Longtime practice partners Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray will go Head-to-Head in the Australian Open final, and you can enter to win a stick signed by the champion.
Head has emerged as a big winner in Oz, as Djokovic and Murray will both be swinging one of the manufacturer’s racquets in the final. The company is commemorating the occasion by offering a sweepstakes for fans. Visit Head’s Facebook page and post your prediction of the men’s final for the chance to win one of five frames autographed by the 2011 Australian Open champion.
Murray, who plays with a customized version of the Head YouTek Radical Pro, reached his second straight Aussie Open final by defeating a determined David Ferrer in four sets. Ferrer had knocked out world No. 1 Rafael Nadal in the quarterfinals and held a set point to take a two-set lead over Murray in the semis.
Djokovic and Murray were born seven days apart and their rivalry roots back to their junior days. When they square off on Sunday, they will be armed with the same brand and a deep familiarity of each other’s games.
“I think experience-wise we are similar,” Murray said of Djokovic. “There won’t be any secrets with our games but it’s going to be a brutal match. I hope it’s the start of us playing each other in big matches.”
Djokovic has won 12 of his last 13 matches at majors. The third-seeded Serb opened the year with new gear—Djokovic plays with a customized version of the Head YouTek IG Speed 18 x 20 frame and totes it in the autographed Djokovic Monstercombi Head bag—and has surrendered just one set en route to his second straight Grand Slam tournament final.
“I already won a Grand Slam, I just won Davis Cup and I’ve been playing at the top of men’s tennis for the last three or four years, so I have a reason to believe that I can reach the top,” Djokovic said. “I am working toward that. It’s my lifetime goal to be number one and to try to do that in the next year or two or three.”
Murray and Djokovic practiced together in Perth before playing the Hopman Cup at the start of the month. Djokovic holds a 4-3 edge in their head-to-head meetings, but Murray has won their last three matches, all on hard courts.
“It's nice to see somebody that you grew up with across the net,” Djokovic said. “We grew up together and basically made a breakthrough to Top 100 more or less at the same time. It's nice to see somebody doing well, the person who was your long time friend.”
Five-time Australian Open singles champion Serena Williams partnered older sister Venus to capture the sisters’ fourth doubles title Down Under last January. A foot injury prevented Serena from defending those titles this year, but if you watched Venus play, you gained a glimpse of Serena’s competitive future.
The doubles partners are teammates in the frame game as well. Wilson aims for another break-out racquet with its new Blade Team BLX, the Williams sisters’ new stick. Serena has announced that she hopes to return to tournament tennis in the spring; her planned comeback could create some buzz around the new frame, which is 104 square inches and features an 18 x 19 string pattern.
“I think the Blade Team BLX has good specs; we did well with the K-Factor version and I like the cosmetics of this frame,” says Woody Schneider, who owns Grand Central Racquet in New York City and was named 2010 Pro Retailer of the Year by Racquet Sport Industry. “There’s no other control racquets on that level in that head size except the Radical Oversize, and that is a 107 (square-inch head), so this is a unique frame.”
The black, gold and white Wilson frame weighs in at 10.2 oz. (unstrung), offering maneuverability and promoting both power and precision in combining a mid-plus head size with a flat beam.
“It’s hard to predict what the Williams sisters’ impact will be because their participation in tour events is so sporadic now, but the Blade Team BLX spec is interesting because it’s a 104-sized head with a thinner beam,” says Midwest Sports’ product manager Dave Limke. “It’s an interesting spec in that there’s not a lot on the market if you’re a better player and you like that upper-end, mid-plus head that has control. We’ve had decent demo interest in the frame and we just got it a few days ago, which is a good sign. Wilson has kind of tapped into an interesting spec with this racquet so it will be interesting to see how people respond to it.”
Growing head sizes in recent years have changed the shape of the mid-size market.
“You used to consider an 88 or 90 as a mid size and 95 or a 98 as mid-pluses, but now you see the upper end mid-plus range in that 102 to 105 range,” says Sol Schwartz, Holabird Sports’ retail manager. “So I definitely think there is appeal, particularly since 100 square inch heads have become the standard mid-size range in recent years. Serena usually attracts more equipment attention particularly when she’s running through a tournament draw so it should be good exposure for the frame when she’s out on court playing with it.”
MSRP for the Blade Team BLX is $210.
“I know Wilson will always provide me with the best racquet with the latest technology,” Serena Williams said recently after trying her new BLX racquet. “This upgrade will help enhance the feel of my game going into 2011.”
The rising star was a familiar face in a rousing Australian Open return.
In her fourth round match, world No. 1 Caroline Wozniacki found herself down 1-3 to 46th-ranked Anastasija Sevastova. The 20-year-old signaled her status as a promising player last year, when she became the first Latvian since Larisa Savchenko Neiland to win a WTA title. She ended the year inside the Top 50 for the first time.
Sevastova ended her match with Wozniacki on the losing end of 6-3, 6-4, but she tested the top seed with some audacious shotmaking that streamed from a star-struck frame. Wielding a customized version of the Kneissl White Star racquet, Sevastova provided the brand with the familiar star logo—it resembles a space shuttle at launch—and rectangular head a platform on the Grand Slam stage.
The new Kneissl Star series of frames include the White Star (weighing 300 grams with a 98-square inch head, designed for tournament players); Red Star (weighing 290 grams with a 98 square-inch head); Black Star (weighing 290 grams with a 100 square inch head) and Blue Star (weighing 290 grams with a 110 square inch head). The racquets are not currently available in the United States, but Kneissl says the line is scheduled for launch in April.
Back in the day-glow days of the 1980s and 90s, Kneissl was almost as common on the pro tour as MTV was in teenagers’ homes. Grand Slam champions Ivan Lendl and Thomas Muster played with Kneissl—the Austrian brand developed a Muster signature racquet called “Tom’s Machine” in 1995—and players including 1985 Wimbledon finalist Kevin Curren, Barbara Schett, Sergi Bruguera and Savchenko Neiland also played with its sticks.
The company’s roots are on the slopes—founded in 1861, Kneissl started the first serial production of alpine skis in Austria in 1919—but made its mark on tennis in 1978 by creating the synthetic frame it called the “White Star Pro.” A restructuring of the company occurred in 2003, and Kneissl continues to manufacture skis and racquets.
Kneissl execs say they are not planning to sign more prominent pros in the near future, preferring instead to build the brand up by focusing on Sevastova and a new line of frames, which should be launched in about 10 weeks.
“About 30 years ago Kneissl had some very good players,” Kneissl’s Thomas Petzold says. “Mainly men on the pro tour. Ivan Lendl began his career with a Kneissl racket. Boris Becker played with a Puma racquet, which was constructed by Kneissl. But those days are long ago; our situation right now is that Kneissl focuses on Anastasija, to give her the best racquet that fits to her game. Because we are a small company, we cannot afford to support more players.”
The brand touts that the one-piece construction of its frames provides comfort; Kevlar tendons in the head promote stability; and its string-tuning technology will give players the option of choosing 16 or 18 main strings, “without holes being left free or string spacing being different.”
Will the White Star rise again?
“Kneissl has a great history; people remember Ivan Lendl playing with Kneissl,” TENNIS racquet adviser Bruce Levine says. “They sort of disappeared in the U.S. market for a while. They were known as an innovative brand so it would be great to see them back as a tennis presence in America.”
There was a time when players’ fashion baggage was almost as expansive as the racquet bags they carried on court. Remember the days when the men in Melbourne took the court in shapeless, grungy garments so baggy you could have created carry-on luggage from the excess fabric, and sometimes still have enough material left over to cover a surfboard?
Thankfully, those days have largely gone the way of the Walkman as we’ve seen streamlined shapes, sharp silhouettes and some crisp color combinations during the Australian Open’s opening week.
Here are our picks for this year’s Oz apparel aces. Please feel free to voice your views in the comments.
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Gael Monfils subscribes to the Serena Williams theory that the best players are also entertainers, and he continues to put on a show with his playing and fashion style.
The 6’4”, loose-limbed Frenchman has an elastic ability to bend his body into positions previously realized only by cartoon characters and contortionists. His apparel is an appropriate accomplice in the process. When he’s on, Monfils plays with the acrobatic exuberance of a Cirque du Soleil performer and looks like a sculpted super hero in his fitted K-Swiss clothes.
The blue, light-blue and white graphic gradation sleeveless shirt plays upon the concept of the horizon, and the light-blue shorts with a single white strip alongside the pocket recall the North Carolina Tar Heel colors. It’s an outfit as eye-popping as Monfils’ energetic, electric game, and complements his showmanship style, even looking good during his victory dance celebration.
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Victoria Azarenka underwent an off-court fashion makeover under the guidance of Australian pop singer Danii Minogue, who gave the Belarusian a dress from her new clothing line, Project D. But Azarenka’s fondness for bold colors needs no direction when it comes to her tennis apparel, as she makes a distinctive pink splash on the blue Aussie courts.
Azarenka looks like a comfortable, confident competitor in her pink Nike Set Point knit dress with white accents. The outfit updates a classic form by incorporating Nike’s Dri-Fit fabric, which wicks sweat off the body. It fits her form without suffocating her body. Attention to color-coordinated detail is apparent in the contoured, white, long-sleeve Smash top the No. 8 seed has worn over the dress during warm-ups, as well as her white wristbands with pink swoosh logo, pink headband with white swoosh and pink Power Balance silicone wrist band, seen on her left wrist.
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Pastel power has made is presence felt on the blue courts of Melbourne. Amid the blue hue, Gisela Dulko delivered a clean, classy combination with a pale blue shirt and matching skirt by Lacoste.
The multi-colored drawstring detail on the skirt recalls the light blue, orange, white and yellow detailing on the top. The shitrt accommodates Dulko’s preference for sleeveless wear, offering comfort and a wider range of movement. Australia’s Samantha Stosur sports an all-white version of the outfit and compatriot Jarmila Groth wore a polo variation of the top.
Top-seeded Caroline Wozniacki dumped Dulko from the singles draw, but you can still catch her in doubles, partnering Flavia Pennetta in one of the best-dressed tandems in women’s tennis.
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Injury-induced inactivity has caused a slowdown in Juan Martin del Potro’s quest to return to the Top 100, but despite his second-round defeat to Marcos Baghdatis, del Potro made a statement in his blue Nike Showdown shirt.
The blue V-neck shirt with white trim along the front shoulder represents Argentina’s national colors, and combined with the black woven short, creates a bruising color combination for a competitor capable of blistering the ball. Del Potro was wearing a sleeveless shirt when he beat Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer in back-to-back matches to capture the 2009 U.S. Open championship, but he opted for sleeves in Melbourne.
In a distinctive touch Nike applies for several of its stars, his nickname, “Delpo,” is emblazoned on the back of his Nike shoes.
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Lastly, response to the “Fashion Faults” blog entry arrived almost as fast as a Hawk-Eye review. Based on email and posts we’ve received, many of you have selected Nadia Petrova as the most egregious fashion felon of the tournament.
While some of you lauded Petrova for her environmentally-friendly approach in apparently recycling the remnants of a piñata as a tennis dress, poster Jean Kirshenbaum called Petrova’s dress a descent into a purple haze of ruffled madness: “It’s the worst so far. She looked like a baked potato in ruffles. And the color combo? Yuk: horizontal ribbons of blue and green. It was all so awful I can’t find words to describe it.”
Alice from San Francisco summed up her dissatisfaction with the Russian’s dress succinctly: “Petrova takes the prize with her piñata-looking outfit which would look great on a 2-year-old girl, not someone who is 5'10" tall and built like a tank.”
Watching the pros' strokes in practice can be a bit like viewing new clothes in a fitting room mirror—everything looks good. But when tennis' stars step beneath the microscope of Grand Slam play, both their games and gear can come under scrutiny from observers and opponents.
Even prominent players who possess stylish games aren’t immune to the occasional fashion misstep. Which brings us to Venus Williams, Fernando Verdasco, Caroline Wozniacki and David Nalbandian. Each has played in a memorable match during the first week of the Australian Open, and each has made a mark—an ugly one—with their apparel.
Here’s a look at the fashion faults from the 2011 Aussie Open, with our picks for the apparel aces to follow this week.
And remember, opinions are like forehands—everyone has one—so please feel free to agree or disagree by voicing your views below.
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It’s summer Down Under, but Venus Williams sprung ahead with a seasonally-influenced woven yellow top and an impressionist-inspired print skirt. Though Venus says the outfit “is inspired by Alice in Wonderland,” it looks like an Easter basket reinvented as a tennis dress, in a design aesthetic that evokes the Mad Hatter after an all-night bender.
The long-limbed American has the graceful physique to make even polyester sweat suits look elegant, yet for years now she’s engaged in a tennis tug-of-war by pulling unruly garments into place between points. It’s almost as if Venus raises her Grand Slam degree of difficulty by playing in dresses that require repeated realignment to prevent sagging and slipping.
Venus famously spoke about the “illusion of bareness” in reference to her flesh-colored cycling shorts she wore beneath her French can-can dress in Paris last spring. She would be well served to consider the reality of comfort. Venus’ practice outfits—a canary-colored top with black leggings, and a blue tank top with pink shorts—were both more appealing than the Wonderland dress and her first-round outfit, which looked like a metallic blue band-aid. One of the best looks Venus ever wore was a white Reebok mini-dress with a corseted back, designed for her in 2004 by Dianne Von Furstenburg. But as Venus is creating her own attire, she would be well served to make at least one dress that doesn’t stick to her body like adhesive tape whenever she moves.
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Competitor as cartoon character comes to life as Fernando Verdasco fuses the good looks of a fashion model with what looks like a style choice that Sponge Bob would wear to a rave. It’s as if an artist’s rendition of a MapQuest route was retraced on the front of his pink shirt in magic marker.
Verdasco has shown sensational skills in Melbourne, in the 2009 semis against Rafael Nadal and yesterday against Janko Tipsarevic, yet exhibits questionable taste in a shirt with so much frenzy on its front that spectators may have been tempted to don 3-D glasses to view it.
Verdasco completes the geek-God look with black socks and pink adidas shoes; the outfit is one fanny-pack short of warranting a walk-on part into theater of the absurd. Verdasco is such a striking physical specimen he could probably swap clothes with the Michelin Man and still look sharp, but in this case his gear does not match the level of his game.
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Caroline Wozniacki looked comfortable in the top spot last season, winning a WTA-best six tournament titles. Yet the 20-year-old Dane continues to experience fashion growing pains in her latest Stella McCartney-designed dress.
While the bottom of the ballerina dress flows fluidly, as if designed for dance, the top looks oddly unfinished, as if the sheer side panels that promote the pop of orange in the bra beneath weren’t fully completed.
The high waist makes Wozniacki, a fit and athletic woman, look lumpy and frumpy in all the wrong places. It’s interesting to see McCartney try to bring couture components to tennis fashion, and her designs have been lightning-rod discussion points for fans around the world. Increasingly though, it looks like some of the designs don’t take into account the physicality of the sport. Wozniacki has been reduced to looking like a woman scouring for sea shells on the beach rather than running down shots on a Grand Slam court.
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David Nalbandian competed with gladiator grit in fighting off two match points and an overwhelmingly pro-Lleyton Hewitt crowd in his gripping first-round victory, but looked like a thickened candy cane in his white Yonex shirt with red swirls.
It’s not so much that the design of the outfit is so objectionable—more the concept of outfitting one of the game’s most brilliant ball strikers and savvy stylists in such non-descript gear. Like forcing a light heavyweight boxing champ to fight in trunks made from red plaid picnic tablecloth, this clothing choice doesn't work—though the look did not detract from the spirit Nalbandian exuded in the fighting through to the second round.
You may never hit a ball as cleanly as Maria Sharapova, but now you can win the right to shoulder her signature bag.
In celebration of Sharapova’s recent signing with Head, the brand has launched a Facebook contest where you can enter to win a one-of-a-kind Sharapova autographed Head racquet bag. Head says the prototype bag, which Sharapova is using at the Australian Open, will not be available in stores and can only be acquired through this promotion.
The all-black bag is emblazoned with the word “Head” in white script rather than the standard block lettering. To enter the contest, visit Head’s Facebook page and answer a few multiple-choice trivia questions about Sharapova. The contest runs through January 31st.
Even before she officially parted company with Prince to sign with Head, racquet customizers speculated Sharapova was playing with a blacked-out Head Radical frame since last May. So when will a Sharapova-inspired line of Head gear be available for retail sale? Sometime after the U.S. Open, Head says.
“Maria has been working with us to develop a new racquet, bags and accessories that should be available this fall,” a Head spokesperson told TENNIS today.
Andy Roddick aims to make his Davis Cup return for the United States in March and will look positively patriotic when he takes the court for next week’s Australian Open. The No. 7 seed will step into the Babolat Propulse 3 shoe, which features a revised red, white and black color scheme, a dramatically different look from the Propulse 2 Titanium shoe Roddick wore in 2010, which was predominantly black with gold detailing on the foot-belt technology.
The 2010 Australian Open quarterfinalist will carry a familiar friend along for the ride—the Michelin Man. Born in 1894, the Michelin Man is one of the world’s oldest trademarks, but he hasn’t slowed a step. The image of the running Michelin Man appears on the heel of the Propulse 3, signifying the shoe’s Michelin OCS sole.
The changes to the Propulse aren’t merely cosmetic. Babolat touts two new technological enhancements—a “kompressor system,” for high-performance heel cushioning, and “cell shield”, a high-tech upper designed to offer both durability and comfort. The cell shield also lightens the load of the shoe: This year’s model weighs in at about 15.1 ounces, compared to the heftier 16.7-ounce Babolat Propulse 2 Titanium.
Fittingly, Roddick’s signature shoe bears his signature above the Babolat brand name on the rear. The aggressive new look reflects a shoe built for bold play.
“Andy’s new Propulse shoe is very different from what we’ve seen from other Babolat shoes such as the V-Pro,” says Dr. David G. Sharnoff, TENNIS footwear adviser. “It’s designed more for his needs. He’s a big guy who prefers a low-cut shoe rather than a mid-cut shoe. The Velcro foot-belt is intended to try to lock his foot into the shoe and minimize the potential for rolling his ankle. It’s a performance shoe intended for aggressive, explosive movers.”
MSRP for the Babolat Propulse 3 is $109; the shoe will be available in retail stores in February along with a white and red companion shoe, the Babolat Propulse Lady 3. The Babolat Propulse 3 comes with a six-month outsole limited durability warranty.
Former Southern Methodist University tennis player Christopher Louis flirted with the idea of pursuing a pro career when he reached a personal epiphany. “I was a head case as a competitor,” Louis says with a laugh. “I didn’t have the mental toughness the pro game requires.”
Ironically, Louis has used his mind to make his mark on the Grand Slam stage.
The former model and current Beverly Hills teaching pro combined his affinity for fashion and tennis to create Fetch Sport, a Los Angeles-based sportswear brand. Louis launched the line in the fall of 2006 and has produced his own Grand Slam with a series of four hoodies, each representing one of the majors. The host nation’s flag is seen on the right arm, with a silk-screened graphic portraying an iconic image of each major: A kangaroo for the Australian Open, the Eiffel Tower for the French Open, the Union Jack for Wimbledon and a big apple for the U.S. Open.
“I was watching the French Open and thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be great to design a piece for each of the majors that women could wear on and off court?’,” says Louis, who has also designed a series of graphic t-shirts featuring favorite player exhortations: C’mon, Allez and Vamos.
Before sinking his teeth into design, Louis created the distinctive Fetch logo—a Chihuahua carrying a tennis ball in its mouth—based on an almost daily experience as a teaching pro.
“I’d be teaching and people walking their dogs would ask me, ‘Hey, can we have a tennis ball for our dog?’,” Louis recalls. “I’d give them a ball and seeing dogs with the ball in their mouth, I thought that would be a cool logo.”
The Texas-born teaching pro chose the image of a retriever for a brand he hopes will “revitalize” tennis fashion. Louis says his design aesthetic comes from fusing traditional tennis fashion with innovation, accentuating the female form and a flair for playful creativity.
“When I was playing competitively in the 1990s, tennis was coming out of a fashion era in the ‘80s when the skirts were a little higher and the shirts were a little baggier,” Louis says. “I thought tennis fashion had gotten a little too masculine for women at that time. You saw these beautiful women dressed in fashions almost too masculine and too technical. I still love the idea of old tennis tradition when clothes could really make an almost couture statement, but at the same time I want to think outside the box a bit and do something different, so that’s where the inspiration for Fetch comes from.”
Fetch is breaking into the pro game. Last March, the brand was selected to sell on-site along with Nike, Fila, and two other lines at the Sony Ericsson Open in Miami. Americans Alexandra Mueller, who won the inaugural 2010 U.S. Open National Playoff tournament, and Riza Zalameda, who partnered Melanie Oudin in doubles last summer at Wimbledon, both wear Fetch apparel. Here’s Mueller, in action:
For more on Louis’ designs, please visit Fetchsport.com.
Tap dancing on her toes behind the baseline, Caroline Wozniacki often looks like she’s bouncing to the beat of music she hears in her head. Expect that to continue next week in Melbourne, when the world No. 1 brings ballerina style to the Slam dance that is the Australian Open.
Wozniacki will start the new year in new gear, sporting an adidas ballerina dress in immaculate white with a playful pop of orange in the Seamless Performance bra and hot pant. The new clothes are part of an off-season makeover, as Wozniacki also switched racquets from Babolat to Yonex.
Designed by Stella McCartney (daughter of Beatles legend and noted tennis fan Sir Paul McCartney), the white Ten Performance Dress is a part of adidas’ Stella McCartney SS 11 (spring/summer 2011) collection and represents a color departure for Wozniacki, who wore a dark green McCartney design with optic yellow hot pant (and matching yellow fingernail polish) at the 2010 U.S. Open. The detail surrounding the waist is part of McCartney’s effort to “redefine and challenge traditional sports silhouettes.”
“It’s really exciting for me to work with Caroline and to see her wearing my designs in some of the most important tennis events of the year,” McCartney said.
The collaboration between McCartney’s designs and Wozniacki’s success has made tennis a winner, as some of the fashions have burst from the court to the pop culture pages.
“It’s really cool because adidas’ partnership with Stella McCartney elevates tennis fashion to high fashion and it makes Caroline completely unique as she’s the only one wearing it,” says Heidi Gotchal, apparel buyer for TennisWarehouse.com, the only online licensed tennis specialty store of adidas by Stella McCartney in the United States. “Tennis fashion is now making the front page of Yahoo! and other news sites during Grand Slam play, and that’s exciting for tennis and great exposure for the game.”
The new design fuses traditional tennis white with technological innovation in the pleated under-layer of the Seamless Performance bra and hot pant, which come as part of the dress. The red-orange wrist bands (adidas calls the color “infrared”) play off the color of the orange underwear range, which is made with adidas’ Climalite technology.
“Adidas has done a really good job incorporating what it does best, creating high performance sportswear, and merging it with Stella McCartney’s designs, so you get the best of both worlds,” Gotchal says.
Fast feet and quick court coverage are key components to Wozniacki’s success, and McCartney has highlighted the 20-year-old Dane’s flair for movement with a flowing pleated skirt on the ballerina dress. On her feet, Wozniacki will wear the adidas Eileithyia tennis shoe, in white, infrared and metallic silver. The shoe’s structure is based on adidas’ classic Barricade chasis, which the brand says provides “midfoot stability, flexibility and cushioning for maximum comfort.” Suggested retail price of the shoes is $130.
The 2009 U.S. Open finalist produced the best year of her career last season, posting a 62-17 record and winning a WTA-best six titles. Sales of the adidas by Stella McCartney line soared during her run to the U.S. Open semis.
“It helps (sales) tremendously that Caroline has been winning,” Gotchal says. “During the U.S. Open, we sold out of her U.S. Open dress. They’re beautiful clothes so people are interested in them anyway, but when people see Caroline on court they sell even faster and the fact Tennis Warehouse is the only online source gives us exclusivity, which helps.”
While Wozniacki’s apparel should play well on the Grand Slam stage, if you’re looking to play in it yourself, you’ll first need to purchase a plane ticket. The identical white Ten Performance dress is not part of the adidas by Stella McCartney line sold in the U.S., but it will be available globally. Similar adidas by Stella McCartney designs are available online at Tennis Warehouse, though some of the more form-fitting dresses require a sleek physique to wear.
“Some of the pieces are geared more toward the very fit woman because of the design; for instance the U.S. Open dress Caroline wore came with a pretty short skirt,” Gotchal says. “There are some real compression body pieces, but there are also a lot of different pieces within the collection, so there’s something for everyone.”
The spring/summer 2011 collection will be available in over 600 retail stores—including high-end department stores such as Nordstrom, Harrods and Crawford—as well as adidas Sports Performance and Stella McCartney stores.
Pete Sampras called Wimbledon’s Centre Court “a tennis cathedral.” Long before I ever stepped foot on the All England Club’s hallowed ground, Pancho Gonzalez unknowingly baptized me as a true tennis convert.
My mother wanted me to become a priest (for years all my clothes were black and white), but sealed my fate as a tennis junkie when she gave me a 123-page tennis book that became my bible. She bought it for 75 cents (marked down from $1.98) at a church tag sale.
Simply titled “Tennis,” it was written by the Hall of Famer Gonzalez (his name appears as “Gonzales” on the cover); the yellowing pages transmitting timeless tennis tips, black-and-white photos illuminating his classic strokes, with each turn of the page dripping with words of wisdom and the acrid smell of stale beer, as if the prior owner had used the book as a coaster at a New York City night club.
Scouring each page of the book like an art student studying the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, I was hopelessly hooked on the game and the grace with which Gonzalez played. Only the 12-page chapter on “Equipment,” featuring a wooden Spalding racquet (complete with the old wooden press), white Tretorn tennis balls and white canvas shoes the book describes as “smoothly-molded (no tread) soles for skid-proof traction” struck me as antiquated. By then I was already fascinated by the gear Borg, McEnroe, Connors and Vilas wore. They looked like rock stars reincarnated as athletes, and I nearly fell out of my Stan Smith sneakers when I shook hands with Vilas at an autograph signing and realized his massively muscular left arm was easily equal to the size of my leg.
My first racquet was a Wilson wood model purchased with paper route money at a now defunct discount chain called Caldor. I had no game, no lessons, no skills, no one to play with, but somehow felt I could figure it out with Gonzalez’s guidance, an eagerness to learn and a brick wall across the railroad tracks from my apartment, where the rumbling from roaring trains drowned out the sound of the ball hitting the wall.
A sporting savant named Ron Green moved down the street from me when I was a teenager. Like me, he was a sports fanatic. Unlike me, he had athletic ability. At 15, he could throw a football 55 yards, fire a fastball 85 mph and had a serve so mammoth he would actually advise you to “buckle up” before unleashing it. He was the first player I ever faced whose serve was so ferocious that it would embed the ball in the back fence—sometimes you’d need to grab the ball with both hands and pull, as if performing the Heimlich maneuver, just to free it.
Figuring I needed more help than the thrashings he administered would provide (or perhaps it was pure pity), he gave me a Dunlop Black Max, the first real good racquet I ever owned. I moved on to a used Wilson Pro Staff 6.1, primarily because Stefan Edberg used it and because I thought it was the coolest-looking frame I had ever seen. Around the same time, I developed a collective crush on Gabriela Sabatini, Sabine Appelmans and Angelica Gavaldon, and I visited the U.S. Open just to watch them practice, becoming fascinated by the frames and fashions the pros sported.
Eventually, I got a job covering boxing and tennis for a New York area newspaper before former U.S. Open semifinalist and Tennis Week founder Gene Scott hired me as an editor. Gene and TW advertising director and former U.S. Open finalist Carole Graebner were both friends and fans of Gonzalez (Carole chided “The man’s name is Richard, don’t you dare call him Pancho!”). When I told the story of Gonzalez’s book as transformative text, Gene broke into a sympathetic smile. He spent some of the next several years teaching aphorisms still tattooed in my memory: “Caring means doing”; “Seventy-five percent of the balls you think are impossible gets are actually makeable shots, but you’ll never know unless you go after them”; “Tennis is a game for a lifetime, but if you don’t play with purpose and passion every time, you’ll never find out how good you can be.”
Despite a lifetime of devotion, my game is decidedly mediocre. Gonzalez, Gene and Carole all fostered the flames of my passion, but repairing my primitive technique was beyond even their expertise. Thankfully, tennis has never been an unrequited love: To this day, nearly nothing gives me as much joy and satisfaction as finding the sweet spot on a single shot.
These days, I’m fortunate to play with a variety of racquets. I was a devoted Dunlop 300G player for years (I had one of James Blake’s old frames when he went to Prince) and lately I’ve alternated between Volkl, Pro Kennex, Dunlop and Donnay. Sven Groeneveld and I may be the only people around who sometimes play with the briefly re-introduced adidas frame.
My favorite places to play are the National Tennis Center, Central Park, Riverside Park, Yonkers Tennis Center, the Dick Savitt Tennis Center at Columbia, Hudson Valley Tennis and Ivan Lendl’s Grand Slam Tennis in Banksville, NY.
For me, it all started with a book titled “Tennis” so I’m excited and ecstatic to join TENNIS as the Gear editor, work with all the people I’ve read for years and actually make a living doing something I would probably pay to do: play tennis, experiment with the latest technology in racquets, shoes and apparel, report what I’ve learned and continue to glean even more about the game and gear in the process.
Like a good rally, good reporting requires responsiveness and interactivity, so I welcome your ideas, suggestions and comments.
And if you’re around a 4.0 to 4.5 level and ever find yourself in NYC looking to hit, please drop me an email.
