12 posts categorized "2005 Entries"
If you’re like me, you’ve already read a few best-of lists for tennis in 2005. If you’re like me, you also enjoy these kinds of things. So here’s one more before I take the next couple of weeks off. I’ll be back with a 2006 preview column on December 30. Believe it or not, that’s when the first tune-up for the Australian Open, the Hopman Cup, gets underway. In case you’re counting it down, the off-season, after one week, is a quarter of the way through.
Most Valuable Player—Men
Rafael Nadal
As the rankings show, he wasn’t the best. That honor goes to Roger Federer, who had another historic season. But Nadal was the most galvanizing presence in the game, and his rampage through the clay-court season was the most exciting time of 2005. His grit, flair, and expressive variety—by the end of the year, my favorite of his many fist-pumps were the ones he did downward, with both hands, while running off the court on a changeover—gave the game a jolt like no one since Boris Becker 20 years ago. Nadal also had a historic season, with 11 titles, four Masters titles (a record, with Federer), a 48-2 record on clay, and a French Open win in his first try.
Most Valuable Player—Women
Kim Clijsters
After the Australian Open, which ended with a hard-to-watch collapse by Lindsay Davenport, the women seemed to be at a low point—did anyone in the WTA want to win? Clijsters answered that question a little more than a month later in resounding fashion by coming back from injury to win at Indian Wells and Key Biscayne. She did the same thing at the U.S. Open. As every other woman was faltering, Clijsters rolled to her first major title with a mix of on-the-rise offense and daredevil defense. Even her celebration—she did a balance-beam act to reach her family in the stands at Ashe Stadium—was memorable.
Most Notable Debut—Men
Andrew Murray
At a time of cookie-cutter power baseliners, the 18-year-old Murray’s variety and thoughtfulness stood out. He doesn’t have a surefire weapon, but that only forces him to do everything well. He’s got a strong serve and forehand, and a versatile backhand. Best of all, he never forces the issue. That package took him to No. 84 in his first year on tour.
Most Notable Debut—Women
Sania Mirza
She’s not a rookie, exactly, but Mirza, the first Indian to win a WTA event and a huge star in her home country, appeared on the world stage for the first time at the U.S. Open. There she showed off that star quality, as well as a big ground game.
Most Notable Farewell
Todd Woodbridge
Maybe men’s doubles players have a point when they say their game is under-marketed. Did you know that the top men’s dubs winner of the Open era retired this year? In a 17-year career, Australia’s Woodbridge won 83 doubles titles (the most in men’s history), including 16 majors and a career Grand Slam.
Biggest Disappointment
Serena Williams
She won a Slam and spent a good part of the year injured. But that doesn’t explain her continued inability to compete seriously. Off the court, she won’t commit to being a full-time tennis pro; on the court, her losses come with excuses. When she’s on, she can beat anyone, but to play her best she needs to compete with everything she’s got. That means facing the fact that it’s possible for her opponents to play well enough to beat her.
Best Match
Rafael Nadal d. Guillermo Coria, Tennis Masters–Rome
There were higher-profile contests—Safin-Federer, Williams-Davenport, Agassi-Blake—but none better than this 5-hour, 14-minute war in Rome. Heavy topspin forehands gave way to delicate drop shots, which were countered by impossible sliding gets. Neither man could distance himself from the other. At 6-6 in the fifth, the players had to ask the umpire if they were supposed to play a tiebreaker. It’s a good thing he said yes, or they might still be battling at the Foro Italico today.
Best Shot
Marat Safin
After five sets, four and a half hours, and six match points in the Australian Open semifinals, it took a knockdown punch for Safin to beat Roger Federer. He got it by smoking a backhand up the line that sent the world No. 1 to his knees—and left an open court for the upset.
Great Performances
Elena Dementieva, Fed Cup Final
For a sunny fall weekend in Paris, Fed Cup mattered. The Russians defended their title in a topsy-turvy final against the French, and Dementieva, a three-match winner, was the unlikely rock of the team.
Ivan Ljubicic, Davis Cup first round
In one three-day swoop before a pro-U.S. audience, the Croat out-rallied Andre Agassi, helped bring down one of the best doubles teams in the world, the Bryan brothers, and wrested a fifth set away from Andy Roddick, who had beaten him five straight times. The rest of the Cup season seemed like a formality.
Venus Williams, Wimbledon
The former No. 1 reminded us how she once reached the top with a surprising and sustained fortnight of excellent tennis. As she had in the seemingly distant past, Williams simply refused to lose.
Roger Federer, Wimbledon final
I had thought Pete Sampras’ win over Andre Agassi in the 1999 final was a one-of-a-kind clinic in grass-court tennis. But Federer matched it with his all-court assault on Andy Roddick.
Rule That Most Needs to Be Changed
Injury Timeouts
When Mary Pierce settled in for a spa treatment during her U.S. Open semifinal against Elena Dementieva, the world got to see what fans had known for a long time: There are too many opportunities for breaks and timeouts in tennis matches. Whether this will lead to any changes is another matter.
Best Quote
“That’s what I call an eBay watch.”—Andre Agassi upon receiving a Raymond Weil timepiece after winning a tournament in Los Angeles. It was nice to see that, even as his charitable works have given him a sort of saint-like status in recent years, the smart-mouthed kid in Agassi survives.
Best Moment
Andre Agassi, U.S. Open quarterfinal
Agassi tapped his heels on the changeover and then jogged to take his place at the baseline. You knew right there that James Blake, who was serving for their U.S. Open quarterfinal, was doomed. For American fans, the sight of Agassi getting fired up in front of a post-midnight Ashe Stadium audience will be the lasting image of 2005.
As Sunday began, Ivan Ljubicic appeared ready to take his place as that much-talked-about-but-rarely-seen sports figure: The Man. It’s a well-worn NBA term, a title bestowed by coaches to motivate their best player to carry everyone else on his back. It’s also a myth—even Michael Jordan needed (a little) help. In tennis’ premier team competition, Davis Cup, one player can theoretically have a hand in all 12 match wins needed for the title. But the Man has been hard to find on a tennis court as well. Only John McEnroe recorded 12 wins in a single Davis Cup season, when he led the U.S. to the championship in 1982.
Ljubicic, a 26-year-old Bosnian war refugee, made an unlikely potential successor to McEnroe. The American finished 1982 at No. 1 in the world, and the U.S. has had a long history of Davis Cup success, including a record 31 titles. Ljubicic finished this year ranked No. 9, and his country, tiny Croatia, had never reached a Cup final. It hadn’t even been a country when McEnroe set his record.
But yesterday Ljubicic found himself just one set from his 12th Davis Cup win of 2005, and Croatia stood one set from the title. The entire 2005 Cup campaign had pointed to this moment. In Croatia’s three previous wins, the same pattern had held. Day 1: Ljubicic wins his singles match, his teammate Mario Ancic loses; Day 2: Ljubicic and Ancic win the doubles; Day 3: Ljubicic wins again to clinch.
Where did he find the confidence to rise to all these occasions? It began with his single-handed first-round demolition of the U.S. in March, perhaps the most impressive performance by any tennis player in 2005. In front of a hostile crowd in California (or as hostile as California tennis fans can get, anyway), Ljubicic played a crafty match to beat Andre Agassi and then partnered with Ancic to beat the world’s best doubles team, Bob and Mike Bryan. In the decisive match, he beat Andy Roddick for the first time in five tries.
Nine months later, the unlikely hero found himself in an equally unlikely place, Sibamac Arena in Bratislava, for the final against Slovakia. Compared to last year’s championship-round site, a state-of-the-art indoor-outdoor arena in Spain that seated 27,000 people, the 4,100-seat Sibamac could best be described as, well, modest. The ceiling was low, the court a garish orange-and-green, the bleachers barebones and about 10 feet from the players. But the passion in the building was just as great as it had been in Spain. Unfortunately for the Slovaks, their home-court advantage was negated by the fact that 800 seats had been given to Croatian fans—the “Big Family,” as they dubbed themselves. The Slovak and Croatian fans were hard to tell apart. Both wore white shirts, batted thundersticks nonstop, and made their own (incorrect) calls on close baseline shots.
Each group saw its hero come through on the first day. Ljubicic beat a rusty Karol Kucera in his usual fashion: a variety of nasty serves, good defense, and brutal backhands. It took hometown boy Dominik Hrbaty to bring the Slovaks to life. Like Ljubicic, Hrbaty had been the driving force behind Slovakia’s run to the final. Running Ancic relentlessly across the baseline and taking everything early, Hrbaty’s emotion and determination were too much for his passive opponent.
The doubles was tight, but Ljubicic again had the right shot at the right moment. Trailing 4-5 in the first-set tiebreaker, he threw up that rarest of shots in today’s game: a perfect topspin lob. It seemed to break the Slovaks. Croatia went on to win the set and the match, and with Ljubicic ready to go again the next day, the Cup seemed to be locked up.
“Seemed” is the operative word there: Nothing is ever quite locked up in Davis Cup. While Ljubicic had a 5-0 record against Hrbaty, he must have known this one wouldn’t be easy. The Croat started strong, hitting huge serves and smart slices, but Hrbaty turned the tables with a ground assault centered on Ljubicic’s weakness, his forehand.
The crowd inspired Hrbaty to play beyond his limits. At 3-2 in the third set, Hrbaty sprinted forward to reach a short ball that had dipped below net level. He got there just in time to roll a perfect two-handed backhand over the high part of the net and out of Ljubicic’s reach. I laughed and thought, "There’s no way Dominik Hrbaty owns that shot!"
Ljubicic, like Ancic, remained too passive in the face of Hrbaty’s emotion. His tactics were curious. Ljubicic would play one point deep in the court, letting the smaller Slovak dictate play; the next point he would try to blast a low-percentage winner on his service return. Neither strategy worked, as Hrbaty broke serve to win 6-4 in the fifth. Along with two recent Masters Cup finals, the loss marked Ljubicic’s third fifth-set collapse in two months. Each was a surprise to me: All three times, he had looked supremely cool and confident until the very end.
Hrbaty’s celebration was typical for Davis Cup: in other words, he went berserk. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone go into his bag, pull out all his racquets, and fling them all into the crowd. Unfortunately, the Slovaks still didn’t stand a chance. The final match pitted Ancic against a late substitute, Michal Mertinak, ranked No. 165 in the world. (Slovakia’s No. 2, Karol Beck, had been pulled due to either a bum leg or a positive drug test—no one was quite sure.) After a shaky start, Ancic kept his nerve and won the biggest match of his life. The first person to hug him was Ljubicic, who later said, “I’m probably the happiest loser in the world today.” Deservedly so.
One man who may have been happier was McEnroe. This was the second record Johnny Mac narrowly preserved in the last month. In November, Roger Federer lost his final match of the season to finish the year 81-4, just short of McEnroe’s 82-3 win-loss total of 1984. Whatever your opinion of Mac, these two records remind us of his ability, unique among modern male players, to dominate in both singles and doubles while enduring the rigors of Davis Cup and the ATP tour at the same time. He was our Federer and Ljubicic rolled into one. The Man, indeed.
Sports fans in Philadelphia lost a local hero last week. No, it wasn't what's-his-name, the Eagles' Flapping Gum. It was Bill Lyon, the least-known great sportswriter in America. Last Sunday, he wrote his final column after 32 years at the Philadelphia Inquirer. Lyon was a favorite of pretty much every sports fan I knew growing up. He wasn't a moralist or a bomb-thrower or a know-it-all, and I saw him on TV only once, being interviewed about the Eagles from a diner booth (so Philly). He was an appreciator, old-fashioned as that sounds.
One of Lyon’s columns has stayed with me—at least the outline of it has—since the late-’80s. It was about Charles Barkley, a 76er at the time. In recovering a loose ball, Barkley had hurled himself into the seats and ended up sprawled in the third row. The ball came out to a teammate who dribbled to the other end of the court. Somehow, the opposing team forgot about Barkley, who was busy peeling himself off a most-likely-comatose fan. After 10 seconds or so, Barkley barreled in from off-screen, took a pass on the run, and rained down a monstrous dunk before anyone knew what had happened. Writing the next day, Lyon imagined himself idling away some weekend during the upcoming summer and being happy to have that memory of Barkley pop into his head.
After a couple months of relatively unmemorable tennis, fans of the game might ask: Were there any moments like that for us this year? Plenty—it's one of the benefits of an endless season. With a nod to Bill Lyon, here are a few of the happenings from 2005 that I hope I won't forget anytime soon.
• Serena Williams vs. Maria Sharapova, Australian Open semifinal. Men are more combative than women, you say? When I want to describe a match as “fiercely competitive,” I will now use this as the standard. Even on TV, you could cut the tension with a knife.
• Alicia Molik, Australian Open quarterfinal. The down-to-earth Aussie is what the women’s game needs: a pro. Too bad she’s out with an infection. In Melbourne she got a bad call that helped Lindsay Davenport beat her 9-7 in third. Molik took it in stride, a nice contrast to Serena Williams’ claim of being “robbed” by a botched overrule at the U.S. Open in 2004. (Williams even wore a T-shirt that read, “The ball was in!”) We miss you, Alicia.
• Marat Safin vs. Roger Federer, Australian Open semifinal. I watched this classic five-setter as it was happening and later with a colleague who didn’t know the result. Once again I learned that there is nothing, not a single word, you can say that won’t give away a tennis match. It was tough to keep quiet through this one.
• Gael Monfils, Key Biscayne. This was my first close-up of Monfils, the French teenager with the elastic body. As he leapt at balls and blasted down Nikolay Davydenko, it felt, briefly, like the future of the game was here. Monfils seemed to have too much athleticism for the little boxes that make up a tennis court.
• Richard Gasquet, Monte Carlo. Just as 18-year-old Rafael Nadal was ready to break through and win his first Masters title, a second teenager stole his thunder for a day. Against Roger Federer, Gasquet was the French version of Vinnie “The Microwave” Johnson of Detroit Pistons fame—I’ve never seen anyone get that hot that fast.
• The Italian Open (men’s edition). After last year’s rain-soaked debacle, a week of sun and huge crowds in Rome’s venerable tennis stadium looked fantastic on the Tennis Channel. The five-hour final between Nadal and Guillermo Coria was simply too much of a very good thing.
• Rafael Nadal, Roland Garros final. After winning a big point near the end, Nadal turned and slid sideways with his right foot, and then his left. Then he did it again. And again. He finished by erupting into his patented flying fist-pump. Mary Carillo said, quite accurately, “Oh, man.”
• John McEnroe. He went neck and neck in matches against Mario Ancic and Mardy Fish this year, along the way showing that variety can still be an effective weapon (as well as entertaining). Is he the best 40-and-over player in history?
• Andy Roddick match, Centre Court, Wimbledon. One group of girls: “We love you Andy!” Another group, on the opposite side of the stadium: “We love you, too!” First group: “We said it first, Andy!”
• Practice court, Wimbledon. Watching Thomas Johansson hit ball after ball perfectly in practice depressed me. Seeing him in his match later that day, where he played much more tentatively and committed a normal number of errors, made me feel better. The pros let their nerves get to them, just like the rest of us.
• Venus Williams vs. Lindsay Davenport, Wimbledon final. I watched this at my tennis club in Brooklyn, where fans arranged themselves into opposing camps as the match progressed. I went out to play but was routinely interrupted as people—adults—shouted and pounded the walls after big points. Leave it to the women’s game to inspire this kind of passion.
• Andrew Murray puking a blue streak, U.S. Open. I was 10 feet away—how will I ever forget that?
• Andre Agassi vs. James Blake, quarterfinal, U.S. Open. Agassi tapping his heels during the changeover before running out to break Blake late in the fifth was a thrill. But Roger Federer’s cold assessment of the match was still true: “James gave it to him.”
• Amelie Mauresmo, WTA Championships. Her reaction to her win was utter joy. That wasn’t a surprise. What was shocking, and nice to see, was that Amelie Mauresmo was celebrating.
• Roger Federer, Masters Cup final. As he went down two breaks in the fifth set, Federer, winner of 24 straight finals, stood back, scowled, and slowly folded his arms across his chest. The oldest rule in sports was true again: No one can win them all.
• Roger Federer, U.S. Open final. No, Federer wasn’t only memorable in defeat. Midway through the Open final, Andre Agassi went up a break and began to look like he might sneak past the world’s best. Federer proceeded to make the most casual comeback imaginable, turning the tables just when he needed to and cruising right past Agassi. It was like watching Michael Johnson run—he didn’t look like he was moving his legs quickly even as he left everyone else sputtering behind him.
Just when it didn’t seem to matter, when the players didn’t want to play and the tours were hoping to put another bloated season to rest, tennis fans were given a reason to watch again yesterday.
At the most basic level, they got a well-played, five-set match in the final of one of the game’s major events, the ATP’s year-end Masters Cup. David Nalbandian came from two sets down to upset world No. 1 and two-time defending champion Roger Federer in a final-set tiebreaker, but not before Federer did “what all great champions do,” rallying from 0-4 down in the fifth to come within two points of the title. While Federer was tired and hampered by an ankle injury, Nalbandian showed again that he’s a paragon of perseverance. Who—other than Rafael Nadal—would have the mental strength to lose a second consecutive tiebreaker to the world’s best player, 11-13, and put it behind him quickly enough to win the next set 6-2?
Doggedness aside, Nalbandian may have been rescued in the end by an overrule that went against him. Riding a surge of momentum, Federer served for the match at 6-5 in the fifth. He went up 15-0 and hit what appeared to be an ace. The line judge called it out, but the chair umpire reversed the call and announced the score, 30-0. Nalbandian protested, but not too mightily. Instead, he hit a backhand winner with his next return of serve. From there he broke and won the tiebreaker with relative ease. The umpire did Nalbandian a huge favor: He gave him something to fight about, which took his mind off his missed opportunities.
It was Federer’s fourth loss of 2005, leaving him one win shy of the best single-season men’s record. John McEnroe went 82-3 in 1984; Federer went 81-4 this year. Those four slip-ups came against Marat Safin, Richard Gasquet, Nadal, and now Nalbandian. Does that lineup tell us anything about what it takes to beat Federer? Two possibilities emerge: (1) Other than Safin, these players don’t have huge serves. It isn’t essential because, no matter how much pace you generate, Federer gets more of them back than any other player. (2) What does seem essential is having a very strong ground stroke on your left-hand side, which allows you to counter Federer’s most important shot, his inside-out forehand. That’s the backhand side for Safin, Gasquet, and Nalbandian, and each of them is outstanding from that wing (another player with an excellent backhand, Ivan Ljubicic, nearly beat Federer in the round robin last week). That’s the forehand side for the lefty Nadal, and we know how good he is with that shot. It’s telling that Federer says he doesn’t like to play Nadal primarily because he’s left-handed.
Oh, one other thing: It helps to play the match of your life (only Nadal didn’t). Last week Nalbandian began to tree in his round-robin match against Ljubicic and never came down.
But this was more than just a good tennis match. It was a moment every sports fan savors—the fall of the invincible. Yesterday, as he found his legs in the fifth and began his improbable/inevitable comeback, Federer, who had won 35 straight matches and 24 straight finals, started to seem like tennis’ version of Duke basketball, USC football, the Kobe-Shaq Lakers, the Yankees, and Tiger Woods. These are the champions we love to hate. Not only do they always win—or at least always seem to win—they do it dramatically, at the last second, with a confidence that seems, infuriatingly, more than human. Gods are impressive, but what’s the point of rooting for them?
The last tennis player with that aura was Serena Williams. It goes without saying that Federer has handled his run of invincibility with more class and humility. Look no further than his post-match words for Nalbandian: “He totally deserved to win tonight.” Still, no great champion can escape a touch of smugness, and it has crept into Federer’s attitude. This is a guy who has denied he has any legitimate rival, characterized Safin and Gasquet as “a little lucky” to have beaten him this year, and has said that his favorite player to watch is himself. By hiring IMG to help market him, Federer may also be getting a new coat of glitz. (In case you didn’t know, he’s now one of the “Sexiest Men Alive,” according to someone.) As the match slid away from him yesterday, Federer grew petulant and disbelieving. At one point he threw his arm up in anger at Nalbandian for daring to question whether one of his glorious forehands had hit the line.
But Federer’s dominance is good for tennis. He brings excellence to the sport when he wins, drama when he doesn’t. His loss yesterday was more than dramatic; it was a relief. Like Duke, the Lakers, Tiger, and the Yankees (but not USC yet, dammit), Federer is human, at least for the moment. He can screw up. I can root for him again—until he wins another 35 straight.
No, that’s not how anyone described last week’s WTA Championships, though it was supposed to feature the eight best women in the world. Rather, that’s how, with an awkward twirl of her arm, Lindsay Davenport described the glorious high-rise hotels of Dubai a few hundred times over the last few days. The women have been accused of a lot of things this past week—indifference, selfishness, sloth, greed, gluttony—but the worst sin had to be their low-budget shill-job for United Arab Emirates’s desert-and-steel paradise. You may not have liked the tennis from Los Angeles, but at least it offered a brief reprieve from the lethal ad combo ESPN served up during virtually every changeover. When we weren’t hearing from multi-millionaires shopping Dubai Duty Free, we were rocking to Lotto’s “Get On Up!” tennis shoe, the Raptor (just what every woman wants on her foot).
Meanwhile, the women’s tour again ended with a whimper in L.A. Top players were missing, promotion was minimal, and crowds for weekday matches were sparse. There seemed to be more energy at the smaller European events in Filderstadt and Linz that led to this big-money event. Or maybe the European audiences just didn’t look as bored as the slumped and sprawled-out fans in L.A.
For a second straight year, the event was partially rescued by an entertaining final weekend. In 2004, Maria Sharapova won a tense grudge match over Serena Williams; this year the final was a friendly contest between two French Fed Cup teammates and longtime head cases, Mary Pierce and Amelie Mauresmo.
Now, I’ve been known to do a little Pierce bashing from time to time. Her tics will always be irksome—she even appeared to have added a couple last week, stretching her mouth wide before returns and cleaning her eyelashes when things weren’t going well. But I’ve also never found her stone-handed, face-the-net, muscle game appealing. That said, Pierce was impressive in L.A., and she continues to make breakthroughs, 15 years into her career. She beat Kim Clijsters for the first time in the round-robin and Lindsay Davenport for only the fourth time in 11 tries in the semis. Her quickness was surprising; Pierce has lost weight, and she was pouncing on the ball all week—“boundin’ and poundin’ from the ground” as New York Knicks announcer Walt Frazier might put it (sorry, I’ve been watching the Knicks try to get their first win of the year). Before last week, I had thought of Pierce’s late-career renaissance as a product of the lax commitment of the top players. But, like Andre Agassi, she’s done a rare thing for a 30-year-old player—she hasn’t lost a step.
Wasn’t it nice to see Amelie Mauresmo celebrate a title this big? Depleted field or not, it’s the highest-profile victory of her decade-long career. Mauresmo has been in many Slam semis and quarters and was the finalist in L.A. two years ago, but she’s never raised her game at the right time. She typically plays just well enough to lose, a product perhaps of her now deeply ingrained stoicism about defeat. Mauresmo almost gave it away yesterday, going down 0-40 when she served for the title at 5-4 in the third. Fortunately, she was playing the game’s new bridesmaid, Pierce, who lost two Slam finals this year. She obliged Mauresmo yesterday by suddenly losing track of the court just when she had a chance to get back into the match.
Mauresmo may be the most entertaining woman to watch. Not many players on either tour have her variety and hands. Crosscourt drop shot? She’s got it. Improvised forehand drop volley on the run? Sure. Still, she looked ready to pull her disappearing act in the semifinals, going down 3-5 to Maria Sharapova in the first set. But it was the Russian who got tight and let her opponent back in. It was a strange defeat for the defending champion. Has a season of tight semifinal defeats shaken her formerly steely confidence? Against Mauresmo, Sharapova looked tired in the second set, and her reliable ESPN booster, Mary Joe Fernandez (her husband is a tennis agent at IMG, the same company that represents Sharapova, among many others) began to say that she could be tired from a recent three-set win over Lindsay Davenport. But Fernandez’s partner in the booth, Cliff Drysdale, wasn’t buying it. He thought she had succumbed to nerves, and that surprised him. While Sharapova was indeed hurting, Drysdale was right on both counts. It will be interesting to see how Sharapova rebounds early next year.
So where does the floundering WTA Championships go from here? To another continent—it will be held in Madrid in 2006. This is part of the tours’ endless global chase for money/buzz—Germany is out these days, Spain and China are in. The international nature of the sport allows this kind of short-term cherry picking. The downside is that the events themselves build no character. The ATP’s big season finale was in Texas the last two years. It’s going on again now—in Shanghai. This may not seem like a big deal, except that the appeal of pro tennis is largely about place. The most prestigious and well-recognized tournaments—i.e., the Grand Slams, which seem to get bigger every year—each have a distinctive character that even casual sports fans recognize. Three years in L.A. did build a distinct personality for the WTA Championships. It just wasn’t one that any sport would want to keep.
Ever wish you had the Tennis Channel? It’s a bonus for any fan, but consider: Last week I walked into a colleague’s office and opened a conversation by saying, not without urgency, “Don’t tell me who won Gaudio-Ginepri, I’m watching it later.” He paused and said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about, but OK.”
The channel, which hasn’t exactly been spreading like wildfire around the country, had wall-to-wall coverage of the men’s Paris Masters event from Monday to Sunday. It was a case of many hours and few stars, as Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, Lleyton Hewitt, Andre Agassi, and defending champion Marat Safin all took passes. Coupled with rampant pullouts on the women’s side—the winners of the first three majors, the Williams sisters and Justine Henin-Hardenne, will skip next week’s WTA Championships—the tours sank to simultaneous low points last week. Every season the game limps to the finish line with injuries and declining player motivation, but it’s worse than ever in 2005. The tournaments have been reduced to asking the players simply to show up to do promotional work on the sidelines. Yesterday Safin, his hair in full frizz, was trotted out like some kind of retired legend to present the trophies in Paris. Even outgoing ATP chief Mark Miles says there are too many tournaments. Can anyone deny that the players and the powers-that-be need to sit down and talk about what can be done to keep the sport healthy?
The crowds in Paris didn’t seem to mind any of this. Even without young French guns Richard Gasquet and Gael Monfils—both of whom withdrew—fans were enthusiastic from thestart. Their countrymen filled in for the big names early in the week. Arnaud Clement kicked things off by beating Nicolas Kiefer in a classic three-setter; Paul-Henri Mathieu rode his usual emotional roller coaster; and Fabrice Santoro conjured away in his alternate tennis universe.
The reigning American in Paris, Andy Roddick, was also an entertaining presence. Looking a little ragged around the edges—his hair poked out from under his ever-present (and inexplicable) backwards cap—Roddick demolished Dominik Hrbaty early. It was so bad that announcer John Barrett described the head-hanging Slovak during the second set as a “forlorn figure creeping toward the net” on a changeover. Roddick also gutted out a third-set tiebreaker against David Ferrer. But he tweaked his back in that match and went down limply to Ivan Ljubicic in the semis.
The clown prince of Paris, whether he meant to be or not, was the Czech Republic’s Radek Stepanek, who reached the semis. Stepanek is an unreconstructed geek, Ivan Lendl look-alike, and a proverbial breath of fresh air on the men’s side. He plays with a tucked-in shirt and high-riding shorts, walks on his toes, uses a near-Continental grip on his forehand, and serves and volleys. He also shows up every single week and rounds out his game by playing doubles.
It’s his variety that makes any Stepanek match interesting. He can blunt a slugger’s power with his volleying skills and change pace by switching from a two-handed backhand drive to a one-handed slice in mid-point. His serve is strong and useful, but he won’t bore a crowd with aces. Best are his celebrations. He begins with a quick shriek and a half-embarrassed, Tim Henman-esque fist-pump. As a match progresses, he’ll spastically bounce up and down on both feet after winning a point. Finally, to celebrate one win last week he dropped his racquet and went into the old break-dance move “the worm.” At least I think that’s what it was; either way, it’s in the same nerd tradition as his countryman Petr Korda’s famous celebratory scissors-kick.
But Stepanek was also gracious and crowd-pleasing in defeat. No sulking multi-millionaire, he walked off after his semifinal loss bowing and smiling. He was also sporting a bizarre, referee-style, zebra-striped jacket. But it didn’t matter, the Parisians liked him even more for it.
Stepanek’s defeat came at the hands of another Czech, and the tournament’s biggest story, 20-year-old Tomas Berdych. The 6-foot-4 power hitter has been a top-player-in-the-making for a couple of years—in 2004, he beat Federer at the Olympics—but has had severely erratic results. Compared with fellow prodigy Nadal, Berdych, pale, irritable, and prone to stretches of indifferent tennis, has seemed a bit of a cold fish.
Like Safin, Berdych stretches the limits of how tall and rangy a player can be and still hit huge ground strokes consistently. Few players generate so much power with so little effort. But few pros typically hit three winners to break serve one game, then give the break back the next game with four horrid errors. Berdych still does this kind of thing. After four sets of up-and-down tennis against Ljubicic yesterday, Berdych’s two major weapons—a huge serve and controlling forehand, what else?—didn’t desert him. This could, and should, be the start of something big.
Berdych’s breakthrough is also a reason to feel good about tennis’ future in spite of all the usual dispiriting news. While the game’s schedule is always a mess, and the top players inevitably grow jaded, this year brought us an impressive group of newcomers to the men’s side. Put Berdych together with teenagers Nadal, Gasquet, Monfils, Andy Murray, and Serbian hotshot Novak Djokovic and you’ve got a stylish and talented next generation in the making. Hopefully it will be a year or two before they get too rich to bother showing up.
The pros got a look at the non-tourist towns of Europe last week—Hasselt, Lyon, Linz, Basel, and St. Petersburg (OK, you might want to visit that one). Sounds more like an itinerary for the senior tour, right? Actually, the old guys were just up the road in Essen, Germany, where Pat Cash and Thomas Muster proved again that they’re as mature as any 18-year-old rookie (but maybe more entertaining). More on them later. First, for those who weren’t watching—such as, everyone—here’s a partial tour of the week’s tennis happenings, starting in tourist central, New York.
That’s where TENNIS Magazine’s offices are located, and where readers have been responding to our yearlong series, “The 40 Greatest Players of the TENNIS Era.” We began this countdown in January as a way to celebrate our 40th anniversary. By “the TENNIS Era,” we mean 1965 to 2005, the years that TENNIS has covered the sport. If you’re wondering why champions like Bill Tilden or Maureen Connolly weren’t included, it’s because we didn’t consider any results prior to 1965. These kinds of lists are nothing if not controversial, but it wasn’t until we got down to naming our top eight players—8. Rod Laver; 7. Jimmy Connors; 6. Margaret Court; 5. Bjorn Borg; 4. Chris Evert; 3. Steffi Graf; 2. Martina Navratilova; 1. Pete Sampras—that we began to feel some heat.
It’s hard to imagine that any stat guru could reconcile all the changes that have occurred in tennis over the last four decades, from court surfaces to depth of competition to prize money to racquet technology. Our criteria were, loosely, major titles, year-end No. 1 finishes and weeks spent at the top, total titles, matches won, and, if needed, longevity and doubles skills. Intangibles like “impact on the game” weren’t considered. The trickiest part was deciding who was the more accomplished player within the context of their respective tours—choosing the “greater” player, Roy Emerson or Martina Hingis, was a somewhat bizarre exercise. (The right answer, of course, was Emerson at No. 21, Hingis right behind him at No. 22. But you could have told us that, right?)
I won’t defend every decision here, but I will address a couple of the problems readers had. First: What’s Rod Laver doing at No. 8? Laver may be the greatest tennis player of all time, and he’s the only one with two Grand Slams. But, as we noted in the first line of his accompanying essay, when you eliminate all results before 1965, you eliminate his Slam from 1962. In the TENNIS era, Laver won five majors, three fewer than both Ivan Lendl, who finished No. 10, and Jimmy Connors, who finished No. 7. After completing his 1969 Slam, Laver never reached the semifinals of another major—not surprising since he was already 31. (Margaret Court, our No. 6, suffered a similar fate. Eight of her record 24 majors came before 1965.)
The other controversy, naturally, involved who was selected No. 1. Why was Sampras ahead of Navratilova, Graf, and Evert, all of whom had more Slams and titles? This was primarily a depth of competition issue—the tricky “context” factor I mentioned above. There were three women (four, if you count Court) with similar all-world credentials, and one man, Sampras, who, by our criteria, stood above his peers. He won the most Slams, spent the most weeks at No. 1, and finished a record six straight years at No. 1— no other man challenged him in all three categories. It’s a career achievement that we considered the most outstanding of the last four decades. While he never won the French Open, no male player in the Open era, other than Laver and Andre Agassi, owns all four majors. As I said, our hands were tied with Laver, and Andre at his most honest would have to say that Pete belonged above him on this list. Of course, now Agassi might put Sampras behind Roger Federer, but that’s an issue for our 50th anniversary.
On to Lyon . . .
Is this where Andy Roddick’s mojo has been hiding all along, in a midsize French city? Time will tell, but Roddick did get his game back last week, winning the title without dropping a set. In the final, he schooled his French understudy, Gael Monfils, the first guy to successfully mimic Roddick’s serve. While the world has been down on Roddick—the headline of TENNIS Magazine’s recent profile was a simple question: WHAT CAN YOU DO?—he has won five titles this year and remains among the game’s elite. One thing I like about Roddick is the fact that, like any red-blooded American, he does care about being No. 1 and seems genuinely disheartened that he can’t get back there. He hasn’t won a Slam or even a Masters Series title this year; a win in the Paris Masters this week (he’s the top seed) could be a minor breakthrough. During the U.S. Open, “Mojo” famously quoted Andy as saying, “Redemption doesn’t hit the snooze button.” After Lyon, Andy may want to amend that: Redemption has to start somewhere.
Linz
Each month in TENNIS, Brad Gilbert analyzes a pro’s skills and tells rec players what they can learn. Thinking Brad to be a bit of a male chauvinist when it comes to tennis, we were surprised last month when he sung the praises of a relatively obscure WTA player, Patty Schnyder. But watching Schnyder in Linz, where she lost in the final, it was easy to see why Brad likes her.
First, Schnyder, a 27-year-old lefty from Switzerland, has a smooth, well-rounded game. She creates effortless racquet-head speed on her serve and forehand, moves the ball from corner to corner with ease, and mixes in a deft drop shot. All of this has helped her win two titles and reach two other finals in 2005. The player she reminds me of most is U.S. junior Donald Young, another loose lefty with a two-handed backhand.
Asked to describe his playing style, Young has been known to call himself a “pusher.” And that’s exactly Schnyder’s problem—she doesn’t seem to have an aggressive bone in her body, at least during points. Yesterday, she rarely stepped inside the baseline, allowing her opponent, Nadia Petrova, to dictate her way to a three-set win. It’s Petrova’s first title after four final-round losses. I began to come around to Petrova’s game—nice service motion, smooth backhand—when I saw her matched up against Maria Sharapova at this year’s U.S. Open. In contrast to the mechanical Sharapova, it was clear that Petrova is a more natural talent, in addition to being a terrific athlete.
Basel
Two notable events here. Marcos Baghdatis, a flashy young player from Cyprus who was a world champion junior, reached the final. After a disappointing couple of years, this could be a significant confidence-booster (he beat David Nalbandian along the way). He’s got an all-court game, and he’s a showman—when he bounces the ball before serving, he often goes between his legs.
Earlier in the tournament, young Andrew Murray registered a win over his fellow Brit and role model, Tim Henman. It was a big enough event in Britain for the BBC to rearrange its TV schedule and show the match live.
Essen
OK, the Cash and Muster affair. On Thursday, Cash drubbed the Austrian 6-0, 6-1. At one point, Muster took a short ball and drilled Cash in the chest. Naturally, the Aussie man’s-man challenged Muster to take it into the locker room. Muster said it had been an accident and refused to shake Cash’s hand at the end of the match. Older boys will be older boys, I guess. For the record, Goran Ivanisevic, who needs the money, beat John McEnroe in the final 6-3, 6-4.
Between “Laguna Beach” and the occasional baseball game—hasn’t October been relaxing without the Yankees-Sox’ billion-dollar psychodrama?—I caught a fair amount of the men’s Masters Series event from Madrid last week. The five-set final, between the immovable object, Ivan Ljubicic, and the irresistible force, Rafael Nadal, was long enough for me to watch the first set, go play a full squash match, and come back to catch the last two hours.
Here, player-by-player, is what sticks in my head from Madrid.
Rafael Nadal
I had thought that his win over Guillermo Coria in a fifth-set tiebreaker in Rome in May was the best performance of 2005, but he may have topped it in Madrid. Not only did Nadal pull off a miraculous comeback against the tour’s hottest player in the final, he single-handedly made the event, a top-tier tournament that was missing Roger Federer, Andre Agassi, Lleyton Hewitt, and defending champion Marat Safin, a rousing success. There was a soccer-match atmosphere whenever he played, and a woman who I believe was the Queen of Spain showed up for the final (whoever she was, she was nearly in tears by the finish).
As always, Nadal was filled with freakish, sweaty energy from beginning to end on Sunday. He hit a jumping forehand—in the warm-up. Three hours and 40 minutes later, he prepared for the fifth-set tiebreaker by doing a few boxer-style shuffle-steps across the back of the court. It looked like he might even throw a few shadow punches for good measure.
Youthful exuberance aside, the kid is a born master of court psychology. He begins by making his opponent and the chair umpire wait until he’s ready to come out for the pre-match coin toss. (I’m not sure what would happen if his opponent refused to go out first; would the match ever begin?) As the umpire tosses the coin, Nadal stands a few inches from the net, bouncing around and staring just above his opponent’s head. During play, he continues at his own pace, whether he’s serving or receiving, and invariably slows things down when he loses a few points. In the Montreal final this summer, Agassi, who’s used to setting a fast pace against intimidated opponents, complained that Nadal was taking too long in his return games. It didn’t seem to affect the teenager’s pace.
Coming into the final, I picked Ljubicic to pull off an upset. He had won 16 straight matches, two straight tournaments, and he has a game that matches up well against Nadal’s. Ljubicic’s backhand is his better stroke—it’s one of the best one-handers in the world—and that’s where Nadal’s lefty forehand naturally goes. Plus, the Croat can punish Nadal’s often-short ground strokes. That’s what happened for two sets. Ljubicic was just too good. Tired from a long month of tennis, he was playing quick-strike tennis, going for return-of-serve winners and taking huge chances with his second serve.
It was all working until Nadal dug in at the beginning of the third set. He broke for the first time after a long game at 1-2 and got his teeth into the match. His mental resilience was amazing, but we already knew that. What was interesting was seeing him change his game and slowly take control of the points from the baseline, which he had been losing badly. In the third set, the average speed of Nadal’s forehand was faster than it had been in the first two sets (not an easy thing to do), and he began pounding it deep into Ljubicic’s inconsistent forehand. It was a new match, and Nadal never let go of it. He won despite hitting a full 50 fewer winners than his opponent. When it was over, British TV commentator John Barrett searched for an appropriate way to describe how Nadal had brought himself back from the dead. He eventually came up with this: “Sheer cussedness.”
This was the fourth Masters Series title this year for Nadal. That ties the single-season record set just this summer by Roger Federer in Cincinnati. It also ties him with Federer for most total titles in 2005, with 11. Nadal has 79 wins on the season, two more than Federer, and he and Federer have split all eight Masters events, an unprecedented stat. This year the men’s tour has produced not one, but two of the best seasons in tennis history.
One more thing about Nadal: I think we can now say that he has invented a shot. I’ll call it the desperation open-stance short-hop backhand pass. Not only does Nadal hit it often, he cracks it for winners. What makes it particularly devastating is that he hits it just at the moment when his opponent thinks he has the point won.
Ivan Ljubicic
I know he’s a war refugee from Bosnia and a gutsy competitor, but I’ve never warmed to Ljubicic. He’s always seemed a little dour and self-righteous, a man in search of a gripe. He’s complained about Andy Roddick’s on-court attitude more than once; this year at the U.S. Open he had a problem with Richard Gasquet; and in the semifinals Saturday he complained about the way one of the supermodel ball girls in Madrid was throwing him the ball (he apologized afterward). Even yesterday, Ljubicic didn’t meet Nadal at the net after the match but forced the champion to find him and shake his hand next to his sideline chair.
But there’s no denying that Ljubicic is a big-match player. He’s 9-0 this year in the pressure-cooker of Davis Cup and has reached eight finals—outside of the Slams, he may be having the third-best year of any man in 2005. He plays a harsh brand of tennis, based around a nasty serve and backhand, and he always seems in control of the situation.
Ljubicic was all class at the end of this one. He praised the crowd, who had been cheering his unforced errors, and then got in a good-natured champagne-spraying battle with Nadal, the guy who just stolen what would have been his biggest tour win. It’s hard not to warm to that.
Robby Ginepri
I didn’t just pick Nadal to lose the final to Ljubicic, I thought he was going to lose to Ginepri in the semifinals. The American had looked strong in thrashing the scrappy David Ferrer one round earlier, and he’s developed a style—baseline grinding backed up with a monster serve—that’s exceedingly difficult to break down.
As the Ginepri-Nadal semi began, Barrett told TV viewers, in his very British way, “Unquestionably there’s a tingle in the air.” The match turned out to be a tight two-setter, with a number of momentum changes, but you could see Ginepri felt the extra pressure of having to be perfect against a guy as steady and opportunistic as Nadal.
This match aside, Ginepri has found a nice balance between rock-like consistency and the ability to hit an unexpected winner on a big point. He’s carved out a comfort zone about four feet behind the baseline where he can do pretty much anything he wants—smoke a crosscourt forehand, roll a short-angle backhand, play for court position with a moonball, and use his ridiculous speed to track everything down. Now if only he would show a little fire. Ginepri’s laid-back calmness helps him in big situations. It also makes me miss his countryman Andy Roddick’s amped-up charisma.
David Nalbandian
The Argentine, who lost to Ljubicic in the semis, is a curious case. He’s hard working and gritty, yet he rarely wins tournaments. He’s taken home only three in his career despite having reached the Wimbledon final and the semifinals at Roland Garros and the U.S. Open. And in two Masters finals last year, he was blown off the court.
In mental approach and playing style, Nalbandian is sort of the anti-Nadal. He seems satisfied with going deep into an event, but he can’t or won’t lift his game at the biggest moments. And Nalbandian’s absolute smoothness—is there another player who looks so totally under control during all of his strokes?—makes Nadal looks an overeager hack who’s terminally out of position. Perhaps that’s what makes Nadal so good. He’s had to find ways to overcome his unorthodox strokes; Nalbandian, king of the orthodox, hasn’t.
Champion or not, Nalbandian is worth watching for his backhand alone. Typically, it’s the one-hander that wins style points—think of Federer, Gaston Gaudio, Justine Henin-Hardenne, Richard Gasquet, even Andrei Pavel. But Nalbandian’s two-hander is their match for artistry.
Which leaves me with a question: Why is it always the pros’ backhands we call out for their beauty? Why is the forehand just a “weapon”?
I’ll leave you to ponder—or, if you’re a normal person, not ponder—that one until next week.
Finally, Ion Tiriac
Tennis’ Count Dracula, looking prosperous as always, was on hand to help present the winner’s trophies yesterday. During the week, his face, impassive behind his beard and dark glasses, would appear now and then in the stands behind the court. It reminded me of the camera finding him after Boris Becker won Wimbledon for the first time. While fans stood and cheered around him, Tiriac, who was Becker’s manager, didn’t move a muscle. He looked like he already knew the trouble that was in store for his 17-year-old charge.
By now, Tiriac, who began as an Olympic ice hockey player for Romania in the 1960s, has become the Zelig of tennis, the guy who’s always there. He led Romania against the U.S. in a series of notorious Davis Cup matches in the 70s, helped bring Becker to fame in the 80s, and, as the tournament owner in Madrid, is currently presiding over the game’s next great leap forward: the hiring of supermodels as ball girls. An idea whose time has come, to be sure—just work on those skirts for next year, Ion, they were a little "long".
From the 70s-camp “Players” to the 80s-teenploitation “Spring Fever” to last year’s Dunst-cap “Wimbledon,” tennis and movies have never mixed. (Not that I’ve seen any of those flicks—just taking an educated guess. Let me know if I’m wrong.) It’s a legacy that makes the “The Squid and the Whale,” which I saw in New York last week, a pleasant surprise.
The movie, which was written and directed by Noah Baumbach (“Kicking and Screaming”) isn’t about tennis per se. It’s an upper-class New York story, another account of enchanted alienation in the city like those sketched out over the years by Salinger, Paul Simon, Jonathan Lethem’s “The Fortress of Solitude,” movies like “Tadpole” and “The Royal Tenenbaums,” the Strokes, and others. It’s an appealing little fantasy world, but it has also produced one real life tennis great, Manhattan prep-school grad John McEnroe (Frank Deford once spent a long profile trying to tie Johnny Mac to Salinger’s Holden Caulfield).
While tennis doesn’t dominate “The Squid and the Whale,” it’s a major part of the characters’ lives. So can you guess when the movie is set? You got it, the early 1980s, the sport’s perennial high-water moment, the last time it resonated in Americans’ lives. The family at the center of “Squid” plays doubles with a motley assortment of racquets, from Borg’s Donnay wood, to Connors’ T-2000 to a Wilson Kramer. Billy Baldwin steals every scene he’s in as a lunk-headed Brooklyn teaching pro who sports long, greasy hair and Fila pinstripes.
Tennis is the metaphor here. Baldwin wants the family’s youngest son to hit a manly two-handed backhand, like Connors; on the sidelines, the boy’s father, a pretentious writer played by Jeff Daniels, speaks up for the artistry of the one-hander. The argument quickly heats up as Daniels challenges Baldwin to a set and loses, a fight that’s played out in more serious form later.
A few weeks after Daniels and his wife separate, he comes back to say hello. This is what he says to mask the fact that his existence is basically useless: “I’m playing the best tennis of my life.” It sounds ridiculous, but as someone who started playing the game in the much-eulogized golden era of the early 80s, I can remember people actually saying things like that about tennis. Now, as we all know, it’s golf that gives “meaning” to middle-aged men’s lives.
In today’s tennis world, it was another week of busy obscurity. There were tournaments in Stockholm, Vienna, Bangkok, and men’s and women’s events in Moscow. These tournaments were not completely uninteresting.
James Blake showed that he can win outside of the New York-New Haven corridor by taking his first European title, in Stockholm; along the way he avenged his Davis Cup loss of this fall to Olivier Rochus. This is good news. I had thought that Blake, a guy with tremendous star potential in the U.S., might fade away for the rest of the year after his quarterfinal run at Flushing Meadows.
On the other side of the planet, in Bangkok, 16-year-old Nicole Vaidisova completed a remarkable triple, winning her third straight title. By doing so, the Czech 6-footer became the sixth woman in WTA history to win five titles before her 17th birthday. Of the others—Austin, Jaeger, Seles, Capriati, Hingis—only one, Jaeger, failed to reach No. 1. In the final, Vaidisova avenged her most embarrassing defeat of the year, to Nadia Petrova at the U.S. Open. After losing that match, she drilled a ball into the stands as hard as she could and was booed off the court. Did that show a self-destructive tendency, or the fire of a champion? From watching Vaidisova over the last year or so, I would say it was six of one, half-dozen of the other. She plays with passion and has surprisingly smooth strokes for such a rangy girl, but Vaidisova lacks the frightening focus of that other 6-foot teen phenom, Maria Sharapova.
Finally, this coming week brings us an event worth watching (or at least following, for those who don’t have the Tennis Channel), the ATP’s Madrid Masters. Some big names are missing—Federer, Hewitt, Agassi, Safin. But some big names are in the draw—Nadal, Roddick, Coria—and a Masters event always has meaning for the players. Most people involved in tennis, myself included, moan that the season is too long; but when it comes down to it, it’s nice to have an important tournament to watch, no matter what time of year it is.
It was a fairly slow week on the pro tours, so I’ll start with a little historical digression.
For TENNIS’ 40th anniversary, we’ve been selecting the 40 greatest players of the last four decades. Whenever anyone tries this sort of thing, they inevitably hear the phrase, “you can’t compare eras.” That point was driven home to me this week while I was reading Frank Deford’s “Big Bill Tilden,” a classic biography that had been sitting untouched on a shelf in my office for years.
The highlight of the opening pages is an anecdote about Richard Norris Williams, a wealthy Philadelphian, U.S. tennis champion, survivor of the Titanic, and hero of Tilden’s. Williams epitomized the game’s gentlemanly, upper-class origins. He played for the joy of hitting spectacular shots—he aimed for the lines with each ball—and never gave a thought to whether he won or lost. Tennis was just a game, after all. In 1926, Williams was the U.S. Davis Cup captain on a team that included Tilden. In the Cup final in Paris, Tilden was playing René Lacoste in the concluding tie when he looked to the sidelines for his coach. Williams was nowhere to be seen. It turned out that he had been asked to be a fourth in a pick-up doubles match somewhere else on the grounds. Hey, why sit and watch a Davis Cup final between two of the greatest players in history when you can hack around yourself?
Unfortunately, the night that I read about Williams, I had to play a match for TENNIS in the New York City corporate league, where we do battle each week with pathologically competitive investment bankers. My opponent was a good player but inconsistent, and I might have beaten him by grinding away from the baseline. But Deford’s description of Williams’ go-for-broke style sounded so good I found myself gunning for the lines—and losing.
OK, on to the pro game. Like I said, it was a fairly slow week, which in tennis means that four events were played. The men were in Japan and France, the women in Japan and Germany. Youth served on both tours, as rookie Gael Monfils reached the final in Metz (he lost to Ivan Ljubicic) and four teenage girls contested the semifinals in Japan: Nicole Vaidisova, Tatiana Golovin, Maria Kirilenko, and Sania Mirza (Vaidisova won the event when Golovin retired in the final).
The biggest tournament of the week, and the one I watched, was the women’s Porsche Grand Prix in Filderstadt, Germany. It’s a prestigious event—Martina Navratilova won it six times, Tracy Austin and Martina Hingis four each—and this year’s draw featured four world No. 1 players. After Justine Henin-Hardenne was ousted early and Kim Clijsters lost to Elena Dementieva for the first time in seven meetings, the semifinals shaped up like this: defending champion Lindsay Davenport vs. a mildly surprising Daniela Hantuchova, and Dementieva vs. Amelie Mauresmo.
This was indoor tennis in its most extreme form, with a slick court, booming acoustics, and bleachers right on top of the players. Typically, tennis is divided into three games: clay, grass, and hard. But the indoor version of the sport is just as unique. There’s no sun in your eyes, no wind to move the ball around, no airplanes buzzing overhead. Players who rely on a strong north-south game uncomplicated by spins, angles, or variety are typically rewarded when they go indoors. In other words, it’s tailor-made for Lindsay Davenport, a woman who learned the game in the similarly ideal conditions of Southern California.
In the semis, Davenport had everything going against Hantuchova. She won with her first-strike ability, hitting big serves and bigger returns. Not that Hanutchova played poorly—after falling apart two years ago, the Slovak has built her game back up with stronger ground strokes and the tremendous hands that make her such a good doubles player. She was rarely pushed off the baseline by Davenport. The problem was, that by trying to go toe to toe, she never changed the pace. Just an occasional slice or heavy topspin stroke might have been enough to throw Davenport off. But it was strictly bang-bang (i.e., indoor) tennis.
The other semi featured two of the game’s legendary head cases, Mauresmo and Dementieva. The second set was a disaster, as they broke each other eight straight times before Mauresmo held to win the match. The flaky Frenchwoman picked up where she left off the next day, losing the first set to Davenport in a hurry, 6-2. Her problems began with her Western forehand grip, which caused her shots to sit up in the middle of the court, not the place you want them to be against a hot-hitting Davenport.
A brief flash of brilliance from Mauresmo in the second was quickly extinguished by more of Davenport’s big serves and returns, both of which she pounded right down the middle of the court with relentless single-mindedness. Lindsay, who showed none of her usual annoyance with having to actually play tennis today, avoided the mental lapses she has become known for this year and won her 50th title in 86 finals. That puts her 9th on the all-time list, three titles behind Monica Seles.
Davenport is perhaps the quietest all-time great player since Margaret Court, a similarly shy, gawky, but overpowering woman. When she won yesterday, she indulged in the briefest of fist pumps. No twirls, no jumps, just a nice smile that we don’t see often enough. But shyness aside, Davenport may be the most influential woman player of her generation. You can see her roundhouse two-hander and flat, penetrating forehand in dozens of today’s best young players, from Anastasia Myskina to Anna-Lena Groenefeld to Ana Ivanovic to Maria Sharapova. If only Davenport had been willing to show us a little more than those great strokes once in a while.
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