NEW YORK—The diamond studs sparkling from both ear lobes aren't the only shining signs from Donald Young these days.
Fresh off his first career ATP semifinal in Washington, D.C. earlier this month, the former junior No. 1 downed Lukas Lacko, 6-4, 6-2, 6-4, to snap a slide of three consecutive Flushing Meadows first-round exits and reach the U.S. Open second round for the second time in seven appearances.
Young, who said it was the most complete U.S. Open match of his career, has generated attention with his use of Prince's EXO3 Tour 100 racquet in recent weeks. The 84th-ranked Chicago native played with Head for much of his career before switching to Prince.
Young does not have a contract with Prince, which is why his black, gold and white frame lacks the "P" stencil in the string bed. Young said he's still in the experimental phase of his relationship with Prince when we asked his commitment to the brand.
"I'm just trying it out. It's a nice racquet," Young said. "I've dealt with Head forever. They're great. I'm just trying it out. I just like it right now."
Young said he continues to use Solinco Tour Bite strings.
NEW YORK—An encouraging entourage, sometimes springing from the seats like revelers at a rave, has helped Novak Djokovic celebrate the eye-popping highs of his record-setting season. But Djokovic's constant court companion throughout his 57-2 campaign has rarely been rattled.
Djokovic switched to a customized version of the Head YouTek IG Speed 18 x 20 racquet before the start of the season, and since the stick shift he's collected nine titles, including the Australian Open and Wimbledon.
We caught up with the world No. 1 at a midtown Manhattan press conference last week—for the launch of his "Head To Head" commercial with fellow Head endorser Maria Sharapova—and discussed the process of changing racquets. The first question on our mind: How do you know when a new racquet is ready for Grand Slam competition?
"There are so many different things that you have to adjust the racquet to your game and your feel on the court—the balance, the weight, the swing weight, the grip size all the different dimensions of the racquet—there are so many different things that are just so relevant," Djokovic said. "Yet again, the ultimate thing that you have to judge for yourself is that feeling you have playing with the racquet. When I finally got the racquet that I wanted, after a couple of days I knew it was just the right racquet. When you have that feel, then you know it’s right and ready for competition."
Of course, past experience playing the frame game helps, too. The Serbian showman won his first major at the 2008 Australian Open wielding a Wilson. Djokovic made the move from Wilson to Head prior to the start of the 2009 season, when he was ranked No. 3, and experienced early struggles with the new stick, but wound up winning five titles. This time around, he believes changing to another Head frame with similar specs, combined with a long-time familiarity with the brand, created a smoother transition.
"First of all I played with Head before I went to the other brand. I played with Head in my junior days and then I switched from the other brand to Head again," Djokovic said. "So I know Head racquets and I always felt comfortable playing with them. It wasn’t an easy procedure of changing, but it was easier, than presumably, if I hadn't played with Head before."
Even when an accomplished champion changes frames, it can still create cracks in confidence when results suffer.
"The best advice I can give to any player is never change a racquet you're winning with and comfortable with," Hall of Famer and tennis television analyst Fred Stolle said. "Even if they tell you it's the same specs, sometimes players feel a difference. It's not worth it because even if you're making more money in endorsements; those things will go away if you're not winning. I remember even Rod Laver struggling after he switched from Dunlop and he eventually went back."
Djokovic is well aware of the potential damage if his latest switch had not been successful and believes finding his comfort level quickly with the IG Speed has been empowering.
"Your racquet is really the most important tool and something that you don’t fool with on the court and something that you really rely on," Djokovic said. "You just have to have 100 percent confidence in what you have and what you play with. When I changed my racquet at the beginning of 2009, it wasn’t an easy process of changing and took me a while to find the right racquet I am comfortable with. So it was a difficult change and once I finally found it I had a great confidence."
NEW YORK—It's rush hour in New York City and Vera Zvonareva is navigating notable traffic. Zvonareva zips past Gael Monfils, brushes by the Bryan brothers and comes so close to Daniela Hantuchova, David Ferrer and Shahar Peer that she could wrap her arms around them in a group hug.
It's not a city sidewalk scene, but a Prince pit stop, where the 2010 U.S. Open finalist is gearing up for her return to Flushing Meadows.
In a midtown Manhattan hotel room several stories above Lexington Avenue, some of tennis' top names are stacked on top of one another like personalized sleeping bags at a Grand Slam slumber party. This space—the size of a college classroom—serves as the Prince distribution center, where the Bordentown, N.J.-based brand supplies the new racquets, bags, grips and strings to its pro players for next week's U.S. Open. Iconic green bags bearing the names of Ferrer, Hantuchova and Peer are organized neatly next to the yellow-and-black bags of Prince Rebel players Monfils and the Bryan brothers, as Zvonareva walks in to pick up her new gear.
We dropped by the distribution room—which also serves as a photo studio, consultation center and new technology preview office—on Friday afternoon for a behind-the-scenes look at how Prince global tour director Helge Capell and his team prepares its players’ gear for the Open.
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"We have three distributions—one in Australia at the beginning of the year, then the French Open and here at the U.S. Open," Capell says. "If players have emergencies throughout the year we will deliver racquets directly to their hotel wherever they are. But these major distribution centers are important because we show players our new technology for 2012, set up the next product testing and get players’ feedback. If they have questions or if, let’s say the player says, '2011 did not go so well for me, let’s change something.' then we discuss changes we can make and go back to our engineers and work on it."
Monfils, whose bag bears one of his nicknames—"La Monf"—while his Rebel racquet features his other tag—"Slider Man"—etched in black block letters on its throat, uses one of the heaviest frames Prince makes with a leather grip. Both Monfils and the Bryans are given the new EXO3 Rebel 95, which is a cleaner, brighter, bolder yellow color without the current cosmetic webbing, and have the option to play with it during the Open, though it won’t hit retail stores until 2012.
"It’s a new cosmetic and we are changing the playability a little bit because Gael requested a little bit extra spin on the ball," says Capell, who gave us a sneak peek of the new black-and-white EXO3 Warrior, which will launch next year and is designed "to address the needs of those who want a very powerful racquet, giving you a lot of spin but giving you more control than other power racquets."
While most players customize their sticks to some degree, Viktor Troicki’s EXO3 Tour 100 is essentially the same stock racquet you can buy now.
"Viktor’s racquet is slightly longer than 27 inches, but other than that it’s a stock racquet essentially off the shelf and he’s been very successful with it," Capell says.
World No. 2 Zvonareva, dressed in her K-Swiss tennis apparel for a 15-minute photo shoot consisting of forehands, backhands and posed shots holding her racquet—with the P stenciled strings always facing the photographer—says the most crucial quality of her racquet is reliance.
"Trust," Zvonareva says when asked what she values most in her EXO3 Black 100. "I really need to trust my racquet, the way it feels in my hand and its balance. I need to feel I can go for my shots and that I have the control to do so. It's the feeling that whatever you will do, you'll know how the racquet will respond and where the ball will go—that's the trust that I need, especially in a major."
Despite reaching major finals at Wimbledon and the Open last year, Zvonareva isn’t committed to a single string set up.
"I change the string tension throughout the year," Zvonareva says. "I go from 23 kilos (50.7 pounds) up to 30 kilos (66 pounds) depending on the surface, balls and conditions—if it’s dry, humid or very hot. For example, coming from Wimbledon where we play with heavy balls I will string 24 kilos and then going to, let’s say, Pattaya, where the balls are flying and it’s very, very humid, I will string 29 or 30 kilos, so that’s a pretty big difference. I mix polyester with a (Gamma nylon) so I get both the spin and the gut-like feel from that mix."
Some players are more experimental than others; ultimately results usually determine a player’s willingness to alter a favorite frame’s weight and balance.
"The more they win, the less they want to change, though that depends on the player," Capell says. "Monfils is happy to test anything, but he knows very quickly if he likes something new or not. Bartoli always likes to try new technology. David Ferrer does not like to try new things. The Bryan brothers are pretty flexible and like to try new things. Even if they won’t use the new technology, very often their play-testing feedback—'It’s not quite there yet, you need to work on this aspect'—will help us as we develop. Players hit thousands of balls every year, they’re more sensitive to changes than the average person, so their feedback is vital."
While Prince’s current cast gives the brand its greatest television exposure, lately it's a pair of Americans outside the Top 20—No. 45 Alex Bogomolov, Jr. and No. 85 Donald Young, who has not officially signed with Prince but used the EXO3 Tour 100 in reaching his first career ATP semifinal in Washington D.C.—creating some of the biggest buzz for the company.
"It’s quite interesting in that even Top 100 players who may be struggling will say, ‘Gee, Bogomolov just passed me in the rankings, what’s he using? Does that have anything to do with it?’ So that does have an impact for us, especially because Bogomolov told us in Paris, 'You guys changed my career,'" Capell says.
Watch Young during the Open and you’ll see his EXO3 Tour lacks the "P" stencil in the string bed—a sign of his evolving relationship with Prince.
"We can’t advertise with Donald because he doesn’t have a contract with us, but we are interested," Capell says. "We play-tested with Donald in California late last year making six variations of racquets based on his specs. Obviously, part of my job is to convince him [to play with Prince], but you can talk as much as you want, you can put as much money on the table as you want, but at the end of the day if the player does not feel comfortable with it, then it’s not gonna happen. Donald had his best result in Washington and likes the racquet. We will sit down with him to see how we can best work together."
For now, there's no time to sit—Capell is already on his feet ready for Ferrer's arrival.
Tennis marathon man Nicolas Mahut slammed serves today at Flushing Meadows while a squadron of Wilson-racquet-wielding USTA Eastern enthusiasts bounced tennis into the record books.
At exactly 9:16 a.m., exactly 658 people—including more than 600 kids, some of their parents, and U.S. Open seeds Mardy Fish and Andrea Petkovic—collectively bounced tennis balls off their racquets for a full 10 seconds to set a new Guinness World Record for “most people bouncing a tennis ball on a tennis racquet in one location.”
The ball-bouncing brigade, clad in red and black Wilson t-shirts and using racquets the manufacturer gave out free of charge to aid in the record-setting effort, shattered the previous record of 383 ball bouncers, established in England in 2006.
Guinness Book of World Records official Mike Janela, aided by a corps of counters, officially certified the event as a world record minutes after the balls stopped bouncing.
Fish, who took photos and signed autographs with fans during the practice round before the successful record setting event, revealed that his first ball-bouncing experience came at age 3.
“I think I managed one ball bounce,” Fish said.
Petkovic placed a premium on learning the simple skill of ball bouncing.
“It can save your life,” she told the crowd a straight face.
Janela, who has audited and certified several Guinness records, said today’s event was one of his most memorable in his unique career.
“I was there for the largest serving of roast pork in Mexico, when 6,000 pounds of pork were consumed; it smelled incredible,” said Janela. “Another memorable one was the longest non-stop wave surfing—was three hours and 55 minutes on the Panama Canal. It was the first time the government ever allowed surfing on the Panama Canal.”
This marked the second time in three years that the New York metropolitan area hosted a successful Guinness tennis record. In August 2008, identical twin brothers and USPTA certified tennis teaching pros Angelo and Ettore Rossetti broke the Guinness World Record for the longest tennis rally, striking 25,944 shots without missing in an epic exchange at North Haven Health & Racquet in Connecticut.
The symphony of the streets—jarring jackhammers, bleating beeping of car horns and rumblings of subway cars beneath the sidewalk—was momentarily muted when the earth hiccuped on Tuesday afternoon. A couple of hours after the first earthquake to hit New York City in decades sent scores of people streaming out of office buildings in lower Manhattan, Andrea Petkovic was neither shaken nor stirred.
The world No. 11 spent some of her afternoon smiling while swinging her racquet without the benefit of a ball or a court inside the cavernous Pier 59 Studios overlooking the Hudson River. Petkovic performed the pantomime shots during a photo shoot for adidas, her apparel company.
Swinging without stress is an aim for Petkovic, who tore the meniscus in her right knee—the same knee in which she underwent surgery three years ago to repair a torn anterior cruciate ligament—and played with taping around her right leg en route to her fifth semifinal of the season last week in Cincinnati. Though other seeded players, including Serena Williams and Tomas Berdych, withdrew or retired from the event, Petkovic said she'd rather perish than pull out.
"I’d rather die than retire," Petkovic said. "The audience comes and wants to see two semifinals. They pay a lot of money. I’m not the type of person to just withdraw and leave the audience out there. You know, when I go to concerts and the band comes two hours late and plays for 45 minutes and then they leave, then I’m really, really mad."
The 23-year-old Bosnian-born, German-raised daughter of a tennis teacher, Petkovic brought a dose of dance fever to the Grand Slam stage in January, pounding out a 6-2, 6-3 win over Maria Sharapova to advance to her first major quarterfinal at the Australian Open. She celebrated that moment with the distinctive Petko dance that was born off Broadway at the 2010 U.S. Open.
"It started off as a bet with my coach," said Petkovic. "He had an idea after I played a terrible summer season in the U.S. and I got Nadia Petrova in the first round of the U.S. Open, which was a tough draw for me back then. So he said, 'If you win, you have to do something special because it's a special match for us.' I won 7‑6 in the third, so I got the inspiration of doing a dance."
Returning to New York this week fresh off two semis in her last three tournaments, the 10th-seeded Petkovic hopes to make some major moves at the Open—if her knee holds up.
Moments after her photo shoot, we caught up with the engaging Petkovic to discuss her gear, game, goals, health, and the prospect of possibly celebrating her 24th birthday with a Petko party at the U.S. Open.
TENNIS.com: How do you get your gear ready for a two-week Grand Slam? Are you practicing and training in the clothes and shoes you will wear at the U.S. Open next week? How do you break the shoes in for match competition?
Andrea Petkovic: Before the tournament, I have selected all of the outfits I am going to wear from the first round to the finals—even if I lose early.
TENNIS.com: That’s an optimistic approach.
Andrea Petkovic: It is optimistic, but on the other hand you want to be ready for any case. I always carry more with me than I actually need. So I always have enough outfits from the first match to the final, and of course you have to account for rain as well.
With the shoes, I am actually quite good so I get used to new shoes quite fast. I would never take new shoes out of the box and go right on court. I will take new shoes [in practice] at least two days before the match. Most of the time I use them for a week before I will wear them in matches. I do a long warm-up before the practice begins, a 20-minute warm-up, and that’s when I first wear them during the warm up. So I do all the little coordination stuff, really going through the cones and getting my feet comfortable with the shoes. Actually, these new Barricades are much more flexible. I needed not even a half an hour, I needed like 10 minutes to really feel comfortable in them in practice.
TENNIS.com: Do you wear orthotics with the new Barricades?
Andrea Petkovic: Yes, I do. I have orthotics and I always wear them. Actually, adidas plans that the athlete is going to wear orthotics with the shoe so they make them a little wider, and it’s not a problem when you have to fit them in because sometimes orthotics can be really thick and then you have problems.
WIN A PAIR OF ADIDAS BARRICADES AUTOGRAPHED BY ANDY MURRAY: To enter, please send your best haiku—three lines of poetry, the first five syllables, the second seven syllables, the third five syllables—that touches on both Andrea Petkovic and Andy Murray to: emcgrogan@gmail.com. The subject of the email must be "Haiku". We'll email the winner during the first week of the U.S. Open.
TENNIS.com: We watched you play after you suffered the knee injury in your win over Petrova in Cincinnati. What’s the status of your knee and how do you feel less than a week before the start of the Open?
Andrea Petkovic: Well, I definitely have a tear in my meniscus and it’s still a little inflamed. The problem is really not actually the meniscus itself, because I have enough muscles to hold it. When I injured it, it was swollen up and all the water inside the knee is disturbing it and it’s not stable right now. So I am trying to get rid of the water on the knee right now and get rid of the swelling, and I think I’m going to be fine then.
TENNIS.com: When you’re playing with an injury like that do you try to just block it out? Or are you conscious and aware of what movement might put pressure or provoke pain on your knee?
Andrea Petkovic: Well it happened during the match against Petrova and I just blocked it out. Because I felt something was just not right at that moment, but I moved totally normally around the court and I just blocked it out. But I knew something was not right and I just wanted to finish the match, and with the adrenaline pumping and the muscles all warmed up, you really actually don’t feel it that much. But then an hour or two after the match, it started swelling up and then the pain came. But I think that’s what most athletes do when they feel it unless you have a major ligament tear or something broken, then you probably cannot continue. Something like this, I think most athletes just keep playing.
TENNIS.com: You had a great start to the year and strong clay-court season, reached the semis in two of your last three tournaments and cracked the Top 10 for the first time. Given that success and the current knee injury, what’s your goal for the U.S. Open and beyond?
Andrea Petkovic: My goal for the year was to be Top 20 and I’m past that now.
Tennis.com: Did you feel different in terms of your confidence on court after making the Top 10, or do you feel the same, just with a different number next to your name?
Andrea Petkovic: I didn’t feel different, though I did feel relief. It was like a weight went off my shoulders because it’s the thing everyone is looking for. And when I made it, I felt like, 'Okay, now I’m a Top 10 player and let’s just keep going.' Even if I drop out of the Top 10, I know that I have made the Top 10 and I have that achievement for life. It’s like winning a Grand Slam, it’s always going to be there.
TENNIS.com: You’ve beaten several Top 10 players this year—Kvitova, Wozniacki, Sharapova—do you get up for those matches more than you do against lower-ranked players, or is it more a feeling of knowing I’ve really got to bring it today because I’m up against a top player?
Andrea Petkovic: I think the thing is that I know against these players I have to play every point 150 percent. And with my fitness, which is obviously one of my biggest advantages, I know that I’m able to do that. Sometimes, against lower-ranked players, I don’t bring that 150 percent intensity to every point, that’s right now what I’m really working on and improving on. I think I did quite a good job right here in the last three weeks during the U.S. Open Series. Against the higher-ranked players I know I have to be intense every point and I can’t afford lapses. Against lower-ranked players sometimes I lose focus for two or three games. But they are still very good players. If you let down, they see, they smell it, they take advantage of it.
Now, the next goal for me is to be able to play each and every match—it doesn’t matter against who it doesn’t matter where it is, even if I’m playing on Court 16 with two people watching—to keep the intensity. That is what Rafa Nadal is doing incredibly well. It doesn’t matter who he is playing or where he is playing or which match of the tournament he is playing: He is always at 150 percent intensity. And that’s what Nole improved this year so much, and that is really one of my top goals for the coming weeks and months: that I can bring that 150 percent intensity in every point of every match.
TENNIS.com: English isn’t your first language but you speak and express yourself very well. Do you read a lot? Was education a big priority in your family as you grew up?
Andrea Petkovic: My dad forced me to read a lot. Well, 'forced' isn’t the right word, he encouraged me and I always liked to read a lot. He’s a tennis teacher. When I was 14 or 15 I started reading all the literature in its original language so basically I was reading in French, English and German.
TENNIS.com: What prompted you to do that?
Andrea Petkovic: Well, I had a really good teacher and she always told us. 'Literature is never really the same if you don’t read it in the original language in which it was written.' So when I read Oscar Wilde, for instance, I read it in English. It just became some kind of natural thing and I watch all the movies in the original language or the sitcoms, you know like How I Met Your Mother, I watch those in original languages so you pick up the phrases that you don’t learn in school, so I like that.
TENNIS.com: A lot of tennis fans know you for your dancing and it seems that music is an influential presence in your life. Do you use music to pump yourself up for a match, to bring yourself down after a match to relax or recharge? What does music mean in your life?
Andrea Petkovic: Well, music is one of the most important parts of my life. I play the guitar and drums, not very well (laughs), but I really enjoy myself. I have a lot of musician friends so I’m really in a circle of musicians. I just really enjoy it. Sometimes, I feel a creativity inside of me and in tennis you don’t always get to use it that much. Of course, you use some inspiration and there is a rhythm to playing tennis. It’s kind of similar in terms of getting into a zone; like when I play the drums I get into it in the same way. Doing something different than tennis is very important. I just like to discover new bands, go on the internet for hours and hours and try to find some new songs that I like. It makes me happy.
TENNIS.com: The USTA did not raise Serena’s seeding as some expected. Are you surprised and what do you think of that decision?
Andrea Petkovic: I was surprised. For me, such a great player like Serena, if she would have come back and it was her first tournament I would have maybe understood. But now she showed she’s won two tournaments in a row and she beat all of the Top 10 girls in doing it. Myself, I would not have been bothered at all if they put her up there because I feel she would have deserved it based on her performance in the U.S. Open. On the other hand, for Serena herself it probably doesn’t matter when or who she is playing.
TENNIS.com: Last question, your birthday is on September 9, which is during the U.S. Open. How will you celebrate here in New York assuming you’re still here in New York on your birthday?
Andrea Petkovic: Well I think it’s the day of the semis, so I really, really hope that I am gonna play and that I’m gonna give myself the best birthday present ever! (laughs) That would be absolutely awesome, but yeah it’s a long time from here to there so we’ll see what happens, hopefully it will be a good one.
The U.S. Open delivers a kaleidoscope of color to Grand Slam tennis with its true blue courts, red brick stadium façade, dancing aqua fountain and forest-green framing of Flushing Meadows Corona Park.
Several of adidas’ top stars will bring bright shades of scarlet to the multi-hued Open atmosphere next week. And four adidas players—Maria Kirilenko, Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, Marcos Baghdatis and Viktor Troicki—have created their own customized 'miadidas' shoes. Click on the shoes for a sneak peek of the apparel they'll wear, and the stories behind some their creations:
