here. It was pretty crazy last night; by the time I finished writing up my last post it was around 2 am, and then I drove a few colleagues back to Manhattan, filed the Tennis.com US Open evening report, and drifted off to bed at 4:30 am. I was up at 7, because this week I have to get the little Cowpoke to school in the morning before heading off for the USTABJKNTC. No pity party here, though, I could be putting up drywall.
Querrey appears to be a quick study, though: he won three Challenger titles last year, and became the fourth-youngest player to crack the Top 150 when he jumped more than 600 spots to to end up ranked 127. 
Anyway, the tableau was enacted on a big stage in the RC auditorium, before three or four hundred people. 
Great responses to the last (but one) posts by Steggy and me. I was just telling her the other day that I'm always a little torn writing myself or my family into the posts; a part of me asks, Does anyone really care, at all, about this personal stuff. . . or. . . isn't this going to sound self-involved at best, crushingly boring at worst? 
Karolj's English was poor, and the Seleses were ethnic Hungarians. So when they first showed up on the scene, I introduced myself to Karolj (I'm still fluent in my mother tongue, despite my parents having been ardent assimilationist's), who was glad to have someone who could answer some of the inevitable questions that a person might have in an alien culture (or on the pro tour, for that matter). In fact, when Monica first won the French Open, Eurosport asked Karolj to sit for an extensive interview. Panicked, he asked if I could accompany him, to translate. I did.
