Revoke His Press Credential

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

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

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

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

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

"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

[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

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

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.