Monthly Archives: May 2006

Hamburg to St. Poelton to Pörtschach

Since I’m one of the doofuses who chose Nadal and Federer on my ATP Fantasy Tennis team for Hamburg this week, I’m very thankful to Tommy Robredo. He’ll meet Radek Stepanek in the Hamburg final tomorrow and, if he wins, I’ll get that $430,000 I’ve been looking for. When Federer and Nadal dropped out, the draw opened up and allowed Stepanek get to the final. Who says Martina Hingis’ boyfriends always have bad luck?

This week’s ATP tournament had been held in St. Poelten for the last thirteen years but has moved to Pörtschach this year. Both towns are in Austria.

I couldn’t find out if there was a saint named Poelton but I did unearth the town’s coat of arms. It’s that snarly looking wolf you see here. Pörtschach lies on the alpine lake Wörther, thus the fish with what looks like a leaf in its mouth. It’s interesting to note that the wolf was passed down to St. Poelton from the abbey of Passau when St. Poelten was one of its fiefs in the 1500’s. The abbey had a wolf in its coat of arms.

I knew the bible story about the multiplication of loaves and fish but I didn’t realize that Ichthys, the Greek word for fish, is also an acronym describing Jesus: Iesous Christos Theou Yios Soter, Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior. Now I ask you, shouldn’t St. Poelten have a fish on its coat of arms instead of that rabid wolf?

Pörtschach doesn’t have it’s trip together yet. The doubles draw is actually a copy of the singles draw so we don’t know what doubles teams are entered. Qualifying ends on Sunday, the same day that first round matches start and after the deadline for choosing our eight player team, 10am Sunday morning. That means we won’t have the full draw when we make our picks. You can bet that when Almagro was a qualifier I picked him. Besides, I’m not sure Lapentti can beat anyone at the moment let alone a qualifier.

What’s the matter with you people at Pörtschach, don’t you know there are fantasy tennis players out here desperate for that information???

Sometimes that first victory gets into a player’s mind. A player can start thinking about what he did to win that tournament instead of what he needs to do in the current match.

I have Oliver Marach over Vince Spadea because Marach is Austrian and Spadea has yet to get past the first round on his current trip to Europe.

Wow, there’s not much to choose from if you’re putting a team together. Very few of these players have done much this year. Two players I like very much are Nicolas Alamagro and Nikolay Davydenko but they’ll meet in the third round. Almagro beat Davydenko in Rome but only because Davydenko had to retire. It’s important to remember that this tournament is at the bottom of the pile in terms of prize money. First prize is $44,100 which is quarterfinal money at a Master Series event and Davydenko could easily get to the quarters at a slam. So, even though Davydenko beat Melzer for this title last year, Almagro it is.

Chela should have an easy road to the quarterfinals.

Horna hasn’t done anything since he won at Acapulco. That was his first career win. Sometimes that first victory gets into a player’s mind. A player can start thinking about what he did to win that tournament instead of what he needs to do in the current match. He thinks his mind is in the present but it’s not, it’s still trying to reproduce that victory instead of focusing on the technique that got him where he is.

I used to have a similar problem when I was training in Alexander Technique. Alexander Technique teaches you how to change movement habits and improve your posture. One of the guiding principles in the technique is to allow your neck to be free so that your head can move forward and up and your back can lengthen and widen. This allows you to move in a light and easy way. I kept trying to recapture that light and easy feeling by copying the movement that gave me the feeling but I couldn’t do it. Instead, I had to go back and use the guiding principle that produced the feeling in the first place.

If I chose my team from my quarterfinals predictions the players would be Davydenko, Almagro, Melzer, Chela, Seppi, Muller, Simon and Hewitt. I can’t pick Davydenko so I have to pick an eighth player from the third round. Even after everything I said, I’m picking Horna. Has he figured out how to move forward? I hope so.

As always, feel free to join our subleague, tennisdiary.com, and don’t hesitate to add a comment/opposing opinion.

Federer-Nadal and media monopolies

Something very exciting is happening in tennis and American media is finally paying attention. Harvey Araton’s column in Tuesday’s New York Times sports section compared Federer-Nadal to Frazier-Ali and, almost, anointed the rivalry with greatness. “…I may even be tempted to nominate Federer-Nadal as the most compelling rivalry in sports,” Araton wrote. Qualified, yes, but we’ll take it.

Last time I looked, though, neither Federer nor Nadal was listed as American

We’re immensely thankful to The Tennis Channel for showing ten hours a day of Rome and almost as much of Hamburg, but it would be nice if the lowly sports fan who can only afford the top 60 cable/satellite package – which does not include The Tennis Channel – could tune in and see the best fight in sports. If you wanted to see Federer-Nadal IV, the hard court final at Dubai earlier this year, you were out of luck if you didn’t subscribe to The Tennis Channel and even if you did, you had to catch the text crawl on the bottom of the screen announcing the broadcast because it was a last minute addition.

If media coverage for this great rivalry was a fraction of the coverage devoted to Hideki Matsui’s broken wrist, we might catch the next Federer-Nadal meeting on a network station or ESPN.

Everyone tunes in for the French Open and it’ll be a huge draw for tennis if Federer and Nadal can make it to the final. A French Open meeting would come only one month after the titanic five hour match in Rome. Last time I looked, though, neither Federer nor Nadal was listed as American. When it was Agassi and Blake at the US Open, that was all over American print media, television and radio. Federer-Nadal is treated more like a soccer match between Juventus and AC Milan: an exciting event somewhere across the ocean.

Both Federer and Nadal pulled out of Hamburg this week. I chose them for my fantasy team even after they played a five hour match the day before Hamburg started. I am the dumbest bunny in the world. When we screw up royally, we tend to look around for someone else to blame. In this case I’m pissed off at the ATP Tennis Fantasy league because they don’t allow substitutions if a player drops out after the first match of a tournament starts.

the WTA and ATP could decide to hog all of the fantasy action for themselves

If I want to dump my ATP fantasy team and go to another fantasy league, though, my options might be limited in the near future. Also in Tuesday’s New York Times is a report about a current court case involving fantasy baseball. The legal system has already established that baseball statistics are news and therefore in the public domain, you can’t charge media outlets for reporting scores and statistics, but what if someone wants to create an online fantasy site where players can be drafted and traded – or, in the case of tennis, picked for an imaginary team every week? Is that fair use of players’ names and statistics or should the site pay a license because they are trading in properties owned by Major League Baseball?

Most tennis fans play fantasy leagues run by the WTA and the ATP but there are smaller sites which run tennis fantasy leagues. For instance, fantasytennis.net and Percy’s 896 Tennis Forum. If the lawsuit decides that fantasy league sites must purchase a license, these sites would have to pay a potentially large fee to the WTA and ATP. Then again, the WTA and ATP could decide to hog all of the fantasy action for themselves. Baseball is already headed in that direction.

Major League Baseball Advanced Media, the arm of Major League Baseball that sells licenses to online sites, used to sell licenses to small sites for four figures. Not any more. It currently licenses seven sites. UPI reports that CBS SportsLine, Yahoo and ESPN paid $2 million each. If you can’t spend millions for a license, forget about it.

This is a very shortsighted approach by Major League Baseball. Fans who merely enjoy baseball can become rabid fans once they become fantasy team owners. Look at the ATP Tennis Fantasy League. There are currently 10,9888 teams. That’s a lot of tennis fans poring over draws and picking eight player teams every week. And those fans are a valuable commodity. Look at the sponsors for tennis tournaments: it’s Range Rover and Mercedes Benz, not Hyundai. Requiring a license to run a site using tennis players and statistics would severely limit the number of fantasy leagues and stunt fan growth.

Sports leagues aren’t the only groups trying to limit media access. In an article about media contol for TennisReporters.net, Matt Cronin reported that “… one tournament denied four legitimate web sites media credentials because the tournament itself feels that it can make money off video, audio and photos and didn’t want competition from other places. ”

Keeping people like me away from your tournament can only hurt tennis. Increasing one group’s control over media penalizes the sport as a whole. Media coverage of tennis is paltry enough as it is, don’t make it worse.

Bring On The Hamburg-ers

Fantasy Tennis turned out to be more like the Nightmare on Elm Street this past week, and what’s more it’s consuming lots of me and my time. I must confess though, I am turning into an addict. It’s getting so I don’t even care about actually seeing the matches; just betting on the players so to speak has been scintillating enough. Don’t get me wrong, I would have liked very much in fact to see that Federer-Nadal final Sunday in Rome. But filling out the draw each week in anticipation of who the eight players are to emerge from the field has become compelling enough.

How do we make our picks? My co-writer, Nina Rota, can probably speak to that herself, I know for me I spend a lot of time just looking at the entire draw. Visually I have to see a picture of it overall. Then you start to see the possibilities as they open up. You see what a great depth of field there is now in men’s tennis. For me, one of the delights of the week is to see on Sunday what the draw will be for the week’s coming event.

Hunches work a lot for me. I am a big believer that first you have to look at the stats a bit and compare the records of players, you do the formal homework. But then you rely on your instincts, or at least I start to.

The ATP Tournament website has a feature wherein you type in two players’ names, and you get their match records against each other. It’s a quick thumbnail of personal stats and whatnot, and I find it helpful in making decisions.

Scoping out the latest news is good too, in case some last minute additions or subtractions have occurred in the field. Often there is just no accounting for injuries and withdrawals until they happen.

If the tournament is held in a particular country, we may also want to check to see how many local guys are playing it. No matter how lowly their ranking, local guys have a way of getting support from the crowd behind them. Before you know it, there can be upsets in the making. It would be far better to play someone like Sebastian Grosjean on the grass of Wimbledon, even though he does pretty well on grass, then on clay, in Paris, with the crowd screaming for him. That’s the advantage of the Hometown Advantage.

What can be annoying though about playing Fantasy Tennis is that you can spend forever planning your draws, and things still go haywire. This past week was a stellar example. We all took it pretty good on the chin. It was a great field, but the favorites were dropping every which way. And who would have expected Andy Roddick to make the run he did, sort of? But then to lose to a younger player like Gael Monfils? It was lucky I picked Nadal, because he saved my bacon. I am still atop the Tennisdiary team, but that may not continue after this past week. I scratch my head over my exalted ranking

So what’s happening in the Hamburg Masters event this week? We have stressed the need to be judicious in picking players like Federer and Nadal, because they can only be picked five times during the year. Mostly they are for the slams, and perhaps one or two other events now and in mid summer. But this week I am bringing both “big gun” guys into action, together yet again probably in the Hamburg final next Sunday. These two guys, what cheek.

Here are my picks for the Hamburg quarterfinals:

Federer-Robredo: (Roger to win)

I think Federer would be best served by keeping up his high level of play into Hamburg, he will be resting next week and the French starts after that. He should go out and give it his all this week, just about peaking in his form.

Davydenko-Moya: (Davydenko to win)

A Moya victory is always a welcome thing, and Davydenko had to retire with in Rome last week. But that’s probably more reason for him to do well this week.

Gonzalez-Ljubicic: (Ljubicic to win)

Two sturdy guys in this one, we should be here a while. Lube had an early exit in Rome at the hands of Dominik Hrbaty, and before that to Fernando Gonzalez in Monte Carlo, but again, more incentive for him to get his act together here. This match could be very close, but Ljubicic is the higher seed, we have to go with him.

Gaudio-Nadal: (Nadal to win)

Gaston has faltered a bit of late, going out in 3 sets in the opening round to Xavier Malisse in Rome last week. But ’tis the season of clay, and who else in that corner of the draw will give him trouble? Nicolas Kiefer? Luis Horna? Stepanek? He’ll get by them I predict, but that boy in the pirate pants….

These would be the semifinal picks:

Federer-Davydenko
Ljubicic-Nadal

And the final:

Federer and Nadal. Nadal and Federer. I would agree with Nina Rota’s pick of Federer to win the final, the man is getting closer.

A Postscript:

Well, it is now Monday afternoon, and Hamburg is looking like chopped liver. Again, the draw is topsy-turvy. I hate Mondays, but I may as well not try and cheat and rework my picks at this late date. But I am tempted. Federer and Nadal have already pulled out. Exhaustion. Well, let’s cut the lads some slack, shall we? After five hours and five minutes in Rome, if anyone has the right to claim exhaustion it’s these two. This can happen in Fantasy Tennis, the guys you want may suddenly have other ideas, or get sick, or get exhausted. You may not know this until it is too late.

I mistakenly picked Marcos Baghdatis and Rafael Nadal to get to the final eight. Then I realized they are both in the same corner of the draw, no way both of them could be in that end of the field. So I tried to change my Fantasy picks late last night. I was going to substitute Tommy Robredo for Baghdatis. But the deadline had passed(!) Baghdatis retired today in his match against Stepanek, due to breathing difficulty. Robredo won his opener. Eeewww. I’m having breathing difficulty now. Maybe the doc can drop by on his way off the courts, after dealing with all those, you know, exhausted people.

Tommy Haas probably started breathing a lot easier, now that Nadal is gone and Robin Soderling took his place in the draw. I did not give Haas a snowball chance in hell against Nadal, but now he might have a nice run on his home turf. But I didn’t bet on Tommy, so more boo hooing.

My man Moya lost in three today to James Blake, who dropped his first round match last week. Go figure. Safin lost early today, ditto Coria. Something told me to stay away from Safin and Coria in the wagering department; these guys have been all over the place of late. Gasquet and Berdych: still waiting to gel. Both are gone today too.

So, the field of battle is not looking pretty. Two of my guys did not show up, Federer and Nadal. Baghdatis was a mistaken pick and he couldn’t catch his breath anyway. Moya was really the only one who actually died in combat. So half of my field is already gone. I am left with Davydenko, Gonzalez, Ljubicic and Gaudio. Not exactly a field full of knights in shining army.

But I’ll be sure and whimper quietly on my way out the door. Is it time to drink yet?

– – – – – –

ATP Fantasy Tennis: Hamburg, Federer-Nadal VII

My fantasy tennis strategy is now officially kerpluft [totally undone, beyond hope, s.n.a.f.u., etc.]. I expected Nadal to skip Hamburg as he did last year to rest up for Roland Garros. Did he suddenly forget how many injuries his nineteen-year-old body has already absorbed? That would have left Federer alone in the draw. I planned to choose Federer for Hamburg, Wimbledon, Cincinatti or Toronto, the US Open, and, depending on whether I choose Nadal for Madrid or not, Madrid or Paris. Now what do I do?

Believe it or not, even after the huge disappointment of losing to Nadal with two match points and a 5-2 lead in the tiebreaker, I believe that Federer will win Hamburg. I am banking on Federer’s ability to see the match as a positive step on his path to Roland Garros. He has won Hamburg three times and he played Nadal exceptionally well today.

But because I forgot, yes forgot, to put Nadal on my team last week, I now have to use both Federer and Nadal in Hamburg. I’d have preferred to use them both for either Cincinatti or Toronto because the second prize is $200,000 instead of $170,000 for Hamburg, and Nadal did win Toronto last year. But he also lost in the first round at Cincinatti so I have to get my money while I can. How many of you have used both Federer and Nadal in the same week?

Here’s hoping for Federer – Nadal VII. When is pay-per-view coming?

Fernando Gonzalez is having a good year and Ljubicic did get to the semifinals in Hamburg in 2004 so I have them both in the quarterfinals. I don’t know if Davydenko is recovered from his injuries but he’s still in the draw and he’s a gamer. I expect Robredo to bounce back and Monfils to keep rolling. The only surprise in there is Melzer. I have him beating Gaudio in the third round because Gaudio has been so up and down and Melzer is on the rise.

I don’t know why I have Coria through to the third round, I think I’m trying help the cranky little guy get back to his old self.

Here’s the draw as I see it along with big thanks to The Tennis Channel for broadcasting ten hours of tennis a day. I’m going to pray that the channel continues to grow even though its founder and president, Steve Bellamy, is leaving.


Federer – Nadal VI

The crowd was seated at the Foro Italico, site of the stadium for the 1960 Rome Olympics, and they were ready for a battle: Federer-Nadal VI. Federer and Nadal were ready to meet for the second time in a month in the long run up to the French Open that culminates next week in Hamburg. Let the battle begin.

Federer and Nadal played even through the first two sets with each taking a tiebreaker. Federer was serving well and attacking the net successfully and Nadal was doing what he does – put up a wall of defense and hit inside out forehands for winners.

Couldn’t we just watch these two play every Sunday?

With Federer serving at 2-2 in the third set, Nadal passed him twice to get a break. Nadal was making it hard for Federer to attack by pinning him to the baseline and Federer started to lose rhythm on his forehand. He whacked a ball with his racket after one point and kicked another ball out of frustration.

He regained his composure and held his serve easily throughout the set but Nadal held onto the break to win it 6-4. Of course, easy is a relative concept. Against Nadal you have to hit two or three good shots when only one would would be enough aganst any other player.

Nadal had two more break points in the first game of the fourth set but Federer found his forehand and hammered enough of them to win the game. You don’t think of Nadal’s grace as much as you do his strength but he has such control of the racket that he can hit the ball to unexpected places even when he is hopelessly out of position. You do think of grace when Federer comes to mind and it was a joy to watch him hit a sharp volley or slide into a forehand wide and hook it sharply cross court. He used one such shot to pass Nadal in the third game and got a break point. It took one more break point but Federer went up 3-1 in the set.

Federer was consistently getting his ground strokes deep enough to cause errors and give himself plenty of opportunities to get to the net. He was serving well and returning well. Nadal had been hitting virtually all off his serves to Federer’s backhand and Federer had finally adjusted. A Nadal backhand error gave Federer another break and the fourth set, 6-2. Federer won 60% of the points in the set.

Up 2-1 in the fifth set, Federer hit another deep forehand down the line to get a break point and went up 3-1. Could he finally beat Nadal after four straight losses?

Not easily. Federer was up 40-15 in the next game but Nadal hit a good return and Federer hit an error to give Nadal a break point. He hit another error to give Nadal a second break point but Federer saved that with an ace and won the game. This was a brilliant tennis match.

Federer hit two unforced errors to start the next service game, you can expect that if you’re forced to keep the ball deep, and gave Nadal the break back. Nadal had recovered from a bad third set and now he was hitting deft drop shots and strong passing shots. Not that Federer was done. In the next game, Nadal hit a drop shot to Federer’s backhand. Federer ran in and hit it down the line. Nadal took it out of the air and put it over Federer’s head. Federer ran backwards and stabbed the ball with a backhand overhead that landed at Nadal’s feet. He put his racket in front of the ball and got it over the net but Federer took the response and hit a shot down the line past Nadal.

Couldn’t we just watch these two play every Sunday?

Nadal had a golden opportunity to get a break point with Federer serving at 4-4 but he made a rare mistake. He ran around his backhand then overhit a forehand wide. In their last match it was Federer who explained his unforced errors by saying that he had to go for better shots against Nadal. After losing the fourth set, Nadal is the one who now felt that he had to go for more.

After more than four and a half hours, Nadal served at 4-5 and had to win the game or lose his 52 game winning streak. After both players held serve, Nadal was in exactly the same position serving at 5-6. This match was certainly not about statistics but one of them popped out: and 85% first serve percentage for Nadal. That is extraordinary. Still, he put up his first double fault in the game to go down 0-30. At this critical point in the match, Federer faltered. Nadal hit four straight balls well inside the service line on the next point and Federer didn’t attack. It cost him the match.

Nadal hit another error and Federer had two match points. Two errant forehands by Federer and two good ones by Nadal and Federer had lost his chance. Nadal sprinted along the baseline to clear the red dirt, jumped into his prizefighters bounce step and the tiebreaker began.

Up 2-1 in the tiebreaker, Federer got to the net, where he should have been much sooner, and got the mini-break. As the clock ticked past five hours, Nadal mishit a forehand and Federer went up 5-3. Nadal had twice served to stay in the set, the second time from 0-30 down, and now he was down 5-3 in the tiebreaker.

I thought I was watching the match live but I was wrong. At this point, for some reason, I clicked on the Rome website to look at the results and saw the final score for the match. I could not believe my eyes. Had they posted it incorrectly?

Federer hit three errors in a row, only one under duress, and Nadal had his first match point. I still couldn’t believe it. Federer hit a ball off the baseline line tentatively, Nadal took it and hit a strong inside out forehand and the match was over.

That was four straight points for Nadal and he had now matched Guillermo Vilas’ 53 game winning streak on clay. That’s entirely appropriate. Nadal is not the Bull of the Pampas but he’s the most willfull tennis player I’ve ever seen.

Federer may be psychologically stronger than the rest of us but this has to hurt. He did exactly what he said he had to do: attack the net and serve well. His backhand even held up and yet he still he could not kill Nadal. He’s beginning to sound like a broken record. After the match he said, “… I already knew after Monaco (Monte Carlo) I was extremely close. I think this is another step closer because I got even closer to the win today than back then. So I’m on the right track.” Isn’t this what he says after every loss to Nadal?

Yes it is and you can call me crazy, but I think he’ll win Hamburg. He’s won it three times already and that could give him enough confidence to get past the immense wall that is Rafael Nadal.