24 posts categorized "August 2010"
 Mardy Fish isn’t easy to recognize these days. When I walked onto the Grandstand this afternoon, Fish and his opponent, Jan Hajek, were facing each other at the net, waiting for the coin toss. I knew, in theory, that Fish was the taller of the two, but I was still a little stunned to see what this 30-pounds-lighter version looked like in person. The rail thin legs and skinny arms, the now-baggy shirt, the newly unearthed muscle definition: It all combines to make him appear taller and, at least in his body type, younger. Fish isn’t quite used to it himself. As the chair umpire tossed the coin, he was busy drawing in the string around his shorts, which still looked a little big on him.
“I feel like a completely different person,” Fish said with a touch of wonder in his voice after his eventual five-set win over Hajek. That starts with the person on court. “I can do so many things with my game that I could never do before.” Fish wasted no time showing one of those things off. Hajek, an undersized but pesky Czech baseliner ranked 82nd in the world, tried a drop shot on the first point. Fish, never a speedster in his past life, was on top of it in a (relative) flash. Much later, after he’d gone down two sets to one, Fish brought the crowd to its feet and grabbed the momentum back for good by tracking down a hard-hit forehand in one corner and looping it all the way back crosscourt for a winner. That shot came at the end of a long rally on a hot day, and it required speed and balance that Fish might not have been able to summon even as recently as last year.
According to Fish, the changes in his life and self-confidence extend far beyond the court. Asked what he thought when he looked at pictures of himself from a couple of years ago, he said he looked “really different. I look at Stacey [his wife] and say, ‘What was your problem? Why didn’t somebody tell me that I looked like that.”
“I feel healthy,” he added, moving from the comic to the therapeutic. “A lot of it has to do with just sort of walking around the locker room, feeling confident. I want to set a precedent to the guys that I can play in the hottest stuff out there. I want to sort of put some sort of myth out there.”
The mythic Fish was reborn after he was forced to have knee surgery because, as he admitted today, he was too heavy. That’s not too surprising, considering that he also confessed that his training meal on the road often consisted of a late-night pie from Domino’s. What I’ve been wondering is, what took him so long, why did he wait until he was 28 to get with any kind of program? Fish offered no excuses, saying he made bad choices and essentially coasted on his talent from age 20 to 26. He also credited getting married, which was once the death knell for a player, with making him hungrier—perhaps literally—and more determined. Fish may be one of those rare tennis players who needs to win for someone other than himself.
It was a big part of his win today. Hajek, who had dictated play through the second and third sets, visibly slowed at the start of the fourth—even his first-serve speed dropped precipitously. “It’s a good feeling,” Fish said, “to wear down a player and know that all the hard work that you put in just paid off right there.”
Still, Fish came perilously close to losing what may have been the most important and pressure-filled match of his career, to a guy he should beat easily. For long stretches, Fish backed deep behind the baseline and was content to let the shorter Hajek run the show. If you didn’t know better, you might have thought that Fish was playing with something to lose, and he wasn’t quite ready for that feeling. You might have been right. “This is a new position for me,” he said. “It’s new to have a lot of expectations, have a lot of people talking about you. It’s where we want to be, but I’ll have to get used to it.”
Now that this early scare is behind him, is Fish ready to do big things at this year’s U.S. Open? How seriously should we take him as a contender? His history would tell us that as soon as we start to believe, that's exactly when we should think twice about him. On the plus side, he’s clearly a much more mature person and player. His serve and backhand have always been weapons. And he’ll know he can go five sets and win. But there are two caveats.
Number one: Is Fish a little too mature to break through at this late date? Is he a little too willing to admit his flaws to himself? This is a laudable trait in any human other than a professional athlete. Today Fish said he believed he could beat anyone in three-out-of-five, but that he had never “shown” that he could do that. That’s certainly true—he’s never reached a Slam semi—but it strikes me as almost too thoughtful, and doubt-full, for someone who is going to have to make himself win the types of matches he’s never won before. I’d like to be wrong about this.
The second caveat is more cut and dry: After his serve, does Fish have the game from the baseline to go all the way? As I said, he played pretty passively today, especially during his return games. More important, Fish didn’t show off the type of point-ending forehand that we know wins majors. He has tweaked this stroke a few times over the years, but it will never be a natural born killer. It’s still mostly a looped rally shot that, if it doesn’t sit up, also doesn’t penetrate through the court for many winners.
Fish has a good draw. One seed in his section, Baghdatis, was knocked off today, and another, Novak Djokovic, used up a lot of energy avoiding his own brush with an upset. Whoever his opponents turn out to be, Fish will have to play better than he did today to beat them. He may be able to go five in any kind of weather, but no one takes home the U.S. Open title on fitness alone—you still have to win one of the first three sets. New body, new game, new expectations: That's a lot to recognize, let alone get used to, in a couple of weeks.
 There’s dissension in the ranks of Robert Kendrick’s rooting section.
“Come on, Robert, be scrappy!” one of them yells, to the dismay of the woman down the bench from him, who may or may not be his sister.
“Uh . . . scrappy?”
Whatever the merits of the word, it seems to help. Kendrick, the athletic, dangerous, flawed veteran qualifier from California, breaks serve soon after.
“That’s it, Kendo,” another member of his crew yells, “just play the game, just relax and play the game. That’s all you have to do!”
Kendrick flashes a gleaming American smile in his direction. His top teeth blend together into one long white line. He wishes tennis were that easy.
Kendrick and his opponent, Gael Monfils, have made Court 11, one of the larger side courts on the Open grounds, feel like center court for the day. Ashe, as usual for a first-week day session, is blowout central. Outside of the luxury suites, it’s a ghost town. The smart fans have spotted their chance to see a player of Monfils’ considerable entertainment skills up close, and they’ve taken it. Every seat is filled on Court 11 at the start of the match, and as it progresses through three hours and five sets, the people keep coming. By the end, they're sitting in the aisles and standing on benches. It’s a day-spanning match, beginning in broiling heat around noon and lasting all the way until the sun begins its descent and the light begins to go golden on the trees around the court. For those three hours, not a whole lot changes. People mill, players run, sneakers squeak, and planes circle their way around the grounds and toward La Guardia. The sight of them floating just off in the distance still gives me a slight sense of relief. I'll never forget how ugly and jarringly disruptive those jets were when they ripped right over the courts—1700 of them a day in the 1980s. Their scarred undersides looked like the bellies of titanic rusted dolphins.
When I saw that Monfils was going to be on 11, I kind of imagined him being too big for the court. Not physically, but athletically. Somehow I could see him leaping for a backhand out wide and bounding right over the stands. And while that never quite happens today, it doesn’t take long for Monfils, who’s wearing a somehow-appropriate skintight sleeveless shirt and long check shorts, to get his freaky show on the road. On the first point I see, he hurls himself into the air for an overhead, as if he’s doing a long jump. When the crowd lets out a long collective oooh, he hams it up a little more, hitting a cute forehand volley behind Kendrick. It’s an unnecessary shot, but it works anyway. More than that, it shows the possibilities that exist in tennis if you’re willing to let your flair get in the way of your chances of winning. Nobody explores those possibilities more fully—and foolishly—than Monfils.
But he’s not the only performer out here today. In his own way, Kendrick is one as well. A relentless self-berater and frustrated mumbler, he brings to the surface the inner turmoil that most tennis players feel. Kendrick isn’t a natural showman; after one bad miss, he waits too long before finally deciding to flip his racquet to the backstop. The timing of the whole thing is off, it looks tacked on and unnecessary, and he loses the chance for catharsis that a really good racquet throw can provide. But this awkwardness only makes Kendrick seem more genuine. He dramatizes the typcial conflict that goes on inside our heads: How, exactly, should I react to a bad miss?; and, more important, how do I keep control of myself? You can see the fight for control in every aspect of Kendrick’s body language.
They split the first two sets, but when Monfils wins the third it appears that he’s going to leave his lower-ranked opponent behind. Kendrick has always had the physical gifts, but there’s a busyness to his game that makes it inefficient. There’s something extra, something not quite perfectly streamlined, both in his strokes and in the way he gets around the court. Monfils simply looks like he has more time to set up and hit the ball. But while Kendrick doubles faults on a couple of crucial occasions, I feel like the set is decided not by his failure, but by one extraordinary shot from Monfils, one that the American, as well as 99.9 percent of all players, will never hit in his career. On the first point at 2-2 in the third, Kendrick serves, comes in behind it, and snaps a very good volley crosscourt. Monfils, by some miracle, moves forward (his long legs gobble up ground effortlessly), cuts the ball off with his backhand, and flips it back crosscourt. Kendrick, stunned, nets the volley and is eventually broken. That in a nutshell, is the difference between a qualifier and a Top 20 player. The qualifier has a complete game; he does everything you can ask of a player. But what defines the Top 20 guy, and what separates him from the journeyman, is his ability to do what no one can ask, to do the unbelievable.
As we know, Monfils loves the unbelievable way too much. He relies on it. Up 2-0 in the fourth-set tiebreaker, a victory and a shower in his sights, he chooses to hit a jumping backhand. He misses it, Kendrick get his teeth into the tiebreaker, and goes on to play his best tennis of the day to close out the set. The match has reached a crescendo; the fans are on their feet.
The only trouble is, neither player has much left for the fifth. Monfils stops running after balls and is broken for 1-2. After double faulting to end that game, Monfils walks to the sideline in a daze, and Kendrick looks destined to pull the upset when he goes up 40-15 for a 3-1 lead. But getting a glimpse of the finish line can do funny things to a player. Kendrick, with a double-fault and a netted forehand, proceeds to give back his serve. Oddly, even as he loses the lead, he stops berating himself. It doesn’t help; he needs the inner conflict. In the final game, he nervously short-arms his backhand for the first time all day and loses the set and the match 6-4.
As for Monfils, he saves one more miracle for the final set. Time after time, he hits drop shots from behind the baseline—exactly where you aren’t supposed to try it—and then stands still to admire his (admittedly beautiful) shot, rather than running forward. Noticing this, Kendrick drops him back. No matter: Whatever spot Monfils starts running from, he can always catch up to a drop shot. He essentially shrinks a tennis court to the size of a squash court. What can you, or I, or Robert Kendrick do against the unbelievable.
After the final point, Monfils blows out his lips in relief, while Kendrick looks down at the court, his fingers pinched over his nose. He’s lost the marathon after three hours, and he doesn’t know how to react. Afterward, Monfils says he played poorly, and that he fought himself all day. But, French showman that he is, he also says that over the last few games, he looked around at the crowd, and the grounds, and maybe even the planes overhead, and he couldn't help but enjoy the moment, win or lose.
“OK, it’s a game,” he thought, “it’s a great game.”
Joy, flair, confusion, the awkwardly real and the unbelievable, all came to the side courts today. The U.S. Open is on.
 A tennis player’s career isn’t a sprint or a marathon; it’s one long roller coaster. We usually measure success by looking at their seasons as a whole—we talk about Laver’s 1969, McEnroe’s 1984, Federer’s 2005 (Or do we talk about his ’06? ’04? ’07? Take your pick). What’s forgotten is that with very few exceptions, each season contains its own slumps and hot streaks, its phases and story arcs, its various ups and downs, which may come and go in a matter of weeks. Consider Andy Murray’s 2010. In the course of nine months, he’s reached the sport’s summit, a Grand Slam final in Melbourne, only to tumble off that mountaintop and get lost in a deep valley of mediocrity for the rest of the spring. By the time I saw him in Paris, he looked tentative and haggard, seemingly unsure of how much effort the whole thing was worth.
At that point a consensus began to coalesce around the idea that Murray didn’t have the stomach—or, at a more technical level, the forehand—to win a Slam, that his steady, reactive game would never get it done over two weeks of three out of five. And while his straight-set loss to Rafael Nadal at Wimbledon didn’t do anything to change those opinions, the tournament still served as a new beginning for Murray, a base of confidence, proof to himself that good things could still happen on a tennis court. Very good things: Despite splitting with his coach, Miles Maclagan, and blowing a lead in the L.A. final to Sam Querrey, Murray settled in comfortably in Toronto and took care of Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer back to back, in straight, non-tiebreaker sets, for the title. Suddenly, two months after his Slam obituary had been written and edited, Murray was back on the very short list—like, three people—of favorites for the U.S. Open.
That’s where he stood when I talked with him Saturday at the National Tennis Center. The low-key, rarely smiling, at times flat out grim-looking Scot had just finished a practice session with Novak Djokovic. Even on the brink of the last Slam of the year, the one he likes best and one he’s just short of being the favorite to win, Murray was studiously even keel and big picture.
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How big of a boost was Toronto for your confidence?
That was great, obviously, but it was Wimbledon really that helped me get it back. I’d played pretty poorly for a while before that, especially during the clay season. Getting to the semis at Wimbledon was a big help in getting over that and clearing my head. Toronto was sort of the next step after, and I felt really good there that week. It's obviously pretty special to get wins for Roger and Rafa. So yeah, I enjoyed it [slight sarcastic understatement detected in that last sentence].
Right now you’re playing without a coach. Do you have a different mindset on court in that situation?
No, there’s no real difference on the court. Even with a coach, you can’t get any help; you get used to being lonely out there. The difference is in the build up for a tournament. When you’ve been with a coach for a long time, it’s nice to have that freedom for a while, and it can help you relax as you prepare and as the tournament goes on. But I don’t want to go for two years without a coach or something.
You’re among the top seeds again here and a favorite to win it. Did you learn anything from the Australian Open final [Murray lost to Federer in straight sets]?
You learn from the whole tournament. You might look at it, look at just the final, and say it was a disappointing result, but it was a very good two weeks for me. Before that, I hadn’t really learned how to peak for the Slams, the training that went into it and the scheduling. I was in Miami for a solid month leading up to Australia just training and practicing, and that’s what led to me getting to the final.
I also learned a lot right after that. I should have taken some more time off, like Roger did, because I was pretty tired from the whole lead-in and then the tournament. Getting to a Slam final or winning one is a longer process than people realize.
Do you look to Roger as model for that kind of thing?
Well, you do watch what he and Rafa do because of their success. But you also learn that everybody is different. Roger doesn’t play as many events as somebody like Djokovic, say, and I’m somewhere in the middle. Over time you figure out what you can handle, but when it comes to the Slams you do keep an eye on someone like Roger and how he approaches things.
Have you done anything new with your equipment, your racquet or strings, this year?
Last year, after Wimbledon I went to a heavier racquet [Head YouTek Radical Pro] for a little more weight of shot. It's helped with pace and depth.
We’ve been hearing that the strings have helped change the game by allowing players to get more spin on the ball. Do you think they've been a big factor?
I’m not sure how big the effect of strings alone has been. The game has definitely evolved from when we used wood racquets, but there are factors like slower courts, too. I think it evolves because players try new shots, they learn new things they can do with the ball consistently. The strings have helped with spin, yeah, but you can’t just chalk it up to them. There’s more to shot-making.
You were more aggressive earlier in points against Nadal and Federer in Toronto. Will you try to do that at the Open as well?
Against Roger and Rafa you need to keep the ball deep and take a few more chances, or they’ll get on top of you. But every match is different. I know what I’m comfortable doing, and if I try to be more aggressive than that all the time I can end up making rash decisions. I’m not going to come into a tournament like this with a blanket idea of being more aggressive, but knowing that it worked well against those guys makes me feel good about my attacking game.
You said you’ve learned how to peak for a Slam. Do you think you’re doing that now?
I’ve played well after having a break from tournaments in the past, and that’s happened again this summer. Yeah, I feel good.
 The scars of school never entirely heal, do they? It’s been almost 20 years since I attended an institution of higher learning, or any kind of learning, but the onset of the U.S. Open always calls up that swirling, oppressive mix of early fall emotions that came with the annual return to class. The dwindling light and the first sporadic cool breezes of late August still bring back a taste of the anticipation and dread that came with school, its girls, books, teachers, sweaters, and bus rides. Wimbledon happened at the early height of summer, and as a kid its pure green was the perfect accompaniment to our escape. The Open felt heavier. Grades were back; life was back; the future was back. You felt the pressure of all three. The party, the free ride, was over.
I wrote about the 1981 U.S. Open here the other day, and seeing clips of the final brought back an intense set of memories of that particular fall, when I was 12. I watched that tournament—which I think was televised only on the weekends—mostly on two tiny (like 10 inches each) TVs, one in my family’s kitchen and the other in the basement of my friend Tom's house. I’d played tennis seriously for a few years, and I was all about Bjorn Borg. When he played, I sat without moving or speaking, with my back pinned against the couch. During his 1979 Wimbledon final against Roscoe Tanner, I was next to my uncle, who was rooting for Tanner. When the match got tight at the end of the fifth set, he put his hand on my stomach jokingly, as if to say, “Getting nervous?” I threw his hand off angrily and turned the other way.
To me McEnroe was the invader, the interloper—how could anyone think this kid should steal the king’s crown? Well, my friend Tom did. He had just picked up the sport that summer, and had no special reverence for Borg. He was pro-American, in the new Reaganite spirit of nationalism that had swept the country since the president’s shooting that spring. McEnroe was the tennis equivalent of that spirit. America was back, and the Davis Cup stalwart was doing his part on the court. His serve-and-volley style seemed to be a return to the manly tennis values of an earlier day. He attacked, unlike Borg. He revered Laver. Jack Kramer loved him. While I would root for him him too someday, I couldn't do that with Borg around.
Tom and I were starting 7th grade that fall, a new junior high school that was bigger than the one we had attended. We spent the last weekend before venturing into that massive unknown watching the Open in his basement. Along with McEnroe, there was also a sense at that point, three years after the tournament had moved from the grass and clay of Forest Hills to the hot asphalt of Flushing Meadows, that the Open had shed its image as Wimbledon's poorly maintained cousin. The site was modern, it was bigger, the event was more lucrative. It was the future. Just as important, for the first time in tennis history, it was the Open, rather than Wimbledon, that felt like the true world championship of tennis. Instead of grass, the bumpy and slippery surface of the old private club, the Open was played on the same true-bouncing hard courts that so many new players had learned the game on over the last decade. Plus, McEnroe, who had won the tournament the previous two years, was returning to New York in 1981 as the No. 1 seed and the new Wimbledon champion. Borg had never won at the Open, on the courts that now were the game's new surface of record.
This sense of the increased stature of the Open only increased the pressure I felt watching it. I could feel it all the way from New York in the town where we lived. Borg had to win it; something would be incomplete in the universe until he did. McEnroe couldn’t actually get the better of him, could he? The Red Sox would never beat the Yankees, right? That Labor Day weekend, the middle of the tournament, Tom and I hit balls in the mornings at the courts at our old elementary school, and then watched as McEnroe and Borg slowly descended through the brackets and made their way toward each other from opposite ends of the draw. We watched a tight first set between McEnroe and Kevin Curren. At one point, Tom said, “Curren’s good, but he’s got no forehand.” Naturally, on the next point Curren went on a forehand rampage, hitting four or five of them in a row that pushed McEnroe farther back, before finishing it with one last forehand winner. Tom and I couldn’t believe it. We couldn’t stop laughing.
But the tension between us was real. He hated the “arrogant” Borg, even calling him a “cur,” which I simply could not comprehend. What was there not to like about Borg? He had aura. He showed that being aggressive didn’t always work, that quietness and class, as well as a devastatingly pinpoint passing shot, were life’s real truths. To Tom, Mac was the return of some kind of retro world order that we’d both heard lamented by our parents so often in the late 70s. He played the game the right way, up front, with authority and initiative.
We watched McEnroe play a see-saw semifinal with his friend Vitas Gerulaitis. I prayed Vitas would pull out the fifth set; Borg had never lost to him! But that would have gone against all the laws of destiny. At the end, when McEnroe finally finished it, Tom bent over and pumped his fist. I was silent, hating Vitas for losing, wishing it could all be played over again. Later that night, though, I was encouraged, in a bittersweet way, by Borg’s demolition of Jimmy Connors in the other semi, in one of the finest matches of his career. I’d sat through two Open finals between these two where Connors had spoiled Borg’s chances to get the New York monkey off his back. Connors was that monkey, really, but even now, when Borg had finally beaten him here, it wasn’t enough. It would be the last match Borg would win at a Grand Slam.
The morning of the final, I could feel my legs shake when I got up. This match begins at 4:00 because of the NFL, and the fact that it goes from daylight to darkness isn’t easy for the players. But there’s something about that time, and that twilight, that maximizes the pressure and jittery energy of the moment, at least as a fan. You’ve had just a little longer to think about it than a normal day match, but it doesn’t have the relaxed, end-of-day atmosphere of a night match, either. The Open men's final makes dusk seem vicious.
This was it. If Borg lost . . . it was the abyss. No U.S. Open and three straight Slam losses to McEnroe. It was unthinkable. I couldn’t take watching the match with Tom, so I sat by myself in my family’s kitchen and saw it on an even tinier black-and-white set. It was the same TV that had brought us so much good luck the previous year when the Phillies had won the World Series. Not this time: I sat on a kitchen chair with my knee in my mouth—funny how good it tastes, isn’t it?—and watched as McEnroe gutted Borg with two topspin lobs late in the third set. I can still feel the awful sinking helpless feeling I had as I saw those shots go up and come down, way inside the lines and far out of Borg’s reach.
I yelled at my mom for something, and then watched in stone cold silence as the crowd booed Borg’s early departure from the trophy ceremony. Even McEnroe didn’t seem to fully enjoy himself. He closed his remarks saying, with an odd bitterness of his own, that he hoped Borg would "win this damn tournament someday.”
It was a joyless ending to a now legendary era in tennis. The next year, with Borg gone, I became a huge McEnroe fan and remained one for the rest of his career. Tom quit tennis that same year. We stayed best friends all the way through high school. Every year, as school began and all the anticipation and dread, the books and girls, filled our heads once again, we headed to his basement to watch the Open. Thank God it was never like '81 again.
 “U.S. Open draw revealed.” These were the dramatic words that the tournament’s website used to announce that the big event was officially on, that we could all start squinting and speculating. Sounds mysterious, doesn’t it? What was the big secret about the draw? Wasn’t it made in front of our eyes, on television? Wouldn’t that have been a more exciting way of putting it: “U.S. Open draw done before your very eyes.” Maybe next year.
Like everything else TV can get its hands and cameras on, the draws at the Slams have become an event unto themselves. Which is all to the good: Whatever you think of ESPN’s coverage—and I’m going to go out on a limb and say that most of you thought it was horrible—a draw is, at least in parts, a naturally dramatic event, one that shouldn’t be passed up. That’s especially true in tennis, where the brackets have such a huge effect on any tournament as a whole. The winner will hold the trophy, collect the cash, and get his name engraved in the roll call of legends, but what won’t be remembered is that he’ll only have had to beat seven of the 127 other players who showed up to get there.
Who has the easiest seven-person road to that silver trophy? Whose bad luck of the draw was revealed today? It’s time to open up the Open.
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The Women
First Quarter
How’s this for a revelation? The first name we see is Caroline Wozniacki’s. In the absence of Serena Williams, last year’s runner-up has ascended to the top seed’s slot. While she is ranked No. 2 in the world, and while she played some of her best tennis of the year last week in Montreal, while she likes the Open’s hard courts, and while she’s tougher than she looks, it still must be a dizzyingly artificial position for Wozniacki to find herself in, one she would do best just to ignore. She’s hardly been a dominant, or even forceful, presence at the Slams this season, and she might not even be favored to get out of the round of 16, where she could meet Maria Sharapova.
On the other side is Svetlana Kuznetsova, the 2009 French champion who has dropped to No. 11. You never know what Kuzzie is going to do next, but she has shown some signs of life recently. She won her first title of the year in San Diego and says she’s figured out how to hit her forehand, for one thing, which is good news—when Kuznetsova has things figured out, there are very few players she can’t beat. None, in fact. And she can certainly beat those who are arranged in front of her here. Li Na is the highest seed in Kuznetsova’s half of this section, and a few of the other talents—Kirilenko, U. Radwanska, Chakvetadze—will be hard-pressed to stay with her.
So who do we like: Woz, Shazz, or Kuz? I’ll take the latter two and see what happens.
First-round match to watch: Kuznetsova vs. 40-year-old Kimiko Date-Krumm; Sharapova vs. Jarmila Groth
Semifinalist: Sharapova
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Second Quarter
Here’s another surprise: Jelena Jankovic is the top seed in her section. While she’s picked herself up after last season’s stumble, she’s hardly been lights out at the majors either. If she makes the round of 16, she may find herself facing Yanina Wickmayer, who made her breakout run to the semis at the Open in 2009.
On the other side there’s Vera Zvonareva, seventh-seeded but, after her runner-up finish at Wimbledon, presumably newly confident in her ability at the majors. Her straightforward, timing-heavy game is a good fit for hard courts—she recorded a comeback win over Kim Clijsters on them last week in Canada—and the woman who beat her at Wimbledon, Serena Williams, isn’t here. But have we really reached the point where we can bet on Zvonareva to keep everything together for the better part of two weeks? There are good players near her: Lisicki, Petkovic, Petrova, and A. Radwanska, who has shown an affinity for these courts in the past.
First-round match for hopeful Americans to watch: Lisicki vs. Coco Vandeweghe
Semifinalist: Zvonareva
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Third Quarter
Unlike her sister, Venus Williams has recovered from injury just in time for the Open; good thing, because she wouldn't have wanted to miss a chance to play a Slam sans Serena. Venus’ draw looks, well, very good. Francesca Schiavone is the second-highest-seed, and Victoria Azarenka comes after that, neither of whom has ever reached a semi at the Open. Last year’s Open star, Melanie Oudin is also on the other side here, and while she faces a qualifier to start, Oudin has struggled with serve and scrutiny in equal measures; it’s been months since she put together a significant run at any event. The one potential burr in the saddle for Venus is the presence of Tsvetana Pironkova, the crafty Bulgarian who beat her at Wimbledon and who she could face in the third round here.
Semifinalist: V. Williams
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Fourth Quarter
On paper, this section should offer the most entertaining quarterfinal, between the second seed, Kim Clijsters, and the fifth seed, Sam Stosur. Clijsters has had the better results this summer, especially with her comeback win over Sharapova in the Cincy final. Stosur may have been the best player through the first half of the year, but she’s been up and down since her French Open final-round run. Hard courts would seem to be a natural surface for her muscular baseline game, but she’s had a better year on clay.
But there are roadblocks between the two: Petra Kvitova, Wimbledon semifinalist; Ana Ivanovic, prodigal daughter; and Marion Bartoli, strange hitter, are on Clijsters’ side. Dinara Safina, former No. 1, and dangerous-but-never-quite-dangerous-enough Elena Dementieva, are on the other.
First round match to watch and very possibly cringe at: Safina vs. Daniela Hantuchova
Semifinalist: Clijsters
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Semifinals: Sharapova d. Zvonareva; Clijsters d. V. Williams
Final: Sharapova d. Clijsters
Champion: Maria Sharapova
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The Men
First Quarter
Nadal and New York, it hasn’t been a winning combination. But he’s been getting better, reaching the semis each of the last two years and lighting up a few night sessions. Nadal has struggled with his backhand so far this summer and hasn’t built the kind of momentum we associate with his Slam-winning runs. At the same time, he’s laid low and taken some of the heat off himself by seeming to revert to sketchier late season Nadal form. Either way, he’s still the top seed and the champ at the last two majors.
This time he has a moderately difficult but navigable path to the semis. Nadal starts with Gabashvili, an excitable free swinger, and then perhaps Istomin, who challenged him in Queens. Kohlschreiber, who took a set from him in Toronto, might come after that. On the other side are Verdasco, Ferrer, Gulbis, and Nalbandian, a guy who has generally given Nadal fits. The question is whether the Argentine can survive long enough to give them to him again.
First-round shot-maker’s special to watch: Chardy vs. Gulbis; First-round match with the best name combination: Fernando Verdasco vs. Fabio Fognini
Semifinalist: Nadal
***
Second Quarter
This section is bracketed by two dark horses for the title, Andy Murray and (a longer shot, but still a shot) Tomas Berdych. Murray went coach-less and found his form in Toronto a couple weeks ago, and reminded us again of his skills on a hard-court. Saying “Murray” and “Slam winner” is suddenly not a joke anymore.
Who can stop them? Sam Querrey has the shots and the crowd, but he’s played a lot of tennis. Nicolas Almagro has been coming back to earth. John Isner may not make it there at all. Stan Wawrinka and Yen-Hsun Lu are OK. Radek Stepanek is here. Same for Tommy Robredo. I think the dark horses should make it to the finish line in the quarters. If it is Murray vs. Berdych, I’ll take Murray, but I ‘m not going to get the waxing that Berdych gave him in Paris out of my mind until then, either.
First-round match to watch: Stepanek vs. Julien Benneteau, two old pros with nice games; First-round match with the best name combination: Marco Chiudinelli vs. Jack Sock
Semifinalist: Murray
***
Third Quarter
This is a stacked and unpredictable section. Davydenko, Gasquet, Monfils, Baghdatis, Roddick, Fish, Petzschner, Djokovic: It’s made for tennis buffs and lovers of the unknown. The top seed, Djokovic, hasn’t looked like any kind of world-beater lately; ditto for the next seed, Davydenko, who must be waiting for fall’s money windfall. Roddick had his moments in Cincy, but three-out-of-five will be tough so soon after mono. Baghdatis is always possible, but never probable; that’s even more true for Monfils.
So what about Fish? He’s playing the best tennis of his career; at 28, he’s almost a new player. This is the moment. If not now, when?
Semifinalist: Fish
***
Fourth Quarter
Like Murray, Roger Federer has used the summer to return to form, so much so that he’s passed Nadal on most people’s lists of favorites. He’s had a few freakish double faults and untimely shanks, but he’s also moved well, returned with oomph, looked to press forward, and hit his topspin down-the-line backhand with confidence. His draw won’t change many opinions about his chances, either. Federer starts with someone named Brian Dabul, and looks ahead from there to a half where Jurgen Melzer is the next highest seed. On the other side, possibly waiting in the quarters, is a genuine obstacle in the form of Robin Soderling. The Sod is no sure thing, of course, and he’ll have to get past Dent or Falla, de Bakker, and perhaps Cilic.
By then, though, when the Open reaches its mellow middle, when the day matches in Ashe get quiet and dull, Federer seems to become unbeatable. The rowdiest tournament in the world can go very close to silent at times, and I can remember watching countless matches like that where Federer has slowly put a sleeper hold on his opponent. It’s nothing spectacular, but he’s hard to break down or get around on the hard courts at Flushing. And the only guy who has done it in the last six years, Juan Martin del Potro, won’t be one of the seven men he has to beat to hold the trophy for a sixth time.
Semifinalist: Federer
***
Semifinals: Murray d. Nadal; Federer d. Fish
Final: Federer d. Murray
Champion: Roger Federer
 For a tennis writer from New York, there’s a Groundhog’s Day
effect to the U.S. Open. Every time I get back out to Flushing Meadows, I
immediately feel as if I’ve never left—I mean never left. Walking around the
grounds, I’m not sure if it’s 2009 or 2006 or maybe even 2003.
I know the National Tennis Center has evolved around the
edges. The event is always bigger—that’s pretty much the law by now—but it’s also
greener and measurably more hospitable than it used to be. Still, just like a
corned beef sandwich from the Tiananmen-sized food court, the place can lose
its pungent Gotham punch after a few days. The sizzle is always closely followed by the
frazzle. By the final Sunday the two are usually locked in a death grip in
the middle of my skull.
If there’s a difference for me this year, it’s that I’m
walking into the Open with a skull newly full of the tournament’s history. As
I’ve said here before, I’m writing—i.e., typing a few words, deleting a few
words—a book about men’s tennis in the late 70s and early 80s, with a special
eye toward the 1981 U.S. Open. Researching it has been a fast lesson in all
kinds of tennis history, and in particular all kinds of Open history. To get
you in the mood for tennis in New York, where it sizzles and frazzles and
overheats like nowhere else, here are five of the more entertaining Open stories
I’ve come across in recent months.
***
5. The past can seem like a foreign place. How many stories
do you read where you end up asking, “Can you imagine that happening today”?
The answer is always no. The history of tennis is as a good a barometer as any for
how much has changed. For example, in the semifinals of the 1926
U.S. Championships (now the Open), there was a need for one more line judge to work the match between Rene Lacoste and Henri Cochet. Who volunteered and sat down to call
the line? The defending champion and consensus greatest player of the first
half of the 20th century, Bill Tilden.
Speaking of Tilden, here’s another story from his days at
Forest Hills that boggles the modern mind. In the middle of the 1920 final,
between Big Bill and Little Bill Johnston, a bi-plane—they were a novelty in
those post-war days—buzzed over the stadium and swooped to within a couple
hundred feet of the crowd, annoying and frightening everyone in equal measures.
A photographer hung out of one window, snapping pictures. After a few turns
around the grounds, the plane suddenly fell out of the sky and crashed, killing
pilot and passenger. As smoke climbed nearby, the chair umpire turned to Johnston and
said, “Can you go on?” Johnston nodded. The umpire looked at Tilden, who also
nodded. “Play!” the umpire yelled. Tilden later bragged that only 50 of the
10,000 people in attendance got up and left.
4. Two of tennis' greatest myths: It’s an individual sport,
and Pancho Gonzalez was one of the toughest and most ruthless of those
individuals. Those two things are true to an extent. But it should be noted that there was no rule
against coaching until Ion Tiriac started blatantly signaling Guillermo Vilas
in the mid-70s; and Gonzalez wasn’t above getting a little help when he could.
Down two sets to one in the 1949 Forest Hills final to his
nemesis Ted Schroeder, Gonzalez went to the locker room for the mid-match break. There he met his friend and fellow player Frank Shields, Brooke’s
grandfather. Shields told Gonzalez that Schroeder, any time he was ahead in a game, was tossing in a soft first serve, which Gonzalez was unable to
exploit because he was standing too far back. Shields, who was sitting in the
front row, told him to look up at him when he was returning, and he would give
him the signal when to move in. “It paid big dividends,” Gonzalez said. He won
the last two sets for the Forest Hills title, a win that allowed him to turn
pro the next season.
3. There is no really no end to Ilie Nastase stories. Here’s
a guy who showed up in black-face to play doubles with Arthur Ashe, after the
tournament had stipulated that teams wear matching uniforms. Here's a guy who hired
someone to kidnap a black cat so he could take it on court and have it cross
his superstitious opponents' path before a match at Roland Garros (Nastase’s
team won). One of my favorite of Nasty's U.S. Open stories happened during his
final-round victory over Ashe in 1972. Down two sets to one and 2-4 in the
fourth, he was on the verge of giving up, having, naturally, already hit a ball
at a line judge and given the audience the finger. But Nastase, who always
played for the approval of others as much as for himself, spotted a fan who was
begging and pleading for him to win, dying with every point. Nastase thought he
should at least try to win it for him. And he did.
2. There’s also really no end to the stories about the 1977
Open, the last one at Forest Hills, held at the tail end of the infamous Summer
of Sam. It was the lawless Slam, where the fans staged a sit-down strike, the
soon-to-be-illegal spaghetti racquet was used, a transsexual played the women’s
tournament, and Jimmy Connors ran around the net post to rub out a mark on the
other side of the net. Connors was the master of ceremonies that year, the
straw that stirred the fetid New York drink. His father had died earlier in the year and he
had careened into New York after an up-and-down summer. In press conferences,
he called one reporter “another a—hole,” and told one female spectator who
heckled him . . . well, I won’t say what he told her. My favorite moment from
Jimmy’s '77 Open, though, was the last one. Rather than try to shake hands with
Vilas, who had just beaten him in the final and was being mobbed by fans (they
ripped his headband off pretty violently), Connors took a swing at a photographer, clenched his
fists and his teeth, and yelled, “Who’s next!!!????”
I like to imagine Roger Federer doing that this year.
1. The
1981 final ended an era and took us to what may have been the absolute peak performance by any player in history. Bjorn Borg lost,
walked off the court and straight through the kitchen, and was escorted by
Queens cops off the grounds. There had been two death theats aimed at him,
though my favorite part of the story is that he took a moment from his fear or despair in the kitchen to warn his coach, Lennart Bergelin, that there was a grease
puddle ahead and to make sure he didn’t slip. Who knows if the threats
were real, but if there was a player who would have gotten them, it would have
been Borg. Like John Lennon, there was magic around the guy in his prime,
a magic that has long since worn off.
Unfortunately that exit overshadowed McEnroe’s
day, which was one of his greatest (watch the amazing highlights here). He had so mastered the
sport, and everyone else who played it, that he beat Bjorn Borg with a
shot he rarely even tried, the topspin lob. He broke Borg in the third set with
two of them—you could see the Swede physically cave in after the second one. Afterward,
McEnroe said, “I felt like I could hit any shot I wanted.” Those words have
always rung loudly in my ears. What would it be like to feel that? Only Johnny
Mac knows.
1A. I have one more Nastase at the Open story that should be
told. It happened in 1979, at Flushing. That was the year he almost started a riot
against McEnroe in a night match, but he made up for it in another,
less-publicized way by playing mixed doubles with man-turned-woman Renee
Richards, who had been largely shunned by other players, including members of the WTA.
“All of the women had refused to play with her," Nastase said, "and men wouldn’t play with her in the
mixed. I thought it wasn’t fair, after all that she’d been through. I was
thinking, why doesn’t someone give her a chance? I asked her to team up, but I
said, “Let’s make it fun,” so that’s how we played."
On the first point of their first match, Nasty put away an overhead
and Richards slapped him on the shoulder in congratulation. He fell down on the
court and acted like she’d hurt him. The crowd loved it. They made the semifinals.
"I got teased the whole time by the other players," Nastase added. "‘Only you
can play with that person, not man or woman,' they said. But it was important for me to
help someone who no one else was helping.”
A former No. 1 playing mixed with a 42-year-old woman who was once a
man. Can you imagine it today? It happened, at the Open of course.
 I'm at the beach this week, so I'll wrap up Toronto (seems so long ago, doesn't it?) and do a quick preview of Cincy as I head out.
Tennis tournaments carve up time; you can live in them. When you look at a season’s worth, only four will become part of fans’ collective memory. Only four will mean anything after their final Sunday. Cincinnati had begun almost before Toronto ended. But while you recognize, in the back of your mind, the virtual irrelevance of the results in the long run, while it’s happening a tournament is a self-contained world, the whole world in a week. It begins all at once, a mass of striving spread out on various backcourts and played from morning until late at night. How long ago did I watch Ernests Gulbis knock a sweatband at a girl on a quiet evening in the Grandstand in Toronto, or see Sam Querrey and Kevin Anderson trade howitzers for three long, intensely muggy sets on Court 1? It seems like, in the hermetic world of a tennis tournament, a lifetime ago.
From that early free-for-all, the weeding process begins and a sense of order gradually materializes. You watch various players have their striving ended, face their farewell press conferences, and get in cars heading for the airport. Finally, it comes to Sunday, a day of fanfare in the stadium and frenzy in the pressroom. At the end of it, the computers get packed away and the wheely bags come out. Everyone says a temporary goodbye; with each person you see, you have to figure out when and where you’ll see them again. To live like this week after week would have its drawbacks and dangers—buffet dinners, airport fear, unlimited Haägen-Dazs bars—but the upside is that the little world will soon start over again somewhere else. You never say goodbye for good.
The tennis universe has picked up and moved itself wholesale to Cincy. Before they vanish entirely, here are a few stray images from Canada, the kind of stray images that give the little world its color and meaning, as temporary as it may be.
***
It’s three hours before the quarterfinal night match on Friday and I’m upstairs in what’s known as the Rogers Lounge, a gathering spot above the stadium for assorted VIP, as well as the press, whose members are invariably the most indifferently shaven and least expensively coiffed people in the room. I walk past a large table, which at first glance looks empty. But scattered around, at a safe distance, are little groups of people who all seem to be covertly looking in the same direction. When I walk back, I see what they’re looking at: Roger Federer is alone at the back of the table, leaning forward, sticking a forkful of pasta in his mouth. A glimpse into the glamorous life of the tennis superstar.
Later, during Federer’s match, I spot Paul Annacone in the same lounge, watching the final unfold from above. According to Federer, he can’t sit courtside when he’s playing Murray, due to LTA obligations. Annacone has a much better view of what’s going on and how points are developing from up here.
***
When I was younger, I’d read profiles of tennis players and shake my head at how one-dimensional their lives were. They all holed up in their hotel rooms and never bothered to see anything else of the cities they visited. Now I’ve begun to see some of the appeal of that hotel room. The good big bed, the deep darkness in the morning, the flat screen TV right smack in front of you, That 70s Show reruns on each night when you get back from work at 11:30. There’s not much more you can ask. Each day last week, there’d come a point in the press room when I would feel myself wishing I could get out of there and go, not to a museum or a concert or a restaurant or a neighborhood in Toronto, but back to the dark haven of the hotel room.
***
My only real-life Toronto adventure came on the first weekend, when my friend Tom Tebbutt, tennis writer for the Globe and Mail, invited me to play at his home club, the ancient and venerable and surprisingly large Toronto Lawn Tennis Club, founded in 1876 and home to a version of the Rogers Cup in the early 1970s. It was charming and absurd to see how modest the pro tour once was. “Center court” was the middle court in a line of five normal-sized club courts. The TV crew set up behind the back fences, and small temporary bleachers were constructed. That was the set up when Rod Laver reached the final one year.
Even better for me was a chance to check out a small collection of hard-to-find tennis books that Tom has tracked down during his travels over the years. One dispiriting aspect of writing about the sport in the U.S. is that it simply isn’t taken seriously, either as a major sport or a writing subject. I don’t care if tennis gains significant mass appeal here—the chances are beyond slim—but I would like to think that what I do has some kind of history or tradition, the way golf and baseball writing do in the States. Tom’s collection was an eye-opener and an inspiration because it contained old volumes of the best British tennis journalists of their time. John Oliffe of the Telegraph, David Gray, Rex Bellamy, and three great Americans, Allison Danzig of the NY Times, Herbert Warren Wind of the New Yorker, and Al Laney, from the days when the sport was covered on a daily basis in the country’s biggest papers. The bookcase that held all of this history wasn’t big, but it was enough to make me feel that tennis writing has its place and its honor. It’s nice to be reminded of that now and then. It’s even nicer when you realize it for the first time.
***
What is a tennis tournament? To you and I, it’s part of our daily lives, maybe even our daily jobs. To its officials and ball boys and merchandise hawkers and food staff and ice haulers, it’s a one-week paycheck. But what is it to the average ticket buyer? They are, after all, the vast majority of people who will experience the event. Their time with the sport can be summed up in two very different scenes from last week.
1. It’s 7:30 P.M., a warm, bright Tuesday evening, and the stadium court is a rare sell out for an opening-round match. Roger Federer, the man who the city has come to see, is playing in a pink shirt. The atmosphere is half sporting event, half performance—I wonder how Federer doesn’t let himself get caught up in the latter. The fans run the gamut from upper crust/middle aged to young guys in baseball hats who feel free to yell whatever they like. Federer, the modern incarnation of the tennis gentleman in flannels, glides over the court and seems only to have to caress the ball with his racquet—it barely makes a sound coming off the strings—to send it exactly where he wants it to go. This is tennis as the elite of all elite sports. It stayed amateur for decades after other sports in part because it wanted to stay above those other sports, a clean little world of its own. Even now, in the pro era, when the money involved is obscene, its retains that elite status for most people. There’s an elevating effect to watching Federer; the people here seem to be looking up at him.
***
2. It’s early evening a day later and the Grandstand court is half full. Two players of relative distinction, Fernando Verdasco and Eduardo Schwank, are facing each other, but it’s no blockbuster—Verdasco is killing him. The sun is setting and the air has cooled, People sit back and put their feet up on the chairs in front of them. Not much is really happening; there’s no fan favorite out there. The entertainment level is just enough to keep people’s attention, nothing more (or less). There’s no sense of occasion, just a chance to see the traveling tennis world come through and watch how ridiculously good even its average members are—when Verdasco hits a forehand winner, the oohs from the crowd are a little like what you might hear for a tightrope walker at the circus.
A mishit sends a ball into the stands, where a spectator stands up and makes a one-handed catch. Everyone cheers; he takes a bow. When, after half an hour, Schwank finally wins a game, he raises his arms in triumph. The audience claps and whistles. When the match is over, there are spirited cheers that die away quickly. We stand up, raise our arms and stretch, and slowly shuffle out together. It’s the last match on that court; the tennis world has shut down for the day.
***
So, Cincy. The players have gathered again. Is it too late to do a preview? How about we just call it a "look ahead" then? I’ll give you a few possible highlights from each quarter.
***
At the top, Nadal could get a test from Taylor Dent right away. Tiebreakers may be in order, but on most days Nadal will be out of Dent’s league. The match to hope for here is a quarterfinal between Nadal and Tomas Berdych on Friday. We’ll see if Berdych is for real against players other than Federer.
Semifinalist: Nadal
***
Speaking of Federer, he should be OK until the quarters, though I’d love to see a Fed-Monfils fourth round at night. The bottom half of his section is fairly strong—Querrey, Ferrer, and Davydenko are all there. Is it time for Kolya to find his game again? It’s got to happen at some point.
Semifinalist: Federer
***
Murray, fresh from his Toronto win, will presumably struggle, but he’s been given the best draw of the top four, with Verdasco the highest seed near him. Based on very little, I’ll take a flyer on a another guy with talent who’s due to do something, Ernests Gulbis.
Semifinalist: Gulbis
***
Novak Djokovic has had success in Cincy in the past, but he may have a few tough opponents to contend with this week—Soderling, Roddick, Nalbandian, and Isner all stick out as dark horses. Even his first round, against countryman Victor Troicki, will be tricky (Troicki and tricky).
Semifinalist: Djokovic
Semifinals: Nadal d. Federer; Djokovic d. Gulbis
Final: Nadal d. Djokovic
***
If the weather is bad where I am, I may be pop in later this week. Otherwise, be thankful you can watch from your couch rather than having to play in Cincy in August. Whatever happens, there will be sweat.
 Andy Murray may never win a major. If he doesn’t, there’s a
very good chance he’ll go down as the best player not to do so. His game has
its flaws and its holes—the biggest one being that he can’t close his eyes and
belt his way out of trouble—and he’ll always have the big British monkey on his
back. Beyond that, his at times tetchy demeanor doesn’t make him
an easy player to love; his fan base presumably consists of students of the game
and diehard lovers of all things pale and Anglo. But this past week in
Toronto, Murray showed that for the span of six days, he can play circles around
the world’s best, steal their games out of their back pockets, and leave them
spinning in confusion.
In the quarters, Murray put David Nalbandian exactly where
he didn’t want to be. In the semis, he gave Rafael Nadal, not normally known
for indecisiveness, no good options and left the world’s best player
temporarily unsure of what he does best. In the final, Murray did a little of
what he usually does, by punching holes in Roger Federer’s net attack, and a
little of what he usually doesn’t, by striking first and piling up more winners than his opponent.
“He was aggressive,” Federer said of Murray. “He was taking
the ball early. He wasn’t giving me much, and he clutch-served at the very end
when he had to, and he deserved the victory.”
Murray came in with four things going for him. He had the
momentum, after his win over Nadal. He had the hunger, after what has thus far
been a disappointing season. He had less outside pressure, with no
coach’s tactical advice ringing in his ears. And he was rested. Federer was
coming off two straight three-set night matches, while Murray had finished his
semifinal the previous afternoon. All of that added up to a hot start: Murray
broke Federer twice to open the match, winning 12 of the first 16 points.
Big early leads can throw you off. You’re suddenly out in
front by yourself, with nobody running neck and neck with you anymore—think
about sprinters and the pace-setting “rabbits” they hide themselves behind.
Murray double-faulted to start the fourth game, and within a few minutes he
couldn’t get the ball over the net. It didn’t take long for both of his breaks
to evaporate. Partially this was
Murray coming down to earth, but it was also due to how difficult it still is
to finish Roger Federer.
Serving for it at 5-4, Murray slid a nice first ball out
wide into the deuce court. It looked for a split-second to be unreturnable. It
was, by virtually anyone but Federer. But he was able, as he so often is, to
get the barest edge of his frame on it, just enough to get it to creep over the
net and land in a tricky position for his opponent. Murray wristed it inside
out, but Federer was there to time a perfect backhand pass. Frustration in his
face for the first time, Murray double faulted to be broken a few minutes
later. The early upbeat aggressiveness was gone; the doomed hangdog look had returned. There’s been talk at various times over the years about how Federer
has lost his invincible aura, that the “locker room” isn’t scared of him
anymore. From the evidence this week, it’s obvious that that’s not true, or not
true enough to make much of a difference. The thought of beating Federer is still
as daunting and exciting and nerve-wracking as ever for these guys.
It all seemed to be going according to Federer’s Toronto
blueprint. He had broken Berdych when he served for the match in the quarters,
and broken Djokovic to end their semi. But against Murray, after he’d won the first point
of his own service game at 5-5, Federer shot himself in the foot. He served and
volleyed, and Murray drilled a return that he couldn’t handle. His
momentum had been stopped in its tracks, and he was broken. Federer is
constantly being told, for lack of any better advice, I suppose, to come to the
net more. But that hasn’t been his game for many years. I’m not saying he
should never come in or never mix it up. But he had Murray on the run at 5-5; there
was no need to change a winning game at that moment, especially against one of
the best returners in tennis, and a guy who loves a target. The same thing would
happen at 5-5 on Federer’s serve in the second set. He began that game with two
trips to the net, and two lost points, and he was eventually broken.
At the start of 2009, Murray was beating Federer with a
largely defensive game. That wasn’t the case this time. Like Federer said, he
came up with bombs at the end; one of them was the hardest serve Murray has
ever hit, a fact that the Scot happily volunteered in his presser (though it still wasn't enough to bring a smile). Murray also
got free points serving to Federer’s backhand—Federer looked fooled by the shot on a number of occasions—and he used both of his ground strokes to open up the court. Few men can create so well with their crosscourt backhands.
Afterward, Murray said that he was calmer than normal last week, and that he didn’t miss having a coach because he’d been working
with one so recently; it wasn’t like he had no ideas or tactics to fall
back on. But like I said after his semi, Murray has a stubborn
streak, one that naturally counters authority. As with many of the pros, we’ve watched
him go through various stages in his maturing process. He tried a celebrity,
LTA-payrolled coach in Brad Gilbert before dumping him. Then he tried to take
some control of his destiny by surrounding himself with a committee of
coaches—Miles McLagan, Alex Corretja, and the various trainers and pals who play video games with him all over the world. What’s the next step? Murray says he’ll start looking
for a coach after the U.S. Open, but in Toronto he may have found out a little more about
what he’s capable of when he trusts himself. Because Murray can do a lot
of things, but not one obvious thing, he doesn’t have an easy game to use. Last week, on his own, he used it better than he ever has when he was listening to someone
else.
This win doesn’t mean Murray is the favorite for the US. Open, or
even that he’s “back,” as we like to say. Every week is its own week on the
tour, worthy of appreciation in its own right. So I’ll appreciate one
particular shot that Murray came up with in the final. Federer hit a drop volley and closed in on the net. It didn’t look like Murray could possibly reach the ball, but he did. More than just reaching it, though, he slid his racquet under the
ball, lifted it over Federer’s head, and brought it down inside the
baseline, at a virtually impossible angle. You could almost see Murray, as he
swung, decide to do something creative and trust his hands and his talent
to pull it off. It was a unique, brilliant, artistic, unnecessary shot, one that almost no one else
on earth could have made. And there’s not a
coach on earth who could have told him to make it.
 Rafael Nadal’s second week at Wimbledon was so routine that
the most surprising moment may have come immediately after his semifinal. When Nadal
saw that Andy Murray’s last sad forehand volley had landed long, he dropped to his back in abject joy. This is a reaction that
Nadal typically reserves for Grand Slam titles, Olympic gold, the occasional
Masters win. If it seemed odd that he would pull it out in a semi, it
shouldn’t. Murray makes him nervous.
Rightfully so: Nadal had lost their two previous
major-tournament encounters, at the U.S. Open in 2008 and in Melbourne earlier this year. And while the Spaniard came into their match in Toronto today with
an 8-3 head-to-head record, he
was no less nervous about having to face him again. In fact, even for a guy who
typically makes his opponents sound like a diabolical cross between Rod Laver
and Bjorn Borg, Nadal seemed unusually, even puzzlingly, respectful of Murray
as he looked ahead to their matchup.
Told that Murray had been singing his praises, Nadal
returned the bromantic word-hug. “Play against him is always a challenge,” Rafa
said, “because if you are not playing your best is impossible to win, and
playing your best at the same time is very difficult, too. . . . If I really
want to have chances to win, I have to play aggressive. Is not going to be
impossible but not exactly like grass. . . . I hope I think I can do it.”
I realize that Nadal is a superstitious guy who knows a
tennis match can go in any direction and that there’s never more than a
hairs-breadth separating one top player and the next. But still, this seemed a
bit much for a No. 1 player—how often do you hear someone with the status of an
eight-time Slam winner use the word “impossible” when referring to his chances
against any player, let alone one who he has beaten eight of 11 times? Nadal
has said things like this about Murray before, and you could hear in his voice
yesterday that it was neither false modesty nor a psyche job. When he said “I
hope I can do it,” he sounded sincerely unsure.
After that Friday presser, I wasn’t surprised when Nadal
came out passively against Murray on Saturday. It didn’t help that his
serve was, as he said afterward, “horrible,” but he also allowed
Murray to take the match to him early on. Nadal was also tentative with both
ground strokes. He netted backhands on key points—he said he needed to work on that stroke before Cincy—and mistimed
some very makeable forehands. What he mostly did was run
back and forth along the baseline sliding and scrambling after Murray’s shots.
Does Nadal respect Murray too much? He said he felt a little
slow at this tournament, and he came out equally flat on Friday against
Kohlschreiber, but today’s match reminded me a lot of his semifinal loss to
Murray at the Open two years ago. Nadal had no swagger to start, and it took him more
than a set to begin to dictate points. In both matches he looked a
little confused about how to play from the baseline, which is a product of Murray’s
particular strengths. Asked
afterward what made him a difficult opponent for Nadal, Murray said that having
a “double-handed backhand” helped. More accurately, it’s having a really good
double-handed backhand that helps. Nadal can’t construct points by
pounding the ball into that side, because Murray can handle his topspin and
redirect offensive shots from there. A typical first-set rally today consisted of Murray
moving Nadal to his right with a crosscourt backhand, then hitting the next
floating ball with a crosscourt forehand. It was his point to lose from there,
and he didn’t give many of them back.
This left Nadal with no blueprint for a rally. Instead of
the brutally decisive player we usually see, he looked like he was feeling
around for what to do from point to point. While he’s solved his Murray riddle the
majority of times, he’s struggled against him on hard courts. Which side should
he attack? Neither presents an obvious target. And when he does attack, Murray is
fast enough to stay with him for longer than just about anyone else. If Nadal
rallies, Murray can take the ball on the rise and move forward. This is why the
word “impossible” comes up when Nadal discusses him. It's why he won't be looking forward to facing him at the U.S. Open.
On the other side of the net, Murray knows he’ll get a
chance to take the offensive against Nadal, which is not
typically the case with this dyed-in-the-wool counterpuncher. Today he returned
serve from inside the baseline and gave Nadal a taste of his own medicine by
looping his forehands deep to Rafa’s backhand. Most impressive was the way he
handled the inevitable Nadal run, which came midway through the second set. Down
3-4, 15-40, Murray turned the momentum back in his favor by going after his forehand on the next two points. He eventually held. The aggression and positive energy spilled over into the next game, when he broke
Nadal with a series of strong, compact crosscourt backhands.
After the match, Murray said he was “enjoying himself”
without a coach. On one level, he meant that he could enjoy spending time on
the road with his coterie, his buddies. But in his last two
matches—straight-set wins over guys of the stature of Nalbandian and Nadal—Murray
has also been calmer than normal, both in his game plan and his demeanor. It
makes sense. With no coach, this edgy and at times stubborn young man has no conflicting advice in his head. He has no last-minute instructions to remember. And, at least for today, he had no face in the crowd to scream at.
 Roger Federer and revenge is an odd and unpredictable
combination. I don’t mean “revenge,” precisely. The word doesn’t apply in
today’s professional, above-board, we’re-all-in-it together ATP the way it did
when Jimmy Connors and John McEnroe were promising to follow each other “to
the ends of the earth.” Let’s say that it’s Roger Federer and making a stand that’s the odd and unpredictable combination.
Fortunately and unfortunately for Federer, he suffers from
lack of experience in these matters. For the last seven years, he’s had the
boot firmly on his opponents’ necks, and has very rarely had to come into a
match on a losing streak against anyone. In that time, only Rafael Nadal and
Andy Murray have beaten him three straight times. That’s what Tomas Berdych had
a chance to do last night in Toronto, and Federer, after playing the first set with mission-like conviction, managed to come within once service hold, two points,
and a blind-stab volley from letting him do it.
Along the way, the surprisingly inappropriate Toronto
fans—“Are you nervous, Berdych?” one called out as he was about to serve in the
third-set tiebreaker—were given an exhibition in the lightning pace of modern
men’s tennis. The match was the same type of roller coaster of smoked forehands and high anxiety that the
two rode earlier in the year in Key Biscayne. After trying to let Berdych
self-destruct at Wimbledon, Federer had come into this one vowing to take
charge—“I’ve got to be aggressive” was even more of a mantra for him beforehand than it normally is. While that's the phrase that every player
uses—Nadal must have said the word “aggressive” 20 times in his presser
yesterday—you could tell that Federer meant it.
The match was body blow against body blow, corner to corner, forehand to forehand,
with neither guy backing off the baseline unless totally necessary. The one tactic that Federer was determined to play
throughout the match, mostly to his advantage, but at least once to his
detriment, was to wrong-foot the towering Berdych. For the most part, it
worked; Berdych can’t turn himself on a dime. But on his first break point at
3-5 in the third, Federer, looking at an open crosscourt, hesitated, tried to
wrong-foot Berdych again, caught the ball late, and shanked it long. It
almost cost him the match.
It should have cost him the match. Until that point, it appeared that we were seeing the official establishment of a
new Tomas Berdych. Toe to toe with Federer, he was the bigger hitter and the
better player. It was a battle of strengths: The speed of Berdych’s shots vs.
Federer’s speed in tracking them down and punching them back, and Berdych had been winning that battle in the third. But
with it all on the line, the old Berdych, the bad Berdych, the original
Berdych, who knows, maybe the real Berdych, returned. He visibly pressed on his
first serve, he rushed points, and, hesitating, he came around a split-second
late on forehands that had been clipping the lines two games earlier. In a
four-deuce game, he never reached match point.
To paraphrase Dennis Green, was this a case of, “He was who he
thought he was”? In that moment, yes, the old Berdych had reared his anxious
head. But I thought that the bigger story of last night was not only Federer’s continued vulnerability before the final rounds, but the rise of Berdych to
elite status. For long stretches, he was the cleaner ball-striker, and there was little to choose between him and Federer in any aspect of the game.
It seemed that Federer was thinking along the same lines.
What struck me most about his post-match comments was the Nadal-like level of respect
he showed for Berdych. Federer said he’d gotten lucky, that Berdych had pushed
him all the way, and that he was finally fulfilling the potential he’d seen way
back at the 2004 Olympics. What was surprising was that Federer went a step
further and admitted that late in the third set, with his losses to Berdych at Key
Biscayne and Wimbledon swirling through his head, he had actually expected to
come up short again.
Is this indicative of a new, post-dominance Federer mindset?
Or was it limited to this particular player? I’m guessing the latter. Federer
played a tight first set, and he had chances to finish it in the second. His most stunning lapse came when he was serving at 5-6 in the
second. Federer double-faulted twice, hit a weird late forehand long,
and shanked a backhand into the stands to give away the set. He said that
the changing light at dusk may have had an effect, and Berdych also doubled twice in
one game around the same time. And
it probably did have an effect. But that series of screw-ups reminded me of
many of Federer’s matches with Nadal, when, seemingly in control, Federer had suddenly given back a break, or a set, or a series of break points.
Which takes us back to Federer and making a stand. After
dealing with challenges and losses to Nadal and Murray and Djokovic over the
last five years, Federer is now dealing with one more, from Berdych. It’s no
surprise that he wanted that win badly last night, and that given new life in
the third, he took it by playing a practical and intelligent tiebreaker that
just nosed him across the finish line—Federer was, once again, who we thought he was. And it really shouldn’t be all that
surprising that even the Greatest would have his doubts that he could get it
done. Maybe it isn’t that Federer has lost a step. Maybe older players in general
don’t lose steps, and that phrase is just a phrase with no real-world meaning.
Maybe it’s just that younger, talented players eventually gain a few steps, and one
more has gained a few on him.
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