Monthly Archives: March 2006

Indian Wells 2006: covering up flaws

It’s a good thing I can sit inside in the media center overlooking the stadium here at Indian Wells. This is the desert, it’s next to Palm Springs, but it’s been cold and rainy. A short poll of the locals found one person who has lived here for twenty years and had never seen snow this low on the surrounding mountains. This is not the place where you expect to sit in the your jacuzzi looking out at the snow.

Everyone is here, nine of the top ten men and three of the top five women and, most exciting of all, there is a good chance we’ll see a Rafael Nadal – Roger Federer final for the second week in a row. Welcome to the Pacific Life Open, sometimes called the fifth major. It’s one of only two tournaments that run for two weeks with both men and women outside of the majors. The other is the next event on the calendar, The Nasdaq 100 in Miami. Both of these events are Masters Series tournaments. Three times each year, Masters Series events follow each other on consecutive weeks. Hell, why not make the entire schedule the Masters Series and make the top players turn up every week.

I’m sitting here ignoring the Lleyton Hewitt – Rainer Schuettler match unfolding beneath me but I should be paying attention because Hewitt and Schuettler are playing a terrific three set match. Hewitt broke Schuettler to go up 3-2 in the third then had triple match point on Schuettler’s serve but couldn’t close out until the next game.

If life isn’t hard enough for Israelis, the tennis world isn’t treating them that well either. Last week in Dubai, players were criticized for taking large appearance fees while ignoring Dubai’s seamy reputation for laundering terrorist’s money and hosting the sex slave industry. That’s bad enough but Dubai also refuses to issue visas to those holding Israeli passports. Earlier this year, Sania Mirza was scheduled to play doubles with Israeli Shahar Pe’er at the Bangalore Open but changed her mind because because Indian Muslim groups threatened protests. Newspapers reported that Mirza told Pe’er, “It’s best that we don’t play together this time to prevent protests against my cooperation with an Israeli. There is no reason to arouse their ire (Muslims).”

Evidently Mirza also felt pressure to play doubles since she went on to to play with Liezel Huber and win the doubles event at Bangalore. One thing that sets her apart from other young players is her combativeness, she’s seldom out of a match as you’ll see below, but she could have shown some of that towards her fellow Muslims. It’s not the easiest time to be a Muslim either but Mirza should have stood up for Pe’er.

Let’s check in on Mirza to see is if she is still impatient and inconsistent. She has a sledgehammer for a forehand and a good serve but she goes for winners far too often. Today she played Elena Dementieva in her third round match. Dementieva has her own problems. Everyone loves her game but that serve. The way her career is going, it will be defined by misadventures in serving. “Dementieva, I remember her, she was a great fighter but couldn’t hit the side of a barn with her serve.” Good thing she’s a fighter, look at this line: she had 18 double faults and was broken 8 time. And she won the match!

Twice Dementieva had three double faults in a row. The first time came in the first game in the second set – Mirza had won the first set by giving up only two breaks to Dementieva’s three. Mirza pounced on her next serves by hitting big returns but all she did was make errors and she let Dementieva win the game. Mirza was so discouraged she gave up two breaks and was down 0-4. Dementieva’s second triple helped Mirza get back to 4-5 but that’s as close as she’d come. The third set had the same pattern. Mirza was down 5-1 and fought back to 4-5 but lost the set and match, 7-5, 4-6, 4-6.

I’d like to switch over to a parallel universe where Dementieva had a consistent serve and Mirza focused on strategy a little more and power a little less. Then we’d be looking at an excellent match. As it is we’ll have to settle for for two flawed fighters slugging it out. One of them, Dementieva, a top ten player successfully covering up her flaws and the other, Mirza, trying to figure out how to play the game.

Barry Bonds – the final judgment

Steroid use in baseball has run its course, all that’s left now is to uncover the lies. Jason Giambi has adjusted to life without steroids, Mark McGwire is long retired, Rafael Palmeiro is gone and Sammy Sosa refused a non-guaranteed contract offer from the Washington Nationals this year.

That leaves Barry Bonds. And now its time for him to go too.

Excerpts from the book Game of Shadows, by Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams, show a clear pattern of steroid use by Bonds. Two employees of BALCO, including owner Victor Conte, testified in front of a grand jury that Bonds received steroids from BALCO starting in 2003. Bonds’ girlfriend at the time, Kimberly Bell, testified in front of the grand jury that Bonds told her he started to take steroids after the 1998 season.

Some people think that Bonds should suffer the same purgatory as Pete Rose – banishment from baseball including the Hall of Fame. Others are unhappy because Bonds is getting a lot of hate while Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa are fading into the limelight without the bitternes displayed towards Bonds.

McGwire lost a lot of respect with his cowardly response at the congressional hearings into steroid use in baseball – he refused to answer when asked if he used steroids – but the evidence of his use was a bottle of androstenedione, an over-the-counter testosterone supplement, openly displayed in his locker. Rafael Palmeiro gave us the most dramatic denial at the hearings then tested positive for the steroid stanolozol during the following season. Congress looked into perjury charges against Palmeiro but baseball didn’t test for steroids before the hearings so no charges were filed.

You could say that Bonds should be judged by the same standard as McGwire, Bonds has never tested positive for a banned substance after all. Many times, though, it’s not the crime but the coverup that gets you. Life would have been much easier for Bill Clinton if he’d just said, “I did have sexual relations with that woman.” Adultery may not be a crime but lying about it can get you into a lot of trouble. It appears that Bonds lied to the grand jury by denying that he used steroids. Bonds may have been unlucky to get involved in the BALCO scandal but so was Giambi. It’s hard to argue that Bonds is getting unfair treatment when you consider that Giambi admitted using steroids in front of the same grand jury. It pays to tell the truth.

You could also say that it’s not baseball’s job to police its players off the field but that’s like saying that Marion Jones was involved in off the field activity went she went to BALCO. Bonds went to BALCO so that he could break baseball records. Baseball commissioner Bud Selig has made a career out of sticking his head in the sand. He had to be shamed into instigating steroid testing by congress and further pressured by congress to increase the penalties for positive tests. He’s getting the same pressure to penalize Bonds.

The best thing for Selig to do is to give Bonds a suspension that is long enough to effectively end his career. Barry lovers will be unhappy because Bonds will lose the opportunity to break Babe Ruth’s home run record and Barry haters will be unhappy because Bonds will still get his first round ticket into the Baseball Hall of Fame. But it’s a fair compromise and it serves a very important purpose: it brings the steroid era to a close and allows baseball to move forward.

Baseball will not have to pretend to celebrate Bonds breaking Ruth’s record and Barry will be put out of his misery because we won’t have him to kick around any more.

Hawk-eye: it’s about time

The Hawk-eye electronic line calling system will make it’s big time debut later this month at the Nasdaq 100 tennis tournament. I’m not going to make a big deal about because it’s way overdue. Let’s just get on with it.

Each player will be allowed to challenge two calls each set and one additional call in a tiebreaker. If a challenge is successful, the player keeps that challenge. Two is a good number. Someone would have surely abused the privilege if challenges were unlimited.

Patriotic feelings go deep, you know you won’t get calls in enemy territory.

Look at injury timeouts. Previously, if a player called a trainer onto the court, they were required to forfeit. After watching Shuzo Matsuoka writhe on the court with painful legs cramps for a full five minutes because he didn’t want to summon a trainer and therefore forfeit the match, the ATP and WTA changed the rule to allow one timeout for each unique medical condition. That didn’t stop Novak Djokovic from taking five medical timeouts for a shoulder problem, a breathing problem and cramps in his legs, back and shoulder in the process of beating Gael Monfils in the 2005 U.S. Open. That’s abusing the rules.

I hope like hell that Hawk-eye turns up in Davis Cup too. Patriotic feelings go deep, you know you won’t get calls in enemy territory. Arthur Ashe could have used it in the 1972 Davis Cup final against Ion Tiriac in Bucharest, Romania. With the U.S. up 2-1 and needing one victory to clinch the title, Ashe slogged his way through a match filled with horrifically bad line calls. On one point, Ashe served one of his many aces then heard a delayed call of “foot fault.” From the linesperson on his opponent’s side of the court!!!

Considering the adversity Ashe must have faced being a black man in a white sport, you have to think that Ashe was one of the few tennis players in the world who could have won that match.

Tennis already has electronic line calling systems. There is an electronic system for calling service lets and the Cyclops machine beeps if a serve goes beyond the service line. It’ll be interesting to see if tennis moves towards totally electronic line calling and dispenses with humans altogether. Do you really miss that guy who used to sit on the court and put his finger on top of the net to call let balls?

Dubai final: so what’s the problem?

As of today, tennis has something is desperately needs: a rivalry. Rafael Nadal, the brash, young beefcake tennis player can now be marketed worldwide as a legitimate contender for Roger Federer’s crown. Nadal beat Federer to win the Dubai Duty Free tournament, 2-6, 6-3, 6-4, in a match that lived up to the hype. If Nadal can stay injury free, tennis could actually become popular again. As for beefcake, the awards ceremony had to be haulted due to the crowd uproar as Nadal changed his shirt.

So what’s the controversy?

The problem is Dubai. It’s all over the news and now tennis writers are joining in. Both Peter Bodo from Tennis Magazine and Jon Wertheim from Sports Illustrated have criticized the men and women’s tour for pandering to Dubai’s desire to be the Las Vegas of the middle east.

Should tennis players be expected to be the political conscious of the U.S. if the same is not required of Major League baseball players?

Bodo is the loudest muckraker in the tennis world. He lays it on Dubai for money laundering, poor treatment of women, refusing to issue passports to Israelis and brokering nuclear arms deals and even then he didn’t make is sound half as bad as it really is. Mike Davis is known for his exposes of Los Angeles: City of Quartz and Ecology of Fear. In his article about Dubai, you can read about the sex slave market and pre-school children sold into slavery to become camel jockeys. Sounds like a sick joke but it’s real. The screams of terror from these young kids, who have been seen on camels owned by the leader of the country, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, known as Sheikh Mo, spur the camels to move faster.

The men’s year-end final is held in Shanghai, China, a country known for its oppressive government and bad human rights record, but the US is not doing so well either. Repugnant torture techniques at Abu Ghraib and forced imprisonment without trial in Guantanamo qualify as egregious breaches of human rights. So why is it alright to play in the U.S.? Should tennis players be expected to be the political conscious of the U.S. if the same is not required of Major League baseball players?

Speaking of Major League Baseball, the World Baseball Cup started this week. The league and the players’ union are the sponsors of the tournament which is part of an attempt to expand baseball’s global marketing presence. Why else hold your own international baseball tournament when the World Baseball Cup already exists?

Just like other globalization issues that affect sports, athletes need to play an active role. After complaints about working conditions in factories where sports clothing is made, athletes toured factories to observe for themselves. If tennis players cash in on $500,000, the reported amount of Federer’s appearnce fee, to be the entertainment draw for Sheikh Mo’s vision in the desert, it’s fair to ask them to look a little deeper at the country they are working for.

At the very least they should give a wild card to an Israeli player and test Dubai’s visa policy.

Wertheim understandably wonders why Agassi flew all the way to Dubai instead of attending the inaugural ATP event in his home town of Las Vegas, The Tennis Channel Open mentioned above. I would add that next week is the start of one of the biggest tournaments of the year in Indian Wells, a short one hour flight from Las Vegas. Instead, Agassi took a twenty hour flight from Dubai. Can’t be good for his sciatica which has plagued him the last year. His career is winding down and he has a lot of bills to pay so maybe he needs the huge appearance fee.

If all of the top players had entered the Las Vegas tournament, the stands would have been full and there would have been real momentum for next week’s tournament in Indian Wells

Appearance fees contribute to the biggest problem in tennis: the product is diluted. If you go to the Formula 1 racing website and scroll along the top of the page, you roll over each country or continent in the current season. All of the drivers are in the same place at the same time. This week in tennis, you could have attended two matches on hard court on opposite sides of the world or a clay court tournament in Acapulco. If all of the top players had entered the Las Vegas tournament, the stands would have been full and there would have been real momentum for next week’s tournament in Indian Wells

Wertheim suggests that some tournaments take place every other year instead of yearly. A good suggestion if the ATP has the nerve to implement it.

As for the match between Nadal and Federer, it was a doozy. Bjorn Borg came out for the coin toss. No doubt he got an appearance fee too. Borg is auctioning off equipment from his grand slam wins because he needs the money. As he watched the match, he slumped in his chair with a look on his face that said, “Has it come to this?”

Federer looked unbeatable in the first set, he had 10 winners to Nadal’s 1. On set point, Federer cut a backhand overhead at such a sharp angle that all Nadal could do was send the ball skidding along the ground and into the net. But it wasn’t all Federer’s doing.

Federer attacked, correctly figuring that net play is his main advantage over Nadal. Nadal hit balls short – making it easier for Federer to approach – and tried to pass him cross court unsuccessfully. In the second set, Nadal found his groundstrokes and moved his passing shots down the line. Backed up by Nadal’s high spinners, Federer started to lose his edge. In the eighth game, Federer made two quick errors and was then passed down the line by Nadal. On the next point he came in on a short slice backhand, something he got away with in the first set, and Nadal passed him again to get the break and serve for the set.

We now had just what we all wanted, a third set. Federer must have lost confidence in his strategy because he looked a bit rattled. He sent a volley into the net and hit a forehand approach shot long to give Nadal a break in the first game of the set.

In the fourth game, Federer twice sent a slice backhand return cross court, a difficult maneuver. The second one worked and he had a break point on Nadal. On the next point he tried something much simpler, he pulled Nadal wide then hit a winner down the line.

Why has Nadal beaten Federer three out of the four times they’ve played? Because his will is stronger.

Three games later he had a game point on his serve and Nadal threw everything he had at him. He started out with a deep topsin return, hit a backhand down the line followed by one crosscourt, threw in a slice backhand then a forehand down the line and, finally, a forehand approach. By the time he was halfway to the net, Federer hit a gorgeous backhand passing shot then shook his racket at Nadal. “Look here, kiddo, there’s a reason I’ve won 56 straight hard court matches.”

It looked like Federer was getting ready to go on one of his late match runs. But he wasn’t. He sent an approach shot long that could have put Nadal down 0-30 on his serve. Then, serving to get to 5-5, he made three forehand errors, the last to give Nadal the break and the opportunity to serve for the match.

How could this happen? Where was Federer’s vaunted ability to rise to the occasion, to turn it on when it most counted? Federer is one of those sure things in life. Unless he was hobbled, you could count on him to wait for his opportunity and take advantage of it when it arrived but here he was making easy errors.

Nadal served out the set and now stands 3-1 again Federer. At the medal ceremony, Federer called his one win against Nadal “lucky.” And it was. Nadal was two points away from winning that match. Why has Nadal beaten Federer three out of the four times they’ve played? Because his will is stronger.

This was a slow hard court surface. Federer will still beat Nadal on a fast hard court and grass but Nadal has the edge on anything slower. How cool is that? Now we get to see if Federer really is the best player of all time.

Paul Goldstein’s long strange trip

Imagine that it’s January 2005, and, instead of playing in the second week of the Australian Open or even the first week for that matter, you’ve just won the challenger event in Waikaloa, Hawaii. Many young tennis players would be happy to get the win and they’d probably think they were on their way up in the rankings and might even get into the main draw at the Australian the next year.

For Paul Goldstein, it was probably a slightly different experience. When Goldstein won Waikaloa in 2005, he probably thought about the first time he won it. Five years earlier. What goes through your mind if you’ve been on the challenger’s tour long enough to win the same tournament five years apart? If that doesn’t make you think about moving onto the next stage of your life then nothing else will.

This is, after all, the guy who holds the record for tournament wins on the USTA Pro Circuit – the minor league of the ATP – with 26 titles, 12 in singles and 14 in doubles. That takes a lot of grinding.

Goldstein is what we call a grinder. After he won his second round match on Thursday over Vince Spadea in The Tennis Channel Open, he said that “he just tried to be the wall,” meaning nothing was getting by him and every ball was coming back over the net. This is, after all, the guy who holds the record for tournament wins on the USTA Pro Circuit – the minor league of the ATP – with 26 titles, 12 in singles and 14 in doubles. That takes a lot of grinding.

Goldstein started his tennis career with a bang. He was the first player in 45 years to repeat as the boys 18 and under champion at Kalamazoo. That gave him an entry into the main draw of the US Open as a 17 and 18 year old. I remember reading about him in Sports Illustrated when he was a high school student in Washington D.C. If a high school student gets his own article in S.I., that’s a big deal. At Stanford, he was the first player in collegiate history to help his team to four straight NCAA titles.

After he turned pro in 1998, he won his first challengers event. In 1999, he got into the top 100 for the first time and played in eleven main tour events. In 2000, he got to the third round of Wimbledon, reached number 56 in the rankings and played in twenty-four main tour events. It was all looking pretty easy.

Then it wasn’t so easy. In 2001 he was at number 162 and actually earned $0 for one first round loss in a challenger. They usually give you at least a few hundred bucks for turning up even in a challenger. Earlier this week, Goldstein said that he wasn’t smart enough to realize how difficult his early success was. He had four years in the minors to figure it out. It was 2005 before he reached the top one hundred again. After reaching the semis at Newport and the quarterfinals at Indianapolis he was up to a career high ranking of 64.

He still doesn’t get much respect. The Tennis Channel cut away from his match with Spadea early in the first set to show a paddle ball match between Gael Monfils and a guy named Freedman – evidently the former number one player in the world before Monfils beat him. I suppose that’s some consolation for Monfils after a first round loss in the ATP draw.

The ATP draw is only one part of the Tennispalooza that is The Tennis Channel Open. This “lifestyle festival of racquet sports” includes the “Wilson World Stringing Championships, a USTA Juniors Championship, Stiga Table Tennis Championships, A Professional Air Hockey Tournament and an assortment of Murrey Parlor Games,” whatever they are. If that’s not enough, there was a shotgun 21 tournament whose winner got a chance to win a wildcard into the main event. In shotgun 21 you serve underhand to anywhere on the other side of the court. First to twenty-one points wins. That’s right, it takes about 15 minutes to play a match. And for the first time in pro tennis history, it was a gender blind event. A woman could have won a spot in the men’s main draw.

We’re in Las Vegas, remember. Someone is probably taking wagers on a contest for lifting those tall cocktails in plastic glasses shaped like the statue of liberty that people carry up and down the sidewalk escalators of Las Vegas all hours of the day.

The problem is that this statistic also tells you why Goldstein has spent so much time in the minors.

When we finally got to Goldstein’s match, he was already up 5-2 in the first set and Spadea was alternating between anger – he yelled at a ball boy – and creeping resignation. One moment he trying to hit return winners on Goldstein’s first serve out of frustration, the next he was running his heart out. He was already down two breaks at 1-4 in the second set when Goldstein hit a very hard forehand approach shot. Spadea ran out of the court to retrieve the shot then all the way to the other side of the court to track down Goldstein’s overhead. Goldstein hit another overhead but it was short so Spadea approached the net and hit a ball down the line.

Spadea lost the point, Goldstein hit a passing shot by him, and we were happy to see some effort but he’d lost six straight games in the first set and much of the time he looked like he really would rather have been playing air hockey. If I’d been a paying spectator, I would have asked for my money back.

By the time Goldstein hit that passing shot, he had a grand total of 7 winners and 8 unforced errors while Spadea had 16 winners and 24 unforced errors. True to his word, Goldstein had kept the ball in the play and let Spadea beat himself.

The problem is that this statistic also tells you why Goldstein has spent so much time in the minors. Defense will get you only so far; if you can’t hit more than 7 winners in two sets, there are lots of other players who can.

Goldstein’s opponent in the quarterfinals, Xavier Malisse, retired with Achilles heel pain so it’s into the semifinals and a meeting with Lleyton Hewitt. I hope Goldstein is on the main tour for a while, he’s a very nice guy who has worked harder and longer than anyone else to be there, but once the season gets in swing and everyone comes back from Dubai having earned their huge appearance fees, it might be much harder for him to get out of the second round.