![](\"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennisdiary\/images\/paul_goldstein.jpg\")
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Imagine that it\u2019s January 2005, and, instead of playing in the second week of the Australian Open or even the first week for that matter, you\u2019ve just won the challenger event in Waikaloa, Hawaii. Many young tennis players would be happy to get the win and they\u2019d 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.<\/p>\n
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\u2019ve been on the challenger\u2019s tour long enough to win the same tournament five years apart? If that doesn\u2019t make you think about moving onto the next stage of your life then nothing else will.<\/p>\n
This is, after all, the guy who holds the record for tournament wins on the USTA Pro Circuit \u2013 the minor league of the ATP \u2013 with 26 titles, 12 in singles and 14 in doubles. That takes a lot of grinding.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
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 \u201che just tried to be the wall,\u201d 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 \u2013 the minor league of the ATP \u2013 with 26 titles, 12 in singles and 14 in doubles. That takes a lot of grinding.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s a big deal. At Stanford, he was the first player in collegiate history to help his team to four straight NCAA titles.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Then it wasn\u2019t 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\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n
He still doesn\u2019t 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 \u2013 evidently the former number one player in the world before Monfils beat him. I suppose that\u2019s some consolation for Monfils after a first round loss in the ATP draw.<\/p>\n
The ATP draw is only one part of the Tennispalooza that is The Tennis Channel Open. This \u201clifestyle festival of racquet sports\u201d includes the \u201cWilson World Stringing Championships, a USTA Juniors Championship, Stiga Table Tennis Championships, A Professional Air Hockey Tournament and an assortment of Murrey Parlor Games,\u201d whatever they are. If that\u2019s 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\u2019s 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\u2019s main draw.<\/p>\n
We\u2019re 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.<\/p>\n
The problem is that this statistic also tells you why Goldstein has spent so much time in the minors. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n
When we finally got to Goldstein\u2019s match, he was already up 5-2 in the first set and Spadea was alternating between anger – he yelled at a ball boy \u2013 and creeping resignation. One moment he trying to hit return winners on Goldstein\u2019s 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\u2019s overhead. Goldstein hit another overhead but it was short so Spadea approached the net and hit a ball down the line.<\/p>\n
Spadea lost the point, Goldstein hit a passing shot by him, and we were happy to see some effort but he\u2019d 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\u2019d been a paying spectator, I would have asked for my money back.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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\u2019t hit more than 7 winners in two sets, there are lots of other players who can.<\/p>\n
Goldstein\u2019s opponent in the quarterfinals, Xavier Malisse, retired with Achilles heel pain so it\u2019s into the semifinals and a meeting with Lleyton Hewitt. I hope Goldstein is on the main tour for a while, he\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Imagine that it\u2019s January 2005, and, instead of playing in the second week of the Australian Open or even the first week for that matter, you\u2019ve just won the challenger event in Waikaloa, Hawaii. Many young tennis players would be happy to get the win and they\u2019d probably think they were on their way up […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-290","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tennis-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=290"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}