52 posts categorized "January 2011"
 Andy Murray came out of his service stance and stared up at the retractable roof, where a bird was squawking. It kept squawking. He banged his strings off his palm, unhappy with the tension, and sent a couple of defective racquets off to be restrung. A few points after picking up a new frame, he was banging that one against his palm, too. Murray yelled at his player’s box to give him more energy. He barked at the ball kids to bring him his towel, please. He winced after dozens of shots, either in anguish or in pain. Even the chair umpire had it in for him. When Murray questioned why an obvious out call hadn’t been made, he said that umpire Jake Garner “bit back” at him. It was that kind of night.
More important, of course, were the bites that Novak Djokovic took out of Murray. I had expected the Serb to come out firing, the way he had against Roger Federer—why change a winning game; more precisely, why change that winning game. But he started easily, feeling the match out, trying a little of Murray’s style before he got around to his own. I thought it was a mistake; I though he was showing too much respect for Murray’s defense. I was wrong.
The measured game turned out to be the right game for Djokovic. It settled him in and allowed him to open up and find his range at his own pace. The shift was subtle, but before you knew it, he was controlling points without taking a lot of risk. He broke it open at 5-4, 15-30. Over the course of a 39-shot rally, Djokovic gave us offense, then defense, then offense, then defense, then O, then D, and on, and on, until he’d won the point and changed the entire match in the process.
“That made a big difference in the momentum,” Murray said. “He really loosened up after that.”
“I was changing the pace, changing the rhythm,” Djokovic said. “I didn’t want to give him the same pace. I wanted to open up the court more and not let him control the points.”
Djokovic loosened up in a big way in the second. There was a Federer-esque, full-flight quality to his performance through the first five games of that set. It was no fluke, either; it was the logical end to two weeks, and two months, of excellent play. In fact, now that I write that, there were also moments over his last three matches when I was reminded of the single-minded, well-regulated aggression that he had brought to the Davis Cup final last December. Somebody on this blog called Djokovic’s form at the Hopman Cup a few weeks ago “ominous.” I had never associated that word with the happy Perth exo before, but he or she was right. He was ominous right up until the final point tonight.
“After we won the Davis Cup,” Djokovic said, “I was feeling great being on the court. I think that had a big effect on this tournament for me.”
What effect did Murray's injury from Friday have on him? He strained a quad in his semifinal, and as he said tonight he wasn’t moving well. There were moments when he clearly pulled up lame, and other moments when he grimaced—though he’s always kind of grimacing out there. Murray said he wasn’t hurt, but maybe a little weary from his last match. Either way, he began the match tight, went straight to agitated, and by the third was pretty well slumped. He played his usual game to a fault. Weary or injured or neither, he failed to change the points’ dynamics, failed to move forward on numerous occasions when he had the chance, and failed to relax at any point and just compete. And there’s always his fundamental issue: a forehand that’s not as powerful or as versatile as most of his opponents’, including Djokovic’s. The Serb can do anything from anywhere with his forehand; Murray can’t. A Slam will likely always elude him unless he can get more out of that stroke.
Of course, whatever you do on your side, you still have to get the ball past Djokovic, which no one in Melbourne found a way to do very often.
“He put up three or four lobs,” Murray said, “that landed right on the line. It’s tough to do anything with those.” On the third of those lobs, Murray looked back down at the line in annoyed disbelief after the point. “How can he put it there?” he seemed to be asking. After the match, Murray was glum, naturally, but he said he felt a lot better than he had after his defeat by Roger Federer last year. Murray claimed that he wasn’t sure why this was, but before the match tonight, he said that in 2010 he had been especially crushed by the squandered set points in the third-set tiebreaker. He never got that far this time. Let’s hope he recovers more quickly than last year.
This match did not signal anything so extreme as a changing of the guard. But it was perhaps the first Grand Slam final contested by the players who came up in the so-far-unnamed “slow-court era.” The combination of modern frames, modern strings, modern physicality, and modern slow courts have produced a distinct style, which Djokovic and Murray both embody. It’s a style of moderation, one that works on all surfaces. It revolves around two-handed backhands that serve as weapons; strong returns and versatile, rather than blistering, serves; a blend of offense and defense; an ability to change the direction of the ball at any time; a basic competence in all aspects of the sport rather than the reliance on a couple of huge weapons; and an emphasis on speed above else.
Every style has its virtuoso performers, and tonight Djokovic showed us that the slow-court game, at its best, can be as dazzling and beautiful as any other. To see it with Djokovic, though, you have to isolate on him. Watch him move. Watch him dance and leap back there—he can play D, then O, then D, then O. His legs look rubbery when he comes down in a split step. He flies low at all times, and he doesn’t have to turn his body away from the net to get a good cut. Where other players' show-off moves are their bomb serves or their inside-out forehands, The Serb’s is the open-stance, abbreviated-swing, sliding backhand get in the corner. It's worth a look.
If Djokovic can track down another player’s best shot with that move and flip a lob into the rafters that lands like a laser on the baseline, there’s only one word for it. Andy Murray knew it early tonight; the rest of the men's tour might be thinking it right now: That’s ominous.
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Yeah
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01/29/2011 - 10:09 AM
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 What’s the current model for WTA success? If you want to reach a Slam final right now, you should be a hard-hitting married 28-year-old who grew up loving “Fraulein Forehand” Steffi Graf but whose best-looking stroke is a rolling two-handed backhand.
Does that sound like a (very geeky) personal ad? Kim Clijsters and Li Na found each other on Saturday night, and they turned out to be a good match. There was suspense, there were surprises, there were plenty of winners and plenty of running, there were ping-pong-style rallies and lots of digging, and there was a champion who, even at her advanced age, is still learning things about how to win. There were also 15 breaks of serve.
“She brought it to me from the beginning of rallies, right from the return,” Clijsters said, referring to Li’s early, walloping form. “I was getting backed up. I’m not used to that.”
There have been times, including against Nadia Petrova at the Aussie Open last year, when Clijsters might never have found her way out of that predicament. Her reaction to adversity has often been to play fast and pull the trigger fast and get off the court fast, which is usually a bad combination for her. And tonight Clijsters appeared ready to do that again. After winning the first eight points, she lost six of the next seven games.
Not only was she being outhit, she was losing the cat and mouse points as well. If both players are at the net, Clijsters has a knack for hitting the ball right back to her opponent, and giving the point away. Down 2-3 in the second set, she did this again, drilling what should have been an easy volley onto the strings of Li, who deflected it for a winner. I thought I had Kim figured out at last: “She has no killer instinct,” I said. “Deep down she wants to give those points to her opponent.” Clijsters had lost yet another deuce game just before that, her sixth of eight. She seemed doomed to defeat, an anxious and conflicted competitor yet again.
“I had to change things up,” she said. “I looped a few balls, I sliced a few. I could see that made her a little nervous.”
The change came at 2-3. Li let her off the hook and let her even the score. Clijsters took heart from how easy it was; she's experienced enough now to sense vulnerability. By the end of the set, it was the Belgian who was backing Li up. Instead of going after Li’s forehand, she had switched her attack to the backhand. She’d found a pattern that worked for her. By the beginning of the third, Clijsters was moving better than she had all night and swinging freely. Just as Li had against Caroline Wozniacki, Clijsters took this match. While Li got safer, Clijsters got bolder. She was more outwardly determined to claw her way through the third than I’d ever seen her.
Clijsters has now won two straight majors, and both times she did it by sticking it out in tough three-setters, against Venus Williams in New York and Li here. And just as she had in Flushing, she won going away tonight, holding at love to close it. Too bad, now that she’s learning to win the big ones even when she’s not at her best, she says she’s going to call it quits again next year.
Hearing Kim say that tonight was a drag, because at the same time she was being as charming and natural as ever. She said she had seen Alicia Molik before the match having a drink and thought, “Wow, I wish I could have one of those, but I have to go play.” She talked about how little things around the grounds remind her of her late father, flowers or sounds or anything she might see that jogs her memory of him; she says it happens dozens of times each day. Clijsters is very good and easy to relate to when she’s talking about the random workings of her mind.
She was best when she mentioned how much it meant for “Aussie Kim” to win in Australia. “I had so many supporters here that I felt bad that I couldn’t give something back and win a title.” (By the way, harking back to the Jim Courier interview story I wrote earlier in this tournament, the interview I’m citing wasn’t from the press room; it was from a conversation she had with Rennae Stubbs on Channel 7 after the match—ex-players get better stuff, no doubt about it.)
I enjoyed seeing Kim fill in this missing piece on her resume, but Li Na remained the story of the tournament. For me, it’s not because of what she did for Chinese tennis, which is a long, long, long term project anyway. Describing how big she was was in China at the moment, Li held her thumb and index finger half an inch apart; not as big as we think, apparently. Or maybe she was joking; it can be tough to tell.
 I liked Li for the way she can tell a joke, laugh, and then in the next sentence speak in a very warm and earnest voice. Clowning is her default reaction, but her voice when she’s being serious, or fairly serious, has an appealing lull to it.
“There were so many China coaches, coaching me during the points,” she said with mock frustration. It’s too bad that her own countrymen distracted her at key moments in the second set. But Li wasn’t bitter. "The tournament is over," she stated with healthy finality.
Li said she’s “never nervous,” and that she really, really wants to spend a little quality time with her family over Chinese New Year. “I want to take time for myself, not for the republic.”
She had no real explanation for why she lost, chalking it up to Clijsters’ experience advantage. (Q: “Can you talk about the third set?” A: “Third set? I lose third set.”) I would say that Li became a fraction safer as the match went on, and that was enough to let Clijsters get back on her feet.
What I like best about Li is the way she nods and says, “yeah” at the end of so many statements. It’s a habit, but it also has the effect of making you feel reassured about her answer somehow. It leaves you with a positive feeling—life isn't "no," it's "yeah." Li doesn’t dramatize herself in the least; she takes tennis as it comes, and seemingly life, too—Third set? I lose third set.
Li was asked about the “pressure” she felt. The word didn’t seem to matter to her. She started, in her earnest voice, “She had more experience than me because she played in so many finals, so . . .”
Then she smiled a little and said, with refreshingly indisputable simplicity, “Hopefully next time if I play final, I do better.” Then she nodded.
“Yeah.”
 It was a different type of scene in the big stadium on Friday night. The evening before, Federer vs. Djokovic offered a match-up of two marquee names with highly distinct fan bases. Coming back 24 hours later, I thought that the atmosphere for Murray vs. Ferrer would be dead by comparison. But leave it to the Aussies to bring a sense of hopeful enthusiasm to whatever sporting event they choose to attend. And leave it to Murray and Ferrer, two of the world’s fastest-moving wallboards, to put on the kind of gutsy scrap that could engage any fan, even those who had bought tickets hoping and expecting to see another Spaniard with a better-known personality.
It wasn’t the players last night, but the quality of the match that held people. Or rather it was more than the quality; it was the totality of the tennis. Murray vs. Ferrer offered four sets of the sport in all of its various forms, from the brilliant to the ornery to the very very shaky to the deeply vulnerable to the sporting to the injured to the toothy and back to the brilliant. Call it the beauty of the five-setter. As Murray said afterward when he was asked about losing his form, for the second or third or maybe fourth time that night, “You expect that to happen over the course of a three-out-of-five-set match.” A lot of things happened over the course of this one, before the two players smiled and shook hands and patted each other on the back as if it had all been another day at the office and better luck next time (nice smile in defeat by Ferrer). It deserved a fifth set, but god knows what would have happened then.
Nearing the end of two weeks of walking this way and that around Melbourne Park, it was a good match to sit down and enjoy and take a few notes on. Here’s some of what I thought as Murray and Ferrer left it all out there for us.
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How can you tell that a player is a big star? His entourage (or “coterie,” as Martina Navratilova insisted the press call her traveling circus of friends) fills every last seat in the player’s box. Even if you have to pick up someone you see on the way to the grounds, you can’t leave anything empty. Too late for David Ferrer. I guess he didn’t expect to be in Laver all that often. His box was spotted with large gaps in it. How embarrassing.
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How could you tell these guys meant business? Late in the first set, after a tremendous rally that took both of them virtually into the stands, Murray hit a forehand winner down the line. Ferrer looked toward his coach. It seemed like the moment when you might see a half-smile from a player, even if he's lost the point. There was nothing Ferrer could have done about the shot anyway, and he couldn’t have played a better point. But Ferrer didn’t smile, or half-smile, or quarter-smile.
***
Do good hands go with a hot, irrational temper? If so, why? Even Federer is crazy deep down. There’s a lot of the half-Irish, half-English John McEnroe in the Scottish Andy Murray. Both have talent and both have rage; in each of their cases, the temper seems essential to the talent, but at the same time it gets in the way.
Murray fought himself more than Ferrer through the first two sets. As he has in the latter stages of majors before, he reverted to the angry and very verbal Andy we’d seen when he was younger and hairier. Murray wasn’t surprised by this—“In the semis of a Slam, some nerves are to be expected, and that’s what happened tonight.” They almost cost him, though. He was a point away from going down two sets. Thankfully for him, he was so agitated that he thought the score was 3-4 in the second set, not 4-5. He wiped away a set point, unknowingly, with a service winner. Like Djokovic last night, Murray’s serve was a difference-maker.
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Another temperamental player, Lleyton Hewitt, used to manufacture a niggling injury for himself as a tournament would begin. He didn’t do it consciously, but it helped him relax; there was just a little less on the line in his head. Murray might want to try this himself. From the moment he strained his upper leg at the start of the third set, he became a different and much better player. With just a little less to lose, and a new sense of urgency focusing his tactics, he turned into the freewheeling, creative star we’ve always known is inside him. He moved forward, he shortened points, he hit his forehand with more conviction, he took his return earlier, he made topspin lobs, he had Ferrer on a string. Then he got ahead and all the nerves came flooding back and he started missing again and cursing himself again. The niggling mid-match injury: A player’s best friend.
***
And how about a word for David Ferrer. He showed a lot of class in victory over Nadal and defeat at the hands of Murray. He was pumped up for this one, and he almost stole it. He’s a hard-hat: He rarely changes his expression and never changes his rhythm—he gets the ball and moves in to serve, no matter what just happened. It gives his matches a watchable quality, with a good steady beat. You sense he’s always bringing everything, with no time to worry about style points. He has to bring it all, because he has less to bring than his colleagues in the Top 10.
Ferrer kept pummeling away as always, and even Murray’s blistering run through the third, in which he elevated himself out of Ferrer’s league, wasn’t enough to discourage him. I will say it again: Ferrer is a great guy to watch as long as he’s facing a more creative player, like Murray. The two teamed up for some extended rallies that had the crowd a little stunned, by the length and the amount of running involved.
But what is it about Ferrer and tiebreakers? He hasn’t won one at the Aussie Open since 2004. For the most part, he keeps his nerves held pretty steady. Then he gets to a breaker and he can’t put the ball in the ocean. It was the big difference tonight.
***
As I said, the match was played in the good modern ATP spirit: Fight hard, fight loudly, be demonstrative, hold nothing back; and the minute it’s over, shake hands and say, “well played.”
There was one other sporting gesture that should be noted. Ferrer hit a serve that landed near the service line and was called out. He looked toward his box to see what they thought, but Murray himself indicated that he might want to challenge. Ferrer did, the ball was shown to have been in, and he used his second first serve to win the point. See what I mean? This match had a little of everything.
***
Murray vs. Djokovic: Looking forward to it? More than one person here has called it a “3rd place match.” But both guys are sharp, both can play their games on this surface, though it’s supposed to be hot on Sunday. Best of all, while we’ve seen plenty of them individually, they haven’t faced off in almost two years, which should make this final feel pretty fresh. Give me another gutsy, messy, ornery, sporting scrap like this one, and I’ll be happy.
 I spent Thursday night's men's semifinal moving back and forth between a seat in Laver Arena and my desk in the pressroom, where I watched on the TV monitor in front of me. Live impressions mixed with a little of the television commentary is the ideal combination for getting your thoughts together about a match.
Doing a guest stint as a commentator for Australia’s Channel 7 was Pat Rafter. As the dazzling first set between Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic unfolded, Rafter said what a pleasure it was to sit in the stadium and see these guys first-hand. He saved his highest praise for Federer. Rafter, like so many other ex-pros who marvel at what the Swiss maestro can do, is a fan.
The two-time Slam champ made his admiration even clearer in the middle of the second set. What did Rafter do? Did he stand up and bellow, “Ozzie, ozzie, ozzie, Rogi, Rogi, Rogi!”? Did he put his finger to his lips and whisper to Jim Courier, “Shhh, genius at work”? No, Rafter did something much more common among Federer fans who played the game at a high level: He groaned at his tactics. Rafter thought that Federer had done the right thing early in the set by mixing spins and trajectories with Djokovic, but that going back to trading bullets with him was a mistake.
Rafter may or may not have been right, but one thing's for sure: He was not the first quality tennis player to become exasperated with the way Federer uses his talents. It’s pretty much a cottage industry, and has been going on for what seems like decades.
Mats Wilander, to cite the most extreme example, said Federer had no [insert punchier synonym for "guts" here]. Pat Cash, after Federer won Wimbledon for a fourth or fifth time, said, essentially, “Yeah, that’s fine, but I really wish he would come to the net more.” I wondered what Cash would have done if someone, the night after he won Wimbledon in 1987, had come up to him as he was celebrating and said, “Not bad, Cashy, but couldn't you have won a few more points from the baseline?” He would have smashed a beer can against his forehead.
The list goes on. From the top down, every player seems to have expert advice for Federer, especially when it comes to beating Rafael Nadal. I had dinner a few years ago with a guy who had toured on the amateur circuit back in the day. He was adamant that Federer could beat Nadal at the French Open if he would just slice his backhand down the line instead of crosscourt. But Federer, apparently, was too stupid to realize it. A teaching pro at the National Tennis Center told me that if Federer would run around and crank his forehand return, Nadal would never win another set against him.
This is a specialized version of a wider phenomenon among sports fans when it comes to Federer, and one that was in evidence again last night. In the middle of one of the superb exchanges between the two players early in the first set, Federer stood up too quickly on a backhand and framed it badly, and loudly, toward the seats. A ripple of semi-shocked laughter went through the crowd: Roger Federer had hit the frame, and they were there to see it! Among his fans, the phenomenon manifests itself in an unwillingness to put any limits on what he can do. Call him a baseliner and you’ll get a sharp look: How dare you suggest that Roger is a bargain-basement baseline-hugging grinder! A category, apparently, has yet to be invented that can satisfactorily describe the great man.
In their own way, tennis players and instructors do the same thing—they see no limits to Roger Federer. They see all that easy flair and versatility, and they think that he must be able to do anything he wants, to make anything happen at will. Nadal, that clunky kid? Slice your backhand down the line, Rog, and you’ll never have to worry about him again. Djokovic the two-handed basher? Hit it out of his strike zone and he’s sure to combust on the spot. And why make it so easy on yourself by winning Wimbledon from the baseline? You know you can win it at the net; just do it for the hell of it. That’s what I would do if I had your talent.
Federer talked about the “monster of expectations” that he had created when he lost to Djokovic here three years ago. He didn’t say anything like that last night. The monster is not roaring at the moment; the semifinals is the best that Federer has done at a major in a year now.
But the beast, and the burden of his talent, lives on. I watched a good part of his match against Gilles Simon with a fellow journalist, part-time player and card-carrying Federer admirer. Every time Federer missed a shot, even if it was a tough one on the run, my colleague would shake his head in disbelief: “What’s he doing?” Even blatant winners by Simon were somehow Federer’s fault, as if he could have prevented them simply by doing what he should be doing. The idea that another player could hit a ball past Roger Federer wasn't quite credible.
If I’ve noticed this phenomenon, surely Federer has as well. And you can hear his frustration with it at times. He was asked at this tournament about his new “aggressive” style. Federer answered, “it wasn’t like I was just pushing the ball in the court before,” all those years that he was winning Slam after Slam.
Calll it the price of being better than everyone else: Nothing is ever good enough.
 From Melbourne to Toronto, here's an Australian Open-themed Rally between Kamakshi Tandon and I.
Hi Kamakshi,
I’m not rubbing it in, but I’m pretty sure you wish you were Down Under again this year. I know you like to get away and stay on the move, and the Slams give you that chance. I’m a little more of a stay-at-home by nature, but every time I go somewhere new, I think, “Why don’t I do that for more often?” Then I get back home and think, “Thank god I don’t have to go anywhere for a while.”
Since we’ve both been to Melbourne now—or, sort of; I’ve been to about a block of Melbourne—let’s ask each other some questions about our impressions of the tournament.
What’s the best thing about being at the Australian Open?
First and most obviously for me is the weather. It hasn’t been hot or even all that sunny, but it also hasn’t been freezing and snowy the way it was in New York when I left, and the way it will be when I get back. I don’t know about you, but it makes a huge difference in my mood and mental outlook, and makes me think I really should do myself a favor and move somewhere where it’s warm and sunny all year.
Second, from a reporter’s perspective, every chance you have to go to a Slam is a chance to learn all kinds of little things about the players. You get to hear them talk, watch them interact with people, and see them play, and you get to pick up little details about them from other reporters. I have a whole new appreciation for the press-conference persona of Francesca Schiavone after seeing how she handled her defeat here. And from listening to a Robin Soderling presser, I picked up the random detail that he and his new coach are trying to improve his “feel around the net.” Something to store away.
I usually start my year at Indian Wells, which is easier to get to and just as warm, but the bigger draws at a Slam offer more chances to see up and comers. It’s been a good two weeks for them, and I’ve gotten looks at Raonic (for the first time), Dimitrov, Berankis, Jovanovski (also for the first time), and Dolgopolov, among others.
What’s one thing you’d change?
This can’t be changed, really, but I’m a little underwhelmed by Melbourne Park. I like the blue side courts and the way they’re laid out in a triangle, I like the inside of Laver Arena, I sort of like Hisense and the other smaller show courts, though they're fairly character-less. But the buildings have aged, and the merchandise tents remind me of one of the smaller Masters events. Of course, I’m someone who has been to the last 30 or so U.S. Opens, and I’m comparing it to that size and scale. I guess the more I go away from Flushing Meadows, the more I realize what it does well—and the more I realize what a whole lot of money can do.
Did all that sound a little spoiled and ungrateful? Yes, I suppose it did. It’s not that I don’t love being here, and I would recommend it as a vacation to any tennis fan, especially if you're from North America. On the plus side, it's certainly the least stuffy and aggravating of the majors, and the fans have fun with the idea of rooting. That must be the great Australian trait: They seem to feel that it's a duty not to take themselves seriously all the time.
What’s been the most memorable match or moment you’ve seen?
Berydch’s Aussie fans, the late-afternoon, jam-packed atmosphere on Margaret Court Arena as the Isner-Cilic match wound to its inevitable lengthy conclusion, the flash of genius we saw for the better part of a set from Bernard Tomic, the light feet and quick racquet of Alexandr Dolgopolov, Li Na's press conferences, David Ferrer's classy handling of his win over Rafael Nadal, Caroline Wozniacki hiking up her sweats to show us where a kangaroo had allegedly bitten her, Gilles Simon letting it rip for two sets against Roger Federer, and, I almost forgot, Hewitt vs. Nalbandian.
Let's hear how it's been as a fan watching from home, Kamakshi.
Steve
***
Hi Steve,
I’m supposed to reply to the same questions as you? Or should I just pull a Caro and answer whatever questions I think of? :)
What’s the best thing about being at the Australian Open?
Well, the best thing about being at the Australian Open is being at the Australian Open. The Australians have the best attitude to the tennis—they don’t worry about whether tennis is up or down or whether a result is good or bad, they just enjoy the unfolding drama and delight in a Baghdatis or a Monfils or a Kzuentsova-Schiavone instead of complaining about Henin’s exit or Serena absence or whatever. The only fretting is over the Aussies. I love the way the tennis takes over and the whole country becomes an extension of the tournament. I like having decent tea and a verbally-sharp paper in the hotel room in the morning, the legacy of the British connection. And that they can make a parking lot fun to walk through—the leafy park you cross on the way to the site (even if it isn’t the tree-lined boulevard you imagined).
But the best thing about not being there is that at least it’s on, and you can watch it. I think all tennis followers know the delicious feeling of being curled up late at night when it’s cold and snowy outside but sultry and cheerful and tennis-y on your TV screen.
I’ve been watching quite a bit and while I’m walking into walls and falling asleep on the steps during the day, it’s been fun. I can’t see Tennis Channel, but ESPN's coverage has been very good overall. When they first took over the Slams a few years ago, I was a bit worried about the jock-ish, stats & technique approach they seemed to be veering toward. They’d drive people away if it became one big, loud, instructional video. You can’t go typical SportsCenter with tennis—half the viewership is female, the demographics and psychographics are different from the average football or basketball game, and as they say, half the game is 90% mental. If you don’t bring in the context and atmosphere and personalities, you’re missing a good chunk of what’s really going on. Trust me, the reason Player X didn’t make that backhand at 30-30 is not because he didn’t bend his elbow enough. He didn’t bend his elbow enough because it was a big point and he was a little tight.
Well, that’s changed and now I’d be more worried about it going off in a reality show direction, but at the moment, the balance has been pretty good. They’re into what’s happening on the court, which is vital. Sometimes with networks like NBC, it’s almost like they’re apologetic about having to show actual tennis instead of John McEnroe talking about how much better things would be if he ran everything.
They’ve got a very solid base in Brad Gilbert and Darren Cahill, so you’re in good hands with the Xs and Os (and elbow bends), complemented by the more seasoned, broad-based former pros like Patrick McEnroe—and Cliff Drysdale when he’s fully awake. It was funny when Cahill first came on the scene and wowed us all with his minute breakdowns of the players’ games and mid-match tactics. I don’t think any other coach gives up that much as a commentator. At first, some of the others would try to hang with him in this department, but they could never do it for very long. That’s pretty much stopped now, except for Chris Fowler who still likes to try to hang with the big guns. He’s learned a lot, but not as much as that. I used to quite enjoy it during the U.S. Open Series when the match descended into some arcane discussion about when to hit backhands down the line against 6’2” opponents with semi-Western grips and size 3 collars, but it’s not something you really want to do too much at a Slam, when you have a broader spectrum of people watching.
At the same time, they’ve done a good job bringng in the fun stuff, like who’s saying what and various facts and themes to add color. During the Kuznetsova-Schiavone match they flashed up some of the humorous things Kuznetsova had tweeted during the Isner-Mahut match, which was pretty inventive.
They’ve been showing these great montages of footage of players from behind the scenes—waiting to go on court, signing autographs, working in the gym. It’s familiar if you’re used to being backstage, but if you’re not, it’s a genuine glimpse of the landscape.
What’s one thing you’d change?
The set isn’t quite quite as overcrowded as it used to be, but they could still stand to lose a couple of people. Too many personalities crowding out the on-court action sometimes. And it’s not a good idea to have a tennis-unaware broadcaster amidst the rest of the crew because she sticks out like a sore thumb.
They do sometimes beat you over the head with stuff, especially if you’re regularly watching the coverage. I get it, Na Li’s jokes about being coached by her husband are pretty funny. And did you hear how Caroline took in the oh-so gullible media? She said she’d been bitten by a kangaroo in a park somewhere! In Australia!! Can you believe it? Who in their right mind would think that could be true? Oh my.
I can’t say Mary Carillo’s absence has been gaping. She’s very well-respected behind the scenes and has set some important standards for commentators in the past, but now her commentary often feels more like a performance than background. She makes you listen to her instead of letting you watch the match. But the politics of her departure sound fascinating, from what’s been written.
Speaking of conflicts of interest issues (and I guess I was above), I’ve gone through all this before realizing that I’ve got some connections to the worldwide leader myself, so perhaps it’s time for truly impartial viewers to have their say in the comments instead.
You—and Djokovic—have been lucky with the weather, from the sound of things. Temperatures of 40C and smoke from bushfires is what I became accustomed to. This is something you can only relate to after two straight weeks of eating on site, but I’d change the pasta in the media centre, especially by the end of the first week when the French have started making their own sauces with olive oil and parmesan cheese from the salad table.
What’s the most memorable match or moment you’ve seen?
The thing about the time zones is that it’s hard to truly absorb the night matches. Federer-Simon was overnight, Hewitt-Nalbandian was so late I had to leave for the day before it finished. Kuznetsova-Schiavone was the only blockbuster that was at a good time over here.
I have to say it was also fun to see Milos Raonic break out like he did. Thinking back to a couple of years ago, sitting crowded around the tiny TV in the Montreal press box and watching him choke match points against Fernando Gonzalez—it was there, that same potential, but now so much bigger and steadier and closer to being fulfilled. Greg Sharko, spot on, said then, “He reminds me of Mark Philippoussis.” How many times did we hear that again last week?
And then last year at the U.S. Open, after he qualified and lost in the first round. ‘I know why I lost that match, and it’ll never happen again.’
He got quite a bit of press in Canada, too. Trudging through the snow and glimpsing a tennis headline— the tournament felt a bit more real from here.
Kamakshi
 There was more energy in Laver Arena than there had been for 20 day-session matches from this tournament combined. The loud, the few, and the flag-wearing were for Djokovic. The quiet and the many—the silent majority—were for Federer. Unfortunately for Federer, while 89 percent of the audience might have been behind him, there were times when the match sounded like it was being held in Belgrade. Even the birds that wheel their way over the stadium seemed fired up—they were squeaking louder than ever.
The players felt that energy. They seemed ready to jump out of their shoes at the start, and their shots were juiced accordingly. They had that little extra, frothy, unnecessary-but-dazzling bit of pace and topspin that you can get in the early stages of a big match. You may not see a better set played this year. There were no breaks of serve, and Djokovic in particular thrived, both on the pace that Federer was feeding him early, the slower evening conditions, and the surface.
“I like this court,” Djokovic said flatly afterward. “I’ve [always] played well at this tournament.”
Corner to corner, crosscourt and down the line they went, freely changing the direction of the ball whenever they pleased. The set ended the way it should have, with Djokovic raising his game above his opponent’s. Djokovic took over the tiebreaker with his forehand, while Federer pulled the trigger on one crucial backhand and put it in the alley. That was the difference.
“I thought he played a great match,” Federer said with a shrug in his press conference. “I didn’t think I played bad myself, so it was a match that was played at a very high intensity for a long period of time.” Three hours for three sets.
It seemed like it might get even better, and testier, in the second. Djokovic broke Federer early, and an annoyed Federer had a conversation with the chair umpire about, it appeared, something that was going on at one end of the court. Federer wouldn’t say what he was talking about afterward, just that the umpire is a “nice guy, so I kind of like to talk to him at times.”
Whatever the reason for it, the new edge helped Federer for a time. He switched tactics for a couple of games, opting to roll high balls and slices rather than feeding Djokovic more pace. Both players afterward said that Djokovic’s flatter shots were penetrating more than Federer’s. “As the match goes on, the ball bounces less,” Federer said, “so the spinny balls don’t really have that effect, so the flatter you hit the more effect it had overall.”
"I like this slower court," Djokovic said, "because it gives me a little more time to set up."
Mixing up pace and spin the way Federer likes to was always going to be difficult, but it worked well enough to earn him a break. After that, he went back to hitting with more pace, and that worked just as well as he built a 5-2 lead.
The key game came at 5-3. Djokovic was ready for the moment; he seemed to anticipate everything Federer threw at him—five matches against a player in a year’s time does help. From where I was sitting, what was most impressive—ridiculous, really—was the way Djokovic covered the baseline the whole evening. It’s one of the great athletic moves in the sport: He runs to his backhand side for a wide ball, finishes with his left foot out and sliding, and flips a backhand with an abbreviated stroke back high and deep. The pressure that Djokovic put on Federer with this type of movement inspired Federer to try a drop shot at 5-3. Djokovic was all over it. He was all over a forehand up the line. The momentum had shifted back in his direction, and Federer wasn’t the same player the rest of the night.
“He moved so well side to side,” Federer said, “you have to try to get him to move forward too at times. I should definitely not have given that game away. It was crucial for the remainder of the match, clearly.”
Federer began to miss. From the start, he had been hitting his topspin backhand out of the center of the strings, and he looked tentative as he shanked a number of them. Federer also missed returns, including a forehand off a 79 mph second serve that he smothered into the alley. He sailed ground strokes long and slid slices into the middle of the net. As he said, he didn’t play horribly, but the attacking game that he had been honing all winter wasn’t in evidence. The slower court and conditions made it difficult for him to hit through the court, as we said. They may also have still been in his head from the Gilles Simon five-setter last week (Federer mentioned that match in his presser) and undermined his willingness to make the first strike.
If Federer was unsure of himself by the third set, Djokovic played the first two with the same kind of conviction that he had shown in the Davis Cup final in December—by which I mean to say, a lot. He won each of the first two sets going away, the first in the tiebreaker and the second with a stellar game on his serve that ended with a snappy backhand winner up the line. Djokovic tightened up immediately in the third, double faulting twice in his first service game and facing two break points, but Federer let him off the hook and Djokovic was able to relax again. This being Nole, as the set wore on, the nerves returned. You could hear his grunts turn to anxious gasps after he broke in the third set. What got him through was his serve.
“I served well under pressure,” he said. “It’s an encouraging fact that I can rely on my serve in a match like this.”
Federer was muted in his presser, but not upset. He said he’s excited about the year, and that it’s just getting started. Asked if this signaled a “passing of the torch,” he muttered, “Let’s talk in six months again.”
So what is it? Is it anything more than one “great performance,” by Novak Djokovic, as Novak Djokovic called it? I’ve avoided speculating about Federer’s possible and eventual decline, especially with the way he’s played since the U.S. Open. And the real story may be the long-term in-cline of Djokovic. He said that he’s been playing great tennis since the Davis Cup, and that having such a unique and positive experience in the back of his mind has helped him.
But champions are measured by the infinitesimal. The difference between a Grand Slam titlist and a semifinalist comes down to a single opportunity taken or blown, a match point squandered, a hold to close out a set where you fight off a break point. Tonight it was Djokovic who fought off those break points to close his service games. It was Federer who didn’t.
 “A game of inches.”
“One point here or there.”
“Sometimes in tennis it’s one ball that can change everything.”
The latter statement was made by Caroline Wozniacki in her press conference today. She knows better than anyone at the moment that one shot, one inch, one ball, can spell the difference between winning and losing, between making a Grand Slam final and shutting the doubters up for a day, and having to wait five months to try again.
The thing is, a few inches can even spell the difference between a stirring, improbable comeback and a garden-variety straight-setter, one that never seems in doubt. In the end, we got one of each in Rod Laver Arena on Thursday. But in truth, the two women’s semifinals reached virtually identical moments late in their second sets. It may not seem like it now that we know the final scores, but both matches were in equal doubt at the same stage. Together they illustrate how suddenly, and seemingly randomly, a tennis match can be decided, how the placement of a single shot on either side of a sideline can send everything careening off in a completely different direction.
Wozniacki served for the match at 5-4 in the first semi against Li Na. Wozniacki had exploited a nervous opponent to that point, masterfully controlling the rallies, redirecting Li's power, and looking totally comfortable both defending and moving forward to put balls away. It looked like No. 1 was living up to her billing at last. At match point, though, Li, with nothing left to lose, took a rip at a forehand. Wozniacki got a racquet on it but couldn’t bring the ball back in the court. It was deuce. The shot seemed to set Na free. She won a long rally on the next point, and an hour or so later she had come all the way back to win the match. When it was over, we were shaking our heads as we walked out of the stadium: “What a great match! What a great comeback!” If Li had missed that go-for-broke forehand when she was down match point, we would said her nerves would always get the best of her, and that Wozniacki really does have what it takes.
In the second semi, Kim Clijsters was in the Wozniacki role. She won the first set routinely over Vera Zvonareva and was cruising in the second, up a break at 4-3. The sun was going down in Laver and the crowd was mellow to the point of inattention. The Russian simply hadn’t had it all afternoon; she didn’t seem to know what she wanted to do out there, whether to attack or push or both or neither.
Then Clijsters went down 0-30. Still not much of an audience reaction. Then she went down 15-40. Finally, a few people were roused to oooh and aaah. Was this one going to go the same dramatic way as the first? Nobody seemed too convinced. But when Wozniacki had served for the first match, very few people watching would have believed that it was possible for Li to make any kind of comeback. She seemed as out of it as Zvonareva did here.
At 30-40, Zvonareva and Clijsters rallied. For most of the match, Clijsters had been the bigger hitter, by an average of 10 kilometers per hour. But she was tentative in this game. Zvonareva got a look at a backhand. It was a similar shot to the one Li had made at match point down. But Zvonareva’s backhand slid a few inches wide. Clijsters pumped her fist and played a confident game to hold. She broke Zvonareva with ease in the next game to end the match.
So is tennis just a matter of a point here or there? Is it, at certain moments, just blind luck? It might seem like it on the surface, but there was a bigger difference between these two matches than just one shot. In the end a cardinal tenet of Grand Slam tennis held true. Barely, but it held true. It’s the rule of thumb that says you must take a major title, not wait for it to be given to you.
For most of the first two sets, Wozniacki had walked the line between taking and waiting. She had allowed to Li to self-destruct even as she grabbed her opportunities to go for winners when they came. She used her sliding slice serve in the ad court to throw off her opponent’s forehand, and she changed directions enough to keep Li from getting into any kind of groove—Wozniacki rarely let her opponent hit the same two shots in a row. If she was backed up, she lofted a moonball to get herself out of trouble, and more than once she drew an error after a long rally by throwing in a nice surprise slice two-handed backhand, an unorthodox and deceptive shot that she hits well.
Serving it out, though, Wozniacki pulled back just a bit, went back into a safe shell. She put the ball, and the onus, on Li’s racquet and waited for her to miss. If Li had missed one more ball, we would have said that Wozniacki’s strategy was brilliantly practical and cagey, just right for the moment, a case of doing only what you have to do to win. But Li didn’t miss. The player who controlled the rallies eventually won.
Wozniacki has been a wacky and weird presence here the last two weeks. She held her own presser, concocted an elaborate fiction about being scratched by a kangaroo, and then appeared in boxing gloves with a plastic kangaroo. She was a good sport. She also engineered her own improbable comeback against Francesca Schiavone, in which she won by coming out her shell at just the right time. But that’s a much easier thing to do when you’re behind than when you’re serving for a place in your first Grand Slam final.
Today Wozniacki was glum when she got to the pressroom. She rested her chin on her palm and summed up her day in a sentence: “Well, I had a match point and I didn’t take it.”
There's that word again: “take.” Maybe Wozniacki will keep it in mind in the future. She put herself one point from a Slam final, but it’s a point she’s going to have to win, and preferably to grab, next time.
Instead, it was Li who grabbed it, and the day belonged to her. She’ll finally bring that fabulous full-blooded backhand to a big stage. She didn’t conquer her nerves in this match so much as hit her way around them.
Li, a born comedian, was even better in the post-match interview on court. She said her husband had woken her up every hour last night with his snoring, and that it was the thought of the “prize money” that kept her going through the third set. Then she forgot that it was—or may have been, no one’s quite sure—her anniversary.
Now she’ll get Kim Clijsters in the final. There’s a lot of talk here about what a win by her would do for Chinese tennis, with some people even speculating that it could mean the Australian Open moving there someday. For the moment, I’m looking forward to a heavy-hitting match-up of two-handed shot-makers. Each of them stepped forward and grabbed their semifinal today. It should be fun to see them take it to each other on Saturday.
 In his pre-tournament press conference last Saturday, Rafael Nadal said that it was “almost impossible” to win four straight Grand Slams. He said this even though he came to Melbourne as the owner of three of those Slams. It turned out that he was more than right. For the 42nd consecutive year, it was impossible for a man to pull it off.
Another thing we know is that Australia Day is not Rafa’s Day. Last year he lost under the fireworks here to Andy Murray. This time it was to David Ferrer. Both times Nadal was hampered by an injury. Ferrer was impressive, no doubt about it, but this result is nothing but a bummer. We keep coming up short. A Federer-Nadal final seemed to be a sure thing at the U.S. Open. Didn’t happen. A semifinal lineup of the Big 4 seemed to be a foregone conclusion when the evening session began today. Foiled again. The sense of deflation won’t go away soon. It may last through the rest of the tournament. There’s a hole in it now.
We’ve heard for years that Nadal’s physical style will make his career a short one. There’s been no evidence of that yet. But it has led to injuries at inopportune moments. In the two majors before his loss to Murray here last year, he pulled out of Wimbledon and was shredded by Juan Martin del Potro when he had an abdominal tear. Nadal may not pay as much as we think for his style in the long run, but it has already cost him. In this way he is the opposite of his rival Roger Federer in one more way. Nadal is the fragile one, the human one, the one who pushes too far, the one you watch anxiously, waiting for the worst. It can happen any time.
“That’s part of the sport,” Nadal said as he stared at his thumbs afterward, his red jacket zipped up around his neck. He tried to avoid talking about his injury, and never named it. He said he was tired of losing when he had a “problem,” and didn’t want to seem like he was making an excuse. Most of the time, Nadal looked down absently. But there was one moment when his eyes became fixed. He was thinking. It looked to me as if the defeat, the disappointment, was registering.
“If I can accept both the high moments and the low moments,” he said, “then I can play my best again.”
High moments and low moments. You have to accept the latter in order to savor the former.
High moments and low moments: Isn’t that what Nadal gives us, too? More than any other legendary athlete I can think of, even as he’s winning, he holds out the possibility of disaster. He plays matches on razor’s edges and always seems one lunge away from his next injury. With every mad scramble across the court, he seems to be taking a day off of his career.
The flipside is that while Nadal knows that disaster is possible, hope is as well—not just excellence, but hope, which is deeper. When he won the French Open in 2006, he thought back to that January, when he had been forced to pull out of the Australian Open. Because of that, it became the French title that meant the most to him. Nadal runs the gamut of emotions; for better and worse, we run them with him. We, or at least, I, run that same gamut every day of my life anyway. Nadal is not an athlete I look to for perfection, for something above the normal run of humanity, the way you might look to Federer. I look to Nadal for the human, for the striving, for the victory that’s tinged with the possibility of defeat every step, lunge, and swing of the way. There's a reason he can win three straight Slams and yet still say that winning four straight can't be done. That's just life.
High moments and low moments: One can't mean anything without the other.
Nadal knows this, and those of us who write about and follow him understand it better because of him.
 Puncher vs. counter-puncher makes sense. One player attacks, the other uses that pace to fire back. Puncher vs. puncher isn’t as elegant, but you can certainly follow it. Two guys take turns belting the ball. Counter-puncher vs. counter-puncher is harder to figure. Neither can play their game. They’re robbed of something to punch against.
Andy Murray vs. Alexandr Dolgopolov was the latter, and it was predictably unpredictable. If it showed us anything, it showed us how deeply ingrained Murray’s defensive mind-set is. For the most part, it was Dolgopolov who attacked and Murray who defended. Murray’s speed and consistency allowed him to remain the counter-puncher, and allowed him to win in four sets. The Ukrainian played well and tried just about everything, but he couldn’t hit through him.
“Hitting with him on the baseline was just suicidal,” Dolgopolov said. “He wasn’t going to give me anything. I had to go after it.”
Dolgopolov was a crowd favorite today. His coach is naturalized Aussie and former low-level pro Jack Reader, a leathery, longhaired character who sported a cap in the colors of the national flag in honor of Australia Day. Cries for Dolgopolov—known as “Alex!” here—outnumbered cries for Murray by roughly 5 to 1.
He’s an easy player to like. Dolgopolov walks on his toes between points, and he appears to float a little above the surface during them. He’s as loose as they get, for better and worse. The freedom that allows him to coast to his left and twist in the air for an inside-out forehand is the same freedom that allows him to chuck in an ill-advised forehand drop shot on a critical point late in a set.
“He hits different,” Murray said. “It was tough to get my rhythm.”
The two players traded sidewinding slice backhands and on the rise two-handed crosscourts. They traded running one-handed shovel backhand winners. They traded heavy topspin crosscourt forehands. There plenty of long games, but Murray was, as Dolgopolov, “more solid.”
“He’s one the smartest players on tour,” Dolgopolov said. “He really breaks your game.”
Murray dropped his first set of the tournament today. By his own admission, he got tight in the third-set tiebreaker. Otherwise, he’s in good, standard form going forward. He bounced back from that breaker by winning 12 straight points at the start of the fourth.
“He was making me run more than any of my other opponents,” Dolgopolov said of Murray’s surge.
So now what? We presume, as of this writing, that Murray will play Rafael Nadal in the semifinals. Can he beat him with this good, standard form? Last year the two met in the quarterfinals, and Murray won by playing some of the most aggressive tennis of his career. His backhand, in particular, was a controlling stroke in that match.
"I feel like I’m hitting the ball bigger than last year,” Murray says.
Aside from that, though, there’s not a lot that's new about the man. His game is the same and his demeanor off the court is as even-keel and reserved as ever. There hasn’t been much discussion of him here so far. Now Murray is back to that point again, the point he’s always asked about, one of only four chances he’ll get this year to make an advance in his career. As always, he’s playing it straight and low-key, no special desires or ambitions revealed. He did crack a couple of smiles in his presser today, but mostly it was the same expressionless monotone, and the same answers about "the player who plays the best" being the one who is going to win, and if he doesn’t it’s not the end of the world.
That’s a theme we’ve heard quite a bit at this tournament, from Roger Federer to Caroline Wozniacki to Jo-Wilfred Tsonga to Andy Murray. It seems like a healthy way to think, but Murray must know that to beat Nadal it can’t be business as usual. He’ll have to push out of the defensive shell that served him so well today. From a personal perspective, it would be sweet to see Murray hoist the trophy here; he’s the only one of the “Big 4” without a major, and I'm curious as to what his reaction would be. A smile? A tear?
As Murray moves on, Dolgopolov flies on to the tour’s next stop. He says he’ll try to get visas to play the clay events in South America next month. He’s a player we’ll hope to see more of very soon. Aside from his balletic game, he’s also a very relaxed press-room presence. He says that despite the big Melbourne pay day, he’s sticking with his Subaru. When he was asked if he was “amazed” by what he did here, Dolgopolov shrugged and said, “Yeah, for sure I’m really happy. I’m confident and I think I can do good.”
“Have you heard from a lot of people, like your parents?”
“Yeah, my parents are watching all the time, cheering for me. They’re really happy. A lot of my friends as well. So it’s really nice.”
The big names take over from here. But amidst the tension and drama of the weekend to come, I may find myself missing Dolgopolov’s easy play and easy ways.
 The scene has played out the same way twice this week. A player is spotted in the tunnel leading into Rod Laver Arena before a night match. He’s there by himself, hopping a little, stretching a little, trying to stay loose. Frankly, he looks like he doesn’t know what to do. Everyone waits. The TV camera waits. The TV commentator who’s going to interview the players as they walk on the court waits. The public address announcer waits. Then a door opens and Rafael Nadal comes out of a room, presumably a bathroom, with his huge racquet bag over his shoulder and customary single Babolat in his left hand. The proceedings can begin.
Hold it, not quite yet. While the other player puts his bag down and walks out to meet the chair umpire for the coin toss, Nadal fiddles with various things, gets a tube of something out and sucks it down, takes a sip of something and then a sip of water, lines the bottles up just so, and for good measure wipes a towel over his arms, even though its hard to imagine what he’s done to start sweating at that point. While this is happening, the other player and the umpire say hello, then look at the court, then smile awkwardly. The player again tries to stay loose, but there’s really not much he can do. Finally, Nadal is ready. He runs out and starts jumping up and down in front of his opponent, who stares at his strings.
I first saw Nadal go through this routine on the Grandstand at the U.S. Open in 2003, when he was 16. He kept his opponent, the umpire, and the crowd waiting just as he does today. I remember thinking something like, “This is one willful kid,” There was something impressive about the way he went about his business on his own terms even then.
I’ve always been impressed, from a competitor’s standpoint, with the way Nadal controls the tempo of a match, even before the players take the court. It gives him a huge, if subtle, mental edge—“this match goes at my pace,” is the message. I’m not even sure how much of it is gamesmanship, and how much of it is just a ritual that he learned very early, and that he simply must perform now or risk thinking he’s jinxed himself out of the match. Nadal is a man of rituals and superstitions. This is a guy who, when he’s walking across the back of Laver Arena after toweling off, goes out of his way to step all the way through the Melbourne logo at the back of the court.
But I haven’t liked seeing those two players—Bernard Tomic and Marin Cilic—waiting in the tunnel for him, looking slightly forlorn. And as much as I admire Nadal’s competitive intelligence, I’ve never liked seeing his opponents standing out with the umpire, fiddling around, looking awkward. Tomic was asked about it after their match, and he said Nadal’s routine didn’t bother him, that the Spaniard just “has his thing.” No doubt there are other players who feel this way; Nadal was voted the winner of the Sportsmanship Award in 2010, which means his colleagues can’t be too annoyed by him.
That doesn’t include Robin Soderling, naturally. At Wimbledon one year, he refused to come out of the locker room until Nadal was ready to walk onto the court. Jurgen Melzer and Roger Federer, among others, have sat on the sidelines waiting for him to get his water bottles aligned before heading out for the coin toss. Cilic complained to the chair umpire on more than one occasion about Nadal's slowness on Monday. And Tomic took a conspicuously long time himself getting ready on the sidelines on Saturday. For a minute, it seemed that both players were never going to come off their chairs, and that the match would never be played.
Waiting it out is not really an effective strategy for combating Nadal’s tempo-control. If you’re sitting there twiddling your thumbs while he gets ready, you’re still playing at his pace. Is this unfair? A poll of the players would have to be taken to find out. How much do they mind it? Does it affect how they play? Do they wish they could invent their own, even longer pre-match ritual?
The next question is, What would you do about it, anyway? Do we want to start timing the coin toss, or the walk down the runway? What would the penalty be for going over those limits, considering that the match hasn’t even begun? If the players thought it necessary, I could see there being an unstated rule that when the chair umpire calls the two opponents for the toss, they have to be out there immediately.
Or I could see Nadal altering his rituals a little and taking less time, especially in the tunnel. Do what you need to do earlier. Eat your tube of whatever it is and sip your sips in the locker room. Have a lackey come out and put your water bottles in the right position for you before you get out there. When he was young and coming up, I admired Nadal’s willfulness and obliviousness to everyone but himself and his rituals. I still admire his competitive intelligence and ability to control his surroundings. But now that he’s No. 1, his pre-match stall session has started to seem like too much. It has started to seem like bad sportsmanship, from a guy who is a good sport in many other ways, and a guy I like for so many other reasons. There’s no need to make your opponents feel awkward before the match, Rafa. You know you can do that once it starts.
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