Monthly Archives: July 2006

bashing Alex and Justine

One of our readers was pretty unhappy with me because, he said, I bashed Justine Henin-Hardenne in my last post. True, I did compare her to Justine in De Sade’s book of the same name but it was, at least partly, in fun and I also gave Kim Clijsters a part in the book. The point was that Justine has the top dog gene and Kim does not. That’s not necessarily a bad thing.

…statistics can get boring very quickly but personality, and more importantly, perception of personality, is an endlessly fascinating subject.

Bashing athletes is not uncommon in the sports world, you can hear it any day of the week on sports radio. One of the most virulent cases of bashing involves Alex Rodriguez, the beleaguered third baseman for the New York Yankees. Here is a guy who’s never had a DUI, never been arrested for domestic abuse and was the MVP of the league last year, yet he is treated mercilessly by the sports media.

The biggest reason is his huge salary, exactly $25,680,727 per year. For that kind of money, the reasoning goes, he should be perfect. It also happens to be $5 million more than the salary of the shortstop on his team, Derek Jeter, who has also never had a DUI and never been arrested for domestic abuse. Unfortunately for Rodriguez, Jeter is a clutch player and has played on five championship Yankee teams while Rodriguez batted .133 in the 2005 playoffs and has no championship rings.

You can’t really complain when the sports media uses statistics to denigrate a player’s worth because sport is all about results, but when the media theorizes about a player’s personality, then it has the potential to turn ugly. And that’s a problem because statistics can get boring very quickly but personality, and more importantly, perception of personality, is an endlessly fascinating subject.

In Wednesday’s New York Times Sports Section, Selena Roberts called Rodriguez a poser. Not just because he was caught by the paparazzi suntanning shirtless and leaning his perfect body against a rock in Central Park but because everything he does is perfect, no hair is ever out of place. She even calls him out for deferring to Jeter and agreeing to play third base – shortstop is his natural position – as part of being traded to the Yankees: “Acts of selflessness can be exhausting if they’re orchestrated.” Rodriguez did orchestrate the trade but players orchestrate trades all the time and trying to turn a selfless act into a selfish act feels a bit desperate. It qualifies as bashing.

Having said that, the unhappy reader is probably correct. Maybe Henin-Hardenne did have a part of a power bar caught in her throat and was not, as I suggested, feigning choking so that she could interrupt Clijsters momentum in the third set of their match at Wimbledon.

Justine is getting bashed by all sides these days, not just me. Justine’s coach, Carlos Rodriguez, writes on Justine’s website that the Belgian tennis association delayed the announcement that she wouldn’t play the Fed Cup semifinal against the US for three days, presumably so that the US would think she was playing. The late announcement made it look like Justine bagged out at the last minute.

He also says that the captain of the team, Carl Maes, asked her to come to Ostend and cheer the team on. But when she arrived, Maes asked her to go home. According to Rodriguez, Maes said that her presence “would not be good for the atmosphere of the team.” The two sides have patched up their differences and Justine will play in the Fed Cup final so you have to wonder if Rodriguez is embellishing but Maes didn’t help the cause with an open letter in which he asked Justine to play in the Fed Cup final against Italy.

Look at this statement by Maes:

“I always thought that had Justine been injured in a more obvious way the public would have found this a more adequate excuse.”

Is he asking for sympathy towards Justine or agreeing with people who wonder, for instance, if Justine really could have finished the Australia Open final against Amelie Mauresmo instead of retiring?

And this:

“I only have the sporting interest of the team at heart and it is clear that we have a greater chance of success with both top world players.”

And your point is? This sounds like one of those companies that pays a huge fine with the agreement that they don’t have to admit any guilt.

It seems clear that the Belgian Fed Cup team grossly mishandled this matter and that’s unfortunate for Justine because she doesn’t need any more problems than she already has. Dealing with a hidden illness can be very difficult.

But Rodriguez should have taken his complaints to the Belgian tennis association exclusively, not the public. His characterization of the situation makes Justine look like the aggrieved victim and that doesn’t help her cause. People already wonder if Justine acts selfishly at times. By detailing every word and every slight, he put the focus, again, on Justine.

Amersfoort, Stuttgart, Indianapolis: atomic time

Oy vey, this week there are two sixty-four player tournaments and one thirty-two player tournament. Thank heavens for byes and qualifiers. The die-hard clay courters will play Stuttgart and Amersfoort and the rest will kick-start the hard court season in Indianapolis.

GMT has been actually been replaced by atomic time (UTC) – not a historical reference to the 20th century form of warfare, by the way, except in its scientific terminology – since time is now measured by a cesium atomic.

Stuttgart is paying its winner $131, 962. That’s a lotta money. The problem is that there are no sure players in the field. The highest ranked player is Gaudio at number 14 and he was disappointing last week. Gasquet has been inconsistent and Almagro has cooled off. Berdych has been playing well but he meets Almagro in the quarterfinals.

Amersfoort is paying $55,742 but Coria is their top seed! Coria has been so bad that I have him losing to number 316th ranked Cilic in the second round. Moya can probably get to the semifinals but I think this is the week that Djokovic gets his first ATP title.

If you haven’t used Blake very much, Indianapolis is paying $75,250. But be sure to save him for either Cincinatti or Montreal and the US Open since he’s best on hard outdoor surfaces. The rest of the draw is so confusing that I have Srichaphan in the semifinal against Roddick and Malisse in the other semifinal.

It’s a scraggly bunch but Djokovic, Moya, Gaudio, Ferrer, Gasquet, Berdych or Almago, Blake and Roddick look like the survivors.

A member of our subleague, Small Fry, lives in England and complained about the delay in getting tournament draws because of the time difference. This turns out to be a rather complex subject since the fantasy tennis community is worldwide.

All of the deadlines for submitting teams are 10am or 11am CET on the first day of the tournament. I have to admit I didn’t know what CET was but I now know that it’s Central European Time which is two hours ahead of Greenwich Mean Time (GMT+2). GMT is the time in Greenwich, England. Except that England is currently on Summer Time which is one hour ahead of GMT (GMT+1).

GMT has been actually been replaced by atomic time (UTC) – not a historical reference to the 20th century form of warfare, by the way, except in its scientific terminology – since time is now measured by a cesium atomic. The smallest unit of time is the frequency of a cesium atom that is emitted when the cesium is disturbed. This is an interesting subject – to me anyway – because we consider time to be continuous but it’s not, it’s discrete, meaning that it has tiny steps.

Look at a stream of light. It looks continuous but it’s not. It’s made of photons. If you look close enough at anything on the atomic level, you see steps. (I knew I’d be able to put my physics degree to use sooner or later.)

All by way of saying, Small Fry, that the 10am CET deadline is 9am in London, 4am in New York and 1am in Los Angeles. That means that you have more time but the US gets the draw five to eight hours earlier. Or never in the case of Newport last week. Which was exceptionally frustrating because Andy Murray was entered and I hadn’t used him yet!

The concept of a home team has been replaced by your own team.

When Justin Gimelstob got up 6-1, 5-4, 30-0 on Andy Murray in the Newport semifinal, I started to hope that Murray would lose because I didn’t pick him for my team and other subleague members did. That’s how fantasy sports warps your mind. Baseball fantasy players go to baseball games and cheer for their fantasy team members, not their home team. The concept of a home team has been replaced by your own team. Luckily for me, Murray did lose.

Bye the way, congratulations to the Brits for getting Brad Gilbert even if you had to pay 500,000 pounds a year for the privilege. The US’s loss is your gain. Andy Roddick might not be number three if he’d stayed with Gilbert but he’d be in the top five. That’s a whole hell of a lot better than eleventh.

Some people in the subleague are dropping by the wayside and haven’t submitted their weekly team. A tennis fantasy league team is more work, I would argue, than a Rotisserie league team because we have to choose a new team every week. Take heart though. I know plenty of people who joined the office pool for the NCAA championships, filled out a draw using the uniform colors or something equally random and did very well. So, even if you don’t have much time, look at the draws – all three of them can be found below with my picks – and pick eight people you like. I am embarrassed to tell you, considering how much time I put into this, how well you could with very little knowledge.





NCAA xenophobia

July 9, nytimes.com

N.C.A.A. and Coaches to Discuss New Limits for International Players

By JOE DRAPE (NYT) 770 words
Published: July 9, 2006

College tennis coaches are to meet with N.C.A.A. officials today and tomorrow to discuss potential changes to rules regarding the amateur status of international players.

Among the proposals to be discussed are limits on the number of professional events that an international player can compete in before entering college and uniform rules on the amount of expenses a player can claim to offset prize money. Some coaches also plan to ask for more severe penalties when foreign athletes are found to have violated rules on amateur status.

”We want to look at what rules are in the books that make sense and those that do not,” said David Benjamin, the executive director of the Intercollegiate Tennis Association. He will lead a group of 10 men’s and women’s coaches for two days of meetings at the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s headquarters in Indianapolis. ”We want to see if there is some way to make the system work better,” he said.

N.C.A.A rules say that athletes who have accepted prize money beyond their expenses in any tournament, or who have played for a professional team in a sport, cannot compete collegiately in that sport. Over the past 12 years, however, coaches have contended that scores of tennis players from other countries had routinely violated those rules and joined American colleges and universities as failed professionals.

They say that such players are older and more experienced than college players from the United States and that it is unfair that they are granted scholarships at the expense of true amateurs.

The coaches have also been critical of the N.C.A.A.’s response to their complaints, describing it as lackadaisical and saying it has emboldened some colleges to make loose interpretations of amateur status.

In April, after an article in The New York Times about how college tennis is dominated by older international players with a wealth of experience on professional tours in Europe, Vanderbilt’s chancellor, Gordon Gee, asked his fellow university presidents to address the issue.

He blamed a confusing rulebook and a lack of oversight by individual universities and by the N.C.A.A. for creating a climate in which a win-at-all-cost-mentality had seeped into nonrevenue sports like tennis.

Wally Renfro, the senior adviser to the N.C.A.A.’s president, Myles Brand, said the association hoped this meeting would be the first step toward building consensus on the college tennis coaching committee, which has been divided over the influx of foreign players. ”It’s an opportunity for the coaches to learn about the reinstatement process and eligibility issues and to express their positions on the whole issue of international athletes,” he said.

Coaches who recruit international players argue that they need to expand their recruiting base to compete and that they are following the N.C.A.A.’s guidelines.

Over all, 28 percent of the players on Division I men’s tennis teams from 1999 to 2004 were foreigners, as were 21 percent of those on women’s teams, according to the N.C.A.A.

In May, at the N.C.A.A. individual championships, international players filled 43 of the 64 men’s slots and 29 of the 64 women’s berths.

Geoff Macdonald, Vanderbilt’s women’s coach, said college coaches were not against the international influence but were frustrated by the lack of a level playing field. He intends to propose capping the number of pro events an international player can play in before entering college.

”I don’t know if the number is 10 or 20 or a certain number per year,” Macdonald said. ”But we have to find a way to stop players who basically play a full-time professional circuit until they realize they are not good enough. Then they declare themselves an amateur, accept a scholarship and beat up on younger, less-experienced players.”

Sheila McInerney, the women’s tennis coach at Arizona State and the co-chairwoman of the Intercollegiate Tennis Association’s ethics and infractions committee, said the guidelines over what constituted expense money should be simplified and the rules already on the books enforced.

She said that the N.C.A.A.’s standard for ”reasonable and necessary” expenses allows athletes to mask the amount of prize money received. Beyond airfare and lodging, McInerney wants a set per diem for every athlete. She also wants the N.C.A.A. to take a harder line on athletes found in violation of amateur rules. In the past three years, the N.C.A.A. has ruled on the eligibility of 31 foreign tennis players. Three were barred from competition; some of the 28 ruled eligible were asked to sit out matches.

exalting Roger, Justine de Sade and other thoughts

One of our readers left a comment about Pat Davis’s take onRoger Federer’s strategy at Wimbledon. He decided that Tennis Magazine writer Peter Bodo had the better explanation for Federer’s decision to stay at the baseline during the final: “He wants to outplay Rafa in Rafa’s style, as he outplays everybody else.”

would he really screw around and lose the opportunity for an eighth grand slam and a fourth Wimbledon title by trying demoralize his opponent?

Peter Bodo is a great tennis writer but why do people believe that? As much as Bodo talks about Federer KAD’s (people obsessed with Federer, or any other player for that matter), here Bodo is trying to exalt him by saying that Federer is so great that he can use a grand slam final to make a point instead of just trying to win the damn thing.

You’re telling me that Roger Federer sat down with Tony Roche and said, “I know I can beat him by attacking the net but I’m gonna beat at his own game and play from the baseline, that way he’ll really know who’s the king.”

I’m sure Federer doesn’t care about a forty-eight match streak on grass but would he really screw around and lose the opportunity for an eighth grand slam and a fourth Wimbledon title by trying demoralize his opponent?

maybe Clijsters should be called Justine and Henin-Hardenne should change her name to Juliette

Athletes have been known to do things like that. There were times that Boris Becker insisted on playing baseline tennis when he should have been at the net because he fancied himself an all court player. But Federer isn’t stupidly stubborn.

I’d be much more willing to believe that he was fearful when he refused to attack the net than I’d believe that he was trying to make a point. It was a tactical mistake at Roland Garros and it made him look bad, but it was the right decision at Wimbledon borne of two weeks superlative play staying, mostly, at the baseline.

What do basketball great Bill Walton and Justine Henin-Hardenne have in common? I’ve just finished reading David Halberstam’s excellent book about the 1979-80 Portland Trailblazers NBA season, Breaks of the Game. Halberstam talked about the small but distinctive ways that Walton tried to establish his dominance on the team. For example, when Coach Jack Ramsay called the players together after practice, Walton made a point of being the last one to join the huddle:

“Ramsay might be talking to the team about that night’s game plan and Walton would take one last shot after the talk had started. Or perhaps two. Nothing big. But something that was always there.”

Henin-Hardenne also does small annoying things that are designed to assert her dominance. Raising her hand to call time out as Serena Williams served then denying she did it when Williams served a fault in the 2003 French Open semifinal. Having a coughing fit right after Kim Clijsters broke her in the third set of their semifinal match at Wimbledon this year which gave Henin-Hardenne the excuse of going to the sideline so she could slow Clijsters momentum. Clijsters is so guileless that she’s ill-equipped to deal with this kind of behavior, a prime reason Henin-Hardenne has won six of their last eight matches.

Perhaps we should start calling Henin-Hardenne Justine De Sade except that the character Justine in the Marquis De Sade’s book – from whence comes the word sadism – was virtuous but suffered for it. It was Justine’s sister Juliette who behaved badly and yet was rewarded. Okay then, maybe Clijsters should be called Justine and Henin-Hardenne should change her name to Juliette.

Tennis Week reports that the ATP doesn’t plan to make significant changes to the tournament schedule until after the 2008 Olympics, meaning that changes would start in 2009. The ATP chairman, Etienne de Villiers, wants to spread the slams thoughout the year and build the tournament schedule around them. For example, the US Open has a series of tournaments called the US Open Series which lead up to the US Open. It’s a good thing someone is finally listening to us columnists. The Australian Open is currently in the third week of the season and Wimbledon starts three weeks after Roland Garros ends, which is ridiculous. Good luck, though, Monsieur de Villiers. The slams have all the money and the power. Moving them might be like moving a mountain.

De Villiers would also reduce the number of Masters Series tournaments which currently stands at nine. I like Masters Series events. Besides the slams, that’s the only time everyone turns up. Look at this week’s schedule: the Stuttgart tournament is paying over $131,000 to the winner and it doesn’t have one top ten player in the field. I’d be pissed off if I was the tournament director.

For everyone bemoaning the loss of serve and volley, you could have watched unadulterated serve and volley at the Newport semifinal today between Mark Philippoussis and Jurgen Melzer. But therein lies the problem. Newport is an orphan child, the only ATP grass court tournament in the US. The ATP grass court season consists of four wamup tournaments in two weeks followed by Wimbledon with a little spit at the end that few players attend – Newport. So you can lay some of the blame for the demise of serve and volley on the schedule.

If you want to see more of it, not as much as you saw a decade ago because Wimbledon has been methodically slowing the grass and they now use bigger balls – there’s an ad campaign in there somewhere, then put a grass court season into the calendar. Spread the four slams evenly throughout the year and create a series of grass tournaments leading up to Wimbledon.

You won’t get the reincarnation of Stefan Edberg or Pete Sampras but you will get a lot more serve and volley than you presently have. By the way, Justin Gimelstob, surprisingly, beat Andy Murray in the second semifinal at Newport and will meet Philippoussis in the Newport final. They should play golden oldies as the players walk onto the court tomorrow.

One last thing. My estimation of Steffi Graf just jumped a mile. Gary Smith has written one of his typically emotional, overdramatic pieces for Sports Illustated, this time about Andre Agassi’s career. The image of Agassi in the article is a portrait by Graf. It’s a straightforward black and white headshot but it is a naked, haunting image that is unlike any other image you’ve seen of Agassi. She looks deep into his soul.

If have a subscription to Sports Illustrated, you can view the image by going here and clicking on Tennis: Coming into Focus. If not, you’ll have to borrow it from a friend or find it on a newstand. It’s worth it.

Federer-Nadal VIII: stay tuned

In the Rome final on clay earlier this year, Roger Federer had two match points before finally losing to Rafael Nadal in the fifth set. He got those match points by attacking at every opportunity. At Roland Garros, he thought the surface was playing slower than Rome so he stayed back in the final and lost to Nadal in four sets. He let the slowness of the surface dictate his game and paid for it.

Could Federer afford to stay back and play baseline tennis against Nadal on grass?

The grass at Wimbledon this year is not playing like grass. The ball bounces higher than usual and the balls are heavier so Federer has not been attacking as much as in past years. He let the slowness of the surface dictate his game again, successfully so far. But now he had a real dilemma. Nadal had steamrolled all but one of his opponents at Wimbledon and that opponent, Robert Kendrick – a qualifier I might add, came within two points of beating Nadal with classic serve and volley tennis. Could Federer afford to stay back and play baseline tennis against Nadal on grass?

Federer had a another problem. Nadal had made it to the final. If Federer couldn’t beat him soundly, Nadal would believe that he could beat Federer the next time they met here. Could Federer hold onto his psychological edge over Nadal on grass?

Federer decided to play the same way he played the first two weeks. He came to the net if an opening appeared otherwise he stayed on the baseline. He made sure he served well and he usually hit his approach to Nadal’s backhand, otherwise it was business as usual. He depended on his slice backhand to keep the ball low. As he explained:

A good defensive slice can help you out, but an offensive slice sometimes doesn’t really give you everything, you know, on clay. On hard court it pays off more. That’s maybe why my results are even better on grass and hard court.

For the fourth time in their eight matches, Federer got out to a one set lead and it was a bagel at that: 6-0. Federer has been exceptional at starting strong this Wimbledon, no doubt the difficult draw pushed him to focus early and often, but it also didn’t mean much because Federer had always lost to Nadal when he’d won the first set.

Never one to give up, Nadal hit a few shots off the baseline and two excellent passing shots to break Federer in the first game of the second set. Federer gave the edge right back. But Nadal showed the first case of nerves. Serving for the set at 5-4, Federer used one of the those low slices to get one point and Nadal hit three errors for the rest to lose the game and let Federer go on to win the second set in a tiebreak.

Now they were playing evenly and the third set went to another tiebreak. Nadal started it off with a passing shot off a quasi-overhead and now you could see the quintessential Nadal celebration. Federer hit a few errors and Nadal hit another amazing shot, a slingshot inside out return, and the tide was turning. Another error and Federer had missed an opportunity to win the match in straight sets and unequivocally express his dominance.

Facing break point at 1-2 in the fourth set, Nadal mistimed a popup return from Federer and hit the ball long. As he made contact, the vibration dampener flew off his racket and landed behind Federer. It reminded me a bit of those stories where an enlightened zen practitioner slips off the side of the mountain but has the presence of mind to notice the beautiful plants on his way into the abyss. Nadal had just lost his serve and was down two sets yet he still noticed that the vibration dampener flew off and pinpointed exactly where it was even though it flew to the other end of the court.

With Nadal serving at 1-4, 30-30, Federer delivered what looked like the knockout punch. He hit four of the hardest forehands imaginable until Nadal finally fell down running for the last one and Federer had a break point to go up 5-1. It looked very similar to his match against Andre Agassi at last year’s US Open final – he pumped up the volume and ran away with the match. He was reasserting his dominance.

Still, as he said after the match, “I was getting awfully nervous in the end.” He gave up the next two games then finally served it out for a 6-0, 7-6(5), 6-7(2), 6-3 victory and his fourth Wimbledon in a row. He looked relieved rather than elated.

He might want to get used to nervousness. This summer will be the biggest test of Federer’s career. As it stands now, Federer is the champion on grass only. Yes, he won the Australian, but Nadal wasn’t there and Federer lost the only hard court match he played against Nadal. If Nadal can win the US Open, the pendulum will start to swing towards the young man from Mallorca and away from Federer.

At the very least, we can hope for a few transcendental matches between these two superior players. I have visions of Nadal winning an 18-16 fourth set tiebreaker followed by a composed Federer stepping to the baseline and winning the next set for yet another Wimbledon title. Wait a minute, that was McEnroe who won that tiebreak in 1980 and Borg who won that fourth set. I think I have that backwards.