COUNTER-PUNCH

Beard Disses Phelps: Are Women Allowed to Be Funny in Sports?

2008-08-21T00:20:00.000-04:00

Clicking around the TV dial Wednesday night I discovered "The Best Damn Sports Show Period." This is some Fox Sports Net show where guys sit around and try to make each other laugh. It was slightly funny. I left it on to see Serena Williams interviewed. She was repeatedly ribbed for skipping out on viewing the other Olympic events so she could play two events in six days and get back to the states to prepare for the US Open.

She took the laughs in stride. What caught my eye was American swimmer Amanda Beard's appearance later in the show. Earlier in the day Beard apparently had the audacity to crack wise when asked about rumors that she is dating Michael Phelps. "Ew, no" she said "I've never ever hooked up with Michael Phelps in my whole life. I have really good taste. He's not my type, personally." This little joke did not sit well with America. Beard was excoriated for this statement. Joke or no, she had to call the show from Beijing to apologize if anyone was offended. Surprisingly, the funny guys didn't play along with the joke or let her off the hook. They wanted to know if she found Michael to apologize to him in person. Beard pointed out that Phelps is pretty busy now. She didn't add that his ego could probably handle it. She also had to issue a statement about how wonderful Phelps is, and how proud we all are as Americans blah blah blah.

It got me thinking - can women be funny about sports, or is that illegal? The guys on the show were deadly serious when they asked her if she apologized. They even wanted to know if that could be a possibility in the future and how that rumor got started. I know what you're thinking "if the shoe was on the other foot a guy would need to apologize." Think again. We've watched an entire generation of sports anchors and writers collectively and publicly drool over some women athletes and mock ones they found less desirable. They do this on Sportscenter all the time. No apology needed because it's just dudes being funny, right? Can't the shoe be on the other foot for a day?

The whole undertone to this entire episode is kinda creepy since nothing Beard said was actually offensive. It was more along the lines of a preemptive rejection. I'm assuming we retain the right not to date Michael Phelps if asked. After all, it's usually the communist countries that go about the business of genetically engineering the next generation of athletes. There is no mandatory breeding between swimmers. We all know Phelps isn't going to have trouble finding a date.

Maybe Beard is nothing more than a Frosted Flake. However, even the President of the United States was allowed to slap the butt of a beach volleyball player since it was all in good fun. So why not lighten up?

Human Lighting Bolt v. DY: Monday Night Cincy Preview

2008-07-28T02:18:00.002-04:00

Slow-motion sliding forehand by Monfils

The atmosphere will be electric on Monday night when Future meets Future. American Donald Young and Frenchman Gael Monfils are two young men with exceptional talent, exciting games and high expectations. DY is the Smooth Operator who makes everything look easy. Monfils cracks across the court like a Human Lighting Bolt. You never know where he's going to strike and he breaks several of the rules of tennis movement, as he demonstrates above by sliding on a hard court. Don't try this at home if you want to keep your knees and ankles intact.

Monfils, 23, is one of the most explosive athletes I've ever seen. When he turned pro he was an athlete who had no idea how to play tennis. Slowly but surely Monfils learned how to play the game and now he's harnessing is power -- he can crank his serve up to 140 mph - and rising quickly up the rankings. After Ali look-alike Jo Tsonga made the Aussie Open final, it touched off serious competition among Gilles Simon, Richard Gasquet and Nicholas Mahut. Monfils made the semifinals at the French Open. Gilles Simon won Indianapolis and beat Federer at Toronto. The French are no doubt reaping the benefits of having several great young players compete with each other, much like the young Americans did in the 1990s.

Donald Young, now 18, was discovered in Chicago by John McEnroe and his agent. He has beautiful, smooth groundstrokes and soft hands. DY is the most promising young American out there. His career was initially mishandled by his parents and agents. Turning pro at 15, DY was at a physical and mental disadvantage against men twice his age. His handlers exacerbated the problem by accepting wild cards to get DY into the main draw instead of letting him play challengers and qualifying events. By playing the Phil Kings of the world, DY would have learned how to win. He would have developed confidence against players who were battle tested but not as tough as the top 100.

A few wild cards can be a good thing, but DY had a dismal first three years, barely able to win a match. DY's parents were a substantial part of the problem. In 2007 his mother referred to her son as an "icon" who faces a lot of pressure. I agree that he should be allowed time and patience to develop; nobody is the saviour of American tennis. But earth to the Young family: Donald isn't an icon. At least not yet.

In 2008 DY finally played some lower tier events and he agreed with me about their importance:

His junior success earned Young several wild cards into U.S. tournaments. But Young wasn't able to capitalize at first. Now he's happy to get in on his own.

"I like being able to get in to tournaments by myself without having to ask or have someone give you access into the tournament," Young said.

Young said his confidence grew after winning a Challenger tournament in Aptos, Calif., last summer.

"Mentally, I felt I could play with those guys," he said. "I started to see other guys I had beaten win (tour matches). I realized I could do it, too. I started believing and I did it."

DY shot up over 350 places in the rankings this year, breaking into the top 100 for the first time. He accepted a wild card into the main draw and is entered in doubles as well. He and the Human Lighting Bolt play Monday night after Russians Marat Safin and Dimitri Tursonov.

YouTube Sensation Leads Day 1 of Tennis Masters Cincinnati

2008-07-28T00:56:00.003-04:00

Mikhail Youhzny, aka "The Skull-Cracker" draws blood

Despite the top seeds receiving a first round bye, there are great matches all day long at the Tennis Masters in Mason.

The afternoon session closes with Mikhail Youhzny v. Tommy Haas. Youhzny became famous earlier this year for busting his head open with his tennis racquet. Haas can be flashy and is at his best on the hard courts.

The twelve seed, Tommy Robredo, once Spain's Next Big Thing, plays Mardy Fish, the flaky but lovable American who once upon a time made the finals here.

Later Tom Berdych plays Fernando Gonzalez. Gonzo is a hit or miss guy. When he's on, he's a real heavyweight who smashes opponents right in the mouth with huge groundstrokes and a massive serve. When he's off, he's off. Berdych is thought by some to be a top tenner, but I'm not buying it.

The oldest man in the draw, Jonas Bjorkman, makes his final appearance here. Bjorkman won three doubles titles in the Queen City: in 1999 with Byron Black, 2004 with Todd Woodbridge and 2006 with Max Miryni. He played through the qualies to earn a first round match-up with Robby Ginepri, the talented but flaky American. (Are we sensing a pattern yet?)

Weekend Pressure Cooker #1 to #377

2008-07-27T23:48:00.005-04:00

Roger Federer reacts to a missed shot on Saturday in Cincinnati

Roger Federer is the #1 ranked tennis player in the world and owns 12 grand slam titles. Phil King is ranked #377 and toils just to make tennis’s major leagues. But both were in the pressure cooker over the weekend, each facing more questions than answers.

King won two junior US Open titles before deciding to postpone turning pro to go to college. He graduated from Duke with a double major. This is the road rarely traveled by professional tennis players. Now he finds himself ranked in the 300s, struggling to accumulate points in the challenger and qualifier rounds that function as tennis’s minors. King wonders about the road not taken - what if he had turned pro at 18 instead of going off to college to compete against inferior players? He wouldn't give back his degree but...

On Saturday King took on Kevin Anderson, a tall, thin South African with a wicked serve and a stinging forehand. At 5’9, King is small for this era of tennis players, populated mostly by behemoths like Anderson who are over six feet tall. Anderson is 6’8, five years younger than King. He actually spent three years playing for the University of Illinois before turning pro in 2007. Anderson has the talent to be in the top twenty in the next two years. He surprised the tennis world by quickly making the finals in Las Vegas and beat world no. 3 Novak Djokovic in Miami in the spring.

In the first set it was easy to see that King was overmatched in the talent department. He runs down everything and competes well, but is hampered by not having that one big weapon that can wipe another player off the court. Still, players like King can win a lot of matches, especially if their opponents lose concentration or get frustrated by King’s ability to keep running around the court. I should know. That’s how I win most of my matches. King quickly fell down two breaks of serve. But he’s a battler. Instead of giving up, King broke Anderson back and crawled back into the set. I yelled “c’mon king!” as he walked toward the changeover. King looked up at me and gave a nod and half a smile. When you’re on the road 44 weeks a year trying to scratch out a living, you can use a little encouragement no matter whom it comes from.

King has a better than average serve and an excellent backhand. His backhand return caught Anderson by surprise several times. Anderson has a tendency to stop and admire those rocket serves - not expecting King to get a racket on it – then was caught off guard by having to hit another shot. He steadied himself and closed out the set. The first few games of the second set would tell me a lot about Anderson. Would he have a mental lapse and assume the match was over? Would errors creep into his game?

The answer was a resounding no. Anderson really put the hammer down in the second set, pounding forehands and whipping serves all over the place. King had to work really hard to stay in it. In the end he lost 6-4, 6-4. A very respectable score, considering the way Anderson played. As both players left the court you wouldn’t have been able to tell who won. King looked disappointed, Anderson looked beaten and worn out. Anderson’s coach was probably pleased with the progress his charge made on Saturday. Not every win against a lower ranked opponent will be a cakewalk, and all too often talented players slop their way through matches like this. Instead he actually played better in the second set. That his display didn’t result in a bigger margin of victory is a credit to King.

Anderson won his second qualifying match and advanced to the main draw.

Meanwhile, Roger Federer arrived at Cincinnati much earlier than he is accustomed to. Historically The Mighty Fed would be in the finals of Toronto this weekend, not playing a practice match against German Tommy Haas. But this is Roger’s year from hell and welcome to it. First at the Australian Open he had mono and then was dispatched by a player he hates, Novak Djokovic, who went on to win the title. Then came early losses to Mardy Fish and Andy Roddick, then the French Open where he was humiliated by Nadal. And we all know what happened at Wimbledon.

We’re more than halfway through the tennis year and Roger has yet to find his sea legs. He lost to Gilles Simon in his first match since The Match. Two losses in a row? That’s unheard of for Roger. Of course the fact that we’re surprised that a player lost his first match after a long layover is a tribute to Roger’s greatness. Roger is human after all. We just didn’t expect it. We thought he would be tying or even besting Pete Sampras’s record twelve majors. Instead the writing is on the wall – his rival will overtake him and finish the year at number 1.

On Saturday Roger practiced with Tommy the Tease Haas. We all expected Haas to spend most of his career inside the top ten, but with a series of injuries and an inability to string together good play for longer than a match or two, that has never materialized. Haas is a fun player to watch, he can hit every shot in the book, he will tease you with potential. He had fun with the Roger-loving crowds. Federer looked a little agitated. Nadal’s climb to the top seems like a forgone conclusion to everyone but him. The players steamrolled by Nadal in Toronto declared that he is the true best player in the world. Simply stated, the Mighty Fed is in denial. He isn’t ready to lose his ranking and is banking on winning the Olympics and the US Open to prove everyone wrong. What we have here is a champion with a chip on his shoulder, and lots of pressure to boot.

Should be a fun week.

Post-Wimbledon Success for the French

2008-07-27T15:13:00.004-04:00

Le Chat Fabrice Santoro

The French have a had a pretty good post-Wimbledon run, led by Gilles Simon, who captured Indianapolis and made it to the semifinals in Toronto, beating Federer in the process. Other French success:

Fabrice Santoro defended his title at Newport. Meanwhile, his namesake, le chat, easily conquered Big Ben.

Alize Cornet continues to impress, winning the Gaz de France in Budapest.

Marion Bartoli lost in the finals of the Bank of the West Classic in Stanford.

Pauline Parmentier captured a Tier III event in Austria.

Simon's big breakthrough should goad the other French players to, in the words of Emeril Lagasse, kick it up a notch. Tsonga and Monfils need to follow-up their Grand Slam successes (Australian final and French semi) with hard court wins.

Did CNNSI Fire Gimelstob?

2008-07-23T00:27:00.004-04:00

We've noticed that CNNSI hasn't published one of former player Justin Gimelstob's "columns" since his little radio tirade that occurred during Wimbledon. Did they deep six the douchebag or what?

Sound harsh? Excuse me for not feeling very charitable toward the jerkoff. He appeared on some radio show during Wimbledon to call Anna Kournikova a "bitch" "scumbag" "douche" and someone he "despised to the maximum level, right below hate."

Had enough? But there's more - noting he was scheduled to play a mixed doubles match against her this summer during World Team Tennis, Gimel-dick talked about how he was going to "kick her asshole" and hit her with a 129 mph serve right in the stomach, "if she's not crying by the time she comes off court I haven't done my job."

Oh really? Who's strong enough to hit that 129 mph serve for him, Serena Williams? We all know Justin can't get it up anymore.

Gimelstob's Brother Murdered a Cop

Gimeldork offered to have Kournikova sleep with his brother, who is "kind of a stud." Yeah he's a stud alright. None of the articles about this controversy mention that said stud Josh Gimelstob pled guilty to negligent homicide for the hit and run death of a Tulane campus police officer in 1997. He left the scene and tried to get his jeep repaired to cover the crime up. The asshole served a lousy six month prison term. Maybe Justin has his own fantasies about Josh's studliness.

And yes, there's even more from the New Jersey Sage. He said women's tennis players "lack the social skills, they don't go to high school, they don't go to parties." Yeah. Frat parties. Dudes develop tons of top notch skills from slurping on the beer bong and passing out in dirty bathtubs.

Justin had some other locker room barbs for Nicole Vaisidova and Alize Cornet. Vaisidova didn't take offense, but that's because she's used to dating with losers like Radek Stepanek. Kournikova's only comment was that she was going to take the high road. She's grown up a lot since she was on the tennis tour and lives a relatively quiet existence.

Unlike Vaisidova, Serena Williams took up for Kournikova

"Being pro-women's rights, I just think we've come farther than to be referred to like this," said Williams. "Anna is a great girl. For anyone to say that about her is not professional. It's just totally uncalled for. Unless you really know these people, you talk to these people, you never know what people go through. It's not good to say those things about people."

Truth and Consequences

Gimelstob was suspended by Team Tennis for one match and he issued an apology. A far bigger issue is his recent election to the ATP Board of Directors, which happened before the incident. Gimelstob was hired by CNNSI to write tennis columns but that seems to have stopped. The columns were mostly wastes of time, like when he defended his bro Andy Roddick from what he perceived as unfair criticism by Jon Wertheim, the real tennis journalist at CNNSI. That was ridiculous, since Wertheim is a frequent Roddick defender and all Wertheim said was that Roddick needed to do something about the attitude he developed with Jimmy Connors. (He did; he parted ways with Jimbo)

Unfortunately the usually strong Wertheim sort of defended Gimelstob after the incident. I wish Wertheim and CNNSI would weigh in on this. If the guy has been fired they need to say so. My take on it is simple: you have free speech, but private employers retain the right to make you suffer the consequences. That's apparently a tough concept for the Gimelstob family.

Real Estate Market Hits Tennis Stars

2008-07-23T00:02:00.004-04:00

The rich and famous aren't immune from the housing mess. Of course not many have had to hit the pavement yet, but still, I'm sure Pete Sampras never imagined having to shave two million off the $25 million sale price to move his English tudor in L.A. The 10,000 square foot house has five bedrooms and twelve bathrooms. Twelve bathrooms are ideal for those of us who hate to clean the bathroom. The LA Times has no info on where he's moving. Pics here.

Meanwhile, Andre Agassi and Steffi Graf have pulled out of their plans to invest in a new resort in central Idaho. Tennis Magazine cited market conditions and litigation as the reason the doubles team is cutting their losses. The Tamarack resort was slated to be a four-season resort with property starting at $450,000. Development of its ski and leisure areas planned for a measly $1.5 billion. A spokesperson for Agassi Graf Development said the pair still hope to do business in the area in the future.

Dear Greg and Chrissie: Instant Karma and All…

2008-07-22T01:03:00.004-04:00

...It’s a Bitch

You would think from watching the ABC golf talking heads over the weekend that the two blonde icons of the ‘80s, Greg Norman and Chris Evert, were living the Greatest Love of All Time. They apparently did. It was just a few weeks ago that they had a $2 million wedding in the Bahamas, where it rained (which Greg described as the spittle of heaven consecrating their union). The wedding featured cameo appearances by Bill Clinton and George Bush I. And the man with his half-a-billion dollar golf empire was able to send goons out to hassle the paparazzi and rent the sky over the wedding site to prevent anyone from taking pictures. (The better to preserve them for eventual sale to an Australian tabloid. At press time there was no word on any Branjelina charity donation)

And even better than Bahamian Godly Spittle is finding one’s Magic Driver in the shapely thighs—um, I mean closet…of an 18-time major tennis champion. As this year's British Openo began, the other famous golfing Animal was back home with a bad Tiger paw, and according to the Golden Bear himself, these young, non-mammalian golfers were weak candy-asses. So how about a Shark attack? Sure Greg hadn’t won a tournament in ages, only played in four during the last three years, and had almost stopped practicing altogether. (Greg claims to play more tennis than golf, which is why after three rounds he said he wasn’t tired, while fat guys half his age wheezed around the golf course like little blowfish).

So there they were, improbably back on center stage. Greg led the first round and it was a nice story, resulting in a good many columnists saying “Chris Evert married Greg Norman?!” After the second round the old guy was still the leader. Chrissie was seen dutifully lugging a gigantic diamond around the golf course after her man. The buzz became an avalanche after the third round when The Shark, assisted by the Ice Maiden, vanquished everyone on a day of 60 mph winds.

The Shark led for three rounds and now it was time, the people seemed to agree, for Norman to chase away all his demons by achieving The Greatest Golf Victory of All Time. The guy who did more for the game of golf than anyone since Jack Nicklaus had a chance to better his elder by becoming the oldest man to win a major. Norman has a tragic record in grand slam events, with just two wins and several horrifying, embarrassing losses. There are the ones he lost when other players made ridiculous, lucky-shot chip-ins. And then there are the ones he surrendered faster than Henri Petain in the Battle of France, by choking away huge leads. By the time he went into Sunday with a two-shot lead he had a non-stellar 1-6 record when he was the leader going into the final day of a major.

All of this might lead you to believe that karma was on Greg Norman’s side. A win would erase even the disaster at the Masters.

But Karma, boys and girls, can be a real bitch. Norman collapsed and lost.

Once upon a time on the way to the wedding chapel…

…Chris Evert and Greg Norman stabbed their spouses in the back, a fact Evert is now acknowledging in a new interview with Vogue. Instant karma’s gonna get you.

Observers already knew the dirt on this one. Evert’s ex-husband Andy Mill was Norman’s best friend. Norman had been married for 24 years, Evert 18. The foursome vacationed together and it is said that Evert and Norman first hooked up during one of their fishing trips (in the middle of the night no less). Gonna look you right in the face.

Evert announced she was divorcing Mill in the fall of 2006. She accomplished the divorce in record time: about six weeks (lawyers can’t even clear their throats that fast), generously paying Mill $7 million to end it ASAP. He stepped aside gracefully, but the word around South Florida was that he was totally devastated. He told People magazine "Greg Norman at one time was my best friend, and a year and a half ago, I would have taken a bullet for this guy. But I didn't realize he was the one that was going to pull the trigger." With three kids to co-parent, he gets to tough it out with Evert over the long haul. Better get yourself together darlin.

Norman’s ex, Laura Andrassy, did not go quietly. At all. She took Norman to the cleaners. Alex Rodriguez, take note: They repeatedly denied the affair. Norman was fighting Andrassy tooth and nail over his golf empire. Until Andrassy subpoenaed Evert for a deposition. Had that deposition taken place Chrissie would have had to produce every gift and love letter and discuss them in gruesome detail. Greg would not let this happen. He surrendered before the deposition could go forward. When it was all said and done he agreed to pay Andrassy $100 million to keep the truth out of the tabloids. Join the human race

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out why Evert is now confessing the affair to Vogue: the Teflon Twins took more hits to their respective images over this than they’ve ever taken before. South Florida and Australia covered the divorces closely. People in Florida were utterly shocked, there had been no rumors, Mill was extremely well liked. Evert is now a two-time loser, with both marriages being dogged by her affairs. How in the world you gonna see

If the respective exes are to be believed, they never saw it coming. Evert is now saying that it was “an irresistible force” that drew them together. “How do you explain something like that?” she said. Laughin at fools like me

Oh Chrissie, don’t try me. There’s always the hormones-and-Viagra explanation, or the public-attention-deficit disorder explanation. Or maybe, just maybe, even true love. Who in the hell do you think you are

Vogue probably can’t believe its luck. Had Greg Norman not gone out and almost won at major at age 53, their little revelation would have been mostly unnoticed. Instead of publishing a nice little article about glamorous has-beens living fabulous lives, Vogue is now sitting on a hot piece of gossip. A super star?

It’s a great story. Who are we to judge? I cheered for The Shark on Sunday. I always liked Evert and like her still. Well right you are.

The Karma Police would probably agree with me if it weren’t for the way they pushed the details of the affair in their exes faces. Airing this kind of dirty laundry in Vogue, for your kids and all the world to see? That’s a little much even for me, a feckless lawyer. And the damage control aspect of the Vogue article will now work in reverse, as a peak at the web today surely reveals. Maybe living well is the greatest revenge. (Ask Andrassy, she oughta know.)

Blake Research Fund

2008-07-18T11:44:00.004-04:00

James Blake has established the Thomas Blake Sr. Memorial Research Fund in memory of his father.

The Blake Research Fund invests seed money in leading-edge science in order to speed up the most promising work and shorten the time it takes to turn laboratory discoveries into better treatments for patients.

The Blake Fund has raised $500,000 with the goal of $1 million by the end of 2008.

Into the Time Capsule

2008-07-17T00:28:00.007-04:00

That video of Pete Sampras on the Charlie Rose show is not available yet, so let’s look back in the time capsule to December 19, 1996. The number 1 ranked player is Pete Sampras. He is 25 and has eight majors. You can tell it’s the 1990s because he’s wearing a flannel shirt.

His coach and best friend, Tim Gullickson, passed away on May 3. There’s something about seeing Pete Sampras cry or almost cry that makes me cry buckets. You can tell by the set of his jaw and the look in his eyes that he’s trying to keep it all inside, even before he says his first words in this interview. Tim’s twin brother Tom Gullickson joins him for the interview. Tom was the Davis Cup Captain at the time. The US won the Davis Cup in 1995 behind Pete’s spectacular defeat of the Russians, in Moscow, on clay, where he won both singles matches and the doubles (with Todd Martin). The Russians haven’t lost in Moscow since.

Tom and Pete are on the show to discuss the recently formed Tim and Tom Gullickson Foundation, which is a non-profit that helps families cope with brain cancer. With all the focus on curing these dreadful diseases, the everyday battles of patients and caregivers can get lost. The Gullicksons set out to change that. Tom and Pete were in New York to play in the Foundation’s first benefit, along with Andre Agassi, John McEnroe and Jim Courier.

Beyond that sad event, it’s fun to hear their assessment of Pete’s career so far and how the rest of the field stacked up. Tom and Pete said Agassi could continue be the biggest threat to take the number 1 ranking…if interested and motivated. That proved to be correct.

Pete correctly diagnosed Andre as having a letdown after the 1995 US Open final. As Pete notes, their rivalry was huge in 1995 with commercials and a major media blitz. Everyone hoped it would just continue into 96 and beyond, but it fizzled when Andre went on another one of his walkabouts, to use the Aussie term. This is pretty evident in the brief clip of Agassi at Gullickson’s funeral, with his chubby cheeks and close-cropped head. If you're trying to figure out when a clip or photo of Agassi was taken, his appearance is always a dead giveaway.

As the 96 Olympics coach, Tom noticed that Agassi was highly motivated to win the gold medal and did, then rode the crest of his Olympic win the following week in Cincinnati against a much tougher field. But Andre was just starting his longest slide down the rankings yet. Look for this same dynamic at this summer’s Olympics in Beijing. Tennis’s experience in the modern Olympics has been mixed, with unconventional winners every time. The first person to correctly post the name of the 2004 men’s gold medalist in the comments wins a CounterPuncher t-shirt.

Tom Gullickson will be appearing at the Tennis Masters Series in Cincinnati on July 25.

Pete and Andre did have a few more moments left in their rivalry. And tennis finally got its great men's rivalry from players, styles and countries that were not foreseen back in 1996.

Champions Roundtable at Tennis Week

2008-07-13T11:10:00.004-04:00

Reaction to The Match continues to pour in. Tennis Week has a spirited discussion with Fred Stolle, Alex Olmedo, Tony Trabert and Jim Courier, with all agreeing this was the greatest match. Trabert points out that Nadal-Federer have played more grand slam finals against each other, 6, than any of the other major rivalries in the men's game. Fred Stolle had some interesting things to say about Federer:

The other thing we (John Newcombe, Fred’s broadcast partner) noticed was when Federer came to the net he almost never came in a hurry. He has got to learn when he comes in to come in with urgency! You come in against Nadal you better come in fast and close that net hard and get two meters closer. Contrary to what most people think, we don’t think Federer is a great volleyer. Now when I saw that this is nit picky a little bit: he’s a good volleyer, but he’s not a great volleyer because he doesn’t consistently get behind the flight of the ball. He tends to bring the racquet face down and sometimes looks to where he’s hitting and when you’re volleying against someone who can dip the ball with that much spin as Nadal you must get that racquet behind the flight of the ball. He’s got to practice that volley and approach more.

Fred gave both high praise for their sportsmanship and character:

Stop and think about what Nadal did this past month: he gave Federer one of his worst losses in the French Open final, he got on the train and came over to London with just a couple of days to practice on grass and then he played Queen’s Club and beat Karlovic, Roddick and Djokovic to win his first grass-court title. Then he plays phenomenal tennis to beat the five-time defending champion in the greatest match I’ve seen there and you have to think the guy must be completely buggered after all that, but he gets on the plane and flies to Stuttgart so he can personally tell the tournament organizers and press that he needs to withdraw. Now how many guys in the world do you think would do what Nadal did? For Federer it was a heart-breaking loss and he handled himself so well and showed his character. I don’t know if you picked this up on TV back in the States, but Nadal went outside and signed autographs for 15 minutes after that match. You could say the rain saved Federer a bit in that Nadal might have won in straight sets, but you saw the character of Federer that when he came back he fought with everything he had and in fact when he got it into a fifth many former players I spoke to there to a man thought Federer would win. These two guys are just a level above in what they bring to the sport.

Jim Courier on Charlie Rose Show

2008-07-13T10:54:00.004-04:00

Jim Courier appeared on the Charlie Rose show to break down the match, calling it a "revolutionary match" for the sport, especially in the US. Judging by the fact that people are still talking about it a week later, he's right.

Charlie is a true tennis lover. Sampras was on Friday. We will post the link when it becomes available.

Tennis Balls Used to Deliver Drugs in Jail

2008-07-12T23:53:00.003-04:00

I think I just found a new way to get my drugs through customs.

Chang Inducted to Hall of Fame

2008-07-12T21:41:00.005-04:00

Above: The Reebok pump shoe. Chang's Reebok ad slams Nike and "those rock and roll" tennis guys. Hmm wonder who that referred to?

Chang was inducted into the Hall of Fame today. It made at least one blogger scratch his head and wonder why. Sean Randall wants to know why Thomas Muster and Sergi Brugera aren't in the Hall. He suggests any player who achieves the number 1 ranking should be eligible, then lays out his other criteria. I disagree with the kind of guidelines he advocates, where achieving a numerical benchmark garners entry. There are players who reached the top ranking who shouldn't be considered, like Marcelo Rios. (We agree on Muster, he should be in, but Brugera never had success on other surfaces and had neither the longevity nor the non-French achievements that Chang does. I believe a credible argument can be made in favor of Michael Stich and Juan Carlos Ferrerro, but there again, where is the consistency?? Part of the equation here needs to be not just how much you win, but how long you do it, the way you do it and and when you do it: coming up with clutch victories in the most difficult and important circumstances ought to factor prominently. Venus Williams, for example, doesn't win a lot of titles. She just wins the big ones)

Statistics don't tell the only story. On longevity, accomplishment and degree of difficulty of the competition, I think Chang deserves this honor. I don't think Chang got in because he is American, or because he spurred tennis in Asia, as Tennis-X suggests. I think he got in because in addition to his French Open victory, he was near the top for an extended period of time in an era with many more outstanding players than there are now. Bud Collins writing for the Boston Globe said:

Perpetual motion personified, making few mistakes, swift 5-foot-9-inch Chang was a finalist in three other majors: 1995 French to Thomas Muster; 1996 Australian to Boris Becker; 1996 US to Sampras. He won 34 singles titles, among them the 1998 US Pro at Longwood, and 662 matches, batting .680. He inhabited the top 10 seven times, No. 2 in 1996, No. 3 the following year.

He may have gotten credit for being part of the greatest generation of American players, and I don't see what's wrong with that. That generation of players was among the greatest historically too. His fellow competitor, Pete Sampras, said "That little guy, Michael, inspired the rest of us. He was the first to win a big one, and we thought if he can do it, so can we."

Although Chang rarely played Davis Cup, he was part of one of the greatest American victories during the 1990 semifinal against Austria. Chang earned a place in Davis Cup lore by rallying from two sets to love down to Horst Skoff, in the face of 18,000 screaming fans, to win the fifth and deciding match in five sets. Again, Bud Collins:

Locked at 2-2 in a semifinal, the US seemed out of it as Chang lost the first two sets to Horst Skoff. "I didn't expect to play," Chang recalls. "We figured Andre [Agassi] would clinch in the fourth match by beating Muster. Didn't happen."

Trapped, he managed to win the third set before darkness intervened.

Maybe he could credit Alexander Graham Bell with the decisive triumph. Having watched the match on TV at home in California, brother Carl Chang, his coach, phoned Michael, calming him and outlining the winning strategy. That 3-6, 6-7 (4-7), 6-4, 6-4, 6-3 result made Michael merely the second American to win the decisive fifth match from two sets down. The other was Don Budge over Germany's Gottfried von Cramm in the 1937 semis.

The US went on to win the Davis Cup that year.

Chang was presented into the Hall by his brother Carl, who acted as coach for much of his career. That was fitting, because Chang was never really a part of the greater tennis scene. He wasn't the type with buddies or close friends on tour. He and his family stayed away, focused on faith. Chang, who is finally giving up bachelorhood, was true to form in his speech, focusing primarily on family and faith.

In my youth, I had the opportunity to watch many a Chang match at the Cincinnati Masters. In his 16 consecutive appearances, he made four straight finals, won twice and is second in total matches won in the Queen City, to Stefan Edberg. I was there the day Stefan Edberg took revenge on Chang for that French Open final, beating Chang to become the no. 1 player in the world. I watched Chang jump rope for twenty minutes on the practice court just to warm up. The year Monica Seles was stabbed, when all the players were on guard against psycho fans, I saw Chang embrace a crazy lady who ran onto the practice court to give him a hug, waiting patiently for security. I remember thrilling night matches against Rafter and Andre. Once I saw Carl Chang preparing Michael to face someone's kick serve - possibly Patrick Rafter's- by standing inside the service box to create shoulder-high serves for Chang to take a whack at. In 1992 my brother and I briefly met equally diminutive boxer Tim Lewis, the bronze medalist, who was on his way to meet Michael. He was a constant in those night matches, electrifying the crowd with his effort on every point.

Chang is playing on Courier's Champions Tour, taking seminary classes and working with players in China and the US. He was a proponent of the Beijing Olympics and acted as an official ambassador. I bet he will be there carrying the Olympic Torch around the stadium during the Opening Ceremonies.

For my thoughts on how exciting a player he was, why he was a better player than Lleyton Hewitt and what Chang's experience could mean for Rafa Nadal, review my January post on Chang.

Sampras Reacts to The Match

2008-07-10T11:34:00.004-04:00

Bodo wrote a book with Pete Sampras that was published last month. Today he published a short interview with Pete on his blog for Tennis magazine about Pete's reaction to Nadal-Federer.

Two all-time greats, at their prime, playing great on the best court on earth. if you wrote a script it couldn't have been any better - Roger coming back from two sets to love, Nadal showing his heart. . . I thought it was great tennis and great drama.

I think Roger handled himself with a lot of class. What I really liked is that the match goes to show that when you come right down to it, great moments aren't about controversy, and they aren't about personality. They're about two great players who manage to reach beyond the usual audience for the game - that's especially big in this country. It was impressive that two guys who aren't American could capture the American sports fans that way.

I love that his comment was a dig at the personality nonsense that constantly dogged his career.

Sampras texted Federer to offer encouragement:

"Bad luck, too bad there had to be a loser in that one." I said he should take pride in the way he and Rafa are taking the sport way beyond the usual audience. He should feel great about that. He texted me back to say thanks.
I know it was disappointing for him, I'm sure he's still playing that match in his mind. But in years to come, he'll look back on this match and appreciate the moment. No question in my mind about that.

Pete believes Roger still would win seven out of ten meetings with Nadal on grass. I'm not surprised he feels that way. I'm thinking maybe it's four times out of ten but his larger point is right on target: this is not the end for Roger, it's just the beginning of a tougher ride. Pete provided extra reassurance for all the crushed Fed fans; he still expects Roger to break his grand slam record:

Oh, absolutely. It's inevitable. He'll be in contention for all the majors, and he'll win a few more Wimbledons and U.S. Opens before he's done - no doubt in my mind.

What major will you be attending next?

The one where Roger is poised to break my record. I'm kind of selfish about it, though - I told Roger that if that happens to be at the Australian Open, I may not make the trip. It's far, I've logged a lot of miles in my life going to tennis tournaments. I half-kiddingly told him he'll have to do it at Wimbledon or the U.S. Open, so now we'll just have to see what happens. Emotionally, I'd like to see him do it at either of those two places, preferably Wimbledon. And I want to be there out of respect for him, but I also would like to go back to Wimbledon someday, because I love that place.

Mr. Pete Sampras, always a class act.

Bodo, by the way, finally decided that Federer finally had his "warrior moment" last weekend. You may recall Bodo's rants about what a ball of wuss Federer was and how manly Nadal is in comparison. Bodo is bothered by Fed's hair, his stylish clothing and his total domination of men's tennis. The domination wasn't enough for Bodo because, gosh darnit, Federer seems like a wimpy little Euro. Bodo, much like Don Imus loves to wax poetic about his testosterone-filled ranch but spends most of his life living in Manhattan. I'm so happy he's concluded that Roger is indeed a man.

Because of my love for Pete Sampras I have to buy the Bodo book, so I need to get my (B)dodo bashing in now so I can give it an honest review.

HE IS LEGEND

2008-07-10T01:09:00.014-04:00

You know men's tennis achieved something truly epic when the match transcends the court and spills over onto... The Gossip Pages.

That's right, Nadal hit both TMZ and gossip guru Ted Casablanca on E! (who judged Rafa as a hottie on the do-me meter). So Rafa apparently has a "secret" girlfriend (yeah, we all wondered about those man-capris) who is banned from his matches due to her magical powers. Deadspin and TMZ have a gaggle of photos of Nadal and said girlfriend- "Xisca"- on the beach. She's 18, white bikini, white hot - you know, the usual.

So who has girlfriend bragging rights, Nadal or Roddick?

I'm thinking Roger needs to tell Mirka to go back to blonde, that dishwater brown isn't working out.

Meanwhile, naughtier, guiltier pleasure Perez Hilton featured tennis several times over the last two weeks. If you're on Perez you're certainly at the top of the zeitgeist meter (just check out the Perez-effect on iTunes). TMZ also got into the, ahem, "act" with Venus and Serena. All this gossip attention can only mean one thing: major celebrity/poseur activity at the US Open.

Mom to Serena: Grow up!

2008-07-07T21:32:00.004-04:00

To those of you who think we just pick on Serena unfairly, consider this:

(H)er relatives willingly take much of the blame for her inability to deal with defeat as an outgrowth of them always spoiling her as the baby of the family. Her sister, Lyndrea, who flew in from Los Angeles yesterday, said Serena to this day can't even bear to lose when they play the card game "spoons."

"Serena thinks everything is supposed to go her way, that's the bottom line," said mom/coach Oracene Price, who had finally removed the large sunglasses she hid behind during the match. "She thinks that's the way it's supposed to go in life. But this is life."
---
For her mother's part, however, she believes it's time for Serena to grow up and experience a reality check on life in the real world.

"Well, you know, she's going to have to learn how to suck things up," Price said. "[She needs to] say, 'OK, I'm not going to win everything. This is going to make me a better person. This will build character for myself and I have to learn how to lose. I might not be happy about it, but I just have to go on, go on and say, you know what, I didn't get this one, but I'm getting the next one.'"

While Price compassionately understands Serena's disappointment in being outplayed, she would prefer her daughter to deal with defeat in a different way -- her present style of going AWOL is disturbing. Most recently, Serena tuned out after her shocking third-round exit at the recent French Open, in which unlike Saturday's final, she played sloppy, dispassionate tennis.

"I'm not going to say nothing," said Price, smiling when asked how she might go about consoling Serena. "Before she won Australia [2007] that time and she lost in Hobart I didn't see her for two days. She didn't answer my e-mails, no texts, nothing. And when she lost at the French Open [2008], which was the worst, nothing for a week or two. You can't talk to her because she's not communicating with anyone."

The rest of Sandra Harwitt's story is here.

I'm with Jon Wertheim, who said discovering Serena is a classless loser even when the victor is big sis is sort of a relief.

Revoke His Press Credential

2008-07-07T20:36:00.008-04:00

I've always liked William C. Rhoden. He's a thoughtful writer who defies the sound-bite loudmouth culture of American sportswriting. He has never been afraid to take a tough stand on whatever hot button issue comes along to activate the American sportsfan's hypocrisy, racism or whatever boneheaded obsession the country has got on about. I even enjoyed today's column for the New York Times.

But dude, you can't go to watch a Will Smith movie when Nadal is up two sets to love and looking like a runaway winner. That's what he and his family did.

Up to this point, the highlight of a tennis vacation in London had been the extraordinary journey of the Williams sisters, carrying the flag for American tennis — and their meeting for the championship at Centre Court on Saturday. What could beat that? Federer was going for a sixth straight title and Nadal, who had fallen to the champion the previous two years, was simply trying to win Wimbledon for the first time.

What could beat it? Bill, where have you been buddy? Last year's final was a classic and Nadal was playing much better than he had in 2007. Federer was not going to go quietly. Many of us predicted a thriller. Sure, maybe not the greatest match ever, but close observers knew it would be as historic as the all Williams final, even if it was a three-set beat down. Yet he still went to the movie:

We re-emerged an hour and a half later, fully expecting to hear somewhere along the road that Federer had nearly come back but had finally lost. The television at the Goat and Boots had what we thought were highlights. But who won?

Another tavern. More highlights, we thought.

We reached the Hereford Arms, saw the large crowds, heard the whooping, and realized that these were not highlights. This match had become an epic. Nadal was near exhaustion but fighting with a determined verve that had long since won over even the most skeptical fan. A classic. The crowd cheered lustily, and by this point rooting interests had given way to deep respect for two champions. All that remained was to crown a champion, not determine the better man.

Mind-boggling to choose Will Smith over Wimbledon, especially when you're live in London. Maybe it was old hat, maybe they'd been there many times before and needed a tourism break. Even sharing a pint at the Goat and Boots has got to beat watching a flick you can see anywhere, anytime. (I'm sure bootlegged copies will be plentiful in Beijing during the Olympics). But hey, this is the equivalent of walking out on your employer-sponsored trip for a day of frivolity on the employer's dime. We all know I would NEVER do a thing like that... :->

Other than that he penned a good article. However, if Rhoden is thinking of turning in his credential for next year, I'll gladly trade him my space at whatever LawyerPallooza is happening then.

THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH

2008-07-07T00:53:00.004-04:00

And the Great London Circus.

There was a moment today, right before the rains came (the first time), when I had to take a deep breath to realize what we were witnessing. Rafa, who was favored by many to win Wimbledon, was taking out Roger like so much trash. And Roger – normally so brilliant at making adjustments – was totally windblown, completely off course. I can’t remember another time when the great champion looked so confused. He was about to lose in straight sets, and then all the whispers he’s heard all year (Federer has lost it, Nadal is better, Djokovic thinks he can be beaten, he won’t tie Sampras, Federer is through) would become roars. But the rains did come, and not a moment too soon. Would this be shades of the Andy Roddick final in 2005? Roddick, playing brilliant aggressive tennis, was tied at 1 set all, and up a break, looking like an upset winner. Something happened during that rain delay. Federer figured Roddick out and was unbeatable on grass for the foreseeable future.

The Championships had been nearly devoid of rain in 2008, so the storm clouds were fortuitous, perhaps even evidence that the gods favored Federer after all. Still, after the rain delay Federer would have to rally from two sets to love to become the first man in 100 years to win six straight at the All England Lawn and Tennis Club. Nadal was just two games from winning the match and becoming the first man since Borg to pull the French/Wimbledon double.Nadal had pushed Federer all over the court. When Roger came to net he was missing volleys, getting passed, looking hesitant. McEnroe’s little nugget about practicing with Rafa earlier in the tournament was instructive. Mac was surprised by the heaviness of Nadal’s ball, which was full of spin that stayed low to the ground, making it very difficult to volley effectively

Roger was different right out of the box. . Instead of going to serve and volley, he picked up his serve and started lashing his forehand, dictating play, moving in when he had the chance. Federer's forehand was an incredible weapon. He won the third set in a tiebreak.

The fourth set tiebreaker was a marvelous example of grit, heart, guts and glory. It rivaled Borg and McEnroe’s 1980 epic. Nadal had two match points but Roger, like Borg, came up with the goods. Now they were even. How could Nadal, who sobbed in the locker room after last year’s five-set loss, stand to lose another heartbreaker? More importantly, could he keep himself from thinking about losing another heartbreaker? While everyone was pondering this, including Nadal, Roger started the fifth set in full flight. He had all the momentum, just as Rafa had the year before. You want a piece of me? He seemed to say. You can’t have it. Come and get me Nadal.

The fifth set was a match all on its own. It included two rain delays – the last we would see on center court, as a new roof will be ready for 2009 – increasingly dark rain clouds and rapidly decaying light. And no tiebreak. The players would see it through until someone broke serve, even if that meant reconvening on Monday. Nadal played from behind that whole fifth set. Every time he was down 0-30 it felt like Roger would close the door. But time after time, Nadal steadied himself. When Rafa pressured Roger the same thing happened. He would not fold. Federer was going to make him pry that trophy from his cold, dead hands.

Neither man was a villain. On the changeovers the crowd was evenly split, simultaneously chanting "Roger! Roger!" and "Rafa, Rafa!" People were in a frenzy, it was a religious experience, the closest most of us will get to speaking tongues. I paced around the living room while Cyclops looked on anxiously.

Finally, in the near dark, at the last possible moment before the dying of the light, Nadal broke serve. Fittingly, he still had to serve it out at 8-7. I thought about all the times all the tennis players all over the world had stayed on the court a touch too long, playing right up until dark, not wanting to go inside. When Nadal earned his third championship point Roger unleashed his best backhand of the day for a clean return winner. Maybe we would be seeing tennis again tomorrow after all. Then at last, Nadal finished it off, flashbulbs popping the way they did for Pete Sampras when he won his fourteenth, a spectacular sight. Nadal fell to the court in shock, the King deposed.

Long live the King.

Where Nadal rates as a tennis prodigy is overlooked because he toils in the shadow of The Mighty Federer. He seemed physically and mentally a man from the moment he burst onto the scene, winning his first French Open at age 18. With bulging biceps and massive energy, Nadal scared the hell out of half the field. Now with four French Open titles at just 22 years old, he still hasn’t lost at Roland Garros. During the last fifteen years we witnessed the rise of the tennis-version of the Spanish Armada, but those players didn’t really aspire to anything beyond the French Open. Sergei Brugera, Alberto Costa, Juan Carlos Ferrerro – all won in Paris. Yet they often skipped Wimbledon altogether and barely made a dent when they showed up. There were two exceptions to this rule. There was Alex Corretja, who more of a hard court player than a clay specialist. Alex went on to star in one of the most memorable matches in US Open history with his gut-wrenching five-set loss to Pete Sampras in 1996. And Carlos Moya, a French winner and fellow mellow Majorcan, who made the finals of the Aussie.

Unlike his predecessors, Nadal announced he wanted to win Wimbledon right away, and he meant it. Nadal's declaration was an awfully lofty goal considering what appeared to be the limitations of his game: big loopy groundstrokes, a soft serve, no net experience and a penchant for playing ten feet beyond the baseline. But Nadal proved to be an exceptionally quick study, and you could watch him improve at a rate that had to be alarming to the rest of the field. Flattening out his groundstrokes, bolstering his serve, discovering he had good hands at net, and bending the laws of physics to his will, Nadal made two Wimbledon finals. The first time he was overmatched (2006); in the second, he fought valiantly, making Federer step it up a notch to regain control and win in five; it was a modern classic (2007).

The third Wimbledon final for Rafa was destined to be a match for all time. From the moment Nadal humiliated Federer in the French Open final four weeks ago, the two were on a collision course – irresistible force vs. immovable object. Federer was the seemingly immovable object. Five straight Wimbledons. Success on all four surfaces. Roger was able to beat everyone in every type of tournament, fast or slow, big or small. He took on all comers and was frighteningly accurate. We watched many matches where Roger scattered a paltry ten unforced errors over three sets. We watched him transcend his sport and project himself into the sporting arena the world over, drawing comparisons with Tiger Woods. We watched him move without an entourage, traveling only with his girlfriend/business manager and a chef, a feat unheard of in this era of athletes and their traveling support groups and sycophants. The Mighty Fed even coached himself, mainly, with occasional support from coaches who only made it to tournaments a half dozen weeks a year.

But Roger’s 2008 has been dismal by his standards. He “only” made it to two grand slam finals and lost in the semis of the Australian. Playing virtually perfect tennis for more than four long years was unprecedented. He was bound to fall a little sooner or later, and there were miniscule cracks in his game in 2007. He started '08 year with mono, which he apparently played through. His Aussie Open loss was startling because he looked drained and almost resigned to his fate. Once the mono was disclosed most people thought the worst was over. There were other shocks to come – a loss to Pete Sampras in a spring exhibition match, losses to Mardy Fish (!!) and Andy Roddick (!) in Indian Wells and Miami. He rebounded at the French by making the final. The humiliation by Rafa was all the more startling because there were times when Roger hung his head, appearing to give up on the match.

Roger was anxious to put Paris behind him and head to the grass, telling the post-match interviewer that Nadal was just too good on clay at the moment, but reminding everyone (and himself) that he had beaten Nadal just as badly in the past. Then it was on to Wimbledon, where many had assumed Roger would be tying Pete Sampras’ 14-slam record this summer. Instead, the stage was set for what we saw today. It is an earthquake for men’s tennis, a seismic shift that heralds the beginning of a new era. Does this mean Federer is through? Hardly. His loss burnishes his reputation, probably more than a routine win would have. This is hard for Fed to believe now, but give him a decade and he may understand why I regard this as the finest match I have ever seen at Wimbledon, and probably anywhere else. After today no one can question Roger’s pride or his heart. However, Rafael Nadal is #1 for now. Roger will turn 27 soon. While not old even by tennis standards, time moves for no man. Regaining his ranking may not be in the cards.

You know who deserves an assist in these events? The man everyone (but me) loves to hate: Novak Djokovic. Joker doesn’t hide his ambition to be #1. He took the lead in piercing Roger’s aura by beating him in Australia and insisting on crashing the Nadal-Federer party. In this space six months ago I wrote that Joker’s rise puts more pressure on Nadal than Federer because Nadal hadn’t played well in six months and was looking a bit complacent. It wasn’t a given that he would be #2, let alone #1. So give Joker credit for breaking the logjam, although he better be prepared for more hard work. It’s suddenly getting pretty crowded at the top.

(B)dodo Droppings & Other Idiocy about Women’s Final

2008-07-06T01:36:00.002-04:00

This poster and other Demotivators and Despairwear can be found at despiar.com. Hang one in your office today.

There was a lot of hot air in the atmosphere after the Williams sisters played a very good final. The Dodo was at it, calling it the best match he’s ever witnessed.

What? Is he fucking nuts? Was this only the third or fourth final he’s ever seen? That is so bogus. I can think of a dozen of three-set matches with better quality play and drama. Venus was involved in one of them three years ago when she beat Lindsay Davenport in the 2005 final.

Unfortunately this lunacy was repeated by others. The often-stupid Luke Jensen told Bud Collins he thought it was the best match he’d ever seen the women play. Jensen and (B)dodo have a lot in common, they’re only impressed by the girls when they hit the ball hard. I’d take error-free play over pace any day.

Bud Collins had the last and best retort though (By the way four-letter, why has Bud been exiled to reporting with Jensen, in a report called “Advantage Luke Jensen?”) Jensen said “I think we’re in agreement that was one of the best finals we’ve ever seen.” Watch Bud nearly have a heart attack as he said: “The women’s final?” [heart attack] Jensen then said because, you know, the girls hit the ball hard! And Bud said “Oh, they’re powerful, they’re wonderful but you’ve gotta go right down to the wire into a third set.”

Thank god for someone sane.

[Note: the deeply uncool AOL Video, with its partner ESPN, won't allow its videos to be embedded in blogs. And it forces you to watch a 10 second commercial you can't close. The kicker:Advantage Jensen is sponsored by IBM.]

Venus Owns the Venus Rosewater Dish Again

2008-07-06T01:22:00.006-04:00

Venus beat Serena Williams Sunday to win her fifth Wimbledon title, breaking a tie with Billie Jean King and bringing her within two of Steffi Graf’s seven championships. Serena came out like gangbusters, winning ten of the first eleven points. Everyone was thinking ‘here we go again’ because it certainly looked like Serena would beat thrash Venus one more time. Venus went down an early break, 3-0, and then came roaring back to win, 7-5, 6-4, on an unusually cold and windy day. She also went down a break in the second before carrying off her eponymous dish.

Bud Collins on ESPN radio broke down the tactical reasons for the victory: Venus repeatedly served into the body, handcuffing Serena on the returns. Then she took charge of the points, pushing Serena back toward the baseline. Serena didn't approach the net, and she still isn't moving as well as she did when she was on top.

This serving development should have made John McEnroe happy. For years he’s bemoaned the focus on serving aces or for speed, saying that the most effective way to stop these big returners was by hitting into the body. I felt Venus really surprised Serena to sticking with this throughout the match.

It was a competitive, very good final Afterward, Venus was subdued in her victory, yet also visibly thrilled. She did her best to console Serena but she didn’t lay it on very thick. This is not a task to be accomplished in fifteen minutes after the match. Both retreated into separate corners to deal with the very different reactions.

Remember that lecture I gave about personality differences? It was in full effect in the post-match, with Serena doing her same pouty, lack-of-credit to-the-opponent act that she does to all the other pros who aren’t related to her. She sort of gave credit to Venus, but as usual, Serena mostly blamed herself for not playing well. She said she was playing for herself only and she never thought about the fact that Venus was her sister. Venus said she never forgot that she was playing her sister, not for one moment, since being a big sister was her first job.

Serena was, in the words of Bud Collins, “morose” in defeat. I had a feeling this match was going to be less love-filled than previous efforts, for the reasons I said yesterday. This was less awkward and did feel like every sister for herself. Venus desperately wanted to prove she could beat Serena, especially at the W. In her presser she said to win five championships at any slam would be awesome, but here it is more special because this is THE ONE. We at the blog agree.

Venus won us over last year with her incredible pre-tournament essay on why women deserve equal prize money, then after that when she thanked Billie Jean King after her victory. Thanks to those two, there is equal prize money at SW 19 today, even if the suits over there had to be dragged kicking and screaming to the equality party. She thanked BJK again today, saying “Billie you know I love you.” She may only play serious for two or three tournaments a year, but we’re willing to give her the benefit of the doubt.

So can Venus, at age 28 now, win two more, catching Graf? I say Yes.

Breaking News: Sister Andrea Admits to Throwing '83 Final

2008-07-05T23:39:00.005-04:00

Well well well. Sister Andrea Jaeger admitted to throwing the 1983 final against Martina Navratilova. I know what you're thinking...1) "Sister" and 2) gambling?

Answers: 1) Yes; 2) No - family fight.

Former pro Andrea Jaeger retired after a brief and notable career. She was the youngest player to be seeded at Wimbledon at 15. She reached the 1983 final as an 18 year-old. Her father was a former boxer, and one in a long line of tennis-father bullies. He was tyrant. She abruptly quit the game. She then famously and selflessly opened a cancer camp called the Silver Lining Ranch in Aspen, Colorado. After sinking all of her prize money into the project, she attracted sponsors like Nike and received financial and other assistance from celebrities and tennis players.

A few years ago Jaeger became a Dominican nun. As you know, nuns are a dying breed who are desperate for recurits, so she was allowed to keep running her ranch. But there was something a bit odd about the whole Dominican nun bit. I guess it's just my lack of belief in all the hocus-pocus that made the whole thing seem kooky. Jaeger is a great humanitarian; why take up the habit?

Probably so she could "confess," via the British tabloid The Daily Mail, that she threw the final after a fight with her dad. Her story:

'I'd beaten Martina on grass at Eastbourne just before the tournament, but the afternoon before the final, my dad saw an empty crisp packet in my room, which I wasn't supposed to have.

'He also asked me about something he heard that happened in the locker-room. I refused to answer. If I'd told him some of the things I encountered on the tennis circuit, he'd have hurt people and pulled me out of that final. Over the years, I took a few beatings from my father to protect players and staff.

'Dad was so angry that I would choose to protect them and not answer his question that I thought he was going to get his belt. I said I was sorry, grabbed my bra and my wallet and ran outside, aware dad wouldn't hit me in public.

'I wanted to order a cab, so I went to the flat next door where Martina was staying. I was upset and kept pounding on the door and ringing the bell until Martina's trainer, Nancy Lieberman, opened the door and took me to the kitchen.

'Martina was sitting in the living room. She glanced round at me briefly with a look on her face to say that I'd interrupted her preparation for the final. She stayed seated and didn't look at me again.

'I couldn't have done that in her position, but all I thought at the time was: "I've changed her routine and affected her. I can't go out and try in the final now''.

'Martina missed her chance to help her neighbour who was suffering in order to fulfil her desire, so I had to make it right. I gave up my desire to give someone their help.

'I went on court in complete peace knowing that giving the match away was the right thing to do. I had to look myself in the mirror for the rest of my life. It meant more to Martina anyway.

'During the match I missed balls on purpose. I hit right to Martina and when I was getting whipped in the first set 6-0, I tried to look upset about it. I glanced at my dad. He knew something was wrong because I never got nervous and always started great.

'I needed to make the second set closer and I did, but not close enough to worry Martina. At changes of ends, I didn't want to look at the crowd. I felt bad that I wasn't giving them the best match as the fans were so good to me over the years, but I also felt that if they knew what had happened they would understand.

'When Martina won the second set 6-3 - and the match - I was happy for her. She walked around with the trophy and everyone wanted her picture. In the press conference I said she played too well.

'God knows the truth. I knew the truth. I emailed Martina three years ago to say it doesn't take away from her win, but she never replied. Had I tried fully, would I have won? I don't have that answer. But I don't want people complaining now and asking for refunds.'

I'm not sure what can be gained from this confession. If I'm Martina today, I'm pretty pissed off about this story. It sure seems like this is a passive-aggressive way of painting Martina in a negative light, and Sister Jaeger in a positive one. Did Martina know what was going on with Roland Jaeger when Andrea showed up right before the final? If it had been you, what would you have thought or done? I doubt I would have acted differently unless she told me the whole story. And if so, what do you do about that before the Wimbledon final? And if you got an email like that more than 20 years later, then what? This seems to be weird territory to me.

Ironically, Lieberman, a member of the basketball Hall of Fame known as "Lady Magic," (as in Johnson), was there to get Martina in physical and mental shape. By the 83 final, Martina was had transformed her often chubby body into a lean mean fighting machine. Equally important, Lieberman was teaching her how to be mentally tough. She had a hard time being friendly and competing against her friends later. This was a pretty big problem when your main rival, Chris Evert, was mentally tougher than 99.9 % of players before and since. So Lieberman turned her into a different person for a while. Eventually that posturing ended.

The other interesting thing about this confession is all that bother in the first few paragraphs about taking beatings to protect players and staff, since daddy wouldn't have liked what went on in the locker room. What are you hinting at Jaeger? Why hem and haw? Why talk to a tabloid like the Daily Mail instead of another newspaper? Maybe we need to look at the Daily Mail itself. The good folks at Wikipedia say the paper "considers itself to be the voice of Middle England speaking up for "small-c" conservative[11] values against what it sees as a liberal establishment. It generally takes an anti-EU, anti-mass immigration, anti-abortion view, based around what it describes as "traditional values." Now we're getting somewhere, aren't we?

Best Lines of the Morning

2008-07-05T11:50:00.003-04:00

"Of all the presidents I ever met, Mugabe was the least impressive." John McEnroe, explaining that Kevin Ulyett is a South African who plays on the Zimbabwe Davis Cup team. Robert Mugabe has been in the news recently for rigging the election by murdering and imprisoning his opposition. Mac said he knew Mugabe was bad news all the way back in 2000.

"I like to think they were rooting for me." Venus Williams, answering the question about how agonizing the match with Serena must have been for her family.

Sisters Are Doing It for Themselves

2008-07-05T02:20:00.002-04:00

[Venus and Serena during their win in the Ladies Doubles Semifinal]

So now that we’ve established that Venus and Serena didn’t cure cancer, it’s time to examine the match they are about to play. It’s time to give credit where it is due.

The first time I saw Venus play I couldn’t wait to see her on the lawns at SW 19, because she obviously had a style that was ideally suited for grass court tennis. She glides around the grass elegantly like a swan, in the great American tradition of exceptional grass court players lead by John McEnroe, Billie Jean King, Martina Navratilova and Pete Sampras. They were the finest grass court players of their generation; now Venus is the greatest of hers.

We will never know why (or if) Venus took a deliberate step back in her career to make way for Serena. At times that certainly seemed to be the case. Although Serena is the one who battles more fiercely on court, no matter how her form is at the time, we can’t underestimate Venus’ drive to win. Who can forget the anguish on Venus’ face when little sister shocked the world by winning the US Open, becoming the first sister to pick up a major? It wasn’t supposed to be that way. But Venus endured another year; and who can forget the overwhelming joy the next year, when Venus finally got hers, that first Wimbledon title? Venus loves Wimbledon more than any other tournament, and brings her A game there no matter what.

On Sunday the Williams sisters will face off for that Wimbledon title. They practice together, eat together, warm up together and often live together. The idea that it is easy or rigged is preposterous at this point. These two women want to win. If they consistently trained and practiced like top players they very likely would have played each other in major finals again and again. That they find the proposition too painful makes perfect sense to me. On the one hand it’s a win-win, since the title stays in the family. But these sisters are best friends. Niether wants to see the other experience the devastation of losing a final. If I’m playing armchair psychologist, then I think Venus’ poor performances against Serena come from an unconscious desire to protect little sis, the thinking being that she can handle the loss with more stoicism than Serena, who wears her heart on her sleeve.Do I think Venus will win? I’m not sure. All signs point to Serena. She hasn’t won at Wimbledon in five years. She’s hungry. She never tires of beating big sis. She is serving better than I have ever seen her. Most importantly, she’s 5-1 against Venus in finals.

They’ve never played an exceptional match against each other as professionals. I feel like this could be the one because they are playing so well. They’re old enough to know you don’t get many chances in tennis, they dwindle with age.

By the way...

They're different you know. The non-tennis media tends to write about the sisters as if they are interchangeable. Now that they've been around for ten years, here's a handy guide for stupid sportscasters and their progeny:

Venus is ice; Serena is fire.
Venus is tall and lanky; Serena has a low center of gravity.
Venus is an intorvert; Serena an extrovert.
Venus is studied and intellectual, more prone to spend her time away from tennis studying; Serena is flighty and emotional, wowed by fame, runs around with high profile beaus and Hollywood.
Venus is Pete Sampras; Serena is Andre Agassi.

Grass Court Art

2008-07-05T02:01:00.004-04:00

HBSC Bank hired artists Heather Ackroyd & Dan Harvey to make grass art for this year's Wimbledon:

"When grass gets plenty of sunlight, it produces chlorophyll and therefore turns green – but the less light it receives, the more yellow the colour is,” explains JWT art director Mark Norcutt of the process used to make the work. “Heather Ackroyd and Dan Harvey discovered that by projecting a bright black-and-white negative image onto a patch of grass as it grows (in an otherwise dark room), they can use the natural photosensitive properties of the grass to reproduce photographs. From a distance it looks like any other monochrome photograph (albeit with a slightly unusual tint); up close, it looks like perfectly ordinary grass. But even individual blades sometimes have a range of hues, as any given cell can respond to the amount of light it receives.”

Click here to see the darkroom process.

American Sports-Mouths Strike Again

2008-07-05T01:48:00.004-04:00

Ever notice how many “sportswriters” are busy clogging up the airwaves at ESPN? Of course you did, to watch that channel is to see sportswriters trying to make themselves famous by yelling like blowhards about things they know nothing about. At least when it comes to other sports, they may have a passing idea of what’s going on, but when it comes to tennis, it’s always ignorance on display. Take today’s episode of Idiots on Parade, I mean “Around the Horn.”

The topic was Elena Dementieva’s comments about the Williams family deciding ahead of time which sister would win the Wimbledon final.

This gave Kevin Blackistone the opportunity to get on his high horse by using a tactic beloved by tennis-hating media: the creation of a straw man that he can then knock down with his outrage. Blackistone asserted that no one expected the old Williams sisters to meet in the final and now people were just smearing them. Wait just a damn minute. No one expected the Williams sisters to make it to the final? Not true. I, like many observers, thought it was a virtual certainty that one of the two would meet in the final. They left the uncomfortable clay behind, and Serena has been playing well and is hungry to win Wimbledon again. Venus is the grasscourt player of her generation and the defending champ. But all this matters not to Blackistone, who then got on his high-horse about all of the horrible things the Williams sisters have had to experience over the years. Obviously I already have a well known position on this and it isn’t black and white (literally or figuratively). The Williams family is complex, their place in tennis can’t really be explained by a sound bite.

Just as I was about to call bull on Blackiston, Bill Paschke of the Los Angeles times weighed in from the opposite view. Plaschke’s role was to explain that Venus and Serena did a lot of questionable things, including throwing matches. WHAT?? The throwing matches allegation is far from proven. Yet here’s an allegedly responsible journalist running his mouth: “The sisters’ 1999 match at the old Lipton was rigged. Anyone who watches tennis knows it. They admitted as much. It’s a reality, it’s happened before. Indian Wells. They’ve thrown matches.” There were strange occurrences involving the Williams sisters. Their commitment to the game has been questioned with good reason. But I don’t want to revisit all that. It’s preposterous and irresponsible to state unequivocally that the Williams sisters throw matches.

Next up, Jay Mariotti from the Chicago Tribune, taking Blackistone’s side, said the Williams sisters were ok despite all the racism they faced from the tennis establishment, and noted that “the father was growing up as well.” Well I agree they are ok and they did weather racism. But I sure as hell don’t agree that Richard Williams has grown up. Not unless you consider these comments, made earlier this year to an Indian newspaper, something a grownup would say:

Tennis is a prejudice game. Well, I'm Black and I'm prejudiced, very prejudiced. I'll be always prejudiced as the White man. The White man hated me all my life and I hate him. That's no secret. I'm not even an American, it just so happens that I was born in America. People are prejudiced in tennis. I don't think Venus or Serena was ever accepted by tennis. They never will be. But if you get some little White no good trasher in America like Tracy Austin or Chris Evert who cannot hit the ball, they will claim this is great.

If Williams wants to call America racist, that’s his opinion and I often agree. But the comments about Austin and Evert were out of line. I didn’t print them at the time for two reasons: they weren’t even worthy of comment, and his daughters have already distanced themselves from dad’s more outlandish comments. I’m sure if I was a right-winger I would have declared that the sisters needed to comment, to “repudiate” their father altogether. But I’m not a right-winger. When Jeremiah Wright was saying similar things and making life difficult for Barck Obama my first thought was “Oh he’s Obama’s Richard Williams.” He doesn’t always believe what he says, you have to take it with a huge grain of salt, he loves attention. Richard Williams, like Wright, is not dumb. He has witnessed things I’m glad I’ll never see. He raised a family in Watts, Los Angeles. He raised two champions and good human beings. They’ve never had a public feud with Williams, but it’s been clear for a long time that he isn’t the omnipresent force he once was, mom Oracene Williams is doing as much if not more coaching, and they don’t need nor want his constant career advice (especially Venus). I just object to hurling epithets at Austin and Evert when neither deserve it.

This whole issue with the Williams sisters always revolves around people who perceive any criticism of them as rooted in race and therefore illigetimate; or simply unfair. The latter group of people are no different than other tennis fans – they take offense at the tiniest criticism of their favorite player.

Now Back to the Four Letter

Plaschke’s idiot comments made Blackistone defensive [because at least Plaschke knew some history] so Blackistone came back with “if you think they’ve cheated then call Congress and have them investigated.”

Then Mariotti had to get in a hit at tennis itself, or something, by pointing out that what he wanted to know was why there weren’t millions of people following in the Williams footsteps, why there were no good young Americans “why haven’t the Williams sisters made that happen.” So a variation on the American sports-mouths’ favorite theme: why aren’t there more Americans? Inn’t tennis more interesting when there are Americans? How come there aren’t black people playing tennis? How come no one cares about tennis?

You have got to be kidding me. You mean Venus and Serena haven’t cured cancer? Tiger Woods doesn’t have to shoulder the burden of why there are no additional Americans, African-American or otherwise, following in his limping footsteps. All he is responsible for is winning. It’s a shame that the same rules don’t apply to Venus and Serena.

It should go without saying that all of those questions were nonsense. The Williams sisters have inspired millions of people around the globe to play tennis. Their impact on the game in America has been huge. Tennis is a more diverse sport than football and baseball combined. There are more people of color in professional tennis than the sacred cow, golf. Two of the game’s brightest young stars, Jo Tsonga and Gael Monfils, happen to be black. But they’re French, so that doesn’t count, right? Keeping up with the idiocy of these sports-mouths is exhausting. I need a nap.

The odious Woody Page capped off the segment by saying “they fought hard every time they played each other.” This is one of those rare times when I will say Page is right.

Gentlemen, please. Focus on the play inside the lines and if you don’t know what’s going on out there then shut the hell up.

Art: Tennis Ball Benches

2008-06-25T00:24:00.005-04:00

The used tennis ball as art. Dutch designer Tejo Remy designed tennis benches using steel and tennis balls. Visitors to the Rotterdam Museum Boijmans Van Beuninge can now sit on the benches and enjoy the rest of the art.

If only all old tennis balls could be refashioned as something other than dog toys.

The Big W

2008-06-22T23:15:00.005-04:00

I'm many days late with my French Open wrap-up, so let's skip it for now and maybe I'll get back to it. What you need to know now is where to follow Wimbledon on tv, from the computer and on the radio. Let's categorize them by good, better and best.

GOOD:

ESPN, Year 1

Monday begins ESPN’s new Wimbledon deal. I’m fairly enthusiastic about it because I enjoy all the commentators, their match selection is greatly improved and they are adding special programming as well.

The coverage kicks off a new six-year agreement between the network and the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club. ESPN2's live coverage from London will begin at 7 a.m. and include all-day coverage the first week, a women's semifinal and a men's semifinal (July 3 and 4, respectively), and a one-hour "SportsCenter at Wimbledon" that will air after NBC's coverage of the women's championship (July 5 at 2 p.m.) and men's championship (July 6 at 3 p.m.). Dick Enberg, covering his 25th Wimbledon, will call the matches, sharing the duties with Cliff Drysdale. Analysts include Darren Cahill, Mary Carillo, Mary Joe Fernandez, Patrick McEnroe, and Pam Shriver.

The most important revelation is“SportsCenter at Wimbledon” after the championship finals. At last, tennis coverage that approaches the devotion the four-letter gives to golf. I say “approaches” for a reason, however. I’ll let you know how the coverage stacks up as time goes on. Hopefully this will grow. For now, adding analysis of the championship matches is a huge commitment from ESPN.

From your PC

Wimbledon.com has live coverage for your pc. Follow the action from nine courts and get highlights and classic matches, PLUS video on demand, for a fee of 24.99 for access to all 14 days. There are cheaper packages as well. This year they’ve added to their classics vault, which is enough to make me subscribe…if I used a PC. But Apple and Linux users are left in the cold due to rights issues. Hopefully they will clear this in the future.

Free from your PC

You can enjoy Wimbledon highlights and interviews for free on the official Wimbledon website.

BETTER

Wimbledon Radio…

I look forward to it every summer. Those wonderful two weeks of Radio BBC’s Wimbledon coverage. Describing tennis for the radio in a play-by-play fashion is difficult. Try it yourself for five minutes. Then try to describe all the action while leaving enough time the color commentator to add her analysis. Double-tough.

But on the BBC makes it sound easy and natural. And it’s an unbelievably relaxing yet exciting way to experience the game. During the inevitable rain delays they often read emails from around the world, including from many happy Americans contently listening while at work. And productivity nags never fear, I think I actually get more done during these two weeks. The hypnotic sounds of Wimbledon Radio will be good for me Monday-Tuesday, since I have a major piece of writing to accomplish.

Wimbledon Radio can be heard over the internet. In addition to the main channel, which features matches from all around the ground, plus interviews, news and pressers, there are two other channels. One covers Centre Court and the other follows the action from Court No. 1.

Also listen to Wimbledon On Sirius Channel 123! I believe last year Sirius broadcasted BBC’s coverage, but I do not know if this is true in 2008.

BEST

DirectTV: Wimbledon Interactive Mix

I am jealous of DirectTV subscribers this week. The provider will have 200 hours of tennis during Wimbledon’s first five days. The features include match selection, the perfect tool for the discriminating fan. That means those of you who have no interest in Serena’s first round match can tune into Robby Ginepri v. Fernando Gonzalez (aka matchup of the mental midgets, which should be highly entertaining), or big serving Aussie Chris Guccione v. next-big-thing Gael Monfils, or Michael Llodra v. Baby Goran. Another sure winner is Sam Querrey v. Juan Carlos Ferrerro, (but I’m sure that’ll make ESPN).

Matches On Now –Provides a view on the lower third of the screen of the latest scores of all current televised matches. Viewers can to tune-in directly to each one by pressing the Select button on the remote.

Matches On Later – This feature will present a schedule of upcoming matches on each of the court channels. Viewers see approximate starting times.

Instant Results – Viewers can access real-time scoring of all French Open matches in progress, and see scores for completed matches. Results from that day play as well as the day before will be available. Also upcoming matchups will be presented, all available without leaving the channel being watched.

Mike, let me know how green the grass is on the other side.

They’ve Got Their Hash Pipes

2008-06-03T01:31:00.001-04:00

Nothing like a little Weezer to kick off the morning. So you’ve heard the news obviously. Tatum O’Neal was arrested with two bags of cocaine in her front pockets. John McEnroe’s ex-wife allegedly asked the police if they could just forget it happened and commented that she was just “researching” a role. Obviously this can’t be right, since Tatum has been to rehab so many times that a judge actually gave John McEnroe the three kids.

Tatum O’Neal is still the youngest person to have won an Oscar, which she picked up at 10 for the movie Paper Moon. She was raised by Ryan O’Neal, an actor famous for his temper and probably resentful of her success. Then she married John McEnroe (daddy complex much?) Substance abuse runs in the family. Brother Griffin O’Neal was high during the boating accident that killed Francis Ford Coppola’s son, leading to a manslaughter conviction. Last year he attacked Ryan with a fireplace poker.

Which is all to say that having John McEnroe as an ex-husband is enough to trigger a relapse in anyone. Get well soon, Tatum.

Meanwhile, over at Chez Noah, Yannick Noah is nonplussed by news of his son’s arrest for (count ‘em): open container, possession of marijuana and driving with a suspended license. Jokim was arrested last week in Gainesville and will pay a fine. Jokim was an obscenely popular member of the Gator’s back to back national championship basketball teams before being drafted by the Chicago Bulls. It’s no surprise to anyone that Jokim ended back in Gainesville partying, since he’s always been a unique personality who thoroughly enjoyed the college lifestyle. Jokim Noah has had some problems fitting in off the court in the NBA.

I know what you’re thinking, “what, they don’t smoke pot in the NBA?”

No, it’s more to do with the younger Noah’s rather laissez faire attitude toward rules and seriousness, and the NBA, like all professional sports leagues, tends to have a “no fun” policy. Daddy Noah basically shrugged his shoulders at his son’s arrest, and can you blame him? It’s not that big a deal. Besides, Noah always had a laissez faire attitude himself. When he retired from tennis he became a popular reggae artist. Reggae… now there’s a drug free environment.

Ignorance in Tennis Media Nominee: NBC Sports

2008-06-03T00:52:00.005-04:00

Today’s nominee is NBC. The Peacock network, the former gold standard for tennis coverage, which has been in freefall for a decade, has now entered a phase of steep decline. (Does it have anything to do with firing Bud Collins last summer?)

Now the coverage is all but unwatchable. ESPN and The Tennis Network are garnering more coverage hours and more praise. ESPN was once in the wilderness in tennis, speaking for endless hours about Americans and only showing American matches, or matches featuring popular players. But starting about four years ago the four-letter left the jingoism behind and showed an acceptable variety of players and matches. But NBC is a horror show. That was obvious this past Sunday when they inexplicably showed Nadal v. Verdasco in its entirety. With no Americans left to show and the beauty queens not playing, NBC chose to showcase Nadal. That would have been fine if the match lived up to the hype, but it didn't.

It was a total beat down, it was hard to tell if Verdasco was on a tennis court or home with his feet up watching tv. The coverage was so rotten that Ted Robinson (criminally overrated), John McEnroe and Mary Carillo spent hours chattering about Nadal eating just the tops off of several bananas (insert joke here), having blisters on his feet, calling the trainer, getting mysterious tennis bags dropped off during the changeovers and chaging racquets.

What’s next, a discourse on the ways Nadal picks his wedge?

I know the action was sparse in the rain-filled first week but there were plenty of matches the network could have featured that would have shown us high quality tennis. This was a waste of time and what's worse, the match was tape-delayed, so the network knew it was a turkey and went with it anyway. That is just giving up, so I gave up on their coverage.

Compare NBC’s lackluster (and now mostly taped) tennis coverage to the slobbering it does over the US Open of golf and it’s nauseating. I told you that bumping off Bud Collins and installing Resident Hobbit and Golf Gnome Jimmy Roberts in his place would sound the death knell for NBC tennis. And so it has come to pass.

An American [Success] in Paris

2008-06-02T00:06:00.006-04:00

Programming note: For an enhanced blog experience, today's posts are meant to be read while listening to the New York Philharmonic play George Gershwin's An American in Paris.

________________________________
To properly assess American failure and success in Paris, we need look no further than Robby Ginepri. The 80th ranked Ginepri made the fourth round! He is the last American in either singles draw. Ginepri is a great athlete and lazy ass who once made the semifinals of the US Open. When he’s working hard he’s a top 30 player. He had never won a match at the French before 2008 and had a dismal 6-24 career record on clay, but rededicated himself to tennis in late 2007 when he started working with Jose Higueras.

Jose was a two-time French semifinalist, but became a world-renowned coach, steering Jim Courier to the number 1 ranking and working with Chang, Sampras, Martin, Moya, Brugera, Dmitry Tursonov and Guerillmo Coria. Ginepri said that under Jose’s tutelage he’s viewing clay court tennis in a different way and [finally] learning how to construct points. Learning to construct points is probably the number one reason our players on both the men and women’s sides can’t win on clay… As Ginepri succinctly explained:

"Playing on clay is totally different than playing on a hard court," Ginepri said. "The movement, how you need to construct a point, the patience required, Jose and Diego have really helped show me how to best use my game in order to be successful on clay. I grew up on hard courts, so my mindset was always to try and win points, but on clay you can't always go for winners. It is the combination of offense and defense that is most rewarded on clay and that is something that has taken me a long time to figure out."

The go-for-broke Americans, including 2nd round losers Venus and Serena and James Blake, should just go ahead and get that quote tattooed on their foreheads right now. Blake was last seen around Roland Garros proudly talking about his refusal to ever not go for broke.

Jose Higeuras rarely travels anymore, but the part-time coach is pulling triple-duty during this French, with players Ginepri, Shaheer Peer and…. The Mighty Federer, his newest charge. Federer has seen the draw part like the red sea, leaving him with what could be his best opportunity to win this event, especially since he has struggled so much this season, slightly lowering public expectations. Watch out…

Dear Over-Tanned ESPN Anchor: You Are Dumb

2008-06-01T23:59:00.007-04:00

Not to be outdone, some random ESPN-anchor bonehead wearing too much makeup over his fake tan came up with this gem yesterday: The French Open has never been kind to the Americans.

Actually, that’s a flat-out lie and it only reinforces the whiny-baby attitude that our current US players adopt every time they’re forced to show up at the French. “We hate clay!” they cry. “It’s so European!” they scream. “It’s too slow!” they bawl. Enough already. Our players aren’t setting the world on fire, but they are good enough to win a few rounds at the French. They just aren’t mentally tough enough to figure it out.

As for the historical statement that the French Open has “never” been kind to Americans, that simply sells the Americans short. They haven’t dominated the way they did at Wimbledon, but no player won more most singles championships in the modern era than Chris Evert-7. American. In fact, since 1925, the America ladies have racked up 27 championships. Impressive, non?

It’s true that the American men have had several long droughts at the French. Non-French players rarely participated in the French Championships before 1925. After ’25, Frank Parker won twice (’48-’49), followed by Budge Patty in ’50 and Tony Trabert in ’54-55. Then there was a long wait until Michael Chang broke through in 1989. Two years later he was joined by back-to-back winner Jim Courier (1991-92). In 1999, Andre Agassi won. Although that represents just four championships in the open era (1968-present), that’s three more than the French men got during the same period.

Even more significant is the number of runner-up appearances notched by the American men in the Open era. They are: Harold Solomon (’76), Brian Gottfried (’77), Vitas Guerilitas (’80), John McEnroe (’84), Andre Agassi (’91 losing to Jim Courier), Jim Couier (’93), Michael Chang (1995). That’s seven appearances, including an all-American final.

If ESPN wants to argue that the American men have stunk up the joint on clay in recent years, I will readily agree. These years have produced a record number of clay-court specialists. But even given the number of experienced clay courters, there is no excuse for American men (and now women) losing unceremoniously in the first two rounds.

This is just another example of totally ignorant US media. It has been so bad this year that at the end of the French, Cyclops shall bestow an award for Ignorance in Tennis Media.

CNN/SI- STUPID HEADLINE ALERT

2008-06-01T23:40:00.006-04:00

Cyclops thinks you are stupid.

We now interrupt the 2008 French Open for a Stupid Headline Alert. I missed much of the first week of the French due to work obligations. Copious amounts of rain means I didn’t miss much. But CNNSI didn’t see it that way. The American sports website ran two gigantic headlines during the tournament’s first three days. They were:

“Huge American Breakthrough at French.”

And

“Federer and Nadal Survive Upset Bids.”

How are these statements wrong? Let us count the ways.

1. Blake Wins First Round. I was skeptical of any huge American breakthrough seeing as how the first round hadn’t even been completed yetWinning a first round match isn’t a real breakthrough. But click through to the tennis page and the title became “American breakthrough” minus the “huge” qualifier. Click through again to the actual article and the headline was “Blake’s breakthrough.”

Ugh. Finally. The headline should have been “Blake wins first round.” End of story. So desperate are they to make every tennis headline an American headline that they exaggerate routine wins.

2. Blake Needs Higher Standards. Blake winning a first round in a grand slam should never really be a story, no matter how bad his previous records on clay.

3. The headline is overly-desperate. True, Americans have sucked hard at the French in recent years. But I’d avoid lavishing praise on the US players for winning single rounds, or even a few. That’s setting the bar too low and it’s a betrayal of all the Americans who went before our current crop of bad players.

4. Federer Wins in Four Sets. There was a time when Federer losing a set would be a headline in and of itself. But that time isn’t now, and it has never been that way at the French, which Federer has never won. Consequently, Rog beating Montanes 6-7, 6-1, 6-0, 6-4 is not an “upset bid.” And there’s nothing to “survive” if, after losing a close first-set, you bash your opponent’s head in during the final three sets.

5. Nadal Routines Unknown Frenchman. In tennis we use routine as a verb, and it applies in situations where the match was both easy and unremarkable. Nadal beat Nicolas Devilder 6-4, 6-0, 6-1. The only thing to survive about Devilder’s game is his surname. Nicolas the Devil should be a player you need a few prayers to survive, but using this logic Ana Smashnova would be the number 1 player too.

In conclusion:

There are four-set matches that are indeed upset bids. That applies only to four very tight sets. And there are three-set matches that a man is lucky to survive. That applies to three tiebreak or 7-5 sets. CNN’s framing suggests that every match between an underdog and a favorite is an “upset bid” from the moment they step on the court. The only way CNN’s headlines make sense is if they apply the same logic to other sports, so that when the Celtics beat the woeful Knicks by 20 they have “survived” the “upset bid.”

Farewell Guga

2008-05-28T00:03:00.004-04:00

This year’s French is so far more about who isn’t here than who is. Justine Henin quit. Andy Roddick, who has been on a roll and actually had a good clay court showing, pulled out with a shoulder problem. Lindsay Davenport isn’t playing for personal reasons (probably, why schlep the baby to Europe for the clay court season when I hate it). And Gustavo Keurten played his first grand slam match in three years, lost, and here bids adieu to the crowd. (Practice your French)

The French presented Guga with a slice of the clay court beneath glass. It was really cool.

Guga was a three-time champion, and in the fever for three-timer Nadal it’s easy to forget that Guga had won three before he fully reached his prime. A hip injury destroyed Guga’s career right as he was hitting his stride on other surfaces. He was the number 1 player in the world once. After the hip he had trouble even getting back on the court. The same thing happened to Thomas Norman, the Swede who was a finalist in Paris before a hip injury forced him to retire as well.

But somehow Guga isn’t bitter about how his career ended. He’s endured some major losses in life. His father died in 1985 while umpiring a local tennis match. Younger brother Guilherme suffered from cerebral palsy and Guga dedicated much of his career to him. He also helped to eradicate discrimination against the disabled in Brazil. Guga’s public embrace of his brother erased some of the stigma associated with people with mental disorders. Guilherme died last year. He was 28.

Guga brought a different spirit to the tennis court. Whereas Nadal looks severe, Guga was always somehow effervesecent, like champagne. He made people smile. In his spare time he was a surfer; he was laid back and exuded a certain gentleness. But at the same time he was an incredible competitor, popular enough to take attention off of Brazil’s famous soccer players. Guga is still more or less the most popular guy in Brazil.

Oh by the way....Henin Retired

2008-05-27T23:50:00.006-04:00

While I was watching and not writing, Justine Henin abruptly retired, just one week after waxing poetic about how much she was looking forward to the French Open. This one was a shocker, but somehow also not. Justine was always the type of player you couldn’t read, she was famously closed off from the world ever since falling out with her family after her mother died from cancer when Justine was a girl. Justine, the oldest, left to train with Carlos Rodriguez and didn’t talk to her four siblings or her father for a decade. In recent years Rodriguez’s hold on Justine became more and more svengali-like, even driving a wedge between Justine and her ex-husband. In the aftermath of that divorce from her husband, Justine and her family reconciled, about a year ago this spring. For much of the rest of the year Justine reasserted her dominance.

The Rationale

Why am I mentioning this now? It’s the reason she quit. She simply (she says) decided she wanted to spend time with them every day and not on the tennis tour. She said she wanted to be there when her siblings came and went to school. Hmmm… My first thought was “why not take a break?” She could easily have skipped the rest of the year and then reevaluated. True, McEnroe was never the same player when he did it, but other players returned after long hiatuses to claim grand slam titles (Jennifer Capriati and Monica Seles). It’s hard for me believe that a player as young and accomplished as Henin won’t simply wake up two years from now bored out of her mind from waiting around for her siblings to come home from school.

“I Could Beat That Girl Like a Drum”

Plus there is the “I could beat that girl with my eyes closed” factor. This is the x-factor that drives athletes who quit too soon to come back. It even tortures those who quit at the right time. The reason Pete Sampras goes crazy during Wimbledon is because he sees these baseliners rallying eight feet behind the baseline on grass and thinks “that guy? I could beat him like a drum.” But he quit at the right time, so he will never comeback.

A Break from the Selfish

Many players, from Pete Sampras to Andre Agassi to Chris Evert, say that to be a great champion you have to be selfish. And when they finally jump off the train that is the pro tennis tour it’s because the price on their family has become too much. Everyone’s schedule depends on the player. You want to see your friends or parents? They have to come to you since you’re never home. You don’t play with your kids because you have to rest your back. You can’t go to the Eiffel Tower with your spouse because you have to save your energy. What’s more, athletes that truly devote their full powers to the game demand a lot from themselves. I thought it was shocking when Pete Sampras said he was so happy when he retired to just be able to drink a beer and not worry about it. He couldn’t drink a beer?? Well, people who are in truly peak physical condition live that kind of lifestyle.

Competitive Voids All Around

It’s hard for athletes to replace competition in their lives, even if they played past their prime. So we have people like Michael Jordan making a comeback, buying into two basketball franchises (and mostly failing). Even Sampras has opened up about the difficulty of transition between tennis and not tennis. When he retired he was spent, but he’s also said after the first year or so it felt abnormal to be retired at 32. The main reason he came back to play the senior tour was because, in his words “a man has to work. I don’t want my kids to think retiring at 32 is normal.”

Justine was more committed to tennis than any current women’s player (by a country mile). That’s why she was a dominant number 1. So it is perfectly natural for a woman who lived in an intense tennis-only training vaccum since she was 8 years old to want and need a break from endless travel, endless training, endless focus. But if I were to bet on whether Justine would make a comeback, I’d vote yes.

Her retirement leaves the WTA Tour with voids all around. With the demise of Henin they lose the one and only top woman who made tennis her priority. Later on in the week, if time permits, I’ll go into what a disaster this is for women’s tennis, if and how they can rebound and why I still believe pouring your all into the game is the way to go, even if it results in a few early retirements.

For now though, I would like to reflect on Justine’s game.

A Player’s Player

In some sense, Henin was a player’s player. In reading her tennis-obituaries this week I was struck by a quote from one of her first appearances in the US Open, when she beat Anna Kournikova. Henin was 18 at the time, and she said this:

I think I am here to play tennis, is the best important in my life. I think [Anna is] a really nice girl. She likes her look, and everybody likes her look. But I am not here to do cinema. I am here to play tennis and I think that's the best important.

As SI’s Jon Wertheim pointed out, in this she was true to herself until the end. Justine didn’t really care what you thought of her, didn’t care if in her rivalry with Clijsters she was referred to as The Mean One, didn’t care if her rivals were busy making cameo appearances on sitcoms or posing for Playboy. She already knew what some players, like Andre Agassi, take forever to discover: it’s ok to be just a tennis player. It gave you everything you have. Some players never learn.

Her game was wonderful to watch. People are saying she’s the last 5’5 champion. Probably, but then again I wouldn’t be too sure to rule out another shorty. Although her peers all played versions of Big Babe Tennis (term coined by Mary Carillo, not by me), Henin could hit the ball with great power. But she had variety and was teriffically accurate, and that set her apart from the others.

Mentally she was also steely tough. At least until a few years ago when all sorts of weird and unsportsmanlike conduct started creeping into her matches, much like the other women of her generation. Wertheim wrote that Henin looked steely one minute but looking to her coach in the stands the next, at once mentally tough and weak. I think he’s right but that’s overstating it. She was the only player on the women’s side who was steely and mentally tough. Looking to the coach was, in my opinin, more her way of letting off steam than anything else.

I’ll miss someone whose sense of professionalism – while not up to the standard we used to see in women’s tennis – was at least strong enough to get her to make tennis her priority. But above all, I’ll miss that searing one-handed backhand that was one of the best the women’s game has ever seen.

Ex-player Klemenschits dead at 25

2008-04-10T00:19:00.009-04:00

I confess I had never heard of Daniela Klemenschits until today. But I think this deserves a mention. She hand her twin sister were BOTH diagnosed with abdominal cancer in January of last year? Are you kidding me? Life is too cruel.

Former Austrian doubles player Daniela Klemenschits died Wednesday after battling cancer. She was 25.

The Austrian tennis federation said Wednesday that Klemenschits and her twin sister Sandra were diagnosed with a rare form of abdominal cancer in January last year, forcing them to retire.

They played doubles on the WTA Tour and the ITF women's circuit until 2006.

Daniela had several tumors removed and required expensive medical care. Roger Federer, Marat Safin, Justine Henin, Amelie Mauresmo, Martina Hingis and others donated items for an online auction in June to raise funds for her treatment.

The Klemenschits sisters won 20 titles on the ITF circuit. Although they didn't win a WTA Tour event, they entered the top 100 of the WTA doubles ranking in 2005.

Tennis is ultimately a small community. It's good to know that the players pitched in to try to help an unheralded player in need. Condolences to the Klemenschits family and Austrian Federation.

Chris & Martina on Oprah

2008-04-09T23:51:00.005-04:00

Apparently Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova visited with Oprah this week. Chris always did look good in red. These two are in their 50s? A good advertisement for the capacity of women's athletics to keep the old body youthful.

Fascinating, isn't it, that two fierce rivals who played each other more than 150 times would console each other in the locker room? Can you imagine Justine and Serena doing that? Neither can I. I'm pretty sure they would strangle each other with their disrespect.

This gives me the opportunity to comment on the revamped Tennis Week site that produced the video. The weekly newspaper Tennis Week was once the only tennis journalism that mattered in the States. When founder Gene Scott died a few years ago it was a terrible loss for tennis. Gene was the conscience of tennis. Whether you agreed or disagreed with the substance of his editorials, it was evident that every word was designed with the best interests of the sport in mind. Gene Scott wasn't afraid to get on the bully pulpit and yell at the game's various special interests. His newspaper was a delight to hardcore fans and favored by industry insiders.

I've given the new website version of Tennis Week a chance. It's been around for at least six months, probably a lot longer. I have no idea what the print version looks like, but if the website is any indication, it's a lost cause.

I hate the glossy "In Touch Weekly" "People" or "Us" makeover.

I hate that there are fewer articles of substance.

I hate the daily video. I don't need that woman giving me Us Weekly stories about tennis. Especially when it ignores serious issues or things that are even timely... Like today, when we learned the Venus is out of commission because of what is described as non-serious medical testing (huh? Get well soon), an Austrian player died of cancer, and Jo Tsonga is out of the US-France Davis Cup clash, which dramatically changes the dynamic.

How much are they paying for that woman to read two minutes of People Magazine stuff? We all know Roddick is friend's with Boyd Tinsley. What we didn't know until this week is that Andy Roddick is friends with T.O. Yes... Terrelle Owens. Weird, wacky, wonderful tennis. I learned of that pairing from the New York Times. When Tennis Week is getting scooped by the NYT, it's time to shut it down.

Ok. Maybe I'm too harsh. Maybe a fluff video is a good thing for tennis. Fine, that girl can even read it. But why does the essence of the paper have to change? Gene would NEVER have approved of this.

Roger Fans, It's Time to Panic

2008-04-03T23:23:00.003-04:00

So far in 20008 fans of Roger Federer have been in "what-me-worry" mode while glancing quickly from side to side to see if anyone is noticing them sweat. Despite well-reasoned articles and posts (like mine) calmly explaining that Federer's successes are slowing down but he will still beat Pete's record, his fans (and Roger) reacted pretty defensively, as if we'd just predicted Roger wouldn't win another match in his career.

When Roger's manager let it "slip" that Roger had mono before the Australian Open, fans said "we told you so!" and seized on that explanation for why their man had been out of sorts.

(If you think the manager accidentally revealed the mono, you probably still think the 9/11 hijakers were from Iraq. He had to spill it right before the Madison Square Garden match against Pete Sampras, just in case Roger lost. Well, Roger almost lost anyway, in a match that showed how great Pete can still play in one-off matches).

But last week in Indian Wells Roger lost to American Mardy Fish --Mardy Fish!-- 6-2, 6-3. That was bad but maybe, his supporters said, explainable, since Fish was on fire (insert fish fry jokes here) and Roger was probably tired from playing Pete in New York.

Roger lost to Roddick and he said all the right things afterward. Roger made an uncharacteristic number of errors in the final set, but said Roddick had previously lost a few matches to him that he really should have won, and it was only a matter of time before Andy took one away from Roger. So Roger was saying it was not too devastating to lose to someone who he has consistently praised as one of his toughest opponents, even when he was destroying Roddick.

But Roger losing to a player he had owned 11 straight times has got to be a shock to the system precisely because it is in these situations where he previously thrived. Trying to make a point, beating up on an opponent he had respect for, I think he was a safe bet to win this tournament. Roger is a lot like other champions in that if you are going to catch them on an off-day, it will be in the later rounds. Pete Sampras was notorious for that. If he didn't lose before the semifinals, he would be virtually impossible to beat because he raised his game.

Of course as we must always point out, Roger has been unique in the history of the game because he hasn't had bad tournaments here and there. He played almost error free tennis for four long years. He hadn't previously revealed himself to be human. It would stand to reason that he still has great tennis left in him.

But...but...consider what happened to Mats Wilander after his untouchable year, and how Federer himself played for the first five years of his career, when he showed flashes of brilliance and a lot of bad play. Perhaps he's eaten some kryptonite after all.

Youzhny Beats Self with Racket: Blood Pours Out

2008-04-03T22:56:00.009-04:00

Russia's Mikhail Youzhny became yesterday's youtube sensation after beating himself in the head with his racket, causing a beautiful red stream of blood to pour down his face.

The video was watched over 500,000 times by Wednesday afternoon.

I've always said this sport was great theater.

I love the way his opponent, Nicolas Almagro, goes over to visit him in the chair and peers down at him as if he's visiting Youzhny in the insane asylum. Both men laughed, but Youzhny got the last one.

He won.

The Future Ex-Mrs. Roddick

2008-04-03T22:44:00.004-04:00

This is Brooklyn Decker, Roddick's new fiance. I know, totally fake name right? For the record, I agree with celebrity gossipmonger Perez Hilton, who gives it two years to fail. Sorry Andy.

Like Nick Lachey before him, Roddick will soon figure out he didn't need to marry the model to um... you know. Then one day he'll be watching basketball and his wife will ask him if Chicken of the Sea is really sea-water chicken, rather than um... you know, tuna.

What, Jessica Simpson was a singer when she made that famous comment about chi-tuna? Huh. Who knew? Remember that miserable look Nick got on his face when he realized Simpson was dead serious?

At least she's moved on to someone who can match her stupidity for stupidity: Cowboys QB Tony Romo.

Congratulations and good luck Andy.

Roddick Beats Roger!

2008-04-03T22:20:00.005-04:00

For just the second time in his career, Andy Roddick defeated Roger Federer tonight in Miami, 7-6 (4), 4-6, 6-3. Roddick is now 2-15 against Roger.

There have been times when Roddick was so close to beating Roger, most notably in that Wimbledon final. But not lately. His game matches up miserably with TMF and their matches have been mostly blowouts for the last couple of years.

Roddick started the year with a miserable Australian Open when he embarassed himself with a Jimmy Connors-like tirade and meltdown. A few weeks later, the two amicably ended their coaching relationship.

Roddick promptly captured the title at Dubai, defeating Rafael Nadal in the semis. It was his first Masters' title in a few years. He is now 19-3 on the year with two titles.

Oh by the way, Roddick got engaged to that swimsuit model last week too. Who gets more credit for Roddick's turnaround, said Model or said ex-coach?

I say neither. I think Roddick deserves all credit for how he's currently comporting himself on the tennis court. A few weeks ago Andy announced he would skip the Olympics to prepare for the US Open. I applauded that decision because no one has been more dedicated to representing the USA in Davis Cup. The Olympics promises to be one big exhausting Hot China Mess (I'll be sharing my own misgivings about the Olympics in a future post). He has taken responsibility for the coaching, for his style of play, for his schedule and for his life. In short, Roddick is acting like a man.

Davis Cup Round-Up

2008-02-17T20:22:00.004-05:00

A week late with this, however, it's worth mentioning that the first round of the Davis Cup is history.

The defending champs, the USA, took on Austria in Vienna and won easily. All the guys who have played so faithfully for seven years showed up. Kudos to Blake, Roddick and the Bryans for making the trip so quickly after the Australian Open. You didn't see Nadal or Federer in action, did you? Nope. A match on clay in Austria was actually dangerous and one we could have lost. For once, they played well on clay. You have to think the team is playing with a lot of confidence right now.

The Yanks take on France in the next round. This will be a blockbuster between two traditional Davis Cup powers. The French boast one of the world's best doubles teams, Arnaud Clement and Michael Llorda, and top singles players Richard Gasquet, Jo Tsonga and Sebastian Grosjean. They easily defeated the Romanians.

Speaking of traditional powers, it seems strange not to see Australia in the World Group this year. This marks just the second time Australia was relegated to zonal play. Australia has won the Cup 28 times, second only to the US (32 titles).

Russia hasn't lost in Moscow since Pete Sampras beat them singlehandedly to win the 1996 Davis Cup. The streak held, as the Ruskis beat a flu-decimated Serbian team that should have been a threat to win this year's cup. But Joker missed the opening singles match with stomach flu, as did Tispsarevich. That left doubles specialist Nenad Z and a player I never heard of playing singles on the opening day. The player I never heard of, Troiki, almost came through, losing a five-set epic. Joker played and won the doubles and made it halfway through the second singles day before having to quit and go to the hospital. The Serbs managed enhance their reputation even in defeat.

Span dominated Peru but promised to help Peru build tennis courts. The country is still recovering from an August 2007 earthquake. The Spanish Federation is celebrating its 100th Anniversary.

Sweden narrowly avoided an upset at the hands of the Israelis, who put on a show for the home crowd in a hotly contested 3-2 loss. Good for Erlich & Ram, the doubles champions in Australia, for making it competitive.

Sweden faces Argentina in the next round, in South America. This one should be interesting.

Japanese 18 year-old Stuns Blake to Win Delray Beach

2008-02-17T20:05:00.003-05:00

Well well well, an unheralded Japanese player, qualifier Kei Nishikori beat James Blake to win his first title. Interested in knowing how he did it? So am I. Too bad that this AP article doesn't fill us in on the how and why behind the final score. Although it hints that James wasn't "there emotionally" (huh?), there is no match analysis in this article. Just the final score, 3-6, 6-1, 6-4 and a few quotes.

This is the type of useless tennis writing that it's hard to believe someone gets paid for. Even match statistics would tell us more than this.

Kei is 18 years, 1 month and 19 days old, the youngest to win an ATP Title since Lleyton Hewitt. According to the ATP Website he turned pro in April of 2007 and has shot up to 244 in less than a year. This is quite impressive. Look at the players Kei beat: Floridan Mayer, Amer Delic, Bobby Reynolds, Sam Querrey and James Blake. All pretty tough customers. Kei trains at Bolleteris in Bradenton. One to watch.

UK v. Argentina: Jamie Murray Attacks Kid Brother

2008-02-07T23:32:00.000-05:00

Left: Andy Murray. Right: Jamie Murray

Andy Murray, the McEnroe-in-Waiting, is skipping the British Davis Cup tie against Argentina. The thinking is that he's just coming off an injury-plagued year and after a rocky start to 2008 he wants to avoid a flight halfway around the world to play on clay against some of the world's best clay courters, just to switch back to hard courts again. In the pantheon of excuses for playing Davis Cup, I think that's a fair enough assessment for a player to make. It's not as if Britain has a chance against Argentina, a Davis Cup powerhouse with David Nalbandian (No. 9, Wimbledon finalist a few years back, beat Federer twice last year), Augustin Calleri, Guillermo Coria, Juan Ignacio Chela, Guillermo Canas (also beat Federer twice last year)...And if they all break legs they can rely on Jose Acasuso and Juan Martin Del Potro.

In other words, they are contenders to win the whole thing, while Britain just made its way back into the top tier of teams allowed to play for the whole thing.

Moreover, Andy Murray has a legitimate shot to be a top five player someday - if his body holds up and his attitude straightens out. But the pressure on him to top Henman - since he's got more talent than Henman had in his little finger - is immense. He's at a rocky stage in his career and his body has been fragile. The press is going to blast him any time he breathes wrong.

That's why I don't like hearing big brother Jamie ripping little bro publicly for skipping the tie:

"It's a shame he decided it was best for him not to come here," Jamie said yesterday. "It kind of affects the way we feel about him. I think from what I've heard he hasn't actually said that he was injured, it was more of a preventive thing. If he really wanted to push himself, he really could have come here to play the tie."

"There isn't really much to say. I'm here working hard for the team, trying to do the best I can and he's at home doing whatever he's doing." Asked if he would try to clear the air, he said: "I don't know, that's kind of up to him. I don't see why I should go to him or anything like that. From his point of view I guess that he doesn't have anything to apologise for as he's taken the decision not to come."

You're saying the decision affects how you feel about him? I would never rip my infinitely more talented younger brother publicly, even if he was (hypothetically) moody, and had more talent than he knew what to do with. Jamie should be sticking up for kid brother and fighting it out in private if that's what he must do. It's easy for Jamie to play Davis Cup: he's a doubles specialist and the spotlight is on him in Davis Cup in a way it isn't the rest of the year. The pressure is all on Andy to come up with some kind of miracle and carry the team.

I gave Jamie credit last year for winning the mixed doubles at Wimbledon last year, even though Jelena Jankovic carried him to the title. It was a charming story though, seeing as how Jamie asked her to play doubles as a way of asking her out. No recent news on whether their relationship is still a relationship.

I understand where the team is coming from if they feel abandoned. Argentina has a whopping 19 players ranked higher than England's number 2, Alex Bogdanovic. Argentina nearly impossible to beat at home. They need to suck it up and take their inevitable lumps.

Now Andy, having fired Brad Gilbert, needs to get on with his career. He's already said he'll play the next round, which will once again find Britain one match away from relegation to the minor leagues. Perhaps he ought to call John McEnroe for a bit of coaching, seeing as how his sullen pouting between points, followed by flashes of brilliance during the points, mirror John so much.

Not to mention Andy's propensity for deliberately pushing people's buttons. The latest? He'd rather win the US Open than Wimbledon. This is another comment meant to remind people that he's Scottish and doesn't consider himself English so bugger off already. He's got some growing up to do and he might need Jamie's advice on a few things. But airing the dirty family laundry in public... I don't like it.

John McEnroe for...All-Bran?

2008-02-07T20:40:00.000-05:00

Beautiful photo courtesy of Katie Meigs. Some rights reserved .

Hat tip to Mike for alerting me to John McEnroe's new association with All Bran. Here's the Yahoo All-Bran Group (yes, really):

I’m John McEnroe. I’m not only the spokesman for the All-Bran 10 Day Challenge™, I’ve done it myself. After 10 days, you too could be amazed at the results.

Become part of a regular movement in the All-Bran® 10 Day Club. See what Club members from coast-to-coast are saying about the benefits of All-Bran®.

Become part of a regular movement? So all those years Johnny Mac was just constipated?

I'm not saying he's a horse's ass or anything but All-Bran must have some serious money, or else John needs some. Showbiz Spy confirms the existence of a commercial featuring McEnroe arguing with some guy about his, um, plumbing.

Sarah Silverman: "I'm Fucking Matt Damon"

2008-02-03T19:05:00.000-05:00

Non-tennis related post again, but I'm pretty sure I just watched this ten times.

This is the best thing Matt Damon has ever participated in.

Earth to Senator Eagles Fan, It's Time for You to Go Now

2008-02-03T18:05:00.000-05:00

So. There's no way for me to justify writing about this NFL "spygate" insanity on a tennis blog. Except to say that perhaps next year Senator Clinton will demand hearings into that horrible line call Serena Williams got at the 2006 US Open, because that is indeed where we are headed, after the weekend's ridiculous actions by Senator Arlen Specter. See, Senator Single-Bullet-Theory is mad! Because he's an Eagles fan and he thinks the Patriots cheated to win that super bowl and... and... He's going to make them pay! He actually compared the NFL's destruction of the videotapes it confiscated from the Patriots earlier this year with Nixon's hijinks.

Huh. Oh Arlen.... Turn up your hearing aid for a moment. You might want to investigate our sitting president, since his destruction of evidence on the torture alone makes Nixon look like fucking Ghandi! GET A GRIP!

Just for a brief review, the NFL fined the patriots for filming the signals of the Jets earlier this year. Actually, that's wrong, although that's what people are going to say for decades. They got fined for filming from the wrong place, instead of from the authorized place... Now some disgruntled ex employee of the Patriots is saying he might maybe know something BAD about the Patriots but he'd only tell if Congress or the NFL asked..

Why should Congress be worried about this issue? You won't read a better defense of Specter than the one written by Gregg Easterbrook, who has been crying about spygate for months:

Think Congress has no business investigating sports? Most NFL teams play in publicly subsidized stadiums, and NFL games are aired over public airwaves controlled by federal licenses. The licenses, among other things, prohibit any pre-arrangement or artifice in what is presented as live competition. If a Super Bowl were affected by cheating, that would be a legitimate matter of concern to Congress. Plus, the recent lesson learned via baseball and steroids was that Major League Baseball did not clean up its own house until Congress put some pressure on.

Oh, boo-freaking-hoo! I disagree with Gregg. If this is the best argument you can make, then you're shit out of luck because this is insane. And who said baseball is clean now? Naivete, thy name is Gregg with two gs. Even worse was Mike Florio over at Pro Footbal Talk, who claimed Congress needed to investigate because it might send a bad message to kids. Always about the kids! The kids! If Congress cared about our kids, we'd have hearings to figure out why the US has the second worst infant mortality rate in the developed world. But that just doesn't get high ratings.

I've said it over and over for ten years now: revoke the various anti-trust exemptions the leagues have and move on. Don't use them as excuses to grandstand. I heard Specter on the radio this morning. After his appearance, Mike Greenberg described him as a "disgruntled Eagles fan." I heard that! He sounded like a whining baby. If there is fraud in the outcome of games, like points fixing or other things that suggest that the games are equivalent to professional wrestling, that may indeed be a matter for Congress (emphasis on the may). But anything less than that is preposterous. Specter suggested that it was no problem for Congress to deal with the war, the economy and pro football because "we have plenty of time" to do all of them. Oh no you don't, because you aren't doing it. What about the anthrax terrorist? Interested in finding out who did it any time this century? How about VOTER FRAUD since we've had two stolen elections now. No? Ok, what about our troops being stranded at the mold and roach-infested prison camp known as Walter Reed? Forgot about that one pretty quickly, didn't you.

As a Cleveland Browns fan you'd think I would be contractually obligated to hate Bill Belichick and the Patriots, but I don't. Belichick didn't move the team to Baltimore, Art Modell did that. I've screamed for years about how unfair that was, how the NFL and the new Browns ownership then held a gun to the city's head to get them to agree to public financing for a new stadium, and I've gone on record before opposing public financing for non-dome stadiums because they can't be used enough to derive financial benefit on their cities. But none of this should be a matter of Congress, even though I would love to see Modell answering questions under oath and squirming like the leach he is. What they are trying to do to the Patriots is just sour grapes and jealousy writ large by a US Senator.

There is a saying that "the people get the government they deserve" and episodes like this convince me that it is true. We place too much emphasis on sports and too little on important things like life and death. But to some extent our elected officials are just mirroring our interests. Super Bowl Sunday, while occasionally fun -- once every eight years, I'd say -- is the ultimate example of everything that is wrong with this country. Lip-synching no talents singing the national anthem, fake concern for "troops" watching around the world, which is really just window dressing for making ourselves feel less guilty, an entire day devoted to commercials, no wonder Bush said the thing we should do after 9/11 was shot till you drop....

What else... Oh yeah, wardrobe malfunctions, wherein millions of Americans claim that a half-second of Janet Jackson's nipple burned their retinas and caused their children to be scarred FOR LIFE, never mind the fact that they'd already seen Bob Dole's erection and Britney Spears' nether regions and lived to tell the tale...

Enough. I didn't plan to live blog the Super Bowl of Chips, as CYCLOPS calls it....

FOX Sports and the NFL Dramatize the Declaration of Independence

2008-02-03T18:00:00.000-05:00

Um... What the hell was that? Fox opened its eighth hour of super bowl coverage with a dramatic reading of the Declaration of Independence by the likes of Tony Dungy, Peyton Manning, Steve Larget (boo, hiss, Mr. Conservative Senator prick), Don Shula, Roger Staubach and others. Why? I demand to know the meaning of this. Perhaps this only proves the point I will soon be making: that the country is getting the government it deserves, one where the Congress hold hearings about sports leagues.

I can't wait till next year's US Open, when Pete Sampras, Billie Jean King and Roger Federer dramatize the Bill of Rights.

New Blood

2008-01-30T23:13:00.000-05:00

Oz has come and gone but I didn't want to forget about Joker's victory over Tsonga to win the title.

Tsonga has all the tools. Now comes the hard part: dealing with sudden fame, learning about consistency, figuring out how to use all those tools to win matches, and staying healthy. To be fair we really ought to evaluate him 18 months from now to see how he handles himself.

Joker's straight-set domination of Federer was shocking. However, I did predict his ascent to the top of tennis. Hey, I'm wrong enough to make sure I point out that when I'm right, I'm right. When I first decided Joker was going to insert himself into the debate between Nadal and Federer, it seemed a little preposterous. The Mighty Fed and Nadal have such a rivalry, and their tennis is so many levels above everyone else it seemed hard to imagine anyone else joining the party. But when I saw him win Miami and I heard him talk, I just knew that the Serb with the unpronounceable name had the game and charisma to be an unlikely star.

Many observers are now noting that it's hard to remember another 20-year old with a such a complete game. Joker was already a mega-star in Serbia so I doubt his win will affect his ability to get through life. His work ethic is already phenomenal and he's not satisfied with one grand slam. As he said two years ago, his goal is to be number 1. To do that in this era you really have to want it, because Fed and Nadal aren't going anywhere. Having Joker get some of the attention will probably temporarily help Nadal, who has some issues in his game that he needs to work through. It takes the pressure off Rafa to be Fed's main rival. But clay is just around the corner for him so he will be fine. Fed, however, may not get his mojo back until Wimbledon.

Speaking of Wimby, Joker had this to say:

“And Wimbledon? My first memory of tennis was watching Pete Sampras lift the trophy. I think I was 6. I felt I should have been in the finals last year, but I was hurt. I have always imagined myself as Sampras.

“To be Australian Open champion is wonderful; to win Wimbledon, that would be amazing.”

Ukraine's Bondarenko Sisters Win Women's Doubles Title

2008-01-30T22:47:00.001-05:00

Alona and Kateryna Bondarenko won the 2008 Australian Open Women's Doubles Title. The Bondarenko Sisters--sound like they ought to be 40s era showgirls, entertaining the troops or something.

Kateryna is more well known, having hovered inside the top fifty singles rankings for the last few years. Although she and older sister Alona have been around a while, they just started playing doubles together last year, as they explained in the post-match presser:

Last year we play not very good doubles because sometimes we fight on the court. But now we start to listen each other and understand, and maybe that's the key

The Bondarenkos used charmingly broken English to describe the thrill of winning and the placement of the nose rings (all-important tennis question, about the nose studs)
Q. What does this win mean to you both?

ALONA BONDARENKO: We don't know yet.

KATERYNA BONDARENKO: Yeah, probably not really know yet that we won a Grand Slam. I mean, we know, but ‑‑

ALONA BONDARENKO: ‑‑ we don't understand it.
Q. Is it pretty tough competition against each other since you know how each other play so well?

KATERYNA BONDARENKO: Yeah, I don't like to play against my sister.

ALONA BONDARENKO: Yeah, for me it's not easy because she play like more winner, good serve, good shots. For me it's very tough because she knows me and can easier win with me.

Q. An important fashion question for you. Why does one have a stud in your nose on one side and the other one on the other side?

KATERYNA BONDARENKO: That's because she saw that I have on one side and she decide to do the same thing, the other side.

ALONA BONDARENKO: I do it later, like one year later than her.

Mixed Champions: Sun Tiantian (China) and Nenad Zimonjic (Serbia)

2008-01-30T22:21:00.000-05:00

Sun and Nenad defeated Indians Mahesh Bupathi and Sania Mirza to win the mixed doubles title.

This is a little bit of an upset since Mahesh has been ranked number 1 in doubles and has several grand slam titles under his belt, while Mirza is a top 20 singles player.

Sun is one of a handful of good Chinese women who have made an impact on the WTA Tour. She and Li Ting won the 2004 gold medal in women's doubles, a huge upset at the time. The pressure on Chinese players to win this summer is intense and insane. Last year the Chinese were not allowed to play Wimbledon because the Chinese Federation wanted them to play a local tournament. China was widely criticized for that move. Sun said winning in Australia will hopefully be a good experience for her Olympic Games preparation. She sure knows what the locals demand to hear, right? Winning the lowly Australian, not good enough. Winning the 04 gold was good, but not as good as winning at home in Beijing. Hopefully a Chinese team will win, so the government will allow them to continue to play professional tennis.

Nenad had won two grand slam titles in the mixed before the 08 Australian (French and Australian). Another triumph for Serbia. I remember when Slobodan "Bobo" Zivojinovic was the top Yugoslavian player in the 1990s. He was a good doubles player and a top twenty singles player for a year or two. I wonder what he thinks about all the Serbs excelling in tennis.

Tennis Ball to the Groin, A Scientific Study

2008-01-30T21:39:00.000-05:00

FOX Sport Science found a stupid guy to be a Crotch Test Dummy for a tennis ball shot out of a ball machine... into his gonads, at over 50 mph.

No, seriously.

Oz is Over; (B)dodo was Quiet

2008-01-28T22:29:00.000-05:00

The 2008 Australian Open is over and Dodo was unusually quiet, for two reasons. First, no one paid for him to fly his sorry ass to Oz. Second, he is writing a book with Pete Sampras. Yes, I've known about it for a while now. It will be interesting to see how it turns out.

I hate the word "interesting."

Now Dodo did have a little macho-outbreak after Fed won that five-set marathon against Janko Tipsarevic (this blog's favorite player). Dodo said this was Fed's first "warrior moment." This is a reference to an argument that went on for weeks on his blog, after one of his attacks on Fed's masculinity. You know, attacking Fed for not having won a match after being down a few sets is suspiciously like those people who are always pointing out that Tiger Woods has never had a big comeback on the last day of a major....

Of course he hasn't -- that's because he's usually winning by more than 8 shots, fools!

Earlier this week Dodo did come up with a fine post about what Fed's loss to this blog's other favorite player--new champion Novak Djokovic--means. It was measured, as it noted that Fed is far from done, but it is the biggest evidence yet that Fed is going to be in for some rough times. Rough compared to the smooth waters he usually cruises.

Look, Fed is still going to break Sampras' record. His reign, which includes many stunning statistics (like the 10-straight slam finals) has been unprecedented because it has been so long. Other players have had spectacular years. John McEnroe in 1984, for example. To sustain that level of play for 4 YEARS is something no one thought possible. In my estimation, 75 percent of that accomplishment is all Fed. The other 25 percent is due to what Bodo called the "seam" that occurred when Sampras and Agassi were gone, and Lleyton Hewitt was on top. Bodo correctly notes that Federer pushed Hewitt out of the picture, but that the next generation of greats wasn't yet mature. (A similar situation happened when Hingis was number 1).

I thought Bodo was right-on with his assessment. He did not say "the sky is falling" he just noted that Fed can't play untouchable tennis forever. But Dodo's groupies did not like that, oh no, what a bunch of whiny Fed Kool-Aid Drinkers (I can't take credit for that; KAD is a term of art on that overly chummy blog). They've lost their shizz over this one.

I Wanna Be Sedated--Sharapova Wins Boring Women's Final

2008-01-26T16:55:00.000-05:00

Sharapova beat Ivanovic in a 705, 6-3 final that featured more uninspired play. Women's tennis is rotten right now. They haven't had a compelling major final in two years. The error-riddled matches occasionally take dramatic turns, but those are brought about by the psychological weaknesses of stars who can't close out matches, along with the usual hijinks we've come to expect from the women's tour.

I give Sharapova credit though. After slipping from the top 5 in 2007, Sharapova really worked hard to get back to where she is. Her work ethic was always evident, even at the beginning of her career, when the marketing gods decided to turn her into a Kournikova.

Sharapova dedicated her win to Jane Joyce, the mother of Michael Joyce, her longtime hitting partner. Jane died last year after struggling with cancer for many years. The awards ceremony featured Sharapova paying heartfelt tribute to Jane. We know Yuri didn't put those words in her mouth.

You know, Sharapova also said some wonderful things about Billie Jean King last year during the US Open, and she has handled her terrible 2007 with a lot of grace. We conclude that she is a nice young lady who is capable of winning and losing with class. What a shame, then, that she is saddled with another one of those evil tennis fathers, the kind of father that makes you root against his daughter because you hate him so much. Illegal coaching, crass comments, ugly jeering at opponents, pathetic attempts to claim he's her real "coach" and the now infamous throat-slash move...it just goes on and on.

And now the WTA has bought into his claim that the throat-slash was just an inside joke with Maria since the two shared a joke earlier in the tournament about him being an assassin. You see, Yuri's disgusting move is just fine with the WTA. Richard Hinds, writing in the Sydney Morning Herald, had this excellent take on it:

Even the American NFL, the world's most violent football code, banned the throat-slashing gesture - which some players had called "the OJ" - eight years ago.

This was one of those clear-cut incidents when there was no alternative but to act.

And, as a bonus, by punishing Sharapov, the authorities would send a message to those who believe women's tennis is run by starstruck sycophants who tread on egg shells around the players and their families in the knowledge they are more dispensable than the divas and prima donnas upon whom their livelihood depends. It was a chance to let everyone know who is boss.

When the verdict was delivered we found out. Is that one lump of sugar or two, Mr Sharapov?

Unfortunately for Sharapova, this wasn't Daddy's only blowup of the tournament. Post-throat slash, he went ape on some reporters who politely approached him for his thoughts on the women's final. "You like sharks! You like sharks!" he screamed. Then another member of the entourage started yelling "you don't care how she plays!" Whatever. These guys are so New Russia, aren't they? Intimidating thugs flush with the spoils of capitalism/mafiaism or whatever they're calling Putin's Russia these days.

After years of allowing its players to pull out of tournaments on a whim, sucking up to entourages, failing to penalize them for illegal coaching (and in fact enabling it by the short-lived on-court coaching experiment), never fining their stars for skipping pressers and disgracing the game on the court, the WTA is reaping what it sowed. When the sponsorship money dries up and the fans go away, the WTA will have no one to blame but themselves for tolerating this conduct.

Ivanovic Rallies, Down a Set and Break, to Defeat Legs

2008-01-25T00:15:00.000-05:00

I can't vouch for much of the tennis since I gave up on Ivanovic after she was down a set and a break. I had to sleep sometime! Apparently, while I was counting sheep Ivanovic clawed her way back into a match that Legs was completely in control of. In fact, Legs won that first set 6-0 and was relaxed and smacking winners. I don't know what happened with the tennis since the articles on the match were filled with whining by Legs about Ivanovic squeaking her shoes during Legs' ball toss. Repeatedly. And then there was the usual carping and drama and fallout that always appears in the women's matches these days. You know the drill, fake injuries, phony bathroom breaks, illegal coaching hand signals, screeching and porn-grunting, complaining, blaming your opponent for daring to breath and throat-slitting by one's father.

Can't these ladies just play a damn match, shake hands and be over it. I can't wait until this era of *cutie-pie or Big Babe Tennis is officially over.

*Both terms coined by Mary Carillo

Tsonga Resembles Sampras, Plus Notes on Rafa and Roger

2008-01-24T23:38:00.001-05:00

This brief video shows Tsonga's Samprasian tendencies. His instinct is to follow huge groundstrokes into the net. This aggression is important against Nadal. In fact, last year Sampras said he didn't understand why Roger stayed at the baseline during his clashes with Nadal, since the way to neutralize him was to blast him off the court. A few months later, Roger looked more like Pete than ever, in the fifth set of his final against Nadal. Nadal was winning but Roger just controlled that set with his serve. He didn't allow Nadal to touch the ball.

But we are here to analyze Tsonga's game. Onward:

First point. Ali in the far court. He punishes Nadal with a wicked forehand. He takes the return shot and slams it crosscourt. Then he does the very Samprasian move of following that stroke into the net. Where he hits a beautiful volley.

Point two. Ali still in the far court. They trade a few groundstrokes and then Ali smashes a forehand, blowing Nadal off the court. It takes a special player to hit a clean winner from that position.

Third point. Ali serving. He hits a pretty good crosscourt backhand and then takes Nadals reply and pushes a backhand down the line. Then he moves to the net and hits a gorgeous, almost behind-the-back touch volley.

Fourth point. Ali serving. He hits a strong first serve. Nadal's return is a bit short and Ali pummels it for a forehand winner...All while moving to the net. Attack, attack, attack. That was Pete Sampras. He could hang at the baseline and hit winners, but he was always looking to take control of the point.

Fifth point. Ali serving. Hits a crosscourt serve that has Nadal on the run, hits a strong forehand to the opposite court, pushing Nadal way behind the baseline. Jo moves to the net and finishes with an overhead. Look at the way Nadal is the one on the string, reacting to Jo. Usually Nadal is the one who is running his opponents off the court.

Sixth point. Ace. Significantly, it is out wide, with more spin than pace. Pete did this too. He could throw the heater down the middle and follow it with an off-pace serve that curled away from the returner.

Now watch it all again and just watch Tsonga's feet. Remind you of anyone? Sampras just danced around the court, he almost resembled a tap dancer at times. His footwork was so relaxed, it was like watching someone skip from shot to shot. I always thought he looked cool out there. Oh, to have your tennis game look so effortless.

It all looks so simple, doesn't it? Although today's players are all-court players, there's often little rhyme or reason to their movement around the court. I keep thinking that the guy who changes his game to a more focused attack will have great success. Pete Sampras thinks so too, and some have speculated that he told Roger that when they played those exhibitions in Malaysia last year.

It seems funny to be saying Roger needs to change his game. But Tiger Woods broke down his entire swing after winning his first few majors. Why? Building it for the long haul, staying in front of the competition. Last year there were a few cracks in Roger. Back to back losses to Canas in the spring; back to back losses to Nalbandian in the winter. Plus Nadal. Don't misunderstand me, Roger is still superb, but he knows his competitors are raising their game. I totally agree with Pete Sampras that Roger would be brilliant as a more traditional serve and volleyer. He surely has the ability.

In Roger's first couple of matches in Australia he came to net more than ever before. But he reverted a bit against Tipsarevic in that five-setter. I think Roger understands that he has to tweak his approach to stay far ahead of the pack. I've always argued that his serve was underutilized. Well he used it in that Tipsaravic match as well, to the tune of more than 35 aces, the most in his career. So we may be seeing Federer's game evolve.

First Women's Semi: Tragic

2008-01-23T23:40:00.000-05:00

Speaking of bloody awful things, that first semi between Sharapova and Jankovic was horrendous. I feel for Jankovic with her "injury" (she's injured every match but so far has made up for it with her giggly on-court charm). Sharapova didn't dominate this match because of her play, it was all Jankovic playing bad. This was by-far Maria's worst match of the tournament.

How great was it to see Carillo's reaction when Mary Jo said the second semi couldn't possibly be worse... It was definitely an "oh yes it could...shudders" look.

Pam Shriver is Hilarious / Maria's Dad is a Jerk

2008-01-23T23:31:00.001-05:00

Good to see that famous old sense of humor again.

So far tonight, Shriver said the tournament director was going to keep the roof closed "to keep my hair from frizzing out." She blamed him for retaliating against her for something she said 15 years ago when he was an umpire.

Earlier she interviewed the delightful, chatty mother of Jelena Jankovic. Before throwing it back to the booth she said "that's the only parent I'll be speaking to tonight." The commentators cracked up, because Sharapova's father Yuri is a first-class wack - job. His latest antic? Making a "slit throat" sign as Maria's match with Henin ended.

Nice.

Remember the controversy in the States when football players started making the slit throat gesture? Maria said he was just putting up his hood, but earlier in the tournament she told the press he likes that sweatshirt since it makes him look like an assassin. Last time I called a Russian a jackass on this blog I got reprimanded by CYCLOPS. But seriously, when it comes to Yuri Sharapov, there's a whole range of blue words I could use.

The above video shows the throat-slit, at about the 48 second mark. I can't stand this generation of tennis parents on the women's side. They're bloody awful.

Chang Highlight Reel

2008-01-23T23:28:00.000-05:00

The picture quality isn't the best, but watch his court coverage. It's amazing.

What's he doing now? Coaching in the US and China. Fishing. Attending seminary part-time. According to Wikipedia, hitting 400 yard drives in golf.

MICHAEL CHANG ELECTED TO HALL OF FAME

2008-01-23T22:25:00.000-05:00

Photo: Legs, the original.

Michael Chang was elected to the Tennis Hall of Fame in Newport, RI, today. Chang is the youngest male to win a grand slam tournament. He was just 17 and a few months when he triumphed at the French Open after an inspiring two weeks of tennis. That wasn't the apex of Chang's career, though. He would be the first to tell you that he was a much better player at 30 than 17. Chang's highest ranking was #2 and he spent seven consecutive years in the top ten. He came oh-so-close to winning the US Open and played some memorable matches there.

Ask fans who saw tennis in person during the 1990s "who was the most exciting player to watch in that era?" The answer might surprise you. Agassi and Sampras were magnificent, but you never failed to get your money's worth with Chang. Although listed at 5-7, Chang was not taller than 5-5, believe me. His small stature and lack of power on the serve meant he had to work so hard for each point. With his piston-like thighs (the most muscular I ever saw), Chang raced around the court - all of it. Every match was competitive because of his height and weight, yet he never failed to disappoint.

And he competed like a gladiator. I often thought it odd that no one compared Chang to Jimmy Connors, because he was Jimmy's heir in competitiveness and heart, but (thankfully) not attitude. Sportswriters have a habit of only comparing black with black and white with white. Since Chang was neither he was beyond their frame of reference. But watch video of Chang, fist pumping and chugging around the tennis court and tell me that doesn't remind you of Connors.

It's amazing that Chang played a style that was so physically demanding and destructive to the body and yet remained in the top ten for seven years, in an era that I believe was a little more competitive than today on the men's side. To illustrate how hard this is to do, look at Lleyton Hewitt - champion at Wimbledon and the US Open, former #1- now out of the top ten. His Chang-like style has already let him down. Andre Agassi had ten times the talent of Chang, yet he spent his career crashing out of the top hundred and then back in the top ten, a roller coaster for all but the last half-decade.

I also look at Rafa Nadal and think of Chang. Their styles are different. But the abuse to the body of playing full-bore on every point and not winning many free points is taking its toll on Nadal already in terms of injuries and running out of gas by August. Even though Nadal is unbeatable on clay and challenging Roger, everyone in the tennis world is assuming Nadal will have to adapt his game in the years ahead if he wants to stay near the top.

Correction

2008-01-23T22:04:00.000-05:00

It's Jelena v. Maria followed by Daniela v. Ana.

A name ending in A is popular now, no?

Two Serbs, a Slovak and a Russian Walk Onto a Tennis Court...

2008-01-23T21:43:00.000-05:00

Photo: Ana Ivanovic

Sounds like a joke about a bar, but it is nice to see new blood in the women's semifinals. The Serbs of course are part of the story I've been writing for two years (that the media has now picked up on, duh) of the five fantastic Serbs who are shaking tennis up. I suppose people are going to get sick of hearing it, but it bears repeating: this is a country that was in the midst of a war when these players grew up. There were no tennis courts, let alone a national federation spending hundreds of millions of dollars, like we have in the US, France, Australia and G.B. And the comport themselves awfully well, so different than the caricature of a Serb that we conjured up when Milosevic was mass murdering his way across the Balkans. They are so open and outgoing in personality, acutely aware of what the world thinks of Serbs and wildly talented. Oh, one last thing. They speak English better than the entire state of Florida. Novak Djokovic speaks five languages and his accent is...almost gone. Jankovic gave an interview the other day and used the word "temperament" correctly. (When's the last time you heard that happen in Florida mom?)

So Legs Hauntuchova, as nicknamed by David, has had a big game for a long time now. She's finally made a semifinal. She's been around for so long people had sort of written her off, but she's only 24. She seems to have put the eating disorder issues to bed for now, and I think everyone is glad to see her excel. She'll take on Jelena Jankovic later today.

Meanwhile, Sharapova takes on Ivanovic in a fascinating match. Ivanovic will need to raise her game. No matter what happens though, she'll be taking over the #2 rankings spot after this, her third consecutive semifinal. I understand why everyone thinks Sharapova is so hot, but in a head to head looks battle with Ana Ivanovic, I don't see how she can win. When it comes down to it, Maria is just another blonde.

Credit the Williams Sisters (I'm serious)

2008-01-23T21:32:00.000-05:00

For not using the old "I was injured" excuse to explain their losses to the two higher-ranked Serbs, Ivanovic and Jankovic. Venus and Serena both lost in a similar fashion, going down a bit meekly in two sets.

Carillo and McEnroe pointed out that these younger women play games that are similar to the Williams sisters, and they wondered whether they've figured out that these players have caught up to them. Perhaps. I agree with their overall assessment that the sisters can still be a factor, but only if they're willing to put in the time and commitment to tennis.

Meanwhile, Justine Henin showed an unfortunate side to her personality after she got smoked 6-0, 604 by Sharapova. She blamed injury - of course! I've said all along that Henin is as classless in defeat as Venus and Serena, and her comments yesterday -"If i play my best I can't lose"- were straight out of the old Serena playbook. In reality, Sharapova looks sensational. The serving problems that plagued her last year appear to be gone. Nobody beats Henin 6-0 unless they're on fire.

Gossip: Stepanek and Vaidisova to Marry? Or it's a Prank.

2008-01-22T00:16:00.000-05:00

I almost forgot to post about Radek Stepanek and Nicole Vaidisova applying for a marriage license in Bradenton, Florida, where they both train. (Hat tip: Tennis Info Blog).

Nicole was on ESPN last week denying it in a half-assed, giggly way. When I saw it I thought "oh shit, how stupid are you."

All I can say is, Nicole--DON'T. You were jailbait until a few months ago. And Stepanek got engaged to Martina Hingis a year ago. Then sometime in the summer, they got un-engaged, he got his game back and had significant wins, and depending who you believe, Hingis snorted some blow.

This just leads me to believe that Stepanek is skeevy. When the cocaine story broke, I was surprised that they didn't link it to her bizarre year of personal angst.

Besides, Nicole, YOU ARE 18! He is 29!

Associated Press: Huh?

2008-01-22T00:11:00.000-05:00

Jelena Jankovic beat Serena in straight sets. If Serena is injured, that's a shame because she played well over her first four matches.

Now, the AP's article says that Jankovic reached the semifinals of a grand slam "for only the third time."

Only? She's 22. I'd say three semis is a pretty good start to a career. Nothing "only" about it.

By the way, she has a really slick website. You should check it out.

The Slow-Mo Venus-Butt Controversy

2008-01-21T23:46:00.000-05:00

Lleyton Hewitt's ex-coach, Roger Rasheed, is in a tiny bit of hot water after playing a slo-mo of Venus' butt and commenting that it looked pretty good. I can't argue with that, can you?

Rasheed's comment may be a tad to the inappropriate side of things, but not by much. Women commentators (and men) make remarks about Rafa's giant arms or James Blake's modeling career. Venus designs these short shorts, so it should come as no surprise that they end up a topic of conversation.

For me the line involves the sexualization of minors. Nothing Rasheed said here begins to compare to the vile public drooling that happened whenever Anna Kournikova took the court as a 14-year old. I wonder if You Tube has video of the ESPN Sportscenter anchors with their tongue's hanging out every night. It was terrible public pedophilia, if you ask me. Kournikova brought nothing but bad things to tennis. Her "success" was a blueprint for disgusting parents eager to pimp out their pre-pubescent daughters for money. (See Harkelroad, Ashley). This unfortunate trend has spilled over into other sports. This is probably a topic for another time, but here goes. I think it's great to show off your body. But it's also a dicey proposition. Where does self-promotion become objectification? I hate golf, including women's golf. A few years ago there was talk by the LPGA that they needed their women to be more trampy to improve the ratings. THAT is the kind of bad stuff I'm talking about.

Now if Rasheed would've commented on Serena's big booty, well, that would be a different story and is a topic you best steer clear of if you want to have a job. I have a feeling that discussion would provoke an international incident.

Bottom line (I know, I know, I just had to use that pun): The Slo-Mo-Butt-Cam was a mistake. However, our Australian friends haven't convened a tribunal to sentence Rasheed, nor are they going to spend the next two months debating this. Perhaps it is we Yanks who ought to lighten up.

Blake's Big Breakthrough

2008-01-21T22:38:00.000-05:00

Above: James meets an Aussie snake.

James Blake has turned a huge corner in his career, in three important steps.

Step 1. Win a five-set match. Players don't make their reputations by playing great in New Haven. They are made during grand slams and Davis Cup, where the stakes are highest and the matches are long. Going into the US Open, Blake was an appalling 0-10 in five-setters. He broke the streak by beating Frenchman Fabrice Santoro, the stylish, gritty, tricky French veteran that this blog loves.

Step 2. Win an important match in Davis Cup. Roddick carried the US Team for the last five years. Blake was 14-8 in Davis Cup. Pretty good, but he needed to pull his weight against the top teams. Roddick sports a 26-9 singles record, 4th all time for an American. Even better, Roddick is 9-0 in clinching matches, ranking him first among all US singles players, especially when you consider who those other Americans are. For the US to win the Cup, we needed James to win a big match. And he did, beating Mikhail Youhzny of Russia last December. The US won the Davis Cup

Step 3. Get a signature win. I was like a broken record in 2007 "James Blake hasn't had a signature win yet." For all his spectacular tennis, he went AWOL for big matches and had yet to win a memorable one. Until last week, when he came back from two sets, two breaks down to beat Sebastian Grosjean in five sets. Unbelievable victory. Blake spent the first 2 sets and five games hanging his head, looking testy, doing all that typical Blake stuff that happens when he just checks out mentally. No one thought a comeback was in the cards. He did it, and changed his attitude and game in notable ways.

First, he didn't rely on emotion to get him back in the match, which was an old trick of his. It's a trick that goes nowhere when you're that deep in a hole. Second, he finally picked his spots, at times anyway. We've all criticized Blake for going for everything on every shot. Why aim for a line when aiming six inches inside the court wins you the point? He had been so stubborn on the issue that the entire tennis world concluded he would never learn. He appears to be getting it.

Most importantly, Blake translated the incredible comeback into a fourth round, straight-set victory over the dangerous newGoran, Marin Cilic. Consolidating a big win with a victory in the next round is often the toughest thing to do.

Blake is a Giants fan who was quite happy with the outcome of the NFC Championship game. He and the Giants are now in the same boat: trying to stop history from happening. Their opponents are the undefeated Patriots and the-about-to-break-Pete's record Roger Federer.

Serena and Andre: Joined by Bike Pants

2008-01-21T22:18:00.000-05:00

Nike made a fairly big deal out of Serena's new thigh-covering spandex bike pants, yet no one noted that we've seen this before, with Agassi. You can attribute that to Aggasi dumping Nike for Adidas a few years ago, after Nike refused to give Agassi money for his charity.

Nike. Still dumb after all these years.

All these comments about Serena being like Andre must be annoying the piss out of their respective camps. Actually, I'm sure he'd be happy to help her out. I said two years ago she ought to grab Agassi's trainer, Gil Reyes.

Typical Women's Match

2008-01-21T22:15:00.001-05:00

I see we've settled into a fairly typical women's match, circa 2008:

Deuce, deuce, deuce.

Error, error, error.

Grunt, scream, grunt, scream, grunt, scream.

Real injury? Fake injury? Real injury? Fake injury.

Drama.

Jo Tsonga Plays the Young Cassius Clay

2008-01-21T22:07:00.000-05:00

Ok I was skeptical of this whole Tsonga looks like Ali line of reporting. I've only caught a few points on tv, and his ATP profile pic is not very Ali-like. The photo above is from his junior US Open win in 2003. He sure looks like Cassius Clay to us at Counter-punch.

I remember Jo from last year's Wimbledon, where he reached the fourth round. He also made the third round of the US Open in 2007. Consider that Blake just recently figured out how to get out of the second round at grand slams, and how difficult it is to master the mentality that it takes to compete in a best of five. I think Tsonga is a safe bet for a very bright future.

French Are Flying High

2008-01-21T21:41:00.000-05:00

The petit French feline Sophia, CYCLOPS' best friend, wanted to make sure we didn't forget about French success Down Under.

It's been a glorious tournament for French tennis, with 29 players starting the tournament and several making it to the fourth round. With the exception of Amelie Mauresmo, the players have made their mark. French Tennis has been building for years, with a definite, different methodology at work. They find great athletes and turn them loose on tennis, and are not anxious for stunning results until the player is into his twenties. No angst over non-performing 24 year-olds from this country.

The breakout star is Jo-Wilifred Tsonga. Tsonga's mother is French and father Congolese. All his press refers to him as the Muhammad Ali of tennis because he looks like Ali. His run has been impressive: beating Andy Murray, last year's finalist Gonzalez ,and today his friend and countryman, Richard Gasquet, to advance to the QF.

Steve Bierley, writing for The Guardian, discusses Tsonga's long road back from a herniated disk. Tsonga was once the #2 ranked junior. (Who was ahead of him? Marcos Baghdatis). Since Tsonga beat the Great British Hope in the first round, you have to wade through several paragraphs of woe-are-we-British-tennis to get to the part about the French. The Brits are so jealous.

Other articles say that Tsonga and Gael Monfils used to pretend they were Andy Roddick when they were young juniors, mimicking his serve. That ought to make Andy feel prematurely old.

The French showing is remarkable when you consider that Monfils is out with an injury, and he's a firecracker, amazing athlete and tennis talent.

Pam Calls Out Serena

2008-01-21T21:30:00.000-05:00

Oh, it's on now. After Chris Fowler pointed out that Serena isn't limping and hasn't called the trainer, Shriver said Serena needs to get fired up, since that's what players do when they have "niggling" injuries in the QF of a slam.

True dat.

The folks over at Black Tennis Pro's are going to be all over Shriver. They complained about Mary Carillo for saying that Serena and Venus have made their share of "kooky" comments over the years.

So? Read Serena's blog, it's full of kooky comments right now. Look, criticizing Serena for being a flake is fair. A lot of players are flakes and kooks. I pointed out three of them (Serena included) the other day.

Serena Injured?

2008-01-21T21:18:00.000-05:00

That's what ESPN's Pam Shriver is reporting from courtside. Apparently a quad strain that they worked on in the morning.

The question is whether Serena is injured, or is she injured? With the Williams and Henin, you never really know.

But Serena fights hard out there and depending on the nature of the injury, she can win this match. I'm not hedging my bets with that "depending" clause, I'm just saying that Jelena Jankovic can be a joy to watch but she hasn't proven herself to be the most mentally tough player out there. In fact, she isn't mentally tough at all. So I'd bet even money on Serena winning anyway.

Dumb Americans Part III

2008-01-20T01:28:00.000-05:00

(Photo by Scott Beale / Laughing Squid Some rights reserved.)

"My coach is from Australia. He lived in Melbourne. So he's here with his wife and his parents and their friends. It's kind of nice, they can show me around. It's just a nice city.

I'm not a big sightseer. And sometimes when you go to Europe, you have to see the Eiffel Tower and places like that. You don't have to see anything here, and I like that."

-- Twenty year-old American Sam Querrey

Ugh. Where to begin with this monstrosity? First of all, I must tell you that I forgive Andy for his boorishness and hope it is short-lived. And I forgive Serena for her Serena-ness because her blog is genius (and I'm not the only one who thinks so, the press at the AO love it).

Second, the only thing that saves Sam Q-boy is his age. Otherwise I'd become a Sam Q-Hater for sure. This is just so classic "Ugly American" it hurts.

Third, let's just say it: Oh, how terrible for poor Sammy-boy. He is forced to travel around the world and get paid for hitting tennis balls. Paid for wearing clothes. Paid for using a certain racquet. And worst of all, he feels pressured to see some of the world's most beautiful places. "Damn! That stupid Eiffel tower. I wanted to just sit home and play video games at the hotel, but now they're forcing me to tour Paris. God my life sucks!"

Fourth, it's kind of a shot at Melbourne. Dude, you're in Australia. You think there's nothing to see? Get over yourself. That was one hell of a dominant performance against Tursunov. But Djokavic kicked your ass all the way back to Cali. I guess I'm supposed to learn to like you because you're a Yank and I'm a Yank.

I can only hope you'll grow out of being a total moron, because that's the only way it'll happen

Dumb Americans Part II

2008-01-20T00:49:00.000-05:00

"Shut up!"

--Andy Roddick to German fans.

"Do you need to be a second-grade dropout to be an umpire? Stay in school kids or else you'll end up an umpire!"

"You're an idiot."

"You need to do your job! Do you have ears connected to your head? You can't hear him yelling?"

--Roddick to chair umpire.

I've always been an Andy Roddick fan. I've defended him for years because honestly I never thought he did anything wrong - other than show terrible court sense and poor judgment in selecting coaches. But after his five-set loss to German Philip Kohlschreiber, it's clear he's taken on too much of Coach Jimmy Connors's persona. This is a shame, because Roddick has always been a fan favorite Down Under. It's sad to see him booed off the court.

Roddick was unhinged and boorish in berating the fans and the umpire. In fact he should have been docked a point for his continual tirades against the chair. I'm no prude; there are times a little rant at the officiating is fine. This was totally uncalled for. I've seen Roddick angry many times, but he's never resembled Connors and his fuck-you-everyone attitude. Until Friday.

Five years ago David and I diagnosed Roddick has having mental meltdowns that came in the form of little fits of anger, and we talked (from our armchairs in the living room) about how those meltdowns broke his concentration. Unfortunately the pattern has held. When things get tight in a match, Roddick blows off steam at the umpire and then he loses focus. I suggest a sports psychologist or a new coach to work through these things, because Andy isn't really mad at the officiating. That's the difference between him and McEnroe. McEnroe believed in his heart he was getting screwed. I just don't think Andy thinks that way. It's more inappropriate stress relief and poor stress management.

Kolschreiber played brilliantly: 104 winners v. 33 errors. Kolscrheiber is not known for his serve yet he hit 32 against Roddick.Can you imagine posting numbers like that? If I was in Andy's shoes, I'd be frustrated too. But we've seen other guys do this to Roddick: put up huge numbers of winners and aces. It's not just running into players having a great day; it's Roddick allowing it to happen. Connors has done a decent enough job of putting Roddick's game back together after a few terrible years. And Andy has given something back to Jimmy too. He's given Jimmy a way back into the game, and a way to pass on what he learned from his mother Glorida (who passed away just before the 07 Aussie Open).

The second big Connors problem is that Andy is starting to play like Jimmy. You are definitely asking me "what could be wrong with playing like Connors? The man won seven grand slam titles."

The answer is, "plenty."

Andy is twice as big as Connors. He's always had a tremendous amount of hustle, just like old Jimbo. But his game is not about that. There are other counterpunchers and pushers out there who are better at it than Roddick. His is a power game. Big serve, big forehand. He ought to be the aggressor in these matches, not the guy reacting to the other player. This is a flaw that has been in Roddick's game since the juniors, when he was a little guy running around like Michael Chang. When Roddick grew two feet he didn't learn how to effectively harness his power.

Brad Gilbert got him to No. 1 by teaching him how to control matches. I'm not suggesting that Roddick would be No. 1 or even No. 2 if he was still being coached by Gilbert. The game changed and he and Hewitt got stuck in the middle of that shift. But surely he should be winning and losing by playing the kind of game that suits his abilities. I can't watch any more matches where Andy flails away from BEHIND the baseline. Please get a clue, man.

We noticed Roddick getting tight during the 4th and 5th sets. He was playing great, but he didn't go for broke. That has to change if he has any hope of remaining in the top 10. That sounds like a drastic statement. However, the other younger players are maturing quickly. Roddick certainly has the skills to stay where he is. The question is, will he?

Dumb Americans, Part I

2008-01-19T23:27:00.000-05:00

"I have honestly never been like in a happier state than what I am now. I'm always happy and smiling. I think because I have kind of made it all about me, I put Serena as A, and A is first."

--Serena Williams

As annoying as Serena can be, right now she might be the smartest American left. Wait till you read what the rest of them said and did.

Tennis Rocks and Rolls All Night with ESPN

2008-01-19T12:33:00.001-05:00

(Above: Dwarf Rockers Mini-Kiss)

Five years ago ESPN was in a dismal state with its tennis coverage. I can always find things to nitpick but their efforts (on the tv side only) have vastly improved since the network got expanded rights to the AO, French and Wimbledon.

This year they added Bud Collins to the announcing team, allowing him to do expanded sideline reporting and commenatry in the booth.

It all culminated in an outstanding day and a half of coverage that spanned four five-set matches on the men's side. This was coverage for tennis junkies. A fifth set is compelling no matter who the players are. This year they've had the remarkable luck to have the greatest of matches featuring the greatest of players: Federer, Roddick, Baghdatis, Blake, Hewitt.

The rain fell yesterday, meaning that the roof was closed. The matches went on consecutively rather than simultaneously and ESPN stayed on through the night. A big thank you to the four-letter for sticking with Federer - Tipsarevic and Baghdatis - Hewitt, amounting to about 11 extra hours of live tennis. They Aussie fans stayed for the entire five set Hewitt match, whic ended at about 5 am Aussie time.

Send ESPN an email commending them for going live rather than tape-delay. The four-letter will be replaying the matches this afternoon, which is great for the casual fan to tune in and see what all the fuss is about.

From the You've Got to Be Kidding Me File: Turk-Cypriots Want Baghdatis Banned

2008-01-17T23:40:00.000-05:00

When I first started following tennis all those many years ago, part of its appeal was that it was an international game that taught me a lot about geopolitical issues. Boris Becker, for example, burst onto the scene in 1984 at an interesting time in German (then West German) history. It seems like ancient history now, but there was considerable tension for Germans as they made their way in the world, and German athletes were certainly not immune to it. When the 17 year-old Becker won Wimbledon the newspapers ran headlines about "Blitzkrieg Becker" and "Bombs Over Britain."

A funny thing happened on the way to that title though. The British people fell for Becker like game, set, match. From then on it was Beckermania. His cultural impact was huge. You may dismiss it, but over the years there have been many articles examining Becker's significance to Germans. As they tell it, Boris was the first thing they could feel proud of, both publicly and privately, since WWII. Bekcer's entry onto the world staged marked the first time they could express any kind of nationalism that was enencumbered by guilt, shame, fear and international admonishment. Becker of course, was easy to love. (Click here for a 2001 Time Magazine article examining the effect these things had on Becker the man. Put simply: it freaked him out. Becker was so frightened of what the Germans would do after reunification he refused to support the country's Olympic bid. Becker later married a black woman and that relationship became the subject of public debate, leading Boris to become an anti-racism activist).

I bring this up in part to prepare you for a later post about my favorite topic of the last two years - the Sensational Serbs - but also because the ugly side of geopolitics really hit the fan yesterday when police subdued 10 Greek-Cypriots with pepper spray. One of those people was the president of a nationalistic group of Cypriots called Hellas Fan Club. What in the world does this have to do with Marcos Baghdatis?

Well let's back up. Tuesday night the police subdued about ten tennis fans with pepper spray (I am not making this up) during Chilean Fernando Gonzalez's match with Greek player Konstantinos Economidis. The officials took a hard line against the fans, including the aforementioned Greek-Cypriots, because of last year's giant mess, when 150 Serbian and Croatian tennis fans beat the shit out of each other with flag poles. It is rare to see this kind of behavior away from Davis Cup, but we are learning that these old blood feuds die hard.

So what did Marcos Baghdatis do? Well, back up again, just for a minute. Melbourne has the largest number of Greeks outside of Greece itself, and is considered the largest Greek city outside of Greece proper. Baggy is a Greek-Cypriot and he really packs the house Down Under. His matches are a rollicking good time for all, he has enough fans support that the matches feel like soccer games. Apparently last year our Baggy attended a barbecue thrown by the Hellas Fan Club and was caught hanging with the president, Mr. Expelled-from-the-Open, in a series of videos that found their way to You Tube. In the videos Baggy says some things about Turk-Cypriots, chanting nationalistic slogans about kicking the Turks out of Cyprus. The Turks living in Australia are in an uproar. They want him thrown out of the tournament and out of the country.

"The community and I have view this breaches the state Racial Vilification Act and when someone gets a visa to come to Australia to play tennis there are certain visa conditions and he's breached all these conditions."

The Australian Greek community is also outraged. Their spokesperson pointed out that in the video you can't tell what Baggy is saying because his arm is in front of his face and he's in a crowd of people who are chanting. They also claim that whatever was said was not racist because "It's not exactly expressing a view which doesn't conform with the UN resolution or with the general global view of that incident." The "incident" refers to the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974 and the continuing hostility that has partitioned the island.

As his country's only star that burns brightly beyond their borders, Baghadtis shoulders an extra burden. When he made his incredible run to the finals of the Australian two years ago, Cyprus declared the day of the finals a national holiday. It wasn't just that he did it, it was how he did it. We tennis fans are smitten with the exuberant personality and style that he is capable of on his best days. (If he isn't eating bonbons with Serena in the locker room). Baggy's popularity at home is such that deals with issues that are bigger than the 46-weeks a year tennis grind. Being the public face of your country is a role fraught with land mines and he just found one.

Baggy had this to say in his defense:

"There has been a lot of coverage of me appearing in a video on YouTube.com."

"In that video from 2007, I was supporting the interest of my country, Cyprus while protesting against a situation that is not recognized (sic) by the United Nations.

"Now I would like to concentrate on the tournament and ask everyone to respect that.

"I love the Australian Open and want to do well here."

I have no opinion on his appearance at the barbecue or whatever he said or did not say. As always, I completely reject throwing someone out of the country for words. I am not an expert on Australian law or the Racial Vilification Act, but I do not like this kind of legislation, wherever it appears. I can agree with it in spirit, but when it comes to free speech I tend to be something of an absolutist.

Above: the incendiary video with commentary from Aussie tv, whose tv personalities can be heard chuckling about a roe started by a barbecue. You have to love them for that.

Magaret Court Slams Tennis Australia

2008-01-17T23:24:00.000-05:00

Legendary Australian Margaret Court has publicly admonished Tennis Australia for their dismal failure to produce anything resembling a championship-level women's tennis player for twenty-five years. She offered to work with Alicia Molik. The 26 year-old went crashing out of the tournament to the Czech upstart Nicole Vaisadova - 18. Longtime readers of mine might remember my prediction of a grand slam title for Vaisadova, and soon.

There have been times when Alicia Molik looked like she had plenty of potential but I've never been sold on her viability as a top ten player. Court's larger points, however, are all good ones. She correctly notes that there is no reason why the country shouldn't be able to come up with a couple of top-notch women. Australia is a sports-obsessed culture where the sporting goes beyond the coach-potatoing that takes place in the US. In Australia sports participation lasts from cradle to grave. They continue to grow stronger in international competitions of all stripes and are expected to take a huge number of medals later this summer at the Olympics in Beijing. So what gives?

"They keep saying our players are very young, but you look at the top players winning grand slams when they're 17 and I think we've got to stop making excuses. We've got to search for the potential — and a lot of it is coming from country areas.

"You take a good athlete at an early age and you can make them into a player and that's why it's so important for the coaches to start them out on the right foot and with the right stroke production. We've also got to do away with the two-hander because it limits reach. Look at (Roger) Federer — it looks so easy and we should be coaching more like that."

I don't know if she's right. The trend is away from the two-handed backhand, but the attack on that stroke is misplaced. Two-handers continue to thrive (just check out the rankings). If anything, I'd expect Court to attack the death of serve and volley tennis, as other great Aussies and our own Pete Sampras and John McEnroe have done over the last couple of years.

Overruled: CYCLOPS Says Lay Off Marat!

2008-01-16T00:22:00.001-05:00

I'm taking heavy fire from CYCLOPS over my comments about Marat Safin being a jackass. CYCLOPS loves them some Marat, especially the Russian Blue half.

Tortured Tatar geniuses stick together.

Good Bodo, Bad Bodo

2008-01-15T23:53:00.000-05:00

I told you will give credit when it is due. Over at ESPN.com, Bodo wrote a short post about legendary tennis coach Robert Landsdorp and his ties to second round opponents Lindsay Davenport and Maria Sharapova. Landsdorp also schooled Tracy Austin and Pete Sampras on their groundstrokes.

Of the four players, Sharapova is the odd woman out and just as that thought entered my mind, Bodo concurred:

Davenport might be Lansdorp's greatest success story, because he shaped her game in a way that minimized her liabilities (relatively poor mobility and a surprising degree of awkwardness in someone with such great hand-eye coordination) and maximized her assets. He once told me "the thing with Lindsay is that if she had a coach who was heavy into top spin, she would never have seen the top 50, no matter how much desire she had. She was kind of lucky that I taught a flatter game. Lindsay surprised me when she won her first pro event at 16, on clay. I was like, 'How the hell did you win a clay-court tournament?'"

---

As a Lansdorp project, Sharapova is not nearly as fully realized. The stroking discipline we saw in the built-by-Landsdorp ground games of Davenport, Austin and Sampras are fitful in Sharapova. Maybe that's what she gets for hedging her bet and coyly playing Bollettieri and Lansdorp off each other, while Uri (Sharapov) claimed exclusive coach status. The most successful players who were developed by Lansdorp are, not coincidentally, the ones who most completely trusted his abilities.

Sharapova is capable of blasting Davenport off the court (remember, at 31, Lindsay is 11 years older than Maria), but I like Davenport's chances if stroking consistency and discipline become issues.

He's right-on with this analysis. Sharapova has so much ability but half the time she can't hit the broad side of a barn. Only an egomaniacal tennis parent would think he knows more than Landsdorp. (In the same article Sampras says if he wanted his kid to learn groundstrokes he would send him to Robert Landsdorp).

Landsorp's comments about Davenport bear repeating because Lindsay's flatter groundstrokes are indeed unusual in this topspin obsessed era. We wish more coaches would bother developing a game to match the player instead of a one-size-fits-all, hit-the-ball-as-hard-as-you-can, never go to net, grunt-and-squeal game. Fortunately this problem is mostly on the women's side of the net now. Here's hoping they grow out of it, and soon.

(B)dodo Droppings--He's Straight, in Case We Didn't Know

2008-01-15T23:13:00.000-05:00

Bodo's Tennis Mag blog was pure drivel today. His aim was to pen a few paragraphs about all the men in action on Day 2. His writing was supposed to be clever and witty but the jokes were flat. It was like this:

Michael Russel - Co-Journeyman of the Century with Paul Goldstein (hey, where the hail is Goldie, anyhow?), he survived a five-setter (6-3 in the fifth) against Fabulous Fabio Fognini, who as all of you know was named for the pasta special served at the popular Roman restaurant, House of Medici

Yikes. We all have bad days, big guy.

I wouldn't be panning Peter today if he didn't resort to the usual "I'm straight, get it!" jokes. Again. I'm sure at one point in history it was really funny to watch middle-aged, straight white guys get all jokey about the fact that they are heterosexual. But with Bodo it goes beyond writer having a bad day because asserting his masculinity is always uppermost in his mind.

Hence all the "Federer is a girl" posts.

This is why it was no surprise to find him asserting his distaste of Fabrice Santoro and his pastel shirts and Frenchy ways. (The French are also on Bodo's list of things that bother him. (Is he auditioning to be George Bush's best-friend or what?) Bodo goes out of his way to slam Santoro for his record number of grand slams played and then links to a goofy picture of Santoro to emphasize his point that Santoro is a dope. Yeah, he kinda looks like Bodo in that picture so...

But back to the hetero-ness that is Peter Bodo. He has this to say about Fernando Verdasco.

Fernando Verdasco - I'm a male heterosexual, so a huge portion of this guy's appeal gets little more than a shrug out of me, except when it comes to his game.

You're giving yourself away Bodo - Verdasco is only occasionally noticed for his looks. There are better looking players out there if you want one.

And then there's that other game. "I don't know what the appeal is." Oh please, as if heterosexual men don't "get" the appeal of Johnny Depp. You don't need to want to sleep with him to understand why you might want to look like him.

Match Worth Staying Up All Night For: Day 2

2008-01-15T01:42:00.000-05:00

Big John Isner v. Fabrice Santoro. One is 6'7, American, power tennis. The other is French, stylish, crafty and has all the mental tricks in the book. Just ask James Blake and Roger Federer.

Le Magician is so creative and retains incredible foot-speed for the oldest guy out there. If Isner serves Fabrice off the court then we know the new courts are playing super slick this year.

I doubt ESPN will show much of the match so perhaps sleep is the best course.

News & Notes

2008-01-15T00:57:00.000-05:00

American Amer Delic (left) won his first round and got a studio interview with ESPN. The Bosnian-born Delic moved to the US when he was 14 and played college tennis for Illinois. Don't worry Pat Buchanan, Delic speaks English better than your average redneck and does it without an accent. Also, he ain't ugly.

Lindsay Davenport won an unexpectedly tough first round match. The mental aspects of playing in a major for the first time in a year probably accounted for that. She got a huge ovation from the Aussies.

Donald Young lost a tough five-setter. I still love this kid. So much variety and a serve and volleyer to boot. At 18, now's the time to get him a coach, mom and dad.

Marcos Baghdatis is blogging for the ATP website. Today's entry: Boring. Note to ATP, just because someone oozes charisma on-court doesn't mean their blog will be interesting. Hopefully it'll pick up as the tourney goes on.

Meanwhile, Ana Ivanovic is blogging simultaneously for her website, USA Today, The Age (Australian), and the WTA. Women. We know how to multi-task. Today's entry talks about gossip but doesn't dish any.

Andy Murray got beat in round 1 by Jo-Wilifred Tsonga. Murray had a tumultuous off-season. He fired Brad Gilbert and continued to recover from the wrist injury that ruined 2007. Not a good start for baby McEnroe. The blog Black Tennis Pro's has a synopsis.

American Sam Querrey won his opener. He's the big-serving Californian who Davis Cup Captain Patrick McEnroe said needed to develop a better work ethic in order to compete consistently.

Mary Jo F - Refreshingly Blunt

2008-01-14T23:30:00.000-05:00

Great exchange earlier between Mary Carillo and Mary Jo Fernandez during the Sveta Kuznetsova match. Noting that Sveta is ranked #2, Carillo asked Mary Jo if she thought the Russian was ready to win her second grand slam title.

"No." said Mary Jo F.

Well played, MJF. This blog, minus the Russian Blue half of CYCLOPS, agrees.

Finessing a Weighty Issue

2008-01-14T21:06:00.000-05:00

Bud Collins is back on television, six months after being unceremoniously dumped by NBC. ESPN wisely brought Bud on board and he got more screen time on the tournament's first day than he got in years with NBC. Bud's opening salvo was that it was good to see Serena Williams, although there's less of her to see! The others quickly chimed in about a little less Serena. This was a tasteful way of bringing up the weight issue.

And when it comes to Serena, unfortunately we must address her physical endurance, speed and strength. I would feel differently if the commentators were openly mocking a spectator or person on the street. But Serena is a professional athlete and as such is held to a different standard. I think everyone involved with tennis on the journalism side is aware of the struggles with eating disorders that plague young women, especially professional athletes - particularly tennis players, who have occasionally struggled publicly with anorexia and bulimia. I have never heard a commentator say something I perceived as unkind on this topic. That doesn't mean it hasn't happened. Sadly, I think much of the pressure to stay rail thin comes from coaches, parents and agents who are looking to peddle the flesh.

Serena herself has been open and honest about the fact that she's struggling with her weight. Is she honest about the fact the a big part of the struggle comes from an aversion to hard training? Yes and no. Serena knows that she's an unstoppable force when she's 30 pounds lighter. She just needs to decide whether it is worth it to spill her guts on magic mountain like Agassi did when he decided to get in shape.

The point is that someone's weight is a valid issue for discussion. I've tried to be fair by pointing out overweight and out of shape men's players when they exist. It is here where I think the sports media is usually biased, because they go to great lengths to avoid calling a man "fat". They use euphemisms like "he doesn't have legs" or "he may run out of gas in the fourth set." Well...yes, a guy may run out of energy or lack legs because he's out of shape, rehabilitating an injury or... because he's FAT. And lazy. (I'm talking to you Marcos Baghdatis).

Calling an African-American player lazy carries with it a slew of negative stereotypes. I am aware of that and am not making a racial slur. My discussion of Serena's problems is based on years of watching her play and listening to her discuss her own training methods and lack of interest. Venus is often disinterested but I would never describe her as "lazy". Venus, like many women other women hate, is also blessed with the tall/thin body type that little sister did not inherit. Conversely, Serena rarely looks disinterested during a match, and I've seen her fight like hell even when she is clearly out of gas and lacks legs.

I thought Bud and the four-letter handled the weight issue well, what do you think?

Lindsay Davenport is 18-1 as a Mom

2008-01-13T18:46:00.001-05:00

Chris Clarey over at IHT has a wish list for tennis in 2008. He hopes Maria Sharapova has a healthy shoulder. Clarey says Sharapova's intensity trumps her screaching and grunting, albeit "barely". I don't know Chris, I still have to watch the Shrieky-one with the volume off.

If Sharapova gets through to the second round she will probably play Lindsay Davenport. When Davenport announced she was pregnant, everyone assumed she intended to retire. So did she. But there she was last fall, playing team tennis a mere six weeks after giving birth to her son Jagger. Davenport has already won three titles during her comeback, beating several top players along the way.

Davenport's comeback is one of the biggest stories to hit tennis in quite a while. If she gets by Sharapova, Lindsay is a definite contender for the championship. The LA Times has a nice article about Davenport's return to tennis, which will include appearances at Wimbledon, the US Open and possibly the summer Olympics in Beijing. Lindsay will almost certainly be seeded by Wimbledon. If so, watch out. Before her temporary retirement, Lindsay had the 2006 title in the bag before choking it away to Venus Williams. She was playing the best tennis of her career then, and she appears to be picking up right where she left off.

Her peers are impressed. "I'm speechless because she looks better than me and she's seven months out of having a baby" said Serena Williams. "I'm convinced if I had a baby, seven months later I'd probably still be in the hospital trying to get over the pain." She said it, not us.

Australian Open: The New Year's Resolution of Slams

2008-01-13T17:38:00.000-05:00

Image: Free Digital Photos

When the Australian Open switched from being an end of season/Christmas affair to kicking off the tennis calendar, it quickly became the New Year's Resolution of Slams. Tennis' notoriously short off season hardly gives the players time to take a breath, let alone time to fine tune their games and physical fitness. However, some players use the Aussie the way the rest of us buy a new stationary bike from QVC. More often than not these are the players who don't work so hard during the season. The challenge for them, as it is for us, is to see how long it takes before stashing the bike in the junk room closet.

We saw this most dramatically with Andre Agassi. Even before Agassi stopped being a bonehead, he usually came to Australia fit and on fire, as if he knew he was wasting his talent by vacillating between eating bonbons in Hollywood and embracing his identity as a tennis player. He has four titles down under, all but one predating his tennis (and life) Renaissance.

Serena Williams, who is perhaps destined to be the Agassi of her generation, came away with the title last year after several years of up and down efforts. Like Agassi before her, she came into the AO sounding like a walking self-help manual. Problem is, judging from her website chats, Serena hasn't quite mastered the self-help genre.

Marat Safin is another underachieving jackass who seems to show up Down Under intent on taking tennis seriously. Safin has three appearances in the finals and one title to his name. His body of work at the Aussie includes a classic five-set victory over Roger Federer in the 2005 semis. Safin has the ability to challenge Federer on every surface, he just doesn't have the interest or the will. Safin is a dark horse to win every tournament he plays, and just as likely to lose in the first round. Still, Safin thinks his best tennis "could happen at any moment."

(B)dodo Droppings

2008-01-13T01:27:00.000-05:00

During the next month I'll be introducing a few regular features here at Counter-Punch. The first one is (B)dodo Droppings. Peter Bodo is a longtime writer for Tennis Magazine. A few years ago he started a blog over at Tennis.com, which he uses mostly to discuss his political views, including how they manifest themselves in the tennis world.

For example, Bodo thinks Roger Federer is a great big sissy with a man purse who probably would vote to turn the world over to Muslim terrorists. He also thinks Roger is probably the greatest player ever.

Yes, Dodo is a Macho, Macho Man all right. He writes extensively about his farm and all the manly activity that goes on up there when he's in town, which isn't as often as he would like, seeing as how he is forced to live in Manhattan with all the super-liberals. He worships Nadal's masculinity and is extremely disturbed by Roger's aggressive, metrosexual grooming. He's a Super-Christian who writes about the excessive commercialization of Christmas at the hands of secularists like me.... and then goes on to write about his son's half-dozen secularized present-fests. (Come to think of it, I did send the kid a present last year to turn him into a Godless Liberal).

I spent some time arguing with Bodo in the comments section to his blog. He is an arch neo-conservative and that's fine, so long as it doesn't monopolize his writing. I will be monitoring his blog to see if he, or Tennis, has decided to tone it down. Bodo still puts together some excellent columns when he wants to.

You may think I'm being hard on Dodo. I invite you to read his archives and see for yourself.

Serena Writes a Poem (and Guess What It's About)

2008-01-13T00:35:00.000-05:00

Serena has posted a new poem on her website. And it's about Serena's favorite subject. "Me me me me me me......."

An excerpt:

I love to act
I love to play tennis
I love to design
I dream of people watching me holding up my third Wimbledon trophy
I dream of people watching me on the big screen in movie theaters
I dream of having every person owning at least 1 piece of my Aneres designs.
I dream
I dream not only at night
I dream during the day
When I want things to go right
What type of dreams make sense?

Most of all I dream of being a good person to all that are inspired by me
I dream of having girls, women, boys, men being fond of not only what I
have done on the tennis court, or on the big screen or what I design but
I dream of what people think of me as a person.
I dream that people think of me as a giving person as a person that
loves life and is fun to be around.
I dream

We hope this poem isn't Serena's version of Martin Luther King's I Have a Dream Speech. Note how Serena's idea of inspiring the masses includes giving of herself so we can all see her on the big screen, or with her "designs".

We could write a dissertation on the crap Serena is plastering all over her website. Sports psychologists tell athletes to use visualization to achieve their goals. But this is not quite what they meant. In order to get that trophy in your hands there's a process you must go through. It's a process called work. This is a concept that Serena has always struggled with. She wants to be No. 1 but refuses to put in the hours to make that dream come true.

Serena is the defending Australian Open champion. What last year's tournament proved, yet again, is that Serena could be the greatest player to play women's tennis... If she works at it. If she doesn't, she will never measure up to Justine Henin. Those words must chill her to the bone. The truth's a bitch.

In case you haven't guessed, Serena will get nothing but tough love from this space.

(Photo courtesy Richard Winchell. Some rights reserved.)

Meet Your Moderators

2008-01-11T01:08:00.001-05:00

The dynamic duo known as CYCLOPS will be calling the lines around here.

BUDDHA

Likes: Russian Tennis.

Dislikes: Everything else.

SHADOW

Likes: Catnip-laced tennis balls.

Dislikes: Mean people and dogs.

Serena Wants to Know Who Moved Her Cheese

2008-01-11T00:29:00.000-05:00

Although the tennis doping and betting scandals contributed to the genesis of this blog, it was Serena Williams' official website that finally pushed me over the edge. Serena's blog is full of fascinating discourses on bad relationships and tips for leading a better life.

You see, Serena read a book last fall that changed her life! It was Spencer Johnson's Who Moved My Cheese. When Serena analyzed her career and life she finally figured out she was on the the wrong path. She had an epiphany:

I was afraid I was afraid to find new cheese! I thought there was only one cheese out there but after reading that book I realized that there is all types of "cheese" out there. Now I am not talking about real cheese but cheese is whatever you make it to be. Whether or not its money, or boyfriends, or friends. There is always more out there if what u have around, Ok I hope I am not boring you guys, but after reading this book my whole spirit and my whole life changed. I became a different person. My personal life as well as my tennis life improved. And all I do now is laugh! I love to live and laugh! It is awesome!

Books are awesome indeed. We at Counter-Punch still think the best way to move your cheese around tends to be through hiring a personal trainer and busting your ass. Tune in to the Aussie Open to see what kind of cheese arranging Serena got done over the winter.

This Blog's For You

2008-01-10T22:29:00.000-05:00

I have toyed with becoming a blogger for a couple of years now. But two things always stopped me. First, I saw how narcissistic most blogs are and I resolved not to join the community of navel-gazers gabbing about their breakfast cereal. I'm self-centered enough as it is - I don't need a blog to further inflate my importance to the human race.

Second, although I always have plenty to say, I was conflicted about whether my opinions, in all their impassioned, rational glory, were important enough to be heard. Over the years I've tended to rely on the rule of thumb I developed back in law school, when I was forced to listen to law students who loved nothing more than the sound of their own voice: In those days of total agony punctuated by tennis and the occasional donut, I resolved to volunteer in class only when I had something new to offer, or when the entire class was missing the point.

Blogs can be annoying, but they have also proved immensely useful as counterpoints to the mainstream media, as well as outlets for discussion and debate. Sports blogs are just now coming into their own. They are needed for the same reason we need them in politics, to challenge media insiders by providing a perspective that isn't tainted by journalists who need access or have an axe to grind.

Tennis is woefully under-covered in the US. Few American newspapers have regular tennis writers anymore. The AP's tennis articles are pathetic recitations of scores and boring quotes. Sports news here is dominated by one entity, ESPN, and that makes things even worse because tennis is often bashed by the four-letter even while the network tries to be the place for tennis on tv. Tennis journalism is dominated by a few personalities. Some are good, some are bad (and you'll be hearing about them soon), but it concerned me to see the four-letter merge with Tennis magazine late last year. Every time a deal like that gets done it's negative for the tennis fan. Do we really need another outlet for Peter (B)dodo?

When necessary, I will be this sport's biggest cheerleader. When it is wronged by the media I will bash the bashers. When something sensational happens you'll hear about it. But I won't sugarcoat things either. When women's tennis is sucking rotten eggs, I'll be talking about it. We're going to dish it up raw.

So tennis fans, this blog's for you. I've followed and played tennis for as long as you have and you deserve a critical analysis of matches, news and hot-button issues. That's what this blog will be. And all served up with a wicked slice of gossip.

First set. Muze to serve.