Juan Martin del Potro: Is he the Elvis of tennis? In 1977, famed and brilliant rock critic Lester Bangs eulogized the King by saying that “he was the last thing that we’ll agree on.” The “we” was the baby boom generation of music fans who had grown up with Elvis, but who by the mid-70s had splintered into various subcultures, like punk and disco, that loathed each other. I could say something similar for del Potro. He seems to be the one guy whom all tennis fans—Federer-ites, Nadalians, Djokovichers, you name it—can rally around. Everyone loves the big Argie, from Hall-of-Famers to hackers. I talked to Andre Agassi in New York today and tried to get him to speak a little about the 2011 season so far, and on Djokovic and Federer. He spent most of his answer saying how happy he was to see del Potro in action again. In the seven minutes since I started writing this post, a tennis buddy of mine emailed to ask: “Is del Potro back?”
“Yes, sort of,” was my answer. That may seem a little hesitant for a guy who just won his first tournament after a layoff of nearly a year, but del Potro's win over Janko Tipsarevic in Del Ray yesterday was not vintage stuff. He came into the match saying he was tired, and then he got much more tired very quickly in the afternoon Florida heat. Over the first five games, four of which he lost, del Potro appeared to play exactly one point at top speed. Otherwise, he was late to the ball and late to set up; out of necessity, and desperation, he even began to develop a whole new shot, a stick-save backhand slice hit while he was spinning away from the net. It kept him in quite a few points.
It was a windy, ugly, schizophrenic, and all around very strange match, the equivalent of an American football game where one team—in this case, Tipsarevic—is in the red zone five times and comes away with a field goal, only to watch the other team—in this case del Potro—which has done nothing all day suddenly throw a Hail Mary at the end of the first half to score a touchdown and take the lead. “All the factors were going my way to win,” a frustrated Tisparevic said afterward. “But I really didn’t use my chances.”
It was windy, del Potro was reeling, but still Tipsarevic stuck with his usual game plan of hitting big and aiming toward the lines. He regretted it later. “I think the tactic I had was too aggressive,” he said, “probably because I was afraid that maybe If I start letting him play that he would dominate the court.” Before the match, Tennis Channel commentators Jimmy Arias and Leif Shiras said that Tipsarevic should be relaxed because he had nothing to lose playing a former U.S. Open champion. In theory, that was true. Except that (a) Tipsarevic is not what you would call a relax-er; he was on the lookout for bad calls from the start. And (b) you stop having nothing to lose the minute you get a lead. That’s when you get really nervous. And that’s when Tipsarevic started to have his troubles.
However long he’s been gone, I would have expected del Potro to be able to handle coming back from two sets of tennis the night before a little better than he did. But it’s been a long road back for the big man, and it’s a little early to get critical, especially after a win. He also seemed to be in the kind of negative mental funk that he sporadically goes into, even during big matches—he spent most of the final of the 2009 World Tour Final against Nikolay Davydenko in one. But the way he broke out of it was also characteristic. Tipsarevic, seeing that del Potro was dragging anchor, tried a drop shot. Out of nowhere, the Argentine was all over it. He got to it easily, flipped a winner up the line, and lifted his arms to rev up a startled crowd, who he had just spent half an hour lulling to sleep. That was vintage del Potro: One minute he’s got his chin on his chest and is ambling his way out of the match; the next he’s in full war cry.
“Janko had control in the first set,” del Potro said, “but I was focused on my serve because it was only a break. If I get a break soon, maybe I can come back to win that set, and that’s what happened.” He knows it’s one step at a time.
The best of del Potro’s game is still somewhere inside of him, waiting to break out—the skiddingly flat crosscourt forehand wasn’t in evidence yesterday, but it will be. What was in evidence, though, was the winner’s calmness that resides at the core of his otherwise highly emotional self. “It was very hot and of course I felt it,” del Potro said. “But in the final, you have to think how you can win. Even if you play bad or not, you have to win the final.”
“You have to think how you can win”: there’s a one-line tennis textbook if I’ve ever heard one.
Why do we like del Potro? I would say it’s the emotion, the genuineness, and the paradoxical, gentle-giant fragility that we see in a big man—we figure little guys can look out for themselves. There’s also that monster forehand, spectacular when it connects, and his understated but obvious passion for the game.
And now there’s something else: Del Potro is fighting back from adversity, from the same type of exasperating injury problems that so many of us weekend warriors have been through. As my tennis buddy who emailed me today said, “I’m rooting for him because I feel like I’m going through the same thing. Taking a bit of time to get back to where I was.”
My friend has been injured as well, but you can be perfectly healthy and root for someone for the same reason: A lot of us are trying to back to where we were, aren't we? It’s just that none of us got to where del Potro got—U.S. Open champion; future of the game—in the first place. We want, at the very least, to see him get a fair chance at that future. That much we can all agree on.
The game starts with the serve, literally, figuratively, and every which way. From the structure of the rallies to the confidence of the person hitting the serve, it all flows from there. “Flow,” however, was not a word that used to come to mind when you thought of Novak Djokovic’s serve; at this time last year he was, as many people have pointed out, hitting it overhand like a cricket bowler. You wouldn't know it today. Asked about his serving performance in the Dubai final on Saturday, Djokovic needed just two words to sum it up: “It’s incredible.” He kept talking about how hard he’s been working on it, how much it has improved, how important it is, but he didn’t really need to elaborate.
Djokovic missed just three first serves in the first set, and in the second he used it to get him out of jail a few times. More than the stats, though, what’s incredible to me is how much better—smoother, with all parts finally integrated—his serve looks. Against Roger Federer, Djokovic’s game really did flow from it. Serving or returning, he tilted the rallies the way he wanted them, toward Federer’s backhand side. More important, every one of his shots had more pace and energy than it had just a day before. The night-time atmosphere, the opponent, the fact that it was a final all came together to produce a different Djokovic from the one we had seen in Dubai up until then. In Melbourne, Djokovic said that the glow of the Davis Cup hadn’t worn off; in Dubai, it was the glow of his long-delayed return to the major-title winner’s circle that hadn’t worn off. Suddenly, he has that champion’s aura, and champion’s ability to rise to the occasion.
I thought I had seen the best of Djokovic in his last three matches at the Australian, but he was even better in the first set against Federer in Dubai. It began with his serve and return—he was reading Federer’s deliveries exceptionally well. But his core confidence soon flooded every part of his game. He hit passing shots on the run and dictated with his inside-in forehand. At the height of his confidence, Djokovic pulled Federer out wide with a forehand, and on his next shot cut an even sharper forehand angle that Federer had no chance of tracking down. It was the kind of flashy, elegant, excessive shot that we associate with Federer at his best. There was something Federer-esque about the way Djokovic reached “full flight” once he had established a lead late in the first set.
What about Federer himself? I thought a backhand that he missed very early in the match was telling. He was down break point at 1-1, but had moved Djokovic off the ad court with his serve. Federer got a good look at a mid-court backhand, and the down the line was wide open. It appeared that he was going to go that way, but changed his mind to go back crosscourt. The result was a terrible shank, the first of many on the evening.
There was an indecisiveness to his whole performance. Federer seemed caught between his new tactics, where he takes every opportunity to attack, and his old tactics of slice, variety, and patience that he has often used against Djokovic in the past. On the one hand, he tried to belt forehands and take over points; on the other, he was content to simply slice Djokovic’s second serve back in the court. He had opportunities to run around it in the ad court and go after a forehand—a signature tactic of the Annacone era thus far—but he didn’t take them.
Credit that, again, to the New Djokovic. Slice, variety, patience: They aren’t working against him these days. Nothing is. Everything about his game, from his serve to his mental approach, is in the ascent; he played this match as if he expected to win, which has often not been the case against Federer in the past. Now that he seems to have cleared away a few mental demons, we’ll see how high Djokovic's version of “full flight” takes him. Whatever happens, it’s great to see this most natural and mobile and athletic of players flowing around the court the way he should.
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Many, including myself, have wondered whether Caroline Wozniacki is a real number one. Many, including myself, have wondered at the same time whether Vera Zvonareva is a real number two (or three, for that matter). However those questioned are ultimately answered, they put on a marquee-worthy show in the Doha final on Saturday. It was high-energy skirmish in which both players fought for every shot and scrap of territory without a choke or second thought between them.
It appears that Zvonareva has reached her level, and that her fate at this point in her career is simple. If she can outhit you, she’ll probably beat you: if she can’t, she won’t. In the last three majors, she beat everyone except Serena and Clijsters, and when she played those two, the results were pretty much foregone conclusions. She wasn’t in any of those matches.
But Wozniacki, however well she’s been playing, and whatever new aggressive tactics she’s been using, is a different case. Zvonareva can outhit her, so she can beat her, as she did in the semifinals of the U.S. Open last year, and as she did, again in straight sets, in Doha. It was one of the finest performances I’ve seen from the Russian, and, like Djokovic’s in Dubai, one you expect from a champ. She came up with nine aces, often right when she needed them. She was extremely solid from the ground, especially on the backhand side, and she played with a well-measured aggression. Just as well-measured were the drop shots and topspin lobs that she threw in at highly opportune moments. As the second set progressed and Wozniacki, as she likes to do, kept hanging around, tears came to my eyes—or at least I imagined that I would soon see Zvonareva crying them once she blew a second set that belonged to her. They never materialized, and her nerves never got the best of her. Again, like Djokovic, Zvonareva played as if she expected to win.
It was a great two-week run for Wozniacki, but she had to come down to earth. She had won the week before with some of the best tennis of her career, and then gotten sick to start this tournament. It might have been a blessing in disguise: She kept the points short out of necessity. But from the start, this wasn’t Wozniacki’s day. She sent balls wide that she never misses, and when she did play well, her opponent had all the answers. Wozniacki slammed her racquet—impressively—to the court and showed more frustration than she had this year so far.
Was it a match that pointed out the limits of Wozniacki’s game once again? That’s possible; she’s been more assertive, but she couldn’t out-hit Zvonareva. Still, I thought her demeanor and her effort more than made up for that. Whatever happened, by the start of the next point, she was composed again. Like Zvonareva, Wozniacki expected to win, and even on a bad day she gave herself a chance to do it. That, as much as anything else, is what No. 1 players do.
“It’s true that it’s not the best memory. At the same time it was magic.”
Who else but Justine Henin could have uttered these two sentences within a few seconds of each other, about the same subject? Who else could utter them about an incident in which she was caught lying in front of the world, in her semifinal against Serena Williams at the 2003 French Open?
I was asleep in Melbourne when Henin announced her second retirement last month, and never got a chance to write anything about her latest, and presumably last, exit. Fortunately, she’s taking her time leaving the stage—in the last week, she’s made news by mentioning doping and Serena “hand incident”—so saying good-bye to this strange and brilliant seven-time Grand Slam champion now doesn’t seem totally beside the point. At least not to me: Whatever her flaws, and in part because of her flaws, she’s worth a proper good-bye.
I first interviewed Henin when she was 17, in 1999, for an “up-and-comer” piece for Tennis magazine. She was an unusual mix from the beginning: Very distanced and practiced and professional for most of it, but then when I fumbled a question near the end, she let out a surprisingly friendly laugh. That year she played Amelie Mauresmo on a backcourt in the first round of the U.S. Open. I rooted for Justine because I thought if she got killed—Mauresmo had reached her first Aussie Open final that year—my story, one of the first I had done for the magazine, would get killed along with her. Henin held her own, and I knew right away that I was watching a player that I would want to watch over and over. I was amazed at her backhand, of course; it looked slightly impossible coming from such a little person. She lost that day, but made it close enough that my piece ran—I think I’ve always been grateful.
What will we miss about Henin? Well, we’re already seeing it in the press comments she’s made since Australia: The drama. Like her sudden, friendly laugh at the end of my interview with her, Henin was always good for a surprise, both good and bad. In her prime, she retired twice. Her big wins could be followed by pitiful defeats—she was a champ and a fighter who on certain days came out with nothing. She broke the rules and didn’t play nice, even with her countrywoman Kim Clijsters. Besides the Hand, her coach Carlos Rodriguez, was routinely spotting by cameras giving her very specific and very illegal coaching. She was intense and distanced on court and stoical in defeat, but she never ceased to surprise me with her normalcy and humor in interviews later.
I don’t think any tennis player has ever been as defined and inspired by their size as Justine Henin. She says now that she was intimidated by bigger players, especially the Williams sisters (interesting that she felt like she was playing both of them at the same time), and that the Hand was magical because it allowed her to fight back, to show the other, bigger players on tour that she was tough, too. That’s how far—too far—Henin would go to make up for her size. Until that moment, she had been soft in the clutch, a choker; after that, she had a reputation for being strong when it counted, even if that wasn’t always the case in reality.
How much should we hold Justine’s less-attractive moments against her? That depends on who you are. The thing about being a tennis fan is that you like who you like—often for reasons you can’t explain even to yourself—and there aren’t many things that a player can do to make you unlike them. If a pro who I didn’t appreciate—I won’t name any names—had lied and fabricated about the Hand or been a serial receiver of strategic coaching or quit in the second set of a Grand Slam final that she was obviously going to lose or announced her second retirement smack in the middle of a major, I would use all of those things as evidence against them. But I liked Justine.
I liked her constant sense of siege and struggle, I liked her weird theatrical soulfulness, I liked the revealing fear in her eyes when she played, I liked her dignified, tear-less way in defeat, I liked her ever-present no-nonsense baseball cap, I liked how she tried and tried to find a better serve, but never totally succeeded.
Most of all, and most important, I liked her game. There the flaws were left behind and her small-person’s struggle and ambition were made artistic, poetic. Again, she often went too far in her quest to measure up to the bigger girls. She attacked too much, and that left her vulnerable to off days. And I'm glad she did. Otherwise we would have never seen her backhand, my favorite all-around shot to watch since, I don’t know, the Sampras serve, perhaps. It seemed impossible to me at first, and it would always seem that way, especially in slow motion. There, when she came over it, you could see how much extension she got out of her arm, and how much torque and force she got out of a mid-section that barely seemed to exist. From start to flyaway finish, it was shot of over-the-top genius. It wasn’t the Hand that made you special, Justine, it was something more worthy and beautiful. It was the back-hand. That was the best memory, and the magic.
It’s that time again, time to find out who I’ve overhyped and not gotten misty-eyed enough over during the last two weeks. There’s wisdom in crowds, someone once said. My question is: How wise was that person in the first place, if he thought the idea up by himself?
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Many attack-style players are high-amperage, wired to the hilt. But Raonic, like Pistol Pete, is calm and calculating... and relentless. I’m liking what I’m seeing here.—Slice and Dice
I’m trying to decide whether I agree with this. McEnroe and Navratilova: extremely high strung. Edberg and Rafter: not at all. Sampras, no. Who else is there in recent years? Taylor Dent, no. Max Mirnyi, no. Llodra, no. On the other side, Nadal, a baseliner, is pretty amped, and while Borg kept it all in, he was a self-described “mad man” as a kid. I wonder if being highly amped was a product of those rabid 1970s. It seems like tennis players have calmed down considerably over the ensuing decades. Hawk-Eye obviously hasn’t hurt.
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think there are 4 main considerations to assess the potency of a player's game (and their future potential!): 1. movement 2. ability to hit winners 3. avoidance of error 4. mental toughness. Put these all together and you have a champion of Serena-like or Graf-like proportion. Kim Clijsters, for instance, is pretty strong overall, but just below the top in avoidance of error and, occasionally, mental toughness. But she's good enough to be a top player and win slams, especially when the competition isn't dominated by someone excelling at all 4 categories.—Charles
This is a decent way to look at it, though every champion is more than the sum of their parts. I would not say that either Serena or Federer have ever rated highly when it’s come to avoidance of error. These are four important categories, and movement is a bigger deal than ever and the one question mark when it comes to Raonic’s game. But each of these four is not of equal value. Looking at Federer, his ability to hit winners trumps his errors, while Serena’s mental toughness trumps everything.
Digression: The question of movement makes me wonder, whose game would have stood up better on the WTA tour today, Seles at her peak or Graf at her peak? Graf was the mover, but her backhand could be exploited. Seles was a hitter, but she didn’t have the same wheels. Or would they both have dominated?
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“Are both Roanic’s parents engineers?” Yes, they both are. His father has a PhD and his mother a Masters. Three of his four grandparents are university professors. Milos comes by his smarts and his intelligence honestly. He finished high school at 16 and he has been taking online university classes while on tour. It was one of his father's stipulations in allowing him to try tennis that until he was ranked 100, he had to continue his education and Milos has said that he definitely wants to get his degree.—Jackson
Can an athlete be too smart? You want to keep thoughts out of your brain as much as possible. Sampras’s father was an engineer, correct? Not that Pete’s an intellectual or anything. The opposite, in fact. From listening to Raonic answer questions in press conferences, he seems to have a very methodical mind, very centered, which is the right kind of smart for tennis.
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Todd Martin also noticed that the one big aspect of Sampras game that Raonic doesn't have (yet) is that running forehand that Sampras used so well to change the dynamic of a point. Del Potro wasn't able to hit that shot right away (but learned how to do it), and Jacket perfected it with the passing of time. Djokovic is getting better and better at it. Raonic's forehand is sound, so I wouldn't put it past him to acquire that tool.—Juan José
Raonic is never going to be as fluid a mover as Sampras, and that’s part of what made Sampras so good at a running shot—he could run. It seems like Raonic is a Sampras-type player for the tall man era. The trade-off will be mobility. Not that Raonic’s forehand isn’t going to get a lot better, but Sampras’s running forehand was uniquely good; I hardly ever remember seeing him miss it.
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I suggest we not worry about who's #1. Honestly, what value does it add to our lives?—Paul
It’s a good question, and one I find myself asking more often as I get older: Who cares? Then again, if you ask that question of the No. 1 ranking, you have to ask it of the World Cup and the World Series. You have to ask it about everything in sports. Why should we care who wins any tennis match between two people we don’t know that takes place hundreds or even thousands of miles away, while there are so many other more serious things going on right next to us? It’s better not to ask.
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i think steve is being to hard on JJ saying she can do the first-strike. if i understand he mean that she is not agressive, and that has change since long time ago. she has been more agressive and a lot more than Caro. the thing is...that she is just on the way to become the player that she was, specially last year during the clay court season. i remenber she was very agressive and confident. her serce, forehand, backhand, movement everything was amazing.—Euris from D.R.
Naturally, right after I wrote that JJ doesn’t have first-strike ability, she showed a good deal of it in her next match, despite losing it to the diabolical Wozniacki. Maybe there are better things for Jankovic ahead.
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Steve......... now really..... I think it might be delightful to watch the Cameron Crazies bouncing up and down to Novak's service dribbling..... plus, they all wear the right color of medium blue....—Frank
I hadn’t thought of that, probably because I’m a card-carrying Duke hater from way back, but you’re right. There should be a pro tournament at Cameron Arena during the school year. Imagine Nadal in there?
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I don't think that I am one who is part of the so-called anti media hype. I just think it's absurd to start comparing Raonic to the likes of Sampras. That's hyperbole of the very highest order. It's also quite unfair to this young kid. Why compare him to anyone? Let him make his own way and be his own unique self.—MindyM
Now let’s consider this question of “hype,” a word which is thrown around so much here. The word as I understand it has to do with publicity and advertising, with the deliberate and deceptive drumming up of excitement to boost sales for something. This is different from a journalist writing an article about a previously little known 20-year-old player who has just won a tournament and made a huge jump in the rankings. It’s also different from a journalist speculating about his future and saying what he likes and doesn’t like about his game. There’s nothing deceptive about that.
You might ask, “Why don’t you write the same stuff about Soderling, who just won two tournaments in a row?” Yes, Soderling deserved his props, and Bodo had it covered last week for us. The difference is that we know Soderling already, he’s in the Top 5, and he was a high seed at both of those tournaments, in Rotterdam and Marseille. Journalism is about the new, the unexpected. It’s not hype, which is fake, it’s news. Regardless of where he ends up, Raonic is also someone exciting for tennis fans—even Roddick, a sports fan, used the word when he talked about him.
As for the Sampras comparison, I doubt any sane person has written that the Canadian is a lock for 14 Grand Slams. It was made because Sampras is Raonic’s idol, and like Sampras he bases his game around a tremendous serve. As time goes on, we’ll see more of what he’s like as an individual.
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Fair enough about Andy's safe style of play, but I'm disappointed you didn't write in a more misty-eyed, sentimental vein about his gutsy way of winning his 30th title. Raonic, Raonic, Raonic. He is an exciting player and I'm perfectly happy with the hype that's slung his way. But Andy fought a really heroic fight with a bad cold and a tweaked shoulder. I was hoping you might open the floodgates and be really mushy about that but... I guess I'll have to hold up the slack on my own read-by-two-people blog. Sniff!—Kristy
It was a great win, and an heroic victory over his own testiness as well. And yes, I knew about his hair situation, but it seemed that a lot of people in the general sports world didn’t.
I might have ventured some purple prose, which I brought out in a big way when the U.S won the Davis Cup in 2007 and after Wimbledon 2009, except that the Memphis win seemed like a case of Roddick settling in to a game that’s good enough to beat most players outside the Top 20 and good enough to win smaller titles, but not good enough to take him deep at majors anymore, which is what he really wants.
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Wrong, Steve. Dubai is a WTA Premier Five Tournament (like Rome, Cincy, Montreal and Tokyo) just below the level of the four Premier Mandatories. Top Ten players have to play in four out of the five Premier Fives according to WTA rules. The winner gets 900 ranking points and $350,000. In fact, together the PMs and P5s form a nine tournament series equivalent to the ATP Masters 1000 series. It's a shame people don't realize this.—woznowuss
You got me.
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The two tournaments in Austria (Bad Gastein and Linz) also still features "Ladies". I think Lady Flavia is a good pick to win Doha, if Caroline withdraws/retires/loses early.—woznowuss
Got me again. Still, whatever your level of political correctness, “ladies” has a retrograde ring to it.
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Remember, Canada is the inventor of basketball.—Sexy Commenter
Darn, you got me . . . wait, is that right? According to the Internet, which is never wrong, basketball’s inventor, James Naismith, was born in Canada, but he invented the game in Massachusetts. Can Canadians really claim America’s game? Now that you have Raonic, you people think you can have it all, don't you?
This week the men to join the women—excuse me, the ladies—in the desert tennis kingdom. It’s about time, too. Almost a month has passed since that two-week season-within-a-season known as the Australian Open. I typically think of the other desert showdown, in Indian Wells, as the start of the year proper, and it will probably feel that way again come March. But if you put together all the players in Dubai (ATP) and Doha (WTA) this week, you could make a case that this is as close to opening day as the sport is going to get.
Both tournaments are well underway, but let’s take a look at where they might lead in the days ahead.
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Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships, Dubai, UAE; DecoTurf II; $2,233,000; draw is here
On second thought, seeing that $2-million-plus cash commitment, and imagining the untold amounts of money that were doled out just to get the players to show up in the first place, makes me remember why I can never quite credit Dubai as a major event or a crucial baromoter of anything. It has always felt like half-an-exhibition. This was brought home to me a few years ago while watching Rafael Nadal lose to Andy Roddick in the quarters here. It was one of the very few times when I’ve seen Nadal give something less than his utmost once he fell behind. That's enough evidence for me.
Hey, it’s February tennis, make of the results what you will. There’s still plenty to watch, starting at the very top and bottom of the draw, where Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic will make their first appearances since Melbourne. Each won their first-rounders routinely today, though Djokovic’s came against a high-quality opponent in Michael Llodra.
Who can stop the Top 2 seeds from another face-off? Ernests Gulbis, who has troubled Federer in the past, is near him in the draw, as is Gilles Simon, the man who almost ended his Australian Open very early. As for Djokovic, he may have to deal with Berdych or Davydenko, who face each other next, in the semis.
Federer and Djokovic are both rested, and neither minds the DecoTurf surface—Federer has won five U.S. Opens on it, while Djokovic has been to two finals in Flushing; each has also won in Dubai in the past. You have to like their chances to play again in a final. Make of that result what you will. Whatever it means, it will mean more for Federer, coming off his loss to the Serb in Oz. It's safe to sat that it won’t be the last time they see each other across the net in 2011.
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Qatar Ladies Open, Doha, Qatar; Plexipave; $721,000; draw is here
Isn’t it only the All England Club that has the right to use the word “ladies” at this late date? Or is this Doha’s bid to be the Wimbledon of the Arabian peninsula? Whatever the reason, it has an odd ring.
The ladies in question are very similar to the ones who just finished in Dubai: Wozniacki, Zvonareva, Kuznetsova (who’s already out), Radwanska (ditto), Jankovic (she won today), Pennetta (she also won). Perhaps of most interest thus far was Daniela Hantuchova’s win over Victoria Azarenka, the No. 6 seed who has yet to gain any traction in 2011, and wild card Sania Mirza’s straight-set win over Bojana Jovanovski. It seems the WTA's future remains unwritten.
Otherwise, Wozniack is apparently ill, and could take a quick loss to Nadia Petrova in the next round. That and the early loss by Kuznetsova might make the Italians, Pennetta and Schiavone, late-round contenders—or not, who knows. On the bottom half, this is an opportunity for Zvonareva and Li Na, who were disappointing last week in Dubai, to make amends. With Jankovic and Azarenka out, their road to the semis looks just a little clearer.
The upsets have started early, and there are sure to be more. I’m looking forward to another roller-coaster ride in the desert with the gals.
“I just didn’t play well. I did too many unforced errors. She played her basic game and didn’t have to do much.”
That was Svetlana Kuznetsova’s post-match assessment of how her opponent, Caroline Wozniacki, beat her on Sunday in the Dubai final. Three-fourths of that statement is indisputably true. Kuznetsova didn’t play well; she was slow and off-balance. She definitely did too many unforced errors, 15 in the first set alone, most of which didn’t land within five feet of the court. And Wozniacki didn’t have to do a ton to win. She probably could have gotten away with playing half as well and still cruised.
But it wasn’t true that Wozniacki just played her basic game. The Dane, who won her first title in Dubai and reclaimed the No. 1 ranking in the process, sounded like a parody of her own press-conference self-parody afterward. “I felt really good out there today," she said. "I felt like I was hitting the ball well, clean, and I could really stay aggressive. I knew I had to, because if Svetlana is allowed to stay and dictate, she’s just too strong.”
Sometimes clichés are clichés just because they’re true. This was the best match I’ve seen Wozniacki play since her crafty win over Maria Sharapova at the U.S. Open last year. If anything, this one was more impressive because Wozniacki didn’t need to be crafty. As she said, she took the match to Kuznetsova in ways that she normally doesn’t. Wozniacki stood closer to the baseline. She changed the ball’s direction and went down the line more often. And as the Tennis Channel’s Corina Morariu pointed out, when Wozniacki had a good look at a forehand, she didn’t just play it safe and roll it back into the court the way she often does. She took it early and went after it, with pace and depth.
Before the match, I would have had a hard time imagining that it would be Kuznetsova who would be doing the scrambling, but that’s how the points played out. Wozniacki broke serve regularly by controlling the rallies in those games right from her return of serve. Only when she got nervous in the middle of the second set did she revert to her ultra-safe, roll the ball back game. It will always be her default; but it’s a better default than going for too much.
This may turn out to be an important match and week for Wozniacki. She killed a few birds with one stone, the least of which, from a long-term standpoint, was getting back to No. 1. She put the tears of Melbourne behind her. She won an event she had never done well in previously, without dropping a set. And she did it with a new assertiveness. All of this should give Wozniacki an expanding sense of accomplishment, of improvement, which isn’t easy to get when you’re No. 1 in the world. The tendency, as Bjorn Borg used to say, is to defend your turf, which means not doing anything differently.
Rather than causing further disorder on the women’s side, Wozniacki’s win gives the tour two success stories at the same time and sets up their possible clash—if she had taken the top spot and then lost in the semis, it would have been a different story. Kim Clijsters, with her two Slams and year-end championship, remains the player of the moment. But if Dubai is any indication, the No. 1 player in the world is gaining on her.
***
What was the big news out of Memphis? That Juan Martin del Potro, a semifinalist, is rounding into form? That big-serve, fast-court, rock-fight tennis made its reappearance and created a “be careful what you wish for” situation? That Milos Raonic continues to defy the anti “media hype” brigade (by the way, writing about a young player who is suddenly winning tournaments and flying up the rankings does not constitute “jumping on the bandwagon,” as some seem to think here)? That Roddick won without being any more aggressive than he has in the recent past, and while fighting congestion and a case of severe grouchiness? Or that he inadvertently revealed the extent of his hair loss by diving for a ball and losing his hat on match point?
All of those things are intriguing, but let me start with Roddick. As impressive as his ability to keep his hair situation under wraps for this long may be, even more significant is the fact that this win marked his 30th career title—as great as his potential is, a kid like Milos Raonic can only hope he ends up with as many. This was a gut check match for Roddick, one that he found a way to win. You could hear him huffing and puffing his way through rallies during the third set; it was bad enough for him to pull out of Delray this coming week. And his final shot was as athletic a move as he’s made in his career. Still, and maybe this was all he could muster on this day, Roddick won the way he wins so many matches against lower-ranked or less-experienced opponents, by waiting Raonic out. It’s an intelligent play, and it worked perfectly in the first-set tiebreaker, when the Canadian went for too much when he was up set point. But as we’ve seen at the majors recently, it’s not a game plan that works against someone who is making those key shots; it leaves a lot of your fate in the other guy’s hands. I didn’t see Roddick’s other matches—was he any more aggressive?
How do you feel about Milos Raonic now? By the end of the Roddick match, I was starting to think that I’ve been watching him for a long time. This is a product of the length of his matches, which involve a lot of service holds and tend to go the distance. It’s also a product of the ritualistic regularity with which he plays: Eight bounces before every ball toss; unwavering calmness and purposefulness as he makes his way around the court, whatever the score may be; bomb serve after bomb serve. It doesn't take long to feel like you've been watching the kid for years.
Raonic-Roddick had its moments. After long stretches of thudding serves and not much else, each set closed on a high. Still, as much as I respect the serve, and as much as I want there to be courts fast enough to show off the net-rushing talents of a player like Michael Llodra, after seeing this match I’m not calling for the death of the rally anytime soon. But that doesn’t mean Raonic is a one-dimensional player. What I enjoyed most in this final was his attempt to change paces, spins and trajectories from the baseline. After falling into Roddick’s trap and overhitting early, he seemed to learn on the job. By the third set, Raonic had stepped back and begun mixing high-looped forehands with low slice backhands. He made Roddick dictate rather than defend, and that’s when Raonic broke serve to get back into the match.
Afterward, Roddick, as he usually does, summed up his opponent well. “He’s as exciting a talent as we’ve seen in a while,” he said. “The good thing for him is that he’s going to be able to learn on the job because that serve is going to win him a lot of matches.”
Learning on the job: It's what Raonic did all week, in his various three-set wins, and it’s what he did despite losing in the end to a diving Roddick. After watching Raonic climb back in the third set from a break down, the veteran had to do something special to finish him off.
The next morning, Raonic flew to Acapulco, where he was scheduled to start another tournament, on clay, right away. By the time he got there, he had thought better of a third straight week of tennis and, like Roddick in Delray, decided to withdraw. The art of the pullout: Call it another lesson on the job.
Should the women just play their entire season in Dubai or Doha? It’s starting to seem as if they’re there, under the lights, in the desert, all season long, the way it can seem as if the Lakers have taken up permanent residence at the Staples Center and Duke never has to play in front of anyone other than their obnoxiously hopping student fans.
In theory, the atmosphere in Dubai should be stultifying. There are tons of empty seats, especially in the “royal” sections at the ends—at times, there may be more corporate logos around the court than there are spectators. But when I watch on TV, I don’t get the feeling that this is an appearance-fee boondoggle, which in reality is what it is. Against all odds, the atmosphere feels good to me, loose and sociable, looser certainly than the crowds that turn out for most indoor events. In Dubai, with the matches scheduled mostly in the evening, the crowd gets to feel the air but it doesn’t have to survive the heat. Could more outdoor tournaments be scheduled mainly at night? It would do a lot for the North American hard court events.
It hasn’t hurt that what I’ve seen of the tennis has been entertaining, in a topsy-turvy way. Much of it has reminded me of what a friend said last week after he’d watched the Soderling-Tsonga final in Rotterdam. He mentioned that when you dropped just a few places down the ranking ladder, you could see that the players were just a little more flawed than the very top guys—the differences were small but always noticeable, and they showed up in every part of their games. I’ve felt the same way watching Dubai. Without Serena or Clijsters, what you get are excellent players with definite flaws. The quality may not be as high as it is when those two are around, but it doesn’t hurt the drama. Just when you think one player is ready to shut the door, she opens it wide again. Just when you think another is going to crumble, she pulls herself together. Until she falls apart again.
I’ve watched what I could on my computer in my office, which has its good points and bad points. I can check in on it no matter what I’m doing, but sometime the feed simply doesn’t work, for no good reason. Can the Internet do something about that, please? Here’s what I’ve taken away from a week of peeking in on Dubai, flaws and all.
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No. 1, Again Disorder has been restored at the top of the WTA rankings: Caroline Wozniacki is back at No. 1. Whether or not she belongs in that spot, Wozniacki has continued to impress. The last I saw her was in Melbourne, where she was gutted after her semifinal defeat. But that hasn’t stopped her from marching right back to the semis in Dubai without much trouble. So far, Wozniacki hasn’t let being No. 1 throw off her evolution. She hasn’t won a major, but if she hadn’t been artificially ranked at the top, you wouldn’t really have expected her to by now, would you? What she has done is elevate herself above everyone else outside of the tour’s elite. She’s doing the first thing that’s expected of a top player, and what may be the hardest: She’s beating the players she’s supposed to beat in the early rounds and giving herself a shot on the final weekends.
It’s JJ Time, Again I used to go to a lot of Jelena Jankovic’s press conferences; you could always count on something wacky coming out her mouth. I spent the better part of a day with her at Bollettieri’s, and there was plenty of wackiness to go around there as well. Then, around the time when she began to drop in the rankings, I began to think I’d heard it all from her, so I stopped paying as much attention—her crazy press conference comments got to be a dime a dozen, like shooting fish in a barrel. But this week she’s been fun to watch again. She’s pulled off two Houdini acts in a row, against Kanepi 7-5 in the third and Stosur 7-6 in the third. Jankovic’s flaw is her first-strike inability; she’s very good at taking what an opponent gives her, but she has trouble taking it herself. Stosur and Kanepi gave her a lot. Wozniacki won’t this weekend.
Fightin’ Sveta Maybe we will see a new Svetlana Kuznetsova this year, after all. It looked promising for a few matches in Melbourne, and while her play has been up and down and everything in between so far in Dubai, she has fought with uncharacteristically overt determination to the semifinals. She looked exhausted and dead to rights in the first-set tiebreaker against Radwanska today, but she fist-pumped her way through it and gained energy from there. Kuznetsova’s flaw? She plays her best when she plays her riskiest, which means that's also when she plays her worst.
Sammy Slamming—Herself When things go bad for Kim Clijsters, she moves faster. Sam Stosur seems to handle disaster with a thousand mile stare. Even as she was busy giving away the third-set tiebreaker to Jankovic today, Stosur didn’t flinch, didn’t change her tempo, didn’t stop and let out any frustration, didn’t show anything at all. She did the same thing during her disastrous tiebreaker loss to Kvitova in Melbourne. It’s as if she’s in denial, physically, of what’s happening to her.
Agi: Too Nice and Smooth Agnieszka Radwanska, unlike Jelena Jankovic, is a player I could never get tired of watching. The natural game and controlled demeanor are always a pleasure to see—Radwanska puts you at ease. In that easy variety, she’s like the return of an old favorite, Martina Hingis, without the spit and vinegar. And there’s the problem: Radwanska doesn’t have Hingis’s ego. She didn't shut the door in the first set against Kuznetsova today, and never recovered.
Being a well-adjusted person: That too can be a flaw in a tennis player.
Part two of this week's rankings Rally continues, and concludes, with Kamakshi Tandon's dissection of the current system and the weird results it can produce. (You can read part one here.) I won't attempt a response; there's nothing I could possibly add. Hope you enjoy this, and learn as much as I did from it. I'll be back tomorrow.
***
Steve,
That’s a very incisive remark by Ilie Nastase, especially since he was one of the first to have none other than No. 1 hung over his head. Your point about the psychological impact of rankings is a very interesting one. It definitely creates a very explicit and fluid kind of hierarchy we wouldn’t otherwise have, with costs and benefits. We’ve seen the impact of it in very stark terms recently with Jankovic, Safina, Wozniacki and even Ivanovic to an extent. If they hadn’t reached No. 1, their achievements would have been perceived both by themselves and by others as praiseworthy improvements rather than a lack of something more, and they might have been able to keep pushing ahead instead of trying to back something up.
Would they have been No. 1 under the old system? I can’t say for sure, but I’m told just barely for Jankovic and Safina, and no for Wozniacki. There was a great collection published at the end of last season of various ways of ranking the players, and here are the year-end rankings under the current Best Of system, the 1996 average, and the 1997 cumulative:
2010
1. Wozniacki, Caroline 2. Zvonareva, Vera 3. Clijsters, Kim 4. Williams, Serena 5. Williams, Venus
I guess we can safely say that Zvonareva should have been No. 2 no matter what. As I said, these ranking variations create fairly small differences, but sometimes those differences can be significant. We want to know that they’re the result of legitimate criteria. Hence my constant drumbeat: design the system, not the results.
For me, any decent tennis ranking system has to have three things:
1. Circularity: It should run over the course of a year instead of starting again at the beginning of the season, which skews the early results too much. Seems obvious, but remember that the ATP in 2000 actually wanted the Race to take the place of the regular rankings, another case of someone taking leave of their senses. (Measuring over two years, the way Nadal wants, or even just six months is also possible, but I think a year makes perfect sense for tennis given that it coincides with the season.)
2. A level playing field: Finding some way to compare players on an equivalent basis, so that Serena’s four tournaments aren’t judged beside Wozniacki's 24 without accounting for the difference. This can be an average or Best Of whatever, or something else. I’m split between the two, but they both basically do the job without being too complicated.
3. Quality control: In practice, this means bonus points. Winning a tournament beating Serena, Venus and Clijsters along the way is not the same as winning a tournament beating Pironkova, Radwanska and Kvitova along the way, and the rankings should reflect this.
The current rankings have the first two, but not the third. The ATP got rid of bonus points as part of its sense leave-taking in 2000, and the WTA a few years ago. I’m not sure why, except that they obviously made calculating and anticipating the rankings a lot harder. This is also one of the main things I’d point to when talking about the problems with the system. Wozniacki has beaten very few Top 5 players, and the system doesn’t care at all. Based on what I remember of the men, bonus points for beating a quality opponent could be as much as 20 percent of a player’s total, or even 30 percent in one or two cases.
(I say all this, but should mention that bonus points would be less important on the women's tour these days because anyone can beat anyone on a given day. Structurally, though, they’re important to have.)
The comments seem to split between ‘Slams are what matter’ and ‘why shouldn’t other tournaments count for something'? This is the classic quality versus quantity debate. But if you won a Slam not beating a Top 20 player, it wouldn't say all that much. Having round points and bonus points is a better way of striking a balance than just increasing the weight given to Slams, which is already considerable.
So while the lack of bonus points is a problem, it’s probably not the real explanation for the incongruity at the top of the WTA rankings these past couple of years. What is? It’s that the top players don’t play a schedule that matches the ranking system anymore.
Apart from the removal of bonus points, the other big change in the rankings has been the creation of mandatory tournaments, about 12 of the 16–18 tournaments required by the ATP and WTA are now must-count events. So in effect, everyone’s being judged on the same schedule. But increasingly, you have a split between the kinds of schedules that players play. Some play everything they should—Wozniacki, Jankovic, Safina—and a select few only play what they want—Serena, Clijsters, Henin.
Clearly, the former group has been winning the rankings war, because the rankings are set up to reward a full schedule. But if the top players won’t follow the system, is it time for the system to follow them? It’s a tough choice. On the one hand, the WTA has to have a system that gives players a reason to play regularly, or there would be no tour. On the other, if they impose a system that doesn’t reflect reality, they’re flushing their biggest source of legitimacy, the rankings, down the toilet.
The other question is how this happened. Just hazarding here, but I think the WTA started this process by abusing the power of the rankings—introducing things to influence player behavior even though they weren’t as effective at measuring performance, like removing the average and bonus points, bringing in mandatory events. That affected the credibility of the rankings and the burden it imposed on players, especially as the demands of the tour were working in the opposite direction, toward a reduction in play.
Now we’re at the point where the big names have all but rejected the rankings in favor of setting their own schedule. The WTA has dropped the number of tournaments from 18 to 16 and changed the commitment requirements for the Top 10 since 2009, but this has been overshadowed by the injury epidemic.
I don’t mean to exclude the men, who have done similar things but have been much more effective in getting the players to play all the events they’re meant to. Because of this, the system has worked pretty well for measuring the top players, though I’m reliably informed it creates a peculiar volatility around the mid-Top 100 since players who don’t have to play the Masters can pile up points at other events and leap up, only to fall again when they must start counting their Masters results.
The reason I said the men’s system is now actually worse than the women’s is because of the changes made a couple of years ago, when the points for getting to later rounds increased substantially, as did the gap between various levels of events (Challengers took a hit in points). It seems like these would make it harder to work your way up to the ATP level, and that streaky players who manage a few good results a year get more reward than consistent players who regularly win a couple of rounds. Perhaps this reflects current values, and certainly it means that the rankings will better reflect our perceptions (one title is a lot easier to remember than four quarterfinals), but I’m not sure it’s a better system. Last year, 27 of the Top 30 men won a tournament (historically unusual). Do Top 30 players tend to win tournaments, or are they Top 30 because they won a tournament?
Again, it may not matter that much in practice right now because there is a bigger gap between the players, but over time this could create, rather than reflect, gaps. Maybe this wouldn’t be bad to most people—protecting familiar names and having a clear hierarchy is probably good business. On the other hand, it's not good competition.
So there aren’t necessarily clear answers, but I’d like to at least know what thoughts are going into the choices that are made. It’s very hard to have a detailed conversation about rankings with officials. When the ATP changed its points table two years ago, I tried to talk about it with Justin Gimelstob (OK, so he wouldn’t have been my first choice, but he is an ATP Board member). I asked generally about the change, and he replied that they had had a board meeting in November where they were presented with some algorithms and picked out one.
“So why’d you pick that one?” I asked.
“They showed us several algorithms and we felt this was the best one.”
“But why?”
“We chose from the ones that were presented to us.”
“But why? Why’d you pick that one?”
“We decided it was the best one.”
“But why?”
After about a half-dozen but whys, I gave up. I suspect it was to match the prize money changes, which increased the money for the later rounds. But that would have been an easy answer to give instead of all that circular talk, which only made me conclude that he was completely lost. The irony is that the players balked at the prize money changes and they were partly reversed, but the points changes stayed as they were.
So Wozniacki could be back at No. 1 again tomorrow. Don’t look at me. It’s the algorithm, you know.
This week in the Rally, Kamakshi Tandon and I talk rankings. What’s their significance, and which system is best? Kamaskshi starts us off.
Hi Steve,
Kim Clijsters seemed to set the rankings world right side up again last week when she finally got back to No. 1 again. But don’t look now, as Caroline Wozniacki could grab the top spot back this week by reaching the semifinals in Dubai, sending Clijsters back down to No. 2 despite her two Slams, year-end championships and Miami titles.
I always feel a bit uncomfortable in these situations, because on one hand the bandwagon complaining is getting tiring and it’s often misplaced. Wozniacki is No. 1 without a Slam. How ridiculous. There must be something wrong with the system.
On the other hand, there actually is something wrong with the system, and this is the only time people really notice—when they disagree which who’s No. 1. So it’s tempting to pile on, hoping that it will result in the system being changed.
But these No. 1 debates aren't really about rankings, they’re about who’s the best player. Wozniacki isn’t the best player, yet she was/is/will be No. 1. Yet the issue of who’s the best player is separate from the issue of what the best ranking system is.
The ranking system isn’t really there to anoint ‘the best.’ It’s there to measure the players’ results and rank them to decide who should get into which tournaments, which means calculating who should be No. 67 every bit as much as who should be No. 1. But people don’t have opinions on who should be No. 67. They have opinions about who should be No. 1.
This discussion is going to be about the right ranking system, not the right No. 1, which isn’t going to do wonders for our popularity since the discussion of the right No. 1 would definitely be more interesting and entertaining to most people. But who’s in charge here anyway? Besides, the two questions are related in the end, so have patience.
For starters, we have to accept that when there’s parity, there are always going to be disputes about who should be No. 1. Every system looks a little suspect when you have Wozniacki, Jankovic, Safina—or Kafelnikov, Moya, Rios—sitting at No. 1. And you can have a system that’s completely crazy but as long as the right player is No. 1, it will hardly be noticed.
As I said, I really do think the women’s system has problems, it’s just that the fact that a player can be No. 1 without winning a Slam isn’t one of them. And I think the men now have in place a system that is similar but actually even a little worse, only no one’s noticed because Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal have been so dominant. One of them was going to be No. 1 under any system during the past few years, but that doesn’t mean this one is the best for sorting things out in less clear situations, or that it’s as good at ranking No. 67.
In the mid-90s, the women had a system that took an average of a player’s results, with a minimum of 14 tournaments (if you played two less, for example, you got two zeros in points). Women also got bonus points for beating top players. Clearly, this emphasized quality, though the 14-tournament minimum made players play a reasonable schedule.
Then there was a year when someone took leave of their senses, and the WTA changed the system so players were ranked based on how many points they had accumulated during the past year, no matter how many tournaments they had played. It was called the Rolling Race, though I believe the institutional memory has pretty much been wiped clean on this fine period. Essentially, Steffi Graf’s total over 12 tournaments was measured alongside Amanda Coetzer’s total in 30 tournaments. This was a pure quantity system. The money list is another good example of this idea, and sometimes people suggest that as an alternative ranking system.
Since then, the system has taken the total of a player’s best [14/18/16] results, meaning that you can choose to play the minimum tournaments without being at a disadvantage (as you would be under a quantity system), or you can choose to play a lot without getting hit for early losses (as you would under an averaging system).
I think both averaging and Best XX work OK in theory, as long as the XX is a reasonable figure. But Best XX encourages a bigger schedule than the average system, which doesn’t matter much in rankings terms but is helpful for the tour in trying to get players to play more tournaments. It also means that some losses don’t count, which affects the results again. Every little change to the system affects the rankings that it produces. Admittedly in practice, the differences tend to be fairly minimal. But sometimes the difference is between No. 1 and No. 2, so it’s important to agree that whatever causes that difference is legitimate.
These two systems get to the heart of the most basic issues in designing a system—do you measure the whole picture, or the high points? It’s like the difference between your average track time and your best track time—which says more about your running ability?
A quick quiz for you to see where you are on the spectrum:
1. One title = how many finals? 2. One title = how many semifinals? 3. One title = how many quarterfinals? 4. One Slam title = how many Masters? (in achievement terms, not public value)
I’ll give my tentative answers next, and talk about what the current systems measure and the results this produces.
Kamakshi
***
Hi Kamakshi,
I’m glad I let you lead the way on this one, as you’re much better versed in the rankings system and its recent history than I am. When Caroline Wozniacki began at No. 1, I likened that accomplishment not to being the best player in the world, but being the best at her job. That's what the women's No. 1 has reflected much of the time recently. "Employee of the Year" is not quite as grand as being the called "The Greatest," but it's a mark of distinction nonetheless.
Before I talk about which system I think is best, let me back up and say a few general things that come to mind when I think about rankings—like, how weird are they, anyway, how brutally definitive and hierarchical? We take them for granted by now, but what a strange thing it must be to, as Ilie Nastase said, “walk around with a number over your head.” Nasty thought some of the camaraderie went out of the game when the weekly computer rankings came in and separated the players one by one from each other—they really had been reduced to a number. But a lot of players thought otherwise. Instituting the ATP computer system in 1973 marked a shift in power away from the sport’s federations, who had always done the rankings with a degree of subjectivity, and toward the players themselves. Politics was out; meritocracy was in. You no longer had to be in the favor of any amateur official to, say, be put on the Davis Cup team or get invited to play Wimbledon. It was all about how you did on the court.
I thought it was interesting that Andy Murray said a few years ago that he thought the ranking system was one reason the game itself had improved so much over the years. It made guys keep trying to climb over each other. It’s given players like Sampras and Federer and Nadal a clear goal. But it’s still kind of weird. Like the above commercial Federer did for ESPN a few years ago, where one of the anchors says, “You know what I like about tennis, are the rankings. I like to know exactly where you stand at all times.” See what I mean? It sounds a little ridiculous, and a little nerve-wracking, when you put it like that.
But as you pointed out, Kamakshi, the computer is only as useful as the system that’s programmed into it. The one that seems to me to be the truest reflection of a player’s season is taking the average of their results. It doesn’t encourage them to play as many tournaments are the Best Of does, but just as important, it doesn’t encourage as many tanked matches or half-hearted efforts—everything you do counts. It’s not good for tennis if players don’t enter many events, but it’s just as bad if they show up and give less then their best.
You asked how many finals, how many semifinals, how many quarterfinals I thought a tournament title was worth, and how many Masters a Slam was worth. The idea, I think, was to gauge what we believe is more important, winning it all or steadily doing well form week to week and over the course of a season. Which should be rewarded more in rankings?
That's another tough question. Some people believe it’s titles or bust; only the winner’s trophies matter. And it’s true, while Federer’s 23 straight Slam semis were amazing, it’s the 16 titles that are even more impressive. What if, say, he hadn’t come through and won any of the 23 tournaments where he reached the semis? He would have been, rightfully, a laughingstock, not a legend. After bombing out in the final of the Aussie Open this year, Murray groped with how to think of those two weeks and the six wins he recorded as a positive. And they were a positive—those wins counted and shouldn’t be tossed aside as garbage. Virtually every player would rather reach the final than go down in the first round, and not because of the money.
I’m not sure how many finals a title is worth: 4? 5? You see, it's a tough question, because while I believe Murray's six wins to the get to the final in Australia were something to be very proud of, I've just speculated that Novak Djokovic's one win in the final was four or five times more important than those six Murray wins combined.
Slams vs. Masters: Probably in most players’ eyes, because they don’t have a chance at either, one major would be worth an infinite number of Masters. It’s something that historically can never be taken away from you—except, maybe, if you’re Thomas Johannson. His Aussie win almost doesn’t count in my mind. But that's public valiue, as you said. Purely as an accomplishment, stripping away the prestige difference, I'd say a Slam is worth 2.5 Masters titles. Is that currently reflected in the rankings? A Slam win is worth twice as much as a Masters, correct? That may be a slight devaluation of the major, but then the Masters are the ATP's core events, so they want to promote them where they can, within reason.
But the rankings aren’t about a player's place in history. They’re about the week to week and how you measure you up over 52 of them. In this sense, the average of all results is the fairest assessment.
My question to you, Kamakshi: In the old WTA system, would Safina, Jankovic, and Wozniacki still have reached No. 1?
The dog days of February roll on. By the time I finished writing about the Milos Raonic-Fernando Verdasco match in San Jose, those two guys were getting ready to play each other again, this time in the first round in Memphis. By the time I was through singing the praises of Petra Kvitova, she was being brought down to earth by Ayumi Morita in the first round in Dubai. The relentless schedule is a double-edged sword. For the pros, there’s always another chance, to win or to lose, to make up for a bad loss or to come out flat and tired after a big win. Let’s see who might do which this week.
***
Regions Morgan Keegan Championships, Memphis, USA; hard courts; 500 ranking points; $1,100,000;
The name hasn’t gotten any better in Memphis—try saying Regions Morgan Keegan Championships three times fast—but the draw is as solid as it’s ever been. Roddick, del Potro, Verdasco, Isner, Querrey, Fish, Hewitt, Tipsarevic are all in the line-up (though some may be gone by the time I finish writing this). Most interesting may be the continuing American adventures of two members of the ATP’s youth brigade, Raonic and Richard Berankis, who face the top two seeds in the first round. Berankis plays Roddick and Raonic, as I said, plays Verdasco.
Roddick will also be an interesting case. There was a sense that Australia represented a crossroads for him. He got some heat from his Davis Cup captains for making Stan Wawrinka look like the next Andre Agassi. Jim Courier said that Roddick isn't doing enough with his forehand; Pat McEnroe was harsher, saying that he plays it safe because he doesn’t want to risk a drop in the rankings. As he left, Roddick himself said that he has to find a way to hurt his opponents more. Will he? Can he? It would require a sharp reversal in mindset both for Roddick and for his coach, Larry Stefanki, who is a devotee of the grind. But if changes are going to happen, Memphis in February would be the place to make them.
Also: The tournament may serve as an American referendum. Can Querrey and Fish turn around slow starts to the year? Can James Blake do something with his wild card? Another American, John Isner, will be in a battle of the bigs, against Juan Martin del Potro. A first-round match to watch, for sure. Thank god for tiebreakers.
Tennis was first owned by the British Empire. In 1968 it was annexed by the American Empire. In the early 80s, it briefly looked like it might become part of the Japanese Empire. Will the women’s game one day become part of the Great Oil Empire? Is it already? Last week we had the “Open de Suez” in Paris; this week the women are back in Dubai yet again, playing for 2 million bucks, twice what the men are pulling down back in the States.
Not surprisingly, a lot of good players have shown up, including Wozniacki, Zvonareva, Stosur, Li Na, Azarenka, Schiavone, Kuznetsova, Jankovic, and, well, basically everyone else not named Williams, Clijsters, or Sharapova. Now you can add Ana Ivanovic to that list. She lost in three sets to Patty Schnyder today. Coachless, playing well at times, she still can’t calm down. Every miss appears to be the beginning of the end in her mind.
It seems a little soon after Australia to get a State of the WTA event, but that’s pretty much what we have here. The stalwarts, at least, are all in one place. I’ll be looking for a few things:
Will any of the air go out of Wozniacki and Zvonareva after their semifinal losses in Melbourne, or will they roll steadily on, unperturbed?
Can Schiavone become more consistent at this late stage in her career and do more than give us an heroic performance every few months?
Kuznetsova: She showed some promising signs in Australia; were they for real?
Sam Stosur: Deflated or liberated?
Li Na: Ditto what I said for Schiavone.
Bojana Jovanovski vs. Yanina Wickmayer: a first-rounder to watch (unless it’s already over by the time you read this).
Petra Kvitova: Is she for . . . oh right, one question has already been answered, for this week. One thing is for sure: She'll get another chance soon.
