{"id":459,"date":"2006-10-22T23:19:24","date_gmt":"2006-10-23T07:19:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/?p=459"},"modified":"2006-10-22T23:19:24","modified_gmt":"2006-10-23T07:19:24","slug":"2006-calabasas-and-madrid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/2006-calabasas-and-madrid\/","title":{"rendered":"2006 Calabasas and Madrid"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nThe Madrid semifinals, and final for that matter, were not interesting. I was more affected by the news that Chris Evert is divorcing her husband Andy Mill after eighteen years of marriage. It pains me when things change unexpectedly. Not that I would have known if the couple had been having problems. Last summer, two couples I know broke up when one member of each couple decided to fall in love with each other. I was the last to know and that was discomforting also.<\/p>\n

The semifinals continued one of Madrid\u2019s themes \u2013 bad crowd behavior. The crowd booed throughout Tomas Berdych\u2019s first service game and increased the volume when he made a mistake. It wasn\u2019t unexpected considering Berdych kissed off the crowd at the end of his victory over Rafael Nadal. That also may not have been Berdych\u2019s problem. He has a habit of getting a big win then losing easily in the next round. Fernando Gonzalez beat him, 6-3, 6-1.<\/p>\n

In the other semifinal, Roger Federer beat David Nalbandian, 6-4, 6-0, then laid another bagel on Gonzalez in the final, 7-5, 6-1, 6-0. As you can see, that match went from o.k. to bad to just plain awful. Federer won the last eleven games. The only excitement happened after the match when Gonzalez accidentally aimed a sharp spray of champagne into Federer\u2019s eye during the postmatch celebration and momentarily stunned him.<\/p>\n

I saw more fireworks at the Calabasas Challenger<\/a>, an event held about 30 minutes north of Los Angeles. Challengers are one level below regular ATP tour events.<\/p>\n

Late in the second set semifinal between Mark Philippoussis and fellow Australian Nathan Healey, Healey complained to the umpire that Philippoussis was moving too much and distracting his serve. The umpire warned Philippoussis and he erupted. \u201cLook, I\u2019ve been doing this for twelve years. Please sit up there and do your job. Don\u2019t tell me how to play tennis,\u201d he said loudly, \u201cI\u2019ve never heard of this before.\u201d Healey then walked towards Philippoussis and pretty soon the umpire had to jump down out of his chair and separate the two players.<\/p>\n

Philippoussis was sitting in the tournament office after the match still complaining to an umpire when he said something that made the situation much clearer. Philippoussis said that Healey began to move laterally during his serve to distract him and he thought to himself, That\u2019s a good idea, I think I\u2019ll do that too. Then Healey complained about him to the umpire.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s pretty smart if you think about it. First distract your opponent during his serve then complain when he does the same thing to you. It has multiple levels of gamesmanship. It didn\u2019t work, though, Philippoussis won the match, 6-2, 7-5, then took the Calabasas title with a 6-7(4), 7-6(4), 6-3 win over Amer Delic.<\/p>\n

I spoke to Philippoussis after his semifinal. (Click on the video above to see Philippoussis play a point in the match. Video has replaced photo in the sports column world.) He\u2019s been going to Las Vegas and working out with Andre Agassi\u2019s team in Las Vegas, in particular, coach Darren Cahill and trainer Gil Reyes. We wondered what that crew might do after Andre retired and it\u2019s not clear yet, but a tennis training center wouldn\u2019t be unexpected.<\/p>\n

Philippoussis\u2019s goal is the same as everyone else\u2019s in challengers: get into the top 100 and earn direct entry into ATP tour events instead of having to slog through qualifiers. The main thing he\u2019s working on at the moment is getting back to playing as aggressively as possible after a slide down the rankings the past two years.<\/p>\n

The ATP has slowed the game down since Philippoussis first joined the tour in 1994. Balls are bigger and the courts are slower. I asked him if he thought this was a good thing since he\u2019s a serve and volleyer. He agreed that they\u2019d slowed the game down to make the competition more even but, he said, \u201cthe good news is that they\u2019re starting to quicken up again.\u201d<\/p>\n

He thought the American hard court season had quicker courts this year and he also said that the Australian Open court will be faster in 2007. I don\u2019t know if the summer hard court season was faster, it seemed like wishful thinking to me, but if it helps him to think that, good enough.<\/p>\n

I wouldn\u2019t usually trade Calabasas for Madrid, but this weekend I preferred it.<\/p>\n

<\/blockquote>\n

See also:
\n2006 Madrid Quarterfinals: Is Berdych Better Than Nadal?<\/a>
\n2006 Madrid Third Round: The Young And The Talented<\/a>
\n2006 Madrid Second Round: Everything Is Upside Down<\/a>
\n2006 Madrid First Round: Don’t Jump<\/a>
\n2006 ATP Fantasy Tennis: Madrid Masters<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Madrid semifinals, and final for that matter, were not interesting. I was more affected by the news that Chris Evert is divorcing her husband Andy Mill after eighteen years of marriage. It pains me when things change unexpectedly. Not that I would have known if the couple had been having problems. Last summer, two […]<\/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-459","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tennis-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/459","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=459"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/459\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=459"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}