Snow Days, Love Letters and Practice, Man	02/26/2010 - 4:05 PM

This morning the narrow streets of my Brooklyn neighborhood were sunk beneath a foot of snow. Steps, stoops, sidewalks, even cars were invisible. When I was walking to work, very little of it had been plowed or shoveled, so the only way forward, if I didn’t want to be covered in white powder up to my knee, was to search for a path of footsteps that had been laid down, like deer tracks, by an early-rising pioneer. Still, whatever its annoyances and inconveniences, I doubt that I’ll ever lose the sense of anticipation I get when I pull back the curtain on a morning when I know there will be snow on the ground. It’s a feeling embedded in childhood, when snow meant a day away from school that could be spent sledding through the streets with friends or, if you so desired, staying in and watching reruns of My Three Sons. Snow meant freedom, stolen freedom.

It still can as an adult, but now I find that freedom at work, in a quieter-than-usual office, where the flakes float by, seemingly in slow motion, in circular patterns out my window, some upward, some sideways, some downward. On snow days as a kid in a small town, I loved to walk down an alley near my house where, because no one needed to pass through it, the snow would never be plowed. Mine were inevitably the first set of footprints to be set down. Ice and snow coated everything in sight, the tree branches that hung overhead, the telephone wires that threaded between them, the red picket fence that enclosed a neighbor’s backyard. There was no sound; the world was frozen silent.

This type of scene is impossible in New York City. Here the only place I’ve found where all outside noises fade away is the colossal Greenwood Cemetery in Brooklyn, though even there you can’t escape the low ambient buzz from airplane engines above. But there are compensations. My walk to work takes me through Manhattan’s Madison Square Park, an underrated gem that’s framed by the Empire State Building to the north, the Flatiron building to the south, and the Met Life Tower to the east. It’s hard to believe, as you look up at the Met Life, that this was the tallest building in the world from 1909 to 1913. But New York is full of monuments and landmarks that were once world-famous and are now passed by without a glance.

In the summer, the trees inside Madison Square radiate and refract sunshine in a way that surreally brings something like nature to the heart of the city. Today, the branches were bare and the normally green lawn was a hazy, drifting field of white, getting higher by the minute. The corners of the park feature unsmiling statues of obscure former luminaries from other centuries—Lincoln’s Secretary of State, William Seward, Congressman Roscoe Conking, and former president Chester Arthur. The best of them is near the park’s center: Saint-Gaudens’ tribute to Farragut, the Civil War admiral who got a battle started by telling his crew, “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead.” This morning, 129 years after he was erected in that spot, Farragut appeared to be wearing a white scarf across his shoulders as he surveyed the park. I wondered what he made of the eye-grabbing fire-engine-red Wellington boots that one woman was wearing as she crossed in front of him. 

Anyway, these thoughts were terminated as I got to my office and clicked on a couple of tennis-related links. One took me to Andy Murray’s comments about how he was “trying some things out,” rather than focusing on winning, during his loss to Janko Tipsarevic in Dubai. On the one hand, he’s only being honest. It won't be hard to see the discrepancy in the top players' intensity in Dubai compared to the way they approach the upcoming Masters events in Indian Wells and Key Biscayne. Guaranteed money tends to do that to people. Plus, to learn to serve and volley effectively, Murray does need to test it out in match situations, and he's not about to do any experimenting at a major. 

But that doesn’t mean it isn't a rip-off for fans. As spectators we need to believe that an athlete is putting it on the line out there. As Allen Iverson, the Sixers' ancient game-day warrior, knows, no one pays to watch practice, man (see below). If a match has no meaning for the player, it can have no meaning for us. Murray, who mentioned Roger Federer's preparation habits by way of defending himself afterward, appears to believe that, like Federer, he has earned the right to concentrate his efforts on rounding his game into shape for the majors. Aside from using Dubai as a tune-up, Murray is also, like Federer, skipping Davis Cup this time around. But while at this stage of his career Federer is often not at his best at smaller events, I’ve never gotten the feeling that he’s been focused on anything other than winning the match he’s playing. 

Fortunately for me today, my job has taken me back to an earlier time in tennis, one where playing the sport was only beginning to seem like a plausible occupation, and six-figure appearance fees were beyond anyone's wildest imagination. I’ve been working on an article for Tennis Magazine about what I’m calling the Greatest Generation, a group of four world-class male players who trained on public courts and at the Los Angeles Tennis Club in the 1930s and 40s, and helped create a golden age for U.S. tennis. The four—Ellsworth Vines, Bobby Riggs, Jack Kramer, and Pancho Gonzalez—didn’t form a single generation in a chronological sense. Vines, the oldest, was born in 1911; Gonzalez, the youngest, in 1928. But they shared a location; a middle-class, non-tennis family background; and a worldview shaped by the Great Depression, World War II, and the experience of trying to fit into a tennis world that, based as it was in private, grass-court clubs on the East Coast, was utterly foreign to them.

In the process, I’ve been reading a tribute book to Vines put together in 2004 by his son, Ellsworth III. He’s certainly proud of his father—the book is called The Greatest Athlete of All Time. But what it consists of couldn’t be more modest or touching. The bulk of it is a long series of letters that Vines wrote to his girlfriend and future wife—“sweetheart” in the parlance of the times—Julia Verle Low back in L.A., when he was on the amateur circuit back east and at Wimbledon, a tournament that Vines won on his first try in 1932. These letters, which we would consider embarrassingly heartfelt today, bring to life a time when tennis could be seen as a temporary pastime even by its greatest player. Vines would grow bored of the sport by the end of the decade and eventually become a pro golfer—the guy really was a fantastic athlete. But even here, as he strives to win the U.S. Championships, tennis remains in the background, his matches summarized in single sentences, his practices wrapped up in two words: “Training diligently.”

Mostly these letters are testaments to how much he misses Verle on the road. Here are a few lines:

From New York, 1930: Had a sweet letter from you today sweetheart and it was just perfect honey. I don’t have to compare you with any other girls Verle to find out your goodness and sweetness. I can just see it dear. When we start comparing instead of looking and trying to find all the good things in one another we are liable to notice little faults. We all have out faults dear.

From USC, 1930: Sure hope you’re thinking of me lots dearest as I’m always thinking of you honey.

On a train heading east, 1931: Dearest Girl, the same old thing. I can hardly write intelligently. This is the worst yet. I missed you a lot honey and am always wishing you were along with me. Someday you will be sweetness.

From Philadelphia, 1932: Dearest Sweetheart, had another letter from you today. It sure is wonderful to receive them from you. You mean so much to me.

OK, you get the idea. This quickly gets repetitive, and I don’t think anyone outside the Vines family would want to read every word of it. But dipping into his letters is to dip into a world that’s startlingly straightforward and unaffected, where desires seemed easier to satisfy. Was this how life was in the U.S. during this period, when people were poor—Vines himself knew poverty as a kid—but they had confidence that their government wasn’t out to get them, that the country was worth trusting. If this is any evidence, it made life simpler, just like Vines’ closing words to his letter from New York in 1930, written as he was planning to come home to see his Girl:

P.S.: Better make a list of all the things you want to say to me. I’ve memorized mine already and it only contains four words. I love you Verle.

"We talkin' about practice, man. Not the game, that I go out there and die for." 

Enjoy a YouTube classic below and have a good weekend.

Drinking Game	02/25/2010 - 3:28 PM

Few recent developments in the game have been hailed as heartily and unanimously around the offices of Tennis Magazine as the ATP’s new $70 million title-sponsorship deal with Corona. You might have thought that a contract linking the healthy sport for a lifetime with the producer of an addictive depressant might have been approached with some degree of trepidation. But no, Pete Bodo praised its raffish populism as he happily hiccupped his way through a recent podcast, while James Martin stated, with Olympian simplicity and assurance, that “beer is good.”

I agree, beer is good, especially after work. And especially in the morning after work. During the dark days of the Clinton era, when the rest of the world was getting rich on Internet stocks and wolfing Ecstasy to celebrate, I worked a night shift job as a proofreader at an investment bank in Manhattan—just for fun, of course. I went in at midnight and rode the subway home to Brooklyn at 8:00 A.M. I learned right away that it’s a disturbing, but also perversely exhilarating, feeling to get off a train at that hour, a train populated by a few scattered, snoring homeless people, and see hordes of upstanding humans waiting on the other side of the platform to begin their day, after what I imagined to be a perfect and peaceful night of sleep. As I passed them, I prayed to God that someday I would be brought in from my nocturnal exile and allowed to join them. I didn’t care what job I would eventually get, I just wanted to work in the daytime. Still, for that one brief moment I had the advantage. These daylight people were heading for work, while I was heading to the 24-hour bodega on my corner, where I could buy a six-pack of Budweiser cans and sit down to drink a couple of them immediately, without a shred of guilt, while watching Good Morning America. After a week or two of this, the gruff Italian guy at the counter started to give me an odd look. Then it came to me as I lugged the beers down the street: “He must think I’m the world’s biggest alcoholic, up at the crack of dawn for six more.” But no, that’s not what it was. The next day he looked at me and said, “You work the night shift? I used to do that. It’s tough.” Granted, he likely operated a forklift while I was checking for spelling mistakes on financial documents, but there was some working-stiff bonding there. 

Beer is also good at the beach, which I found out again last summer when I spent a few days at a share house on Long Island with a couple of friends. One of those friends brought a party pack of Schaefer cans down to the water. This is a brand of American swill that I normally cannot stomach, even though I always admired the modesty and honesty of their old ad slogan: The beer to have when you’re having more than one. But at the ocean, in the sand, under the sun, Schaefer was perfect; anything stronger or better would have been too serious, a drag. When my friend cracked the first can open and we heard that familiar, frothy, de-pressurized burst of noise around the tab, he looked up at the sky and said, “The sound of victory.”

And, of course, beer is good for college students, though the crazed obsession with it that seems to overwhelm kids in this country from ages 18 to 22 is hard to explain. I was reminded of that a few years ago when I was riding up in a hotel elevator. With me were four scruffy kids in their late teens. They looked unhappy, frustrated, a little desperate. Finally, when I got to my floor, one of them stopped me and asked, “Do you have any beer?” It was as if he thought everyone on earth must have a keg with them wherever they go. If you’re over 21, how could you not be drinking beer every minute of the day?

OK, but the question we’ve been posed by the ATP is this: Is beer the best drink to have when you’re watching tennis? I believed this to be so when I attended my first U.S. Open as an employee of Tennis Magazine a dozen years ago. With no real responsibilities other than to watch matches, I grabbed a free cup of Heineken in the press room and headed for the media seats in Ashe Stadium. There I was quickly spotted by a grizzled veteran of the tennis press sitting three rows ahead of me. On the first changeover, he walked back to my row, leaned down into my face, and informed me that I was “disgracing the media.” I took the (rather strong) hint and got rid of the beer. And went to another stadium.

Since then, I’ve restricted my blending of alcohol and tennis-viewing to the privacy of my apartment. At the same time, I’ve moved on from the easy, youthful, screw-the-top off-the-bottle-and-go pleasure of beer for the more potent qualities of the Martini. This year I found that one—or OK, maybe two—of these little triangles to be the ideal accessory for evenings spent watching the Australian Open. Beer bloats and blurs, while gin, in the right quantity, can make you feel sharper even as it sands down the anxious edge of your mind. (Of course, in the wrong quantity, it can make you want to smash your TV set in, but that’s a story for another day . . .) It’s not just the drink, but the process, the ritual of making it that counts. The sound of ice cubes cracking out of their holder, clinking against the glass, being swirled by a spoon. And then you end up with the high metallic sheen of the gin itself in the glass, a single olive at its bottom. It’s a hard, minimalist-aesthetic drink for a hard, minimalist-aesthetic sport.

So as a tennis viewer, I suppose I have left beer behind. A Martini, like a cup of coffee, can heighten my appreciation of a match. But what about as a tennis player? That’s where Corona makes sense. This may not be true for Roger Federer—I like to imagine Rog celebrating a Grand Slam win by doing a shot of Jack Daniels with Mirka in the back of the limo while they bang their heads to AC/DC’s “Highway to Hell” and flash each other the sign of the devil (unlikely, I know, though remember that the stylish family man was once a Metallica fanatic). But a beer makes sense for me. There really aren’t many better feelings than running hard on a tennis court in the hot sun for a couple of hours and then finding a cold beer waiting for you in your fridge when you get home. Pull the tab off the can or the top off the bottle, and even if you’ve lost the match, at least you get to hear the sound of victory.

Peer's Pressures	02/23/2010 - 4:17 PM

The men of the ATP are taking their turn in Dubai as we speak, but before we join them, let me throw a final glance back at the most memorable story of last week’s WTA event. That, of course, was Shahar Peer of Israel’s run to the semifinals after being barred from the United Arab Emirates, and the tournament, in 2009. I talked to Peer’s coach, Pablo Giacopelli of the IT USA Tennis Academy in Scottsdale, Ariz., yesterday about their experience, both on the court and in lockdown, in the UAE.

Do you have a minute to talk?

I’ve got plenty. We’re not doing too much for a couple of days, to recover from everything that happened last week.

I’m guessing you considered it a successful week overall?

It was very successful, considering the situation.

Was Shahar’s strong play sparked by that situation?

Yes, but really, though, things were worse in Auckland [when Peer played at the WTA's event in Auckland in January, there were anti-Israeli protests on the grounds]. In Dubai people were civil, so there wasn’t as much immediate pressure all around, and she could let her tennis do the talking. But still, Shahar was desperate to win her first match, not to go there and lose in the first round [she beat Yanina Wickmayer 7-5 in the third set].

Beyond this tournament, she’s played some good tennis so far this season.

It’s definitely been a good start to the year, I think she’s improved quite a bit. Against Caroline [world No. 3 Caroline Wozniacki, whom Peer upset in Dubai], it was the best she’s played. She came up with the shots she needed in the key moments.

What was it like for the two of you off the court?

It was much different for me than for her, of course. I couldn't stay in the same hotel with her, and I was free to walk around Dubai and she wasn’t. Compared to some other Middle Eastern countries, it is a pretty open country. But she was in a room by herself almost the whole time, at the hotel, eating, practicing, waiting to play. At the hotel and even in the locker room, it was just her with me, her father, her trainer, and a dozen bodyguards. She didn’t even have much contact with the other players. So it was hard for her to feel any kind of tension because she was cut off from everything. In that way she didn’t too many distractions.

How much did it affect her?

We had an idea of what was coming beforehand. We talked to [fellow Israeli player] Andy Ram, who came here last year and got the same treatment. And on the flight in, I prepared her as much as possible and tried to tell her to take something positive from the situation. But there’s preparing for something, and then there’s experiencing it. There are dimensions to it you can’t prepare for, that you can’t be used to. For example, she played every morning first up, even if she had played late the night before. She even played at 11:00 in the morning, when everyone else started at 12.

It’s my job as her coach to help her with all of this. I think every situation can make you either bitter or better. It’s how you handle it. Are you going to let it make you angry, or are you going to allow it to help you build character? I said coming there that we can make ourselves better and stronger for having this experience, and that’s how she approached it. And that's how it worked out.

Did you feel all the security was justified?

It’s a fair question, and at times it seemed a little extreme. But neither of us knew how serious the threat really was, especially after the Hamas murder in Dubai [Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Mabhouh was murdered in Dubai last month; British officials suspect that it was committed by Israeli government agents using stolen European passports]. This is a country that relies on tourism and good publicity, so they couldn’t afford to let anything happen. If something did happen with Shahar, it would have been awful for everyone and catastrophic for them, so maybe going overboard was justified.

They didn’t have much choice to let her play, because of the headlines it caused last year. I don’t think the country expected those headlines when they denied her visa. They can’t rely on oil anymore, and they’ve been struggling with their economy. Tourism is what they need now, and they have to portray themselves as being an open society.

The Future is Then	02/22/2010 - 3:16 PM

Followers of women’s tennis have been asking the question for a solid 10 years now: Who’s next? In that time we’ve received just one correct answer, in the long and loud form of Maria Sharapova. Now, though, as a new decade has begun and an old cast of Grand Slam winners has reassembled, we appear to have discovered the truth. The past will be next. Serena Williams, Venus Williams, Justine Henin, Kim Clijsters, maybe Sharapova—can we conceive of a women’s-tennis world beyond their dominance?

This past weekend’s Dubai final, between Venus, who is 29, and Victoria Azarenka, who is 20, proved again how hazy the future remains, and how difficult it will be to make one take shape. Azarenka, along with 19-year-old Caroline Wozniacki, is the best hope for the current “new generation”—in pro-tennis, generations turn over every 18 months or so—to produce a consistent champion and member of the Top 5. In fact, Azarenka is already No. 6 in the world, while Wozniacki has been to a major final and is a stunning, though only semi-meaningful, No. 3. With those high rankings, at their tender ages, we should be able to say with confidence that we have seen the WTA’s future. But we can’t.

After a weary end to 2009, Azarenka has found her top form again this season, and she played a quality match against Williams in Dubai. Even more important and impressive was the way she handled herself. Maybe Azarenka felt like she had little to lose against a seven-time Slam winner, or maybe she looked at the match as a learning experience, but the sometimes-surly and always intense Vika maintained her poise even after her ugliest errors, and even when she fell behind in the middle of each set. She looked thoughtful rather than angry after her misses, she took an extra deep breath before serving on crucial points, and she continued to try to implement her and her coach’s game plan—move forward as soon as possible, but mix up the approaches—with admirable persistence. She even smiled a few times. Of course, this being Azarenka, she also bashed herself in her forehead with her racquet after one boneheaded forehand. But overall, her agitated energy was more helpful than hurtful, more engaging than grating.

The same was true of her game. Azarenka is known primarily as a hungry battler with a top-shelf backhand, but she showed flashes of her underrated athleticism and hands against Williams. Twice she took a backhand out of the air from behind the service line and hit a perfect topspin swing volley into the corner. When Venus had her on the run along the baseline, she managed to surprise her by sending  a stretch forehand back crosscourt for a winning pass. And as her coach, Sam Sumyk, emphasized, Azarenka took the ball early and moved forward whenever she had even the slightest opportunity.

And she still lost. In straight sets. The first and most obvious reason is the physical difference between the two players. While Venus, who is listed at 6-foot-1, is only three inches taller than the 5-foot-10 Azarenka, the disparity seemed to be much greater in their respective lengths—Venus covers more ground with her legs and generates more pace with her arms. Most important, she wins many more free points on her serve than Azarenka, who finished this match with no aces to her name. Her forward-moving strategy was really a strategy of last resort; Azarenka and Sumyk decided that to have any chance at all, she needed to push her game beyond where it normally goes, to hit shots she normally doesn’t hit. On many occasions I would say this was a fool's plan, that you should stick to your own game until it’s proven that it can’t work. But while Azarenka paid the price for her aggression with errors and failed forays to the net, I think it was the right tactic against an in-form Venus.

Still, the match didn’t look like a battle between the No. 5 and 6 players in the world as much as it did a battle between a woman and a girl, an all-time talent and a solid citizen of the second tier. I like Azarenka’s game, but its limits thus far—lack of variety and a point-ending weapon—only point up again how big a leap the Williams sisters made for the women’s game, both in terms of physical capability and mental strength. Venus has taken her share of losses over the years, but her bedrock confidence in herself is rarely shaken. Her losses always seem random, rather than part of a trend of poor play. What young player can measure up to that? It's hard to imagine Azarenka, whose game slowly but inexorably slid last year, ever being that serene about her abilities. It makes me wonder whether the group of champions in their late 20s on both the men’s and women’s sides—namely, Roger Federer, Henin, and the Williams sisters—will be remembered as a sort of Greatest Generation among tennis fans of the future. With their unstoppable weapons and the mental strength that comes with knowing they own those weapons, these players have leapt ahead, and no one younger has been able to keep up with them for long. They're a lot to live up to.

Azarenka ran head-on into her own limits at the end of each set. In the second, at 5-5, 15-30, after fending off her opponent with hard-hit backhands all match, Vika finally bashed one 10 feet wide. She dropped her racquet and held her hands to her face. She was broken soon after, and despite staving off two match points in the next game, she was done in by the fundamental superiority of Williams’ serve and forehand, both of which Venus hit for winners.

Even more telling was how the first set ended. Down 2-5, Azarenka called Sumyk onto the court. He reiterated their basic strategy—move forward at the earliest opportunity and don’t let Williams win the battle of positioning at the baseline, which in women’s tennis has become the equivalent of the old tactic of not letting your opponent take the net from you. He also told her to hit the ball up the middle in rallies and approach to different sides of the court. Azarenka, absorbing the lesson well, did all of these things successfully to hold the next game.

At 3-5, though, she stuck to the game plan a little too well. Given a short forehand, Azarenka went crosscourt with her approach, into Venus’ forehand. You might think Venus would have been surprised by this. She wasn’t. She was waiting, ready to rip the ball past a stumbling Azarenka. It was as if Venus was sending a message to her young challenger about this match, and to everyone else about the future: You kids still have a lot to learn.

The Joys of Victory	02/19/2010 - 1:36 PM

This is the frozen season in the Northeast, when the ever-present cold air in your face and gray slush below your feet begin to wear down even your most cheerful attempts to ignore them. I keep hearing the same phrase, whether it’s from people talking to me, or people I don’t know talking to someone else as I pass them on the street: “I’ve had it with winter.” The sentiment is mutual.

The athletes we’ve watched this week, Tiger Woods excepted, have done their best to bring some warmth to us through the TV set. Shahar Peer’s run in Dubai, which ended today at the powerful hands of Venus Williams, was historic and courageous. But it was also harsh and a little sad. Rather than getting to exhibit their skills inside the main arena, Williams and Peer looked they were playing in a cage on Court 2. Still, Peer’s ability to keep her spunky toughness tightly focused throughout the event was inspiring.

More joyful, though, has been the experience of watching the U.S. Olympians win gold each night. Lindsay Vonn in tears, unable to think of a word better than “awesome.” Eric Lysacek punching the air after nailing his long program. Shaun White hugging his bronze-medal-winning teammate under the lights. Before this week, I’d thought of snowboarding as nothing much more than a stoner’s diversion. Then I saw White’s first trick on Wednesday, where he floated about 50 feet in the air, a good 10 feet higher than anyone else, and thought, “Oh, so that’s why he’s famous.” That and the fact that, unlike his teammates, White didn’t wear his jeans down around his knees. I can see him teaching the sport someday to little redheaded Shaun-White-wannabees: “First lesson of the half-pipe, kids: pull your pants up.”

As every photographer and TV cameraman knows, we remember the victory celebration as much as we do any individual moment from the competition itself—the emotion is what sticks to us. Nowhere is that more true than in tennis. Look at the Getty Images website after a Grand Slam final and you’ll see that half of the photos were taken in the five-second period immediately following the last point.

Popular culture has become much more blatantly and unapologetically emotive over the years—witness American Idol for starters. At the end of the NBA championships, the winners used to run straight off the court and into the locker room. Two years ago, the Boston Celtics stood on the floor and bellowed obnoxiously for what seemed like hours. Their star forward, Paul Pierce, was still crying when the next season began. Tennis, in a more genteel way, has followed the trend. When the American champs of the 40s and the Aussies of the 50s and 60s won a big title, they typically didn’t do much more than raise their hand or fling their racquet upward as they ran to the net for a quick, respectful pump of the hands with their opponents.

In the 70s, Jimmy Connors jumped the net, but, as in so many other aspects of the game, it was Bjorn Borg who set the standard when it came to celebrating Slam wins. From what I can tell, he first fell to the court in prayerful euphoria at Wimbledon in 1978. But the drop we all remember came on Centre Court two years later, when he leaned back and soaked up a planet’s worth of energy after beating John McEnroe in five sets in the final.

What are the other great celebrations in tennis? Let’s take a look at five that are available on YouTube—you really need to see these, not just read about them. Maybe they’ll make us forget the frozen season outside.

This is from Pat Cash’s 1987 Wimbledon win over Ivan Lendl. It’s hard to believe now, but it was the first time a champion had walked into the stands on Centre Court to celebrate with his family. We know this because we can hear the immortally bewildered words of British commentator John Barrett: “And Pat . . . well, I don’t know where he’s going.”

The old Aussies had been classic gentlemen on the court. It took a new, post-McEnroe-era Aussie to blow past the decorous royal traditions of the Wimbledon trophy ceremony and take the celebration right to the people who had helped him get there. Cash didn’t follow a tradition; he started one.

Here we have a few clips from the latter stages of Chris Evert’s 1985 French Open victory over rival and friend Martina Navratilova. It had been a long time coming for Evert, who had been on the losing end of their contests for about four solid years. But while it was Evert who won the match, I like this celebration because of Martina’s reaction. After Chris passes her, it’s Navratilova who crosses the net and gives the winner a congratulatory hug. It echoed a reaction from seven years earlier, when Evert, then the No. 1 player in the world and in their rivalry, had patted Navratilova's head and thrown her arm around her after the Czech had upset her for her first Wimbledon title. On both occasions, it felt like a win for both players.

Once again, it’s Borg and McEnroe at Wimbledon. In this clip, you don’t get much more than the rapturous pose you know so well—Borg sitting on the grass is an iconic representation of triumph, and needs no words. But what’s interesting is that the Swede, who had just spent four or so hours without showing a flicker of emotion, would stand up a couple seconds later, and, with his face wiped clean of expression again, calmly shake hands with McEnroe at the net, sit down on his sideline chair, look into the camera with just the hint of a smile, and murmur the Swedish word for “Incredible.” That was it. It was almost as if the man who bottled everything up would have chosen not to drop to his knees if he could have helped it. But he couldn’t help it. More than any other tennis celebration, Borg’s at Wimbledon in 1980 was a release. What makes it epic is the mix of involuntary emotion and graceful control.

Twenty-eight years later, we’re in the same spot, in overtime in the fifth set on Centre Court, with the No. 1 and 2 players levitating each other into history. This time the last point ends with an error, from Roger Federer. But the reaction of the winner, Rafael Nadal, is the same as Borg’s—total release. Where Borg kept come control over his body, Nadal can’t help but wipe himself out. Rather than falling to the ground, his legs seem to lead the way and come out from under him. He ends up looking like he's been shot on a battlefield, which couldn’t have been more appropriate to the player or the moment. Unlike Borg, Nadal, liberated by Pat Cash 21 years earlier, shares the moment with whomever he can, including Federer’s agent, Tony Godsick, and some lucky Spanish royalty. What sets this scene apart from all the others in tennis is its lighting—the darkness in the arena, and the flashbulbs popping all over it. As I wrote at the time, it was as if the match, and Nadal’s reaction to winning it, had set off a current that circled the stadium and exploded out of people’s cameras.   

The deepest and best celebration of them all: Frenchman Yannick Noah winning at Roland Garros in 1983. I had a friend in college, a guy who didn’t even play tennis, who brought a tape of this match with him to school. He’d watch it whenever he felt down. I spent a few happy weekend mornings reliving it with him. As you can see from this clip, it wasn’t just the moment of victory that was special, it was Noah’s entire performance that day. I remember thinking at the time that there was no possible chance that he could beat Wilander, who had won the French the year before and looked pretty much invincible on clay. I had been playing tennis at my racquet club that morning and planned to watch most of the match afterward. But Noah had run Wilander off the court so quickly, by the time I walked into a crowded TV room at the club, he was setting up to serve at match point. I was stunned to see Wilander’s return float long and Noah throws his arms up in triumph.

Yannick, the last Slam winner to use a wood-based racquet, had done it by charging the net at all times, by using his famous flair and athleticism more forcefully than ever before, by maneuvering Wilander off the court, by angling off volleys, by crushing leaping overheads, and by wiring the Parisian crowd into his desperate, now-or-never intensity. When he won, he looked for his father and jumped into his arms. If anything, this image is improved by the song used here: Toots and the Maytals’ anthem of soulful abandon, “Pressure Drop.” 

That music, that moment: I hope it makes you feel a little warmer.

***

If Yannick alone doesn't do the trick, try playing all five videos at once. The joys of victory abound. 

Have a good weekend.

Cinderella Goes to Dubai	02/17/2010 - 1:23 PM

A shorter version of this post appeared on ESPN.com yesterday.

Shahar Peer, with the winds of poetic justice firmly at her back, is on a run at the women's event in Dubai. Today the Israeli, who was denied a visa by the United Arab Emirates last year to play this tournament, advanced to the quarterfinals by upending No. 1 seed Caroline Wozniacki in straight sets.

This is storybook, headline-making stuff, but yesterday I wondered which was the more important of the news items coming out of Dubai: That Peer is playing and winning there, or that another, non-Israeli WTA player, Jelena Jankovic, has decided to move to the city and make it her home base.

It would be nice to say the former, of course. To have an athlete from Israel, whose diplomatic existence the UAE doesn’t recognize, competing in that country is a political victory that resonates far beyond the lines of a tennis court. But in many ways this victory wouldn’t have happened without a move like Jankovic’s. While the WTA and its former chief officer Larry Scott deserve credit for demanding that all of its players be guaranteed entry to the UAE this year, this wasn’t just a righteous triumph for freedom. It was also a triumph for the publicity machines of both Dubai and Doha, which have labored for years to show off the world’s top Western athletes—golfers, tennis players, racehorses—happily doing what they do best in their spectacular Middle Eastern cities, and receiving a king’s ransom to do it. The UAE, as well as Qatar, had invested too much in Roger Federer, Maria Sharapova, Andre Agassi, Tiger Woods, and the WTA’s Top 8, who play their year-end championships in Doha, to let it all be scuttled by l’affaire Peer. Certainly Dubai’s title sponsor, the British bank Barclays, doesn’t need any more bad publicity at the moment. Today it was announced that the company’s two top executives gave up their bonuses in 2009 as a “tactical move” to give the bank more “moral authority” in the future. I guess in an era when the popular nickname for Goldman Sachs is "vampire squid," a 92-percent increase in profits over a 12-month period, which Barclays just experienced, leaves you with a lot less moral authority.

Either way, Jankovic, a Serb who has always been based at the Bollettieri academy in Florida, says she’s joining the desert's star-athlete brigade. “I love so many things about this place,” she said of Dubai. “The people are good and the place is lovely as I can step out anytime and practice.” This echoes sentiments shared by Federer, who has trained in the city for years, on his website. “I really like the nice climate in Dubai,” he wrote. “It’s always sunny, making it the ideal location for holidays as well as practice. I like to go shopping and eating out in the great restaurants and hotels. Dubai is a true melting pot of nationalities.”

Sounds nice, doesn't it? A perfect spot for a vacation, and there are plenty of houses and condos available from what I've heard. Besides the appearance-fee and prize-money dollars—Dubai offers the sport’s most lavish player guarantees, while Doha hosts the richest women’s tennis tournament in history—local officials have also featured the pros in some of the more jaw-dropping photo-ops of recent years. Where else can you play tennis on a towering helipad or an indoor ski slope?

Peer’s tale is approximately half of a feel-good story. In the end, it won't matter how an Israeli got to play; it’s the result, the breakthrough, that will count. If it’s money and publicity that made it happen, so be it, it’s not the first time they’ve been the driving force behind social progress. But as we're celebrating that breakthrough and her good play, we can also note a not-so-subtle difference between Peer’s description of her experience in Dubai, and the glowing, travel-brochure descriptions of Jankovic and Federer. An Israeli newspaper reports that Peer’s hotel has sealed off her floor for security reasons, and that her movement has been restricted to the hotel and the tournament site. Her upset of Wozniacki took place on Court 1 rather than the center court, because the smaller venue was easier to lock down. Still, Peer says, “The attitude to me is very warm, and I feel quite safe.” 

Feeling "quite safe": I guess a true melting pot of nationalities has to start somewhere.

Glimpsing Flavia	02/16/2010 - 4:00 PM

It was a weekend of small surges and modest triumphs. Lucie Safarova flashed across the radar screen again in Paris, her Selesian bashball game and preposterously youthful features unchanged since we last saw her. Sam Querrey returned to form in San Jose, where, by extending Andy Roddick to a third-set tiebreaker in the semifinals, he showed that he might just be ready to challenge the guys at the top in 2010. Robin Soderling silenced any murmurs of a post-breakthrough slump by winning in Rotterdam. Fernando Verdasco produced a rare victory over a Top 10 player—Roddick—in the San Jose final. And most significantly, Israel’s Shahar Peer won two matches in Dubai, where she had been denied entry a year ago. I wrote about that development, and who might have the most to gain the most from it, over at ESPN.com earlier today.

For me, though, the small triumph of the weekend was the chance to see another woman briefly flash across the radar screen before vanishing again, the way she always does. That was Italy’s Flavia Pennetta, who made a strong run in Paris before finally getting out-bashed by Safarova 6-4 in the third in the semifinals. This is the way it works with Pennetta. She shows up on the fringes of my tennis-viewing life—saving multiple match points in a dramatic win over Vera Zvonareva at the U.S. Open before losing in the next round, upsetting Maria Sharapova in Los Angeles, belting out a victory song with her teammates after their Fed Cup title victory, and giving the chair umpire the finger in another Fed Cup match (I think it’s the same ump who did the Serena-tirade semi at the Open, ironically enough). Maybe it’s because my sightings of Pennetta are so limited that makes them such a pleasure.

Or maybe it's something more, something slightly indefinable about her and the way she carries herself. Like all Italian players, from Adriano Pannatta and Antonio Zugarelli in the 1970s to Francesca Schiavone and Potito Starace today, the pleasure begins with the musical quality of her name. But what’s striking about Pennetta is that, compared to most of her peers, she makes you feel like you’re watching a woman rather than a girl play tennis. This is partly a function of her age—she’ll be 28 on Thursday—but it’s a quality she’s had for a while now. It’s also a function of her nationality; rather than being limited to a fist-pump and a pony-tail flip, Pennetta expresses a wide range of emotions on court without ever getting depressingly negative. It may even be partly a function of her dress; I always liked the clean, elegant white Tacchini number that she’s sported over the years. 

But what Flavia offers as much as anything else is a change of pace from the WTA norm, circa 2010. She has black hair rather than blonde. She isn’t rail thin, 6-feet tall, or a physical specimen. Like the rest of the women, she’s a baseliner with a two-handed backhand, but she’s not a flat-hitting basher, either. There’s a satisfying straightforwardness and simplicity to her game, but it never appears one-dimensional. If Pennetta lacks killer power from behind the baseline, she can nevertheless hit every shot with authority. It may be meat and potatoes tennis, but it has flavor and low-key flair. Watch Pennetta set up to serve; instead of Sharapova-esque calculation, she does it with the fluid little strutting ball bounce of the born jock. She’s a link to the women’s game before the more programmatic Eastern bloc brigade was loosed on the sport.

That’s also why Pennetta, despite playing virtually every week and working her way up from No. 292 in 2001 to No. 11 at the end of 2009, will remain on the tour’s fringe. Against Safarova in Paris, she hung with the younger player by defending well and taking her opportunities to attack when they came. But in the middle of the third set, the Czech took control with the depth and flat force of her strokes, particularly her service returns. Pennetta couldn’t defend against that forever. Having come up in the late-90s, before the Russian revolution and the consequent spike in power and athleticism, she doesn’t hit with the same abandon as the women ahead of her in the rankings. Pennetta may not melt down too often, but there’s a ceiling to her game.

After 13 years as a pro, she knows it. Pennetta can show deep anger and histrionic frustration on the court—witness the aforementioned middle finger—as well as despair, which is often accompanied by a weird gesture where she holds her racquet strings a centimeter from her face. It’s hard to tell whether she wants to hide behind them or smack them straight into her forehead, à la Mikhail Youzhny. Either way, you feel her pain. But she doesn't let it drag her all the way down, like, say, Zvonareva does at her worst. There's a sense of stability to Pennetta that may paradoxically allow her to show as much emotion as she does. And when the pain and the match are over, there’s her smile, full, toothy, genuine.

Last week, I talked about how tennis is often reduced to a single either/or—Roger or Rafa, Chrissie or Martina. The tours are often reduced in a similar way—10 years ago, it was “all the men can do is serve”; today it’s “all the women can do is bash and shriek.” But again, the diverse, individualistic, world-spanning nature of the pro game always comes back to prove otherwise, to prove that with each match you might just see something different, something you like. And then it might be gone again, off the radar screen, the way Pennetta disappeared before I could see her play a full set on Saturday. Before she left, I had time to notice, with some dismay, that she had ditched the classic Tacchini for a more standard yellow-and-black Adidas get-up. I also had time to notice that, like everything else with Flavia—her name, her age, her rage, her wins, her losses, her smile, her career-long struggles to improve—she wore it well.

Rooting in the Past	02/12/2010 - 4:24 PM

The final installment in my three-part mini-series on the varieties and vagaries of perception in tennis.

It’s fair to say that Ivan Lendl was not a popular champion when he was playing, particularly in the United States. He was perceived here, in the home of John McEnroe and Jimmy Connors, as a sallow-cheeked tennis robot from behind the Iron Curtain bent on removing all joy and artistry from the sport. Sports Illustrated summed the consensus up neatly, if not nicely, by describing Lendl on a 1985 cover as “The Champion That Nobody Cares About.” Or, as Joel Drucker put it: Borg was the Beatles, McEnroe was the Stones, and Lendl was Led Zeppelin, the guy who crushed the magic of the 70s golden age with raw, ugly power.

I would like to say that I bucked the trends, but I must admit that I was not a Lendl fan either. I was a Johnny Mac guy, and then a Boris Becker guy, and then an Andre Agassi guy. Basically I was for everyone except Ivan Lendl. It wasn’t stylistic for me. It was the fact that he won so much, and that he did it with such grim gusto. I didn’t come around to him until he dedicated himself to winning Wimbledon only to come up short in the finals twice. Then I liked him. I’m sure knowing this would make Ivan feel much better about those defeats.

But tennis fans are notorious for not appreciating what they’ve got until it’s gone. Exhibit A: Miloslav Mecir—who would have thought the Slovakian beardo with the tricky, straight-backed, soft-looking strokes would become a cult figure, an icon of tennis nostalgia for fans of a certain age? I liked the Big Cat’s game as much as anyone, and I realize he was hobbled by injuries, but let’s keep one statistic in mind: Andy Roddick, he of the much-maligned, one-shot, lunch-bucket style, has reached five Grand Slam finals; Mecir made it to two, both of which he lost badly to, yes, Ivan Lendl. Those guys who gave everyone else fits? Mecir, Brad Gilbert? They didn’t give Lendl fits. He was a combined 21-1 against them.

Still, I’m amazed to hear so many people now say that they always loved the Sultan of Sawdust. The argyles, the eyelash-picking, the shots at John McEnroe’s head—even Snoop Dogg now says Ivan was the man. So what changed? On a general level, Lendl benefits from a mysterious cultural fact: Everything looks better in the past—athletes, fashions, music, movie stars, book covers, sunglasses, lampshades, coffee cups, sports-team uniforms. Everything. People in New York City are even nostalgic for the Summer of Sam 1970s, which is a little like saying you wish there were more chances for you to be mugged or murdered as you walk down the street. My pet theory on this is that when we look at the past, we don’t take our anxiety with us. What we see is over, we know how it turned out. There’s nothing to be anxious about, so it all seems cool and quaint. This is a relief from our daily lives, where every minute is burdened, somewhere in the back of our brains, with anxiety. Why else would anyone drink? That’s what we’re removing when we do, our nerves.

Anyway, let’s examine the specific case of the resurrection of Ivan Lendl by looking at a video of the man in action, at his peak, against Boris Becker in the 1986 Masters final in New York (Find it here; I couldn't embed it.) What did so many of us miss about him the first time around?

—The intro is strange, don’t you think? Pam Shriver and John Feinstein look absurdly young and sound slightly stoned. Another odd thing about the past: When we know what someone looks like now, and then we see him or her in photos or videos from a few years earlier, they look like kids, even if they were, say 35 years old at the time. It’s a shock to see that the person we know now ever looked that young.

—I have to say Lendl’s patterned, tucked-in shirt and high socks are pretty cool. I don't see any reason to mourn the tight shorts, however.

—Lendl’s reputation is for not being particularly talented or athletic, for making fitness and power, in the form of his inside-out forehand, the coins of the tennis realm rather than the delicate volleying and shot-making of McEnroe. So what do we see Lendl do on the very first point shown here? Come to net behind a soft slice backhand and make a highly athletic and delicate stretch backhand volley. This kind of shot obviously didn’t fit into the Lendl storyline, but he had it nonetheless. That’s one thing you can say about virtually every top player—even if they have a reputation for being able to do just one or two things well, in reality they can do it all well.

—In 1986, this was state of the art tennis, and the all-court games on display—especially Becker’s—more than hold up for entertainment value. But knowing how the men play today, the game then seems almost half-formed, a stop on the way to 2010. No doubt in 25 years, the styles of even Federer and Nadal will no longer look state of the art, either; they’ll look like another stop along the way in the game’s eternal evolutionary process. Nevertheless, the late-80s, early-90s were an underrated period as far as quality of play is concerned. I’m always shocked at the jump that was made between 1981 and 1986. The sport seemed to evolve as much or more during that time period than it has in all the time since. It really is all about the racquets.

—Another thing I’d forgotten or never realized, and that I’ve never heard discussed about Lendl: He could really return serve. Granted, these are highlights, so we don’t see any of his shanks and errors, but it’s shocking how far Becker is from some of Lendl’s backhand chip returns as he comes to the net. Again, it isn’t power that Lendl wins with on these points, it’s placement.

—Of course, he deserves his reputation for certain other aspects of his game. Lendl had heavy feet, though he made the most of them—he does a lot of scrambling here, and never seems out of a point. His backhand was hardly fluid, but he worked hard to learn to come over it, and he uses it to thread the needle on a series of down the line passes. Even his vaunted forehand was somewhat mechanical and loopy in the backswing. Rather than going inside-out, he's best with it when he’s on the run in this video. He nearly decapitates the net-cord judge with one forehand winner.

—What seems a shame to me now, and this goes along with what I wrote about Federer and Nadal this week, is that being a fan of one player means that you can’t appreciate what that player’s most hated rival brings to the sport. You can’t learn from him, about both tennis and life in general. I may have learned about temperamental genius from John McEnroe, but I didn’t appreciate what Lendl had to offer, which would have been even more instructive—how to make do it your way, how to make the most of yourself, how to grow as a player rather than settling for what you're been given, even if it gets you ridiculed.

Lendl began his career as a choker and a tanker; he finished it as a paragon of mental fortitude and beyond-the-call-of-duty effort. He quit against Jimmy Connors in a U.S. Open final; a few years later he went so far as to skip the French Open for the chance to win the one major that had eluded him, Wimbledon. He remade his backhand. He learned to serve and volley for grass. He pretty much invented physical training for tennis, and despite his choppy feet he became a good defensive player.

The guy has earned his nostalgic-icon status. Now I can laugh about the ticks, the sawdust and the multiple racquet changes, that were once so annoying. Back then they seemed soulless and nerdy to me, a case of a guy trying too hard and making tennis less beautiful and instinctive. Now they seem forward-thinking, comically noble attempts at giving himself an edge, any edge. None was more comical than Lendl’s contribution to tennis fashion, the foreign-legion style hat he made himself for the 1990 Australian Open. It looked ridiculous, but it helped him in the heat. He won the tournament.

Tennis is too often cast as an either/or. You identify with and appreciate Federer’s easy elegance, so you can’t appreciate Nadal’s energy, and vice-versa; ditto for Sampras and Agassi, ditto for McEnroe and Lendl. But the pro tours offer too many styles, too many characters, too many ways of looking at the world to be reduced to either/or. But that’s the trade-off of being a fan—you can’t identify with everyone, so you can't learn from everyone. Today, though, it feels good to be a Lendl fan, even if I’m 20 years late. It’s easy, too, because there’s no anxiety to it. I know how it turned out for the game’s greatest overachiever. He ended up on top.

***

Have a good weekend.

Bias Case	02/10/2010 - 3:31 PM

We’ve heard a lot about objectivity in journalism. More specifically, we’ve heard a lot about what a futile, foolish, naïve, and outdated goal it is. Bloggers and talk-show mouths on both sides of the political aisle have beaten it into our heads that beneath the evenhanded veneer, the “mainstream media” is a cesspit of thinly veiled bias and demagoguery (love that word). I get it, I suppose, though I still prefer the primly informative old “MSM”—is it possible to outlaw the use of a set of initials?—to the rancorous self-congratulation of the blogosphere.

The skepticism has even seeped into the seemingly innocent and innocuous world of tennis, where the words of commentators and writers are routinely examined with a jeweler’s eye in search of bias against one player or another. I shouldn’t say “one player of another,” really; as anyone who has visited Tennis.com for more than a few seconds knows, there are only two players that fans care about to this degree: Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal. The fueds between their camps swamp everything else on this website. You might begin a discussion talking about Don Budge’s hair or Frew McMillan's hat, and when you come back 10 minutes later it’s all Roger and Rafa.

Speaking for Pete Bodo and myself, I can say that each of us tries to be as objective as we can in talking about these two players while still conveying the emotion and excitement of watching them. Part of writing about the entire sport of tennis is not writing as a fan of one particular player. Still, neither of us could avoid rattling the cages of Federer’s and Nadal’s fans if we tried. Maybe the strongest testament to how good Federer has been is that his fans now seem to have something invested in his infallibility—he's allowed them to believe in perfection. I once thought of him as the President of Tennis; at this point he may be closing in on Papal status. But I’ve gotten it from both sides. I’ve been asked, by a Federer fan, “When are you going to start doing Nadal’s hair?” After a recent podcast, I was asked, by a Nadal fan, “Why don’t you just come out and admit you’re in love with Roger?”

Which means, I suppose, that I’m doing my job. But after this year’s Aussie Open final, I began to wonder, like the rest of the world’s bloggers and talk-show mouths, whether objectivity was possible, or even whether it was the best way to analyze a tennis match. I’ve admitted before that even though I’m a tennis journalist, I began as a fan and I remain a fan. I would hate to lose that irrational passion, and I would hate to have to write about a sport I didn’t care about. I’ve also admitted that, as far as Federer and Nadal are concerned, I’m a Rafa fan and a Roger admirer, even though I've liked them equally when I've met them one-on-one (I liked Novak Djokovic as well—he was the most outgoingly friendly of the three). 

I tend to root for underdogs and guys who don’t necessarily believe they’re the best there is—guys with doubts. For these reasons, I rooted for Agassi and admired Sampras (though I’ve come around more to Sampras’ style and demeanor watching him in old You Tube clips). For the same reasons, I root more often for Nadal, and find myself remaining neutral about Federer most of the time. As a fan and player of the sport, I find it impossible not to like and appreciate the guy who plays it better than anyone has, but there’s also a lot more excitement to Federer’s matches when he’s challenged than when he’s cruising. Either way, I’ve always given him all due credit for his success.

Still, I was surprised to find myself rooting for Federer in his Melbourne final against Andy Murray. I like Murray, I like his game, I want to see him win a major someday, and as I said, I like upsets. But in the previous round I’d been so impressed by the clinic in fluidity that Federer had put on against Jo-Wilfried Tsonga that I couldn’t help but want to see tennis like that, and even root for tennis like that, again. I even found myself briefly believing, the way his fans do, that Federer plays tennis the way it’s supposed to be played, which is an attitude I’ve always found to be beside-the-point in sports. What was interesting was that as the match progressed, I realized that I was seeing Federer in a different light, watching him in a different way, than I ever had before.

In the past, I’d believed that he didn't get nervous—I mean really nervous, gagging nervous. Not having a stake in the outcome, I always just assumed he would win, and that deep down he assumed the same thing, and that most of the time we were right. Now, with Murray keeping the first set tight, I could see that Federer’s nerves do affect his play, especially on his backhand side. I had also believed that Federer’s periodic inconsistency was mostly the product of his trying to take the ball so early off the bounce. Now I could see that confidence played a role here as well; one miss would lead to a frown, which would lead to a worse miss. 

Along those same lines, I’d never read Federer’s emotions particularly well, the way I can most other players'. While his gestures were still minimal in Melbourne, I could make out more uncertainty and frustration in them, as well as more relief when things went well. Again, as a neutral observer, I couldn’t bring myself to believe that Federer thought many of his matches, even his Slam finals, were ever in doubt. I believed that, like Sampras, deep down Federer knew he was better than anyone else, and that it would be proven in the end. I was wrong; it may seem obvious in retrospect, but the man, like all other men, has doubts.

There was a simple reason for my new perceptions: I was feeling Federer’s emotions along with him. I thought about a conversation I had had with Tom Perrotta a few days earlier. We were trying to decide who got jumpier, Federer or Nadal. I said it was obviously Nadal, while Tom thought they both did pretty equally, and that they were both good at finding ways around their nerves. Now it was clear that I only thought Nadal got tight more often because, as a fan, I could see when he was tight and recognize when it affected his play. Nadal’s fans have credited me with being able to see, more than some other observers, that their guy isn’t just a one-dimensional grinder, that beneath the grunts and fist-pumps it’s his tactical sense as much as anything else that wins him matches. And it’s true—I’ve been surprised at the persistence of the idea, even among knowledgeable tennis writers, that Rafa does little more than slug the ball crosscourt and keep it in play for three hours. 

The flipside of this, however, is that I’ve had trouble seeing what Federer does tactically. I’ve written many times that his strategy seemed to consist of rallying patiently with his backhand until he found a chance to hit a winner with his forehand—it all seemed too easy to my detached eyes. In the Aussie final, my fan’s eyes could see that Federer’s tactical genius in this match was really a genius for courage under pressure, for recognizing and seizing moments, for ignoring his nerves and focusing clearly. Unlike Murray, when Federer needed a point, when he seemed in danger of letting the momentum slip away, he became less hesitant. If he’d been rallying passively for a few points, he would suddenly, at 30-all, take his first forehand and barrel in behind it. Or he would carve his crosscourt backhand just a little finer and send Murray just a little farther off the court. Or he would make life simple by playing meat-and-potatoes, serve-forehand tennis. Federer shares this genius of experience and courage with another Slam-winning veteran, Serena Williams. Their 28 combined major titles tell them that all things being equal, nobody is better than they are, so why shouldn’t they take the game to their opponents?

I knew that about Federer at an objective, intellectual level. But I had only rarely recognized that it’s a struggle for him the way it is for everyone else, that he begins with doubts. Struggling along with Federer gave me a deeper appreciation for how consistently he overcomes them. Does this mean that objectivity for a writer isn’t just impossible, but counterproductive? Do fans see the game better because they feel the game more? Is what we call fan bias really just a fuller recognition of the human side of a player? If so, I’ve got a big problem: How do I make myself into a fan of everyone I watch?

Being There	02/08/2010 - 3:44 PM

It’s that time of year again: February. For a tennis fan, the word rolls off the tongue and lands with a thud. It’s the sound of winter returning after all that Aussie sun. What seems like a soothing lull in the action at first begins to get a little worrying by month’s end. Where does the sport go, you might find yourself asking. To South America, to Holland, to Dubai, to Zagreb and Johannesburg and Marseilles; tennis is everywhere and nowhere at once.

By February’s end, after the guarantees have been paid and the results have been totaled up, nothing historic or memorable will have happened. But if it doesn’t mean much for the Nadals and Henins of the world—neither of whom are going to play until March—February isn’t a complete waste. It has already allowed Marin Cilic, who won in Zagreb, to consolidate his Melbourne gains, and given Melanie Oudin, who won two Fed Cup matches this weekend, some much-needed positive energy. It has also, naturally, left Gael Monfils injured again.

Before February wreaks any more havoc, I’m going to spend this week writing about a subject that preoccupied me last month while watching the Australian Open men’s final: the varying perceptions and points of view that are possible while watching a tennis match. I’ll start with that fundamental question summed up in the old (yes, very old) blank cassette ad: Is it live, or is it Memorex? For me, as a professional observer of the sport, it can be rephrased as: Which gives you more insight into a Grand Slam final, watching it live in the arena, or on TV?

I asked myself that question as I watched Roger Federer beat Andy Murray on the television in my living room, on the other side of the world from Melbourne. This was a drastic contrast from the previous Slam, the U.S. Open, where I’d been a few feet from the court as Juan Martin del Potro upset Federer. Which was the better view?

The logical answer, and the consensus wisdom of all media outlets, is the front-row seat. You are there—how can you beat that? But, as every reporter who covers an event that's aimed primarily at a TV audience can tell you, there are major trade-offs involved. Last year the New Yorker sent one of its columnists, Hendrik Hertzberg, to the Democratic National Convention in Denver, where Barack Obama was going to be named the party’s presidential nominee. Hertzberg said afterward that, being on site, he couldn’t really cover the event properly because he didn't see it on TV.

The 2009 U.S. Open final offered a perfect example of why that seemingly farcical statement is true. From the press seats near the south baseline in Ashe Stadium, I could see Federer and the chair umpire jawing at each other at certain points. But I couldn’t hear anything that was said. Neither could the reporters around me. It turned out, of course, that Federer was cursing at the ump. This is not something you see every day, and was deservedly a major topic of conversation among fans afterward. But the only reporter who asked Federer anything about it in his press conference was a guy who had been watching the match on the TV monitor at his desk. Most likely, he’d been unable to secure a seat in the lower media section and decided that he’d see more on the tube than he would from the upper media seats, which are halfway up the stadium in Ashe. He wasn't wrong. (In the bottom right corner of the photo above, you can see another U.S. reporter, Bill Simons, straining to hear the conversation between the players and the chair umpire.)

By contrast, I didn’t have to worry about missing much of anything from Melbourne. ESPN had the score on its screen at all times, which comes in handy when you're trying to record the precise moment when an important shot was hit or crucial point played. The network periodically flashed the number of break points won and saved by each player, and their first-serve percentages—also handy. The commentators framed the match in a way that I thought was generally accurate—Murray's timidity vs. Federer's opportunism—and I noted some of their thoughts for my own analysis later. They also framed the off-court battle of quotes, in which Federer said that Murray “needed” the match more than he did. If I'd been at the tournament, I would likely have heard Federer say them, but I might not have heard how the network and the press used those quotes later to stoke a few flames between the players. Most important, on television I watched the points through a camera set up behind the court. This is the best angle for seeing rallies and tactics develop, and it’s one you never get from the press seats, which are invariably off to one side at the Slams.

I missed all of this at Flushing Meadows. Despite taking notes throughout, afterward I had trouble deciphering when exactly certain breaks of serve had happened, and in which game Federer had been two points from the match. I had no idea until later that Federer’s first-serve percentage was around 50, or that he was in double digits in double faults. I also didn’t realize that del Potro was taking pace off his first serve as the match progressed. Theoretically I could have found this out by observing the radar gun after every delivery, but I’ve never gotten into that habit. It’s much easier to have John McEnroe or Brad Gilbert feed you this information. Worse, I was more easily distracted in the arena, and I couldn't pause the action with a remote. A fellow writer would sit down and we’d have a conversation over the course of a couple games. Or I’d notice an expensively dressed man who was sitting with his wife a few rows in front of me and have to ask my friend Tom Perrotta, “Wasn't he with a much younger woman last week?”

As far as seeing how the rallies and tactics developed live, I understood that Federer was going to del Potro’s forehand too often, the same way I could see that he successfully changed this tactic over the course of the first set against Murray in Melbourne. At the same time, though, games seem to go by much more quickly when you’re watching live. There’s no commentator breaking things up with between-point talk, or a score resetting itself on the screen in front of you. There’s also a stronger sense of inevitability in an arena. From close range, you can read each player’s body language and get a sense of when one of them is going to throw away a point, go for broke, or dig in for a battle. This tends, once a game gets to 40-15 or 40-0, to make me relax my attention slightly. If I can sense that a game is going to be over, I don’t analyze what happens on the next point quite as closely.

This brings me to the one very real advantage of being there. You feel the truth of a match, your own truth. At the U.S. Open, you can rent headphones that allow you to hear what's being said in the CBS booth. You would think this would add to the experience of a match, the way it does when you’re in your living room. But the one time I tried it, I found that it came between me and the action. With Johnny Mac narrating, I couldn’t keep my own thoughts about the match in my head. I was watching it rather than feeling it.

What did I sense while watching del Potro and Federer? That the Argentine was going to win, not because, as others told me afterward, Federer was being too casual, or that he was being too stubborn strategically. While my sideline vantage didn’t allow me to see how rallies were being structured very easily, my proximity to the court did allow me to see, hear, feel something just as valuable—the depth and velocity of each player’s shots, and the positions from which they were hitting them. Once del Potro won the second set, his coach, Franco Davin, said that he “knew Juan would win.” I had virtually the same view as Davin, from the other side of the court, and I thought the same thing. His shots were knocking Federer backward and off balance, something I’d never seen before, not even when he’d played Nadal. The tide was with the taller man, and nothing else mattered. You might think that Federer’s first-serve percentage and double-fault count caused his defeat, but I would say it’s just as likely that they, along with whatever other match stats you might want to throw out there, were the effect of this basic fact. The same way that a football game is won in the yard between the offensive line and the defensive line, last year’s U.S. Open final was won in the few inches that Federer was forced to lean backward, both mentally and physically, by the pace of del Potro’s ground strokes.

To paraphrase a philosophical cliché, the reporter watching on TV with the rest of the world is the fox, who knows many things, while the guy stranded in his press seat with only his eyes and ears to help him is the hedgehog, who has a chance to know one big thing. If I see a match on TV, I tend to see it and write about the way the rest of the world sees it; I don’t miss much, but the analysis can be conventional (this is one reason I'll occasionally watch with the sound off). In person, I miss many elements and pieces of information that have been gathered by the TV network and which could deepen the way I see a match. But I also get to find my own version of what happened—I can feel it, in the body language of the players, in the sound of their shots, in the stadium’s air.

Which is the better, truer vantage point? Neither, in my opinion. But while I enjoy watching tennis on TV, the chance to sit by myself, with a notebook and pen, a few feet from the court, somewhere far from my living room (the farther the better), and think about what’s happening, with no help from anyone else, so I can put it into words later is one of the most satisfying experiences I can imagine having. My analysis might be limited, it might not be fully informed by all the latest quotes and numbers, it might even be proven wrong eventually. But I wouldn’t want to write about tennis if I couldn’t use it to find the limits of my own thoughts and senses. I wouldn't want to write about tennis if I couldn't, every now and then, be there.