Book Club: Men for All Seasons	07/31/2009 - 3:08 PM

The Book Club returns as Kamakshi Tandon and I discuss Jon Wertheim's

Hi Kamakshi,

Hate Jon Wertheim? That’s against the law, isn’t it? Of all tennis writers, maybe even of all sportswriters, I would say that he receives the least amount of criticism. That’s not because he plays it safe, necessarily; it’s because his strongest trait is his judgment—you can trust Jon to be thoughtful and fair, as well as being open-minded without espousing anything faddish. That’s hard to criticize.

Jon’s evenhanded insights are on display in Strokes of Genius, though you’re right, the book was rushed. That fact is given away even before you open it: both the title and cover design could charitably be described as "uninspired." And when I read someone as experienced as Wertheim writing a line as pat as, “The stands for other big-time sporting events are peopled by corporate stiffs and the brie-eating, see-and-be-seen luxury box set,” I have to believe that if he’d had a little more time, the writing would have been more ambitious.

Of course, there was no choice. It was either write about this match immediately, or wait 20 years to do the full historical treatment. It couldn't be started today, now that another classic Wimbledon final is fresher in our minds. The upside of the time pressure is that Wertheim delivered a compact, fast read that’s still heavy on information. As you said, Kamakshi, professional tennis observers are unlikely to find anything stunning in here, but I was still impressed by how many of the details, both of these guys’ lives and the events surrounding the match, were new to me.

The last book we did, about Budge vs. Cramm in 1937, was also called the greatest match of all time in its subtitle. With the background of World War II and the inclusion of a character as rich as Germany's Cramm, the author had much more to work with there. But Wertheim makes the most of his short-range view of Federer and Nadal. Rather than a Levels of the Game look at how two players' personalities are manifested during a tennis match, Strokes functions more like a co-biography. The backgrounds of Federer and Nadal are quietly and smoothly woven through the story, and even though I already knew most of the big events of their lives, I had a lot of the particulars about their families, their childhoods, and their early tennis experiences filled in.

Federer is painted in a very sympathetic light; he ends up coming off as some kind of man for all seasons, both of and above the masses. Where some others would descry a strain of (useful) conceit in Federer’s various post-match quotes and on-court fashion statements, Wertheim takes the line that he simply isn’t going to do false modesty—fair enough. I don't disagree with the essential idea that Federer is an authentic mix of the human and the beyond-human, though I cocked an eyebrow at the dubious notion, backed up by instructional guru John Yandell, that his brilliant but fairly traditional forehand can be copied by rec players, that it's "a stroke of genius and a stroke for the masses." Which masses, exactly?

More important, though, is that Wertheim comes up with two sharp insights about Federer to help explain his seemingly inexplicable success. The first is that he realized his sky-high potential in part because his parents put so little pressure on him to do so.

Instead of supplementing God-given sports talent with burning ambition and intense training, perhaps it needs to be “depressurized.” Instead of saddling their son with expectation, the Federers stressed fun. Maybe this relentless onslaught of “normal”—natural fertilizer, so to speak—is precisely what abnormal talent requires for growth.

The second intriguing Federer-related theory involves the Swiss’ use of what Wertheim terms “Soft Power.” Federer goes out of his way to be friendly to all of his potential opponents, to be one of the guys in the locker room—for a competitive person, he does his best to take the personal confrontation out of it. Rather than making him seem too nice, and therefore vulnerable, it endears the other players to him and lessens their desire to beat him. They end up facing not just another guy, but a phenomenon—they’re almost on his team. I’d never thought of this before, but it was certainly borne out at the French Open. Robin Soderling didn’t just play differently against Federer in the final than he had against Nadal in the fourth round, he competed differently. And when Soderling lost a tight match to Federer at Wimbledon a few weeks later, he walked off with a broad smile across his face, as if he were honored to go out to the Greatest.

Wertheim also brings Nadal and his quirks to life, but in a slightly less adulatory way. We get a good look at the Spaniard's old-world philosophy—taken in large from the book’s most original character, the determinedly stoical Uncle Toni— and the influence of Mallorca's island culture on him, but I think Wertheim sells Nadal a little short in one area. Wertheim describes him as a tough and testy interview, a kid who has been well-programmed in the bland, safe answer and who is easily annoyed in press conferences, especially when compared to the polished and media-friendly Federer. There’s no doubt that Nadal knows how to hang onto a mantra—“I’m young and I just want to get better”—but I’ve always been struck more by how quick and poised he is in a presser. He simply won’t let anyone put words in his mouth, and on most of the occasions when he corrects a questioner or disagrees with the premise, he’s right. For example, as Nadal climbed the rankings and challenged Federer’s supremacy, he was asked in a few press conferences about whether he considered himself the “favorite” in a certain tournament or on a certain surface. If he said yes, it was a good headline. His typical answer was that he doesn’t think in terms of “favorite,” that that’s a media concoction, and that he has to play each match without thinking long term. That may sound like a programmed answer to some people, but it’s also an honest one, and a smart one.

I’ll get to the match itself and some of the other side characters who pop up around it next time. What did you think of Jon’s portrayals of Roger and Rafa, Kamakshi? Do you see either of them any differently now that you’ve read the book?

Steve

Book Club: Blood in the Page	07/29/2009 - 6:07 PM

The Book Club returns as Kamakshi Tandon and I discuss Jon Wertheim's

It's always tricky to do one of these when you know the author, so I'm happy to report it was fun to read Strokes of Genius and relive the match now we've got some emotional distance from it.

I want to start at the end of the book -- a comment from the acknowledgments at the back: "As always, thanks to Allegra, Ben and Ellie, who provided support and love and relative quiet while I spent three crazy months engrossed in tennis."

Let me get this straight: he wrote the book in three months? In that case, it's not just good; it's great done in that length of time.

This has to mean that he pretty much sat down, watched three different broadcasts of the match, did various research and interviews, and then tapped out 60,000 words without much hair-pulling or writer's block.

I hate Jon, don't you? :)

Maybe I'm completely wrong, but it reinforces the general impression that writing comes pretty easily to him, and a need for speed doesn't affect content or the trademark turns of phrase. How about this description of the Wimbledon crowd: "For every Brahmin, there's a bloke." And later: "Federer's face looked as if it was caving in on itself."

Have I mentioned that I hate Jon?

The only downside is that sometimes you can't taste the blood in the pages: the sense that the writer has tortured himself and wrung out deep, personal ideas that were rattling his bones; this being the sadism we readers feel entitled to have indulged for our $24.95 (or free advance reading copy, in this case). Here I remember Joel Drucker in Jimmy Connors Saved My Life -- "I've left my DNA in here."

Strokes of Genius is engaging while you're reading it, but the impact after you put it down might be stronger if there was a more obvious overarching concept driving the narrative. A couple of big ideas are mentioned at various stages, like the nature of a classic rivalry, but there isn't that's explicitly developed over the course of the book. And while I like the title, it doesn't really relate to the story being told.  

Nevertheless, there is a proxy theme. In Levels of the Game, the book on which Strokes of Genius was patterned (as was our previous book club title A Terrible Splendor), the overarching concept is that a player's whole self and personal history is woven into the fabric of a tennis match.

Here, over the course of the "Greatest Match Ever Played," we again see how rich the tapestry can be. There are the childhood histories of Federer and Nadal, and their latest business dealings. The story of how Federer's parents met. The philosophy of Uncle Toni (new when the book was written). And also, a surprising number of vantage points of the match -- not just the players and the player box, but the BBC radio booth, Betfair, vamosbrigade.com and so on.

The original idea was to do a book on Federer, but after the 2008 Wimbledon final, the plan became to examine the Federer-Nadal rivalry though the lens of that epic encounter. I'd estimate the match itself gets about 20% of the text, which is probably about right for a mainstream audience -- you get a good sense of the contest but it's the backdrop to the stories of the two players.

One of the best qualities of Jon's work is that there's no ego whatsoever. You never get the sense that it's all about him, but about the reader and the subject. It's a rarer thing in this situation than one might expect.

Jon's previous tennis book, Venus Envy, seemed to play better to reporters/industry types and casual fans than it did to the group in the middle, hardcore fans. Do you think that'll be the case with Strokes of Genius?

The reason for the different reactions is that each party has different expectations. I read a ton about tennis day to day, for example, and on a topic like this, I don't expect to encounter much that I don't know or have my existing views substantially altered. If 10% of it is new to me and if it has the correct elements in a conceptually pleasing way, I'll be impressed. For casual fans, most of what they read will be new to them, so the work is judged on its absolute rather than relative content.

Hardcore fans, standing on the edge but trying to burrow ever deeper, want whole new levels of insight and information in addition to everything they've prviously absorbed (which already is a lot). It's a tough ask in this day and age.

Firstly, it's only been a year after the match, and neither player has yet had the time or inclination to recount it in great detail. Secondly, given modern media, about 80% of it has already been excavated in Strokes and elsewhere. The other 20% is harder to get, and it's also the sphere of the highly subjective, esoteric and sometimes sensitive: feelings, beliefs, ideas. We'd be talking three years rather than three months, and a lot more blood.

Still, it follows that the most enjoyable part of reading the book was finding little nuggets that I hadn't previously known. I'll finish with a sampling:

The Fundamental Fact	07/27/2009 - 2:30 PM

The rich get richer, as we know. And the poor? I guess they just keep muddling through and pretending everything is OK. You’ll find no clearer demonstration of this truth than in the mid-year descent we’ve just made from the grass-capped peaks of Wimbledon to the dry ATP valleys of Indianapolis and Hamburg. If anything, it's an even harsher truth in tennis: As the Grand Slams get grander with each passing season, the small events that are clustered around them just look smaller by comparison.

Hamburg and Indy are two prime examples of the decline of the week-to-week tour over the last 20 years. These tournaments once had strong and recognizable identities. For years they were known as the German Open and the U.S. Clay Court Championships, respectively, names that made them seem like more than just tune-ups for the Slams. Now Indy is a hard-court event and is known, rather parochially, as the Indianapolis Tennis Championships presented by Lilly. Hamburg has suffered an even more ignominious fate. First it lost its simple, understandable, and impressive name—winning the national championship of any country sounds like a pretty big deal—and was bureaucratically rechristened the Masters Series-Hamburg, back in the short-lived and misguided days when the ATP thought it could sell the entire Masters Series, rather than individual events, to its sponsors. Last year the tournament lost more than a name when it was stripped of its Masters status, booted out of the spring European swing, and consigned to the kind of netherworld of irrelevance that only a clay-court event that takes place after Wimbledon can occupy.

The current recession hasn’t yet blown a hole in the budgets, or the retractable roofs, of the tour’s bigger events, but it has hurt the little guys. Second and third tier tournaments are struggling to retain financial backers—16 ATP events are without title sponsors at the moment—and dole out sufficient appearance-fee money to put name players on their marquees. Hamburg and Indy suffered at both ends of this spectrum last week. When Indy’s marquee catch, Andy Roddick, pulled out, the tournament couldn’t get James Blake to replace him because it wouldn’t match his asking price for a guarantee. (Next week’s ATP event, the Legg Mason in D.C., another longstanding part of the U.S. summer swing, is foregoing appearance fees altogether.) This left Indy with a final featuring Sam Querrey and Robby Ginepri. That's not a complete disaster for an American tournament, but it's a long way down the ladder from the days when Jimmy Connors and John McEnroe began their U.S. Open preparations in the heart of Indiana. Afterward, tournament director Kevin Martin said he won't be able to hold the event next year unless he can find a title sponsor for it. As for Hamburg, the tournament had to resort to accepting sponsorship from a sports gambling website, bet-at-home.com. The event was prepared to call itself the bet-at-home Open until city officials blocked the move. The name that was eventually settled on, the International German Open, is certainly more dignified. Unfortunately, it's also a total non sequitur.

The results of these two events were mirror images as well. In Hamburg, Nikolay Davydenko beat Paul-Henri Matheiu 6-4, 6-2, while in Indy Ginepri upset Querrey 6-2, 6-4. The wins ended title droughts for both players; one year for Davydenko, four years to the day for Ginepri. Hamburg’s final featured two Europeans who were comfortable sliding on clay, while Indy was a battle between heavier-footed, hard-court-loving Americans. With those basic similarities in mind, what else did these matches show us?

—All four players spent the vast majority of their time at the baseline.

—Points were similar in both places, but in Hamburg they involved a little more movement across the baseline and into the doubles alleys, and a little more topspin for safety. In Indy the rallies were contained within the singles sidelines; by today’s standards, this court looked quick.

—The only player who backed off the baseline appreciably was Mathieu. Other than the fact that he’s an inveterate choker, his biggest problem seems to be that his elaborate strokes make it difficult for him to transition forward smoothly. (This is also true for fellow Frenchmen Gael Monfils and Richard Gasquet.) Davydenko, while he looked like a featherweight compared to his opponent, was the guy dictating from on top of the baseline. He was at his most efficiently machine-like yesterday, taking the ball early and punching low lasers up the lines and past Mathieu.

—The losers had two things in common:

(1) A complete inability, or more likely a complete unwillingness, to attack even the weakest second serves from their opponents (and Davydenko and Ginepri have particularly weak second serves). Querrey, who was way off all day—he showed more anger and negativity than I’ve ever seen from him—just stood straight up and hit his returns out. Mathieu actually backed up to receive Davydenko’s weakly kicked second delivery. 

(2) Serving difficulties. Tied 1-1 and up 40-30 in the second set, Mathieu double-faulted and was eventually broken; at 2-4, down a break point, he doubled again. Querrey double-faulted at 4-4 in the second set to be broken.

The serve and the return: No matter what the surface or the style of play, those two shots still constitute a good 70 percent of tennis all by themselves.

—For his part, Davydenko served with aggressive confidence—he used it to get out of trouble, which is not very often the case with him. Up 2-1 in the second but down 15-40, he hit a rare ace and went on to hold for 3-1, keeping his momentum alive. Meanwhile, Ginepri showed more touch and strategic variety than I thought possible. He hit a delicate slice lob over his 6-foot-6 opponent for a winner, and on one crucial late point he completely bamboozled Querrey by floating a one-handed slice backhand deep and down the middle to move him back, and then cracked a sudden, surprise two-handed drive for a winner up the line. Each of the champions finished in style, nailing down their final service games at love with multiple winners.

What does all this mean? Was it worth staging, or watching, these tournaments in the first place? From my perspective seeing both finals on TV, I was happy to witness the following phenomena: Davydenko using the purest form imaginable, form developed through uncountable hours of practice, to belt forehand winners with deceptive pace up the line; Mathieu’s adamant seriousness and nobly concentrated effort in the face of a superior opponent and his own tendency to blow leads (he broke early in the first set and then gave it back immediately); Ginepri’s escalating and slightly incredulous confidence as the match wore on and he maintained his lead—by the end, his game had grown back into the shape it had three years ago, when he patiently wore opponents out with his muscular, lunchbucket strokes.

Finally, and most memorably, there were the moments of victory. These, as Pete Bodo also noted on his blog today, should be savored, even if the results themselves will be quickly forgotten. Davydenko and Ginepri, both a little rusty in the celebrating department, each hesitated for a split-second after the final point. The Russian then threw both arms up and did a little hop, his eyes wide with an excitement I’d never seen from him. Ginepri had to stand and wait for a line call to be corroborated by the chair umpire on match point. It was an awkward couple of seconds, and I thought it would ruin his moment. But when he finally got the good news, he went to one knee and put one hand behind his head. The gesture was indeed a little awkward, but the look on the normally undemonstrative Ginepri’s face was one of deep joy and relief, like that of a man who, however briefly, had just had the weight of the world lifted off of his shoulders. In each case, these long-awaited victories provided a few seconds of vicarious thrill, and even vicarious redemption, for anyone who had a chance to see them. For a sport to mean anything to you, you have to know it means even more to the people playing it. Davydenko and Ginepri couldn't help but show us that it does.

Whatever the level of a tournament, there will always be someone who thinks that winning it is the greatest thing in the world. Title sponsor or not, recession or not, marquee names or not, you can never take that fundamental fact of tennis away. It's why they play; it's why we watch.

Playing Ball: Down the Shore	07/21/2009 - 1:39 PM

With nothing earth-shattering, or even earth-nudging, going on in the professional game at the moment—the hard-court season takes a few weeks just to get into first gear—it seems an appropriate time to catch up on two other traditional summer pastimes: an afternoon of baseball and a couple of days at the beach. On Wednesday I’m going to see the (world champion) Philadelphia Phillies play the Cubs, and after that I’m heading for the Jersey Shore—"going down the shore," as they say—for a mini-family vacation.

Our beach town of choice has always been Ocean City, an alcohol-free, family-oriented little hamlet that explodes over the summer months, when something like 200,000 people jam themselves within 100 yards of the Atlantic. My grandparents, who lived in the Philadelphia suburbs, owned a house there. Our family visited for a week each August when I was a kid. From what I’ve heard, this is where I was first bitten by the tennis bug. My grandmother liked to tell the story of a week I spent there with her and my grandfather, a devotee of the sport, when I was 5. He took out me out to the town’s public courts the first day, and I guess they couldn’t get the racquet away from me the rest of the week. I would walk out of my bedroom with it in the morning.

What I do remember of vacations in Ocean City is a sense of time slowing down and becoming hazily elastic. I was young enough then to savor the art of doing nothing for hours. I’ve never recaptured that feeling as an adult, even when I’m on vacation. I may spend an entire day sitting on the beach, but to enjoy it I have to rationalize that time as somehow productive—there will be only so many more opportunities to spend an uninterrupted afternoon with a Trollope novel, so I better make the most of them. 

I’ve heard that our experience of time speeds up as we get older; or maybe the past elongates in our minds when we remember it, because we experience those moments so much more intensely as kids. Either way, the lion’s share of my day in Ocean City could be profitably spent on the couch in my grandmother’s small, hot TV room playing Sorry!; watching an entire Phillies game, sans DVR or even remote control; winning a checkers marathon; losing in APBA baseball, a primitive and highly addictive fantasy board game, to a family friend; reading Bridge Over the River Kwai or Tom Sawyer; or just lying there staring blankly out the window at the town’s big blue water tank through the murky humid air. (The bigger South Jersey shore towns have water towers with their names emblazoned across them. Legend had it that a friend’s heavy-partying older brother, after a summer spent in Stone Harbor, climbed the tower there and spray-painted a “D” at the end of the first word.) Doing nothing then really meant doing nothing, without a thought to the future.  

Outside of that back room, Ocean City, an island three blocks wide and hundreds of blocks long, spreads out along the shoreline in both directions. At our end, the newer end, each block was (and still is) stuffed with a dizzying number of duplexes. To drive toward the other end is to go back in time. Halfway down, the grand old single-family beach houses begin, including, most famously, the brilliantly white mini-mansion where Grace Kelly spent her summers. At the other end is the boardwalk, equally grand in its own way, a timeless mess of pizza, cotton candy, air hockey, neon-signed motels, Kohr’s soft ice cream, miniature golf, ferris wheels, and the assorted humanity of the Mid-Atlantic flaunting its newly tan skin, for better and for worse. Little has changed here in the last 30 years, but skin wasn't always in. My grandmother loved to recall the 1920s boardwalk, when people dressed up, in slacks, dresses, jackets, and hats, for the customary evening stroll.

Near the center of the island, land-locked and hot as hell, are the tennis courts. They were as chaotic as the rest of the town when I was a kid. When we could get a court, which wasn’t easy, I left the beach and saw my horizons instantly narrow. Here, rather than looking out at the wide vista of the ocean, I stared down at the small patch of asphalt in front of me as I walked slowly back to collect a ball at the fence. I moved to my own rhythm between points, my forehead dripping sweat that I enjoyed not wiping off. I blocked out all sensory stimulation other than the sound of the ball and my own huffing and puffing. When you practice seriously for a long time, your opponent tends to fade away and the rhythm of your breathing becomes your companion. You play to the deliberate and purposeful cadence of concentration, of practice, of trying to do something better. Again, when I hit balls at the shore, time slowed down. But unlike those lost hours of indolence in my grandmother’s house, I can still create the same quiet, solitary feeling on a court today. Maybe it’s because it reminds me of playing the sport as a kid, but I still love staring down in front of me and hearing only my breathing as I walk toward the back fence to pick up a ball. If nothing else, tennis teaches us to love concentrating.

I first tried serving in Ocean City and failed miserably. It was a lot of body parts to coordinate, and I can remember the panic of throwing the ball up and knowing that I wasn’t going to hit it anywhere near the service box. Later, as a teenager, I would practice with a junior rival who was vacationing in a nearby town. I also spent one of those weeks reading a tennis novel—these existed in the 70s—called World Class, a veiled fictional portrait of the first group of professionals. The quest of its protagonist, the young American Christopher Hill, to become the greatest player of all time, was inspiring.

That quest is long over for me. I probably won’t play tennis in Ocean City this year—it’s supposed to rain, which might mean another marathon of Sorry! and more Trollope than I bargained for. And I certainly won't play a tennis tournament, which is what I did one year at the shore. My dad drove me to a 14-and-under event in Willingboro, N.J., where I lost to a tiny, cocky human backboard 6-1, 6-1. I rode back to Ocean City under a cloud of gloom; the day was ruined. Now I wonder: What would have prompted a kid to voluntarily leave the shore to compete against another kid he didn’t know 100 miles away in blistering August heat? There can be only one reason: To win, and to experience the feeling you get when you win. There was nothing like it then, and there’s nothing like it now. But just like my ability to enjoy staring at a water tank, I’ve lost the desire to compete seriously at tennis, in tournaments, against people I’ve never met. I get enough competition in my work life and even social life. I still love to play matches against friends and fellow club members—that I can experience the relief and happiness that come with winning, even in these pick-up games, is proof of how powerfully satisfying that feeling is. But anything more official than that, any sense that a match I'm playing really matters, begins to make tennis feel like another quintessential feature of youth: a test. I’ve taken enough of those in my life, on court and off. It’s nice to leave some things in the past. It’s nice just to go to the beach.

Playing Ball: Excuses, Excuses	07/17/2009 - 3:37 PM

“You know what you need to do an article on?” my opponent, Don, asks me as he bounces the ball at the net before we begin our match. “Excuses. You need to give people tips on the best excuses to have ready when you lose. It’s the only thing you can get better at when you get older.”

“Most guys I know don’t need any help in that department,” I tell him.

Last week, in paying tribute to Roger Federer’s 15^th Grand Slam title, I mentioned that the psychological difficulties of tennis are exacerbated tenfold by the fact that the sport wraps skill and luck so tightly around each other. If you’re playing someone even vaguely at the same level as you, unless that person aces you nonstop and belts outright winners on returns, there’s no legitimate way to excuse a defeat without implicating yourself in it. Even when your opponent plays well, you let him play well. Each win and each loss is a comment on what’s inside you, not on the circumstances surrounding you.

Most tennis players say they like it this way, that we’re individualists and meritocrats by nature, and we don’t need any teammates to bail us out. But then bankers used to say something similar once upon a time. In reality, taking responsibility for your defeats does funny things to people. Namely, it forces them to search for extenuating circumstances—i.e, base and cowardly excuses—for their failures. This search, if conducted on a regular basis, can take a man far and wide. Let me give you a few examples.

—I’ve played tennis and squash with four or five different communities of players over the years. Each consisted of 5 to 10 guys of similar levels who rotated pick-up matches with each other two or three times a week. The one common element I’ve found within these groups is that no one ever lost to anyone else.

Rich, to me: “How do I do against Jeff? I don’t think I’ve lost to him in three years.”

Jeff, to me: “It’s weird, but I’ve never had much of a problem with Rich. My game just matches up well with his.”

These kinds of logical impossibilities are so common that they seem to be almost codes of conduct in tennis and squash—it’s simply understood that you’re not going to admit defeat, or at least not without a reason attached. Whenever I’ve tried to break this code by simply stating that I had beaten by another guy, I’ve felt unnecessarily sheepish and even ashamed about it, as if I’ve just revealed that I’ve been fired from my job. Sometimes, the person I’m talking to will help me by making an excuse for me. “Well, you’re just getting back into it, right?”

—The saddest, but perhaps most effective, excuse I’ve received: As a college kid I beat a guy maybe 10 years older than me in a tournament out west. After screaming at himself for the entire hour, he shook my hand limply and said, “I haven’t been able to play much, my wife’s mother is dying.” I just nodded. How low can someone go to rob you of the satisfaction of beating them?

—Here’s a favorite infantile maneuver of an old squash partner. Every match that I won somehow, for no apparent reason, “didn’t count.” We’d play three out of five sets, I’d destroy him in the first three, and he’d say, “OK, another one, this is the one that counts.” When I beat him nine or 12 or 15 straight times, he’d say, “That didn’t count. One more game for a beer, so this is the one that counts.”

—I used to play a tennis opponent who hit his second serve as flat as his first. Because of this, his second delivery routinely hit the tape and bounced long for a double fault. After I would beat him, he would inevitably ask me, as if he honestly wanted to know the answer, “How many second serves do you think I hit that hit the tape and went out?” I wouldn’t answer, of course, because he didn’t really want to know. He wanted to point up his “bad luck.” I refrained from telling him that this wasn't bad luck. It was the reason the rest of the world spent the time to develop a kick serve.

—Another old tennis partner didn’t know how to eat, apparently. One time he lost to me and said, “I could barely move out there, I ate too much for dinner.”

—One time I beat an opponent who was a bigger but more erratic hitter than I was. I’d been more consistent, but hadn’t tried to do much with the ball. As we shook hands, he looked at me, shook his head, and said, “Too much junk, just too much junk.”

—I beat a squash opponent in a match in which I was the beneficiary of a number of “nicks.” A nick is when the ball lands exactly where the wall meets the floor and subsequently doesn’t bounce—at lower skill levels, this is a plainly lucky shot; at higher levels it can be done purposely. I didn't do mine purposely, but they were still the result of well-hit shots. The next time we played he beat me. As he was doing it, he looked at me and said with a malevolent grin, “Not so easy when you’re not getting all those nicks, is it?” (He had apparently forgotten the 10 other nick-less times I’d beaten him.) At that moment, if it had been legal to kill a man . . .

—Last year I beat a high-quality tennis opponent in three sets. I had decided to go for my shots from the start and I ended up hitting a number of abnormal winners. When I broke him in the third set with a passing shot that clipped the sideline, he sat next to me on the changeover and said, with phony calmness, “You’re hitting a lot of lines today.” This was not the compliment it may seem to have been on the surface. What he was really saying was, “You’re so f---ing lucky.”

—As a kid, I used to play a very fit Irish weightlifter who had no serve. How did he get around this rather crucial flaw? Naturally, by claiming that baseline games were the true test of a tennis player, and that the serve wasn’t what the sport was all about (he never specified why). He would only play me in baseline games, which he often won. Then he would sit on the sideline next to me and brag about how I would never beat him and that I was “nothin’.” After that, he would get into his Trans Am, put on his sunglasses, and drive home singing along to the same song every time: “People Out There Turning Music into Gold,” by Gary Stewart.

This, obviously, was a very funny guy who regularly smashed his racquets into little bits and cursed in the most creative ways imaginable, so it was all forgivable. If we hadn’t played in a couple of weeks and I saw him around town, he would say, “You’re duckin’ me, lad.” Sometimes I would try to avoid playing him just so I could hear him say those words.

You may be starting to wonder, after all these tales of my victories, if I’ve ever lost a tennis match. I have, of course, hundreds of them, maybe even thousands of them. But as I’ve gotten older I’ve discovered a simple secret to avoiding them: Schedule most of your matches against guys you can beat. Like everyone else, I don’t like to lose. The feeling I have when I do lose is the way I imagine I would feel if I were swindled in a pyramid scheme. I feel like a child, an innocent, a dupe, as if my opponent knows something about how tennis, and thus the world, works that I don’t. I'm willing to bet that I've blocked out plenty of the excuses I made for my losses as a kid, but these days I try my best not to make them, simply because I hate hearing them so much myself.

What’s the best excuse you’ve ever heard? I’ll give you mine.

At a junior tournament in Philadelphia, I watched a friend go up against an older, better, and much crazier player. My friend pushed his way to a lead in the first set. Upon losing his serve, his opponent felt his leg and said, with seemingly genuine concern, “I think it’s broken.” He hobbled to the sidelines. After a few minutes he was back up and running around. He won the first set.

My friend again grabbed a lead in the second. This time his opponent began to rub and pick at his eyes, as if something were in them. He eventually covered his eyes completely for a good five seconds. When he uncovered them, he stared straight ahead, blinked a couple of times, and yelled, “I’m blind!”

Needless to say, he won the second set.

The Hot and Sleepy Season	07/15/2009 - 6:51 PM

Over the next six weeks, millions of Americans will flee the paved oppressions of their working lives for a chance to walk barefoot down sandy beaches or through backyard grass. The professional tennis players of the world, meanwhile, will be heading in the opposite direction, straight into those twin torments of summer's dog days: asphalt and humidity.

The men start fully land-locked, in Indianapolis on Monday, while the women wait a week before gathering out west, in Stanford. This stretch of the tennis season—is it the third, fourth, fifth, or 10th leg of the tour?—is typically both overheated and a little sleepy. The top women routinely skip large chunks of it, while the best European men, having already made one swing through the States back in the spring, don’t rouse themselves until the Masters events in August. Still, no matter who’s missing, the sport never lacks for storylines and characters ready to fill the gaps. Lets take a look at five that may develop as we make our way toward the U.S. Open.

Rafa II

A perfectly disastrous storm of events sabotaged what was looking to be a career season for the 23-year-old Rafael Nadal. After winning a Slam and three Masters tournaments, he was hit with his first loss in 30-odd matches at the French Open; the return of knee problems that forced him to miss his beloved Wimbledon; the surrender of his No. 1 ranking; and, for good measure, his parents’ separation. The question now is: How can Nadal put all that behind him and find his best form by the time he reaches Flushing Meadows?

The downside is that Nadal has generally played his best tennis with a few wins under his belt. In 2006, ’07, and ’08, he started slowly out of the gate at the Australian Open but rode a wave of clay momentum all the way to the final at Wimbledon.

The upside is that Nadal changed that dynamic in Melbourne this year, winning Down Under when few people picked him. And despite his knee pain, the rest of his body, as well as his mind, will be much fresher in August than they have been the last three years.

In short, there are too many questions marks surrounding Nadal to make any serious predictions about his summer. One positive: He’ll make his debut in Canada, a tournament he has won twice.

Serena vs. Safina

Is it possible for Serena Williams to win three majors and not finish No. 1? I believe it is; she’s already won two of them, yet she languishes behind the Slam-less Safina in the rankings.

The American has made it clear that she’s not going to kill herself to rectify that situation—she wants majors, nothing else and nothing less. And despite their repeated cries of “road trip!” in USTA commericals over the years, Serena and her sister have never been strong supporters of the organization’s U.S. Open Series. Last year, Serena only played Stanford, where she defaulted in the semifinals. Safina, meanwhile, took advantage of her absence to propel herself toward the top with titles in Los Angeles and Montreal. She has the points to defend during the Series, while Serena has them at the Open itself, which she won in 2008. If I had to choose, I’d say Serena is more likely to do the defending in New York than Safina is to win both L.A. and Toronto again. The loser in this continues to be the rankings system, and the value of the once-coveted No. 1 spot, which has now reached a low point. How long will anyone continue to prize it, or even mention it, if things stay as they are now?

A Del Potro Juggernaut?

A year ago few thought of Juan Martin del Potro as a threat to anyone but himself. Then his career took off. He won four straight titles, including two on U.S. hard courts, in D.C. and L.A. He’s continued to fly along that elevated trajectory ever since, all the way to No. 5 in the world and the semifinals of the French Open. With Nadal just putting his toe back in the competitive waters and Roger Federer becoming a father, it would make a lot of sense if del Potro broke through with his first Masters title this summer. He isn’t listed as playing in L.A. but he is defending his title in D.C., which should be enough to get him primed to face the big guns of August.

What’s Next for Andy?

Whether the hip flexor and the broken heart are healed or not, Andy Roddick is scheduled to play in Indy next week. There we’ll begin to get an idea of whether his level of play during the last three rounds at Wimbledon was a one-week effort, or whether he really has made himself a better all-around player at the not-so-ripe age of 26. I’m thinking the latter is closer to the truth. This doesn’t mean Roddick will have filled the famous holes in his game, or that he’s going to become No. 1 in the world, but I do think that his performance in London will have him believing that he belongs in the very top tier of the sport. He should make the most of that feeling, and that boost in confidence, over the summer.

Who’s Hungry on the Women’s Side?

Last year it was Safina who used the mid-year lull to ambush the rest of the field. Is there anyone who stands a chance of repeating that performance? Two young women, ranked No. 8 and 9, respectively, come to mind: Victoria Azarenka and Caroline Wozniacki. With the Serbs in decline, there’s room at the top for these two steady risers. Wozniacki has the calmer head and the craftier game, which means she should be a regular in the latter rounds of events. But she’s also played a lot of tennis this year and hasn’t yet proven that she can handle the pace of the best players, or avoid the occasional head-scratching loss. Azarenka is the more explosive and overtly determined of the two, but her ever-present anger takes up a lot of her energy and makes an extended run through two or three events seem unlikely. Still, if anyone is ready to use this sleepy WTA span to hurdle upward, it’s the lean and hungry Vika.

Everyone has a story in tennis; those are just five that come to mind. What else should we be watching for during the hard-court season?

CE 10: Plus One Edition	07/13/2009 - 4:19 PM

If there’s a universal truth in tennis today, it is this: The Davis Cup cannot win. In 2009, the big idea was to move the quarterfinal and semifinal ties to the weekends right after Wimbledon and the U.S. Open, so the players could go straight from one to the other. What was the upshot? The team event lost one of its star stalwarts, Andy Roddick, after he surrendered a heartbreaking Wimbledon final and couldn’t face the indoor clay that the Croatian team had waiting for him on Friday.

Still, the event, like a BBC production that casts expert character actors rather than Hollywood stars, continues to produce first-class drama with relatively anonymous talent—do you know the name of the newest DC hero pictured at right? Davis Cup proves that, for 12 days a year, the sport remains bigger than its stars. (Is that what they call damning with faint praise?) Here’s a roundup of what happened in DC and elsewhere this past weekend.

1. Croats Crush

Count me as another casualty of the new DC schedule. Like Roddick, I wasn’t properly prepared to get into the U.S.-Croatia tie; I like to have a week off after Wimbledon to let it sink in. Otherwise, it feels like just one more event on the endlessly churning circuit. I watched what I could on my computer at work on Friday and at my tennis club on Sunday. What I saw more than anything was Marin Cilic pulling at his sweaty,one-size-too big shirt and then hauling off and hitting winners I'd never seen from him before. Davis Cup does funny things to people. Suddenly Marat Safin can focus, and Marin Cilic can show us the passion that lurks somewhere beneath his dour surface. Even at 6-foot-6, he looked much more balanced and comfortable on clay than either James Blake or Mardy Fish. The key to beating the Americans is as clear and simple as ever: dirt. 

2. Israeli Upset

Put their semifinal run together with their bizarre and lonely victory in Sweden in the opening round—see their surreal celebration in Malmo here—and Israel’s DC team may qualify as the biggest story of the 2009 season. This time Dudi Sela, Harel Levy and company swept the Russians in front of 11,000 fans in Tel Aviv. Along the way, they extended Marat Safin’s yearlong farewell tour of pain. Safin and partner Igor Kunitsyn came back from two sets down in the doubles only to lose the match, and the tie, 6-4 in the fifth. Israel’s reward is a trip to Spain for the semis. Doubles player Andy Ram says he finds that prospect “frightening.” Give him points for being honest, but at least his team should be very, very loose.

3. Spain Survives

To get to the semis, a Nadal-less Spanish team had to go the distance to beat Germany for their 16^th straight victory at home. This time the hero was JC Ferrero, who picked up the slack after a loss by Fernando Verdasco by winning a straight-set clincher over Andreas Beck—Spain is deep, no doubt about it; they never seem to have the same MVP twice. Ferrero’s turn is especially noteworthy. He led the country to a Cup title early in this decade but had long been relegated to the sidelines. “This competition is amazing and to play for your country also is very special,” Ferrero said afterward. “There’s no words to explain how I feel right now but I’m pretty happy about it.” Pretty happy? After all these years, the proud JC remains a tough man to please.

4. Czech Mating

I spoke too soon at the top of this post. What’s the only thing more snakebitten than Davis Cup? It’s the Argentine team. A year after the Massacre in Mar del Plata, their own star stalwart, David Nalbandian, pulled up lame and left the team exceptionally vulnerable on hard courts in Ostrava. Berdych and Stepanek won all three rubbers in a 3-2 victory. After Stepanek won the clincher, he made one of those statements that only DC seems to inspire. “I had to really dig deep to step on the court,” Stepanek said. “After the doubles [on Saturday] I was like 90 per cent sure that I’m not able to play singles, but I was assured by the doctors that it was not going to damage my knee. I had to lie to myself that it didn’t hurt.”

Kudos to Czech coach Jaroslav Navratil for resting Stepanek in the first singles so he’d be ready for both the doubles and the decider. And kudos in defeat to Juan Martin del Potro, who shrugged off any memories of his key defeat in Mar del Plata and beat both Berdych and Minar in straight sets. That’s what singles stars do.

The Czechs travel to Croatia for the semis, starting September 18.

5. The Loners’ Game

The NY Times pointed out last weekend that it’s been 30 years since the original stereo-for-one, the Walkman, was invented. Did you know why it was created in the first place? Sony co-founder Akio Morita wanted something to listen to while he played tennis. First it was sports agents, then private musical universes. Tennis has certainly done its part to up the self-absorption levels of modern life. As for me, after cranking a white bargain-bin cassette of the Clash’s first album on my Walkman until it broke, my ears would never be the same.

6. The Roid Question

Slate informs us that tennis is ripe for a steroid infestation. The writer, Bill Gifford, claims that there isn’t much out of competition testing. I was under the impression that there was a decent amount done by surprise and during the off season.

7. Ramming Ahead

Like I said last week, tennis is nothing if not utterly unpredictable. Who would have thought that veteran Challenger mainstay Rajeev Ram, 25, was due for a surge? The American was the lucky loser in Newport when Mardy Fish pulled out to play Davis Cup. Ram rode this lucky break all the way to a win over Sam Querrey in the final.

8. Life of Johnson

Also in Newport this weekend, legendary African-American tennis coach Dr. Robert Johnson—he worked with both Althea Gibson and Arthur Ashe, not a bad résumé—was inducted into the tennis Hall of Fame. Tennis.com profiles him here.

9. New Old Blood

New faces have been what the WTA has needed for a while now. It got one at the top of the tour today when Stacey Allaster was named the new chairman, replacing Larry Scott. She had previously been the organization’s president under Scott. Whatever her plans—according to SportsBusinessJournal, she’s not looking to make any big changes—it’s a positive for the sport just to have visible leadership in an important post. The USTA isn’t replacing Arlen Kantarian at the U.S. Open’s director, and ATP chief Adam Helfant, perhaps in reaction to the flashy style that doomed his predecessor, Etienne de Villiers, has been virtually invisible since he took over at the start of 2009.

10. Speaking of Walkmans . . .

Three songs I’ve been spinning—yes, I still think of songs as “records”—in my IPod on my way to the tennis courts.

Luna’s version of the Velvet Underground’s “Ride into the Sun”: weak singing, poetic guitar

Eddie Cochran’s “Lonely.” Perfect for tennis players. As a gravelly voiced musician friend of mine in college told me, “Everyone writes a song with that title.”

Bob Seger’s “Night Moves.” Sue me, it makes me feel like it’s summer.

11. Night Game, Part II

And speaking of such moves, in my last post, which was about the particular vibes that come from playing tennis in the evening, I forgot to mention one of my very best experiences along those lines. In high school I was a counselor for a week in June at a local tennis camp. During the day, we sweated it out in the humid glare while feeding balls and yelling at brats of various ages. In the evening, sans rugrats, we gathered again to practice against each other. The competition was serious, but everyone was looser under the lights. The cooler air and darker sky relaxed us—I could see the ball better under the lights. We were pounding out the annoyances of the day and remembering why we picked up the sport in the first place. There was something luxurious and indulgent about the scene. Nature, in the form of the setting sun, told us that the tennis day should have been over. But the buzzing electric lights had the final say: We could play as long, long, long, long, long as we wanted.

***

I’ll be back this week to preview the U.S. hard-court season, when the sport makes its annual transition from the hallowed grass of Wimbledon to the asphalt parking lots of Indiana. Still, no part of the tennis year looks as good at night.

Playing Ball: Night Game	07/10/2009 - 8:51 PM

Three or four years ago, I traveled to Key Biscayne with a fellow New York tennis writer. Driving through the cluttered Florida suburbs along route 95 one evening, we passed a sight that was as welcome as it was startling: a vast outdoor tennis center, brightly lit and chaotic with players. Each of us was quiet for a minute as we went by, until my friend said, “Can you imagine being able to play tennis outdoors every night of the year?” It was the same question I'd just silently asked myself.

For most people reading this, that must sound like a rather hum-drum fantasy. “Yeah, of course, I play four times a week after work,” a typical tennis fanatic from most places around the U.S. might respond. I can remember being able to that myself for the first 20-odd years of my life in Pennsylvania.

The lights burned brightly all summer at the far end of our town’s park. Eight or 10 lighted asphalt courts were lined up next to three baseball fields and a bandshell. Summer concerts were held there, though it seemed that no matter who performed—old-time swinging bandleaders like Doc Severinson and Maynard Ferguson were the norm—the crowd would end the evening bellowing that traditional tribal chant of the Midwest: “Oz-zy! Oz-zy! Oz-zy!” I knew the stage better from my Little League days, when our “assistant coach,” a sadistic 20-something slacker with long blond hair who never took off his sunglasses, would yell at us to run “to the bandshell!” every time we dropped a fly ball in practice. At certain moments, there was no one left for him to hit balls to; we were all running to the bandshell.

Well, anyway, the courts sat in the heart of this nexus of summer-evening commotion. I played all kinds of tennis on them over the years. I practiced with my dad, I hacked around with friends in cut-off jeans who could barely get the strings on the ball, I won and lost tournament matches there, I hit serves out of buckets by myself, I dodged girls on roller skates circling the courts, I played doubles matches with friends where all we did was try to thread a lob between the two tree branches that hovered far above the court—we couldn’t leave until somebody pulled it off. As you can see, the park was mostly a spot for tennis of the most social and disorganized sort. The serious play went down earlier in the day at another, more sedate set of courts in a nicer section of town.

In the park, early in the evenings, there might be two Little League games going on at the same time, even as the tennis courts were overflowing with random action. Once, when I was 13 or so, a foul ball thudded down next to me while I was playing.

“Hey, kid, we need that ball,” one of the baseball players yelled to me, as if I had planned to put it in my pocket and take it home.

“That’s Steve Tignor,” another one yelled to his friends. I’d pitched on the same team with him a couple of years before. “He can throw,” he added. His current teammates seemed skeptical that I had the strength to get the ball all the way back to them, even though the field and the courts were about 50 feet apart. With two-dozen kids watching, I picked up the baseball and threw it high and lazily in their direction. It was a weak throw—after a year or so of tennis, I hadn’t anticipated how heavy it would be—and I cringed as it quickly began to dive. It cleared the baseball field’s fence by about a foot. The only sounds were a few scoffing laughs and grumblings of general dispapproval. No one said thanks. No one was very impressed. My baseball life was officially behind me. It was all tennis from then on.

This leafy, humid, buggy, artificially lit zone of hot dogs, Orange Crushes, concession stands, licorice, braces, peanut shells, skateboards, curse words, and wild pitches was a regular stop on the somewhat limited social tour of the area’s junior high students. Few of these kids had ever thought about picking up a tennis racquet; those of us who did play were figures of curiosity. My most vivid memory of this scene is of three guys, slightly older than me, strolling up to the fence and standing behind a cute girl who was playing with her friend. The dudes frowned silently behind her, their long hair in their faces. Either they couldn’t think of anything to say, or none of them wanted to risk venturing a line and looking like a moron if she ignored him. Finally, after playing three or four points while they watched, the girl looked back and asked, “Where are you guys heading tonight?”

The tallest snapped his head sideways to get his hair out of his eyes and said, “You know, we’re just gonna go wherever the wind blows.”

I’ve resigned myself to the idea that this world is a thing of the past for me. In New York, there are few lighted tennis courts, and they’re invariably booked. Even if you're lucky enough to find yourself on one, it won’t be for longer than an hour—not nearly enough time to try to send a lob in between two tree branches. The club where I play is jammed so tightly against a set of apartment buildings—you can hear silverware clink while you’re waiting to return serve—that any lights around the courts would blast straight through the residents’ living rooms.

But if you get there early, no later than 6:30 in July, you can squeeze in a couple of sets in fading sunlight. I did that for the first time all year yesterday, which is sad because the longest days, and seemingly half the summer, are already past us. Still, I drilled ground strokes—also a first this season—for half an hour and played nearly three sets of doubles. All five courts were being used, but the clubroom was empty and the place was peaceful. On the opposite side from the apartments is an outdoor subway line. Every few games during the evening rush hour you can see the rusted top of the Q train barrel past. As the airplanes once did at the U.S. Open, the train drowns out all other noise. It’s somehow soothing to play a point when you can’t hear the ball hit the racquet. 

Above there was planes flying into La Quardia in the opposite direction from the train. The sunset made them pink. A chimney belched black smoke. Players from other courts left one by one. Their places were taken by a cat that likes to lie on the Har-Tru at night. We could hear a few crickets in the bushes, a rare sound in New York. Otherwise, with darkness creeping down the walls around us, the only signs of life in this particular center of the city were the politely enthusiastic sounds of our match—doubles is always social tennis, and the best method the sport offers for leaving behind a day at work.

“Hey, great point.”

“Let’s break ’em here.”

“That’s the way, nice and simple, no problem.”

"It's OK, it was the right shot."

“I’ll serve the ball up the middle and you move, it's easy.”

“Last game, guys.”

A well-struck ball smacked the net's wide white tape. You know the sound, it’s so solid and final, even though it really could have gone either way. When I hit a ball right and still hear it collide with the net, I snap my head up in frustrated surprise. But as long as the point wasn’t life or death, I can take some pleasure in that smacking sound. And when is a point life or death, really, when you’re playing tennis on a summer evening?

W: The Rest	07/08/2009 - 6:25 PM

It’s Roger Federer’s world at the moment, and you may or not be happy to be living in it. But as we know around here, there’s more to tennis, and there was more to Wimbledon, than just the winners. If anything, this season has shown us again that one of the gratifications of being a fan of this sport is the stone cold unpredictability of it. The only thing you know for sure is that, with 256 players starting a Slam together, there are going to be stories you didn’t see coming, for better and for worse. Before we forget they ever happened, I give a few of them their ephemeral due here, and over at ESPN.com.

Venus Williams

Her yearly run to the final is getting to seem almost unremarkable. This one was notable mainly for her demolition of world No. 1 Dinara Safina in the semis, the worst mockery of a rankings system I can remember. Then Venus upstaged herself by defending Safina in her press conference. But watching her watch Serena hold up the winner’s dish, I wondered whether Venus had done that herself for the last time in 2008. Her reign must end sometime. A

Elena Dementieva

I can’t believe I never realized that she couldn’t hit a serve to her opponent’s backhand side. Seeing her do it against Serena in the semis was bizarre. For the first time, Dementieva looked like a full-fledged tennis player. An unlucky one, too. A-

Tommy Haas

Haas reminded us that a one-handed backhand and a crisp volley still make for beautiful, electric tennis. If you want to have the latter, you have to have the former. Suddenly I want to see the cranky German do it some more. A-

Lleyton Hewitt

His quarterfinal against Roddick was a calm and quiet classic between “two old married guys,” as the American said. Hewitt took us back to those bygone and not-much-missed days before Federer and Nadal. It’s not a place any of us want to live, but I enjoyed the visit. His feistiness and his never-changing lunchpail style should have more appeal now that he’s officially an elder of the game. A-

Pete Sampras

Nice gesture, suave entrance, blond wife, good jacket, bad sunglasses. A-

Bjorn Borg

Where, exactly, did he get that skin? A-

Rod Laver

The Rocket isn’t going down without a fight. A-

Melanie Oudin

I liked the patience and intelligence, as well as the fist-pumping gusto—she looks like she's practiced it—of this 17-year-old during her win over Jankovic. I hope I see it again soon. B+

Sabine Lisicki

Another heavy hitter throws her hat in the ring. If only she’d closed Dinara out and saved her from facing Venus in the semis. B+

Victoria Azarenka

It’s always eye-opening to see a young sure-shot go toe to toe with Venus or Serena when it matters. Serena showed another one just how much work she has to do yet. B

Andy Murray

The Scot has a problem. The defensive, leg-based game that he devised over the last year is working everywhere but at the majors, where big-hitting opponents have three sets to find their range. I think he felt the pressure more than he might have anticipated—he pressed against both Wawrinka and Roddick. But the real issue is that, despite having superior net skills to Roddick’s, he hit virtually no volleys during their semifinal. He still has to find a way to use everything he’s got. B-

Dinara Safina

I feel bad for her, and she should be commended for toughing out a couple of three-setters when she wasn’t at her best, but the late-Slam breakdowns are getting hard to watch. Pretty soon I won’t even turn it on when she’s playing on the final weekend, just to spare myself the vicarious angst. Like Jankovic, Safina is proof that it’s hard, bordering on impossible, to win your first major late in life. The evidence is building that, improved physique or not, she doesn’t have what it takes. B-

Juan Martin del Potro

He took a step back against Hewitt here, but he understood where he had gone wrong. Next thing to fix: consistency on returns. You get the feeling he’s working on it now. B-

Novak Djokovic

Another thing that’s getting hard to take is watching Djokovic grin and embrace the guy who’s just eliminated him from a tournament. Match to match, it’s hard to tell how motivated the Serb is going to be. C+

Jelena Jankovic

Seeing her up close for the first time since March, I'd say Jankovic looked extremely average all around, even when she was winning. Not much power, not much purpose, a lot of confusion. Maybe this is more than a slump; maybe it's a correction. C

John McEnroe/Ted Robinson

We know Robinson is the Old Faithful of purposeless statistical filler, but why did I once think that McEnroe was selective in his commentary and didn’t just say whatever came into his head? Perhaps it was the absence of Mary Carillo, but Johnny Mac blathered over, under, and around what was otherwise a highly enjoyable final. C-

Federer Fashion, 2009 Edition

Rog, Rog, don’t you know you’re not supposed to go with gold during a recession? Two words come to mind regarding the fashion gimmicks: Just. Stop. F

W: The Lucky Few	07/06/2009 - 6:00 PM

In 2009, the headline-making players and stories have remained the same. The record books of the future will remind us that Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, and Serena Williams continued to make history this season. What will be forgotten are the reasons that tennis fans kept watching in surprise from match to match and week to week: the sudden, unlikely rises and falls of the mortals who reside on the second rung of the sport’s totem pole. This year’s Wimbledon was rife with them. Andy Roddick, Tommy Haas, Elena Dementieva, and Andy Murray, while they didn’t end up winning anything, tantalized us with the idea that they could. If Federer made this year’s fortnight historic, it was those players who gave it its texture. I’ll memorialize their efforts here this week, before they fade out of our minds. But first things first: the A-plus performers.

Roger Federer

The spoilsports, curmudgeons, and logicians will tell us that we “can’t compare players from different eras.” I would answer by saying that we can do whatever the hell we want to do. Even if I admitted that their point, however prudish it may be, was a reasonable one, my mind would go ahead and make the comparison anyway before I could do anything about it—I’m a sports fan, which means I always want to know who's going to win. When I picture Roger Federer playing tennis, there’s no doubt in my mind that he’s the best in history at it. But just when that idea seemed to be corroborated by all relevant statistics, the fact that Federer hasn’t won a calendar-year Grand Slam, à la Rod Laver, has begun to be used against him, presumably by those same spoilsports and curmudgeons (it certainly can't be the logicians). Leaving aside the fact that Federer was one match away from doing it on two separate occasions, Laver’s two calendar-year Slams—the first took place during the amateur era, when he didn’t face the world’s best competition—qualify as single-season achievements, not career achievements. If you consider them, by themselves, a reason to think Laver is untouchable, you then have to ask yourself: What if he had never won another match aside from those Slams? Would he still have the greater career than Federer? The answer, I believe, is no.

Still, when I picture Federer playing, my analytical skills fall far behind my appreciative ones. On dozens of occasions I’ve tried to describe to myself how he won a particular match. Often all I can visualize is Federer patiently slicing his backhand from behind the baseline, and then . . . winning the set 6-3. But this year’s French Open and Wimbledon crystallized for me what it is that he does better than anyone else, on and off the court: He takes what you give him.

If a draw opens up for him with the shocking defeats of his primary rivals, which happened with suspiciously destiny-like regularity in both Paris and London, Federer is always there, uninjured, to take advantage. If you don’t punish his floating slice backhand with a perfect approach, he’s there to stun you and take the point from you with a crosscourt forehand. If you leave a ball hanging in the middle of the court, he goes from passive to aggressive in one long, predatory stride. And if you don’t close out a tiebreaker on your first opportunity, when you’re up 6-2 and serving, he’ll take a Wimbledon title from you.

As you know, the second-set breaker was the tide-turning moment of yesterday’s final. Andy Roddick looked assured of going up two sets to love and putting a firm grip on the match. As you also know, he would eventually blow his fourth and final set point with an embarrassing backhand volley wide (to win 15 Slams, you have to take everything you’re given). But it wasn’t that moment that seems crucial to me now, or that exemplifies why Federer won. It was the reflex flick backhand that he hit to save the first set point, with Roddick serving at 6-2. The American hit a strong forehand up the line; Federer stood his ground and found a way to short-hop the ball and direct it into the open court. Nobody else owns that shot. Nobody else would have been alive in that tiebreaker long enough to see Roddick stone that backhand volley wide at 6-5.

And nobody else would have hung around long enough to win that match. As in 2007, when he beat Rafael Nadal in five sets, Federer snuck past an opponent who was frankly the better player on the day. He did it the same way, by serving lights out—the only thing you’re given on a tennis court is your serve, and he took it with everything he had—and saving his best tennis for the tiebreakers. Like the man he passed on the all-time Slam list, Pete Sampras, Federer continues to succeed in his late 20s because he does nothing more, or less, than win. Sometimes that means finding a way to take a match that belongs to someone else.

After last year’s Wimbledon final, it appeared that Federer, whatever his other achievements, would be known for losing his greatest battle. Now, along with his 15 majors and umpteen other records, he has an epic victory to his credit as well. This is a fitting capstone to a fantastical six weeks for Roger Federer. While his French-Wimbledon double will be remembered as one more historic achievement from the greatest player ever, those of us who were watching Federer all year know that fortune has smiled on him to an unusual degree since the 4^th round of the French Open. In tennis, however, “fortune” has a narrower meaning than it does just about anywhere else. 

In few other sports are you responsible for everything that happens during play, including your good and bad luck. Aside from aces, there are virtually no winning shots from your opponent that you can honestly say were “just too good.” Chances are, an imperfect shot from you allowed your opponent to hit that winner. (This is what makes a loss in tennis so hard to accept—deep down, you know it was your fault). And vice-versa, simply by putting one more shot in the court, as Federer did at 5-6 in the second-set tiebreaker, you give your opponent a chance to screw up, to send a volley 10 feet wide. If he does, you weren’t merely lucky; you had a hand in making your good fortune.

“You create your own luck”: It’s a phrase that’s both too optimistic and too cruel, but it’s undeniably true in tennis, where cause and effect, fortune and skill, are fully intertwined. Staying healthy for every Slam while your main rival falls to injury; getting yourself to the semifinals while your other rivals fall prey to pressure or exhaustion; remaining calm when you’re on the verge of defeat and you have a chance to break the all-time record for majors. These are seemingly routine marks of consistency, but no one else in tennis history has matched them. Luck? Roger Federer has earned more of it than anyone else. A+

Serena Williams

Her competitive energy was wild and unfocused in Paris, where she trash-talked Dinara Safina and threatened an early-round opponent. At Wimbledon it was just as fierce, but she channeled it into pummeling the little yellow ball. Does anyone, other than perhaps Rafael Nadal, embody the desire to win as much as Serena? She grunts—no extraneous screams for her—and pumps her fist, she bends over in disbelief when she’s missed, and most theatrical of all, she leaps after she hits a ball that’s going to land close to the line, hoping to bring it down safely with the power of her body English.

And while she’s never tidy about it, Serena gets what she wants. Talk about creating your own luck. Down match point to Elena Dementieva in the semifinals, Williams played with no fear, taking the first opportunity to come forward. You can sum up her subsequent net cord volley winner in four words: “fortune favors the brave.” You can sum up her crucial first-set tiebreaker win over her sister Venus in the final the same way. A+

Men’s Final

Nadal-Federer 2008 overflowed, with long rallies, daredevil shot-making, rain delays, flashbulbs, operatic drama, darkness, tears. This year’s was fast and spare by comparison, a quartet rather than a symphony. The points themselves weren’t as spectacular, though you also got the sense that no one wanted to claim it was as good as last year’s final, right after we all got done calling that one the greatest match in history.

This was just as entertaining, however. I’ve never seen anything quite like the end. Each player faced a quandary. On the one hand, the longer the match went, the more emotionally drained Federer and Roddick became with each game—how many aces and service winners could they hit? But at the same time, the longer it went, the more there was at stake for each of them—they must have been winding down just as the drama was winding up. They were stuck on a high-wire together. I had a feeling that, unlike last year, the end would be anti-climactic. Roddick’s terrible mishit into the back tarp proved me right. It’s too bad, for Roddick and for us, that we’ll have to watch that shot replayed for so many years to come. A+

Andy Roddick

Late in the final, John McEnroe seemed to overspeak while watching Roddick hit a strong backhand down the line. He said that that shot should make the people back home “proud to be Americans.” It’s probably a lot to ask from a ground stroke.

But McEnroe was right in the larger sense. We saw Roddick grow up in front of us over the July 4th weekend. He never lifted his eyes, changed his gait, or showed more emotion than what was absolutely necessary—he looked consumed by the task at hand. He ignored the wishes of 15,000 people in the semis and a soul-crushing blown tiebreaker in the second set of the final. Can you imagine him talking to the camera, the way he did the last time he played Federer in a Slam final, at the 2006 U.S. Open?

Moreover, has Roddick ever hit his vaunted serve so effectively or rushed the net with such intelligent selectivity? Has he ever hit so many forcing forehands and deadly backhands on the run? Has he ever looked more like a born tennis player rather than an all-around jock? This was muscular tennis at its most controlled and purposeful.

Roddick had been beaten three straight times by Murray and 18 times by Federer, but he approached both of this weekend's matches as if they were contested on even terms. He had been written off at Slams for years, but he set about remaking himself with a new coach for at least the fourth time. The upshot is that he just played the two best matches of his life at age 26: He pushed Murray back without trying to blast through him and controlled the rallies against Federer off both sides.

He's been known in some parts as the American who couldn’t keep his country’s tradition of great tennis champions alive. A win over Federer yesterday would have banished that criticism forever. Instead Roddick played beautiful tennis for 4 hours on Sunday only to run up against a brick wall and end the day in tears, a lifelong dream and career vindication thwarted by his more gifted nemesis again. Then he was forced to describe how he felt to the world. Asked by Sue Barker if he felt the sport could be cruel, Roddick said to the crowd, who had supported him as they always do at Wimbledon, “No, I’m one of the lucky few who gets cheered for, so thank you for that.”

Roddick may not be a champion on the order of Sampras or McEnroe or Connors, but none of those guys could match the breadth of his personality, or his unpretentious humanity. His performance on Sunday, first in his actions and then in his astoundingly stoical, winning words before a worldwide audience, was inspiring. It really did make me proud to be an American. A+