Monthly Archives: August 2007

A Serbian Weekend in Tennis

The Serbs dominated professional tennis this weekend as Ana Ivanovic and Novak Djokovic both won titles.

Ana Ivanovic knew that Novak Djokovic had already beaten Roger Federer before she took the court for the final here at the East West Bank Classic just south of Los Angeles. “I was motivated to do the same thing,” she said and she did exactly that.

Except for failing to serve out the first set at 5-4, Ivanovic had few problems winning a straight set victory over Nadia Petrova, 7-5, 6-4. And so we came to the end of a Serbian Weekend.

In Montreal, Novak Djokovic edged his way into the Roger FedererRafael Nadal perennial two-step with a 7-6(2), 2-6, 7-6(2) victory for his second Masters Series title. Not only that but he beat Andy Roddick and Rafael Nadal along the way.

Ivanovic said she has known Djokovic since they were both 4 years old and they’re good friends:

As kids we would practice sometimes together and then go play hide and seek for the rest of the day. …It’s nice to know someone for so long and look back at your childhood… I love spending time with him.

The same is not true for Jelena Jankovic, the third member of the Serbian troika. She was not in the same age group as Ivanovic and they do not appear to be as friendly. The weekend started off with a semifinal between the two and it was a battle from beginning to end.

Jankovic was up a break in the first set and serving at 4-3 when Ana put her hand up for a timeout because the ball kids were rolling balls behind Jelena. Jelena stopped for half a second – essentially ignoring her – then went into her service motion. Ana mishit the return and stood there with her hands on her hips. She was not amused.

It was another one of those serving incidents that display gamesmanship. Jankovic should have waited until the ball kids were finished. She was clearly letting Ana know who was in charge.

Jelena was in charge and she stayed that way until Ivanovic pulled even with a break to go up 4-2 in the second set. Ivanovic had to fight off thee break points to serve out the set but she’d evened the match.

Jankovic got two match points with Ivanovic serving at 4-5 in the third set and though Ivanovic won the game, it looked like it was just a matter of time before Jankovic won the battle.

Then it happened:

BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM. Five straight forehand winners from Ivanovic and she had the break she needed. Jankovic had run out of energy. She’d suffered through a case of the flu last week so she couldn’t practice and her conditioning failed her. Ivanovic won the battle, 4-6, 6-3, 7-5.

Djokovic had his own battle with Federer. He fought off six set points to get to 6-6 in the first set then won the tiebreaker 7-2. He took the third set tiebreaker by the same score.

It’s been a historical day for Serbian tennis and now it’s time to ask if Serbia is prepared to win a U.S. Open title.

Renae Stubbs and Kveta Peschke came into the media room after they won the doubles title today and Stubbs gave us one of the answers. Stubbs is fantastic. They should put her in a commentator booth immediately.

In addition to an excellent comparison of Steffi Graf‘s and Ivanovic’s forehand*, she said that Ivanovic has the skills to win a slam but might not have the mentality yet.

Ivanovic may not be ready yet, but after today, Djokovic is.

*Ivanovic hits harder but then Graf didn’t have current racket technology and, by the way, Graf moved better.

ATP Fantasy Tennis Picks: Cincinnati

We’re deep into the ATP Fantasy Tennis Season so check out my Fantasy Tennis Guide. You’ll find Fast Facts, Strategies, and Statistics to help you play the game.

Sign up and join our subleague! It’s called tennisdiary.com. We send weekly email updates to all subleague members before the submission deadline.

The deadline for picking your team this week is Monday, August 13, 10am EST, 4pm CET.

Rear View Mirror – a look at last week’s picks

I got only half of the quarterfinalists in Montreal and that ain’t good but look at it this way: I’m still in 23rd place in the standings and Fernando Gonzalez, Tommy Robredo, Tomas Berdych and Richard Gasquet were all gone by the time the third round rolled around.

Radek Stepanek got to the semifinals, for heaven’s sake, so we’ll have to make a decision about him. Novak Djokovic knocked Rafael Nadal out and that’s important because Nadal has a big lead in this year’s race and he could have made a significant step towards the number one ranking.

Cincinnati (hard court, first prize: $400,000)

Court speed is a significant factor this week. Tennisinsight.com gives Cincinnati a percentile of just under 2% versus other hard courts. This means that it plays faster than 98% of the other hard court tournaments. Montreal is playing at about 19% which means it’s about 17% slower.

That may explain why Andy Roddick has won this tournament twice and also explains why I won’t be choosing Nikolay Davydenko.

Roger Federer’s Quarter

As usual, the idea is to pick two guys from each quarter to make up our 8 player team. Federer should be an easy pick but he’s not wild about back to back one week Masters Series events. Last year he lost here in the second round to Andy Murray and his record in Canada is far better than here. But he has won this thing and Nadal is breathing down his neck so you have to pick him.

As for the bottom part of his quarter: good luck. Everyone told me I shouldn’t have picked Tommy Robredo last week and they were right and they’re probably still right.

Ivan Ljubicic was having a good year on hard court until he lost to a qualifier in the first round at Montreal. He reached the quarterfinals at Indian Wells and the semifinals at Miami. Jarkko Nieminen is in this quarter but Ljubicic beat him at Miami so I’m going with Ljubicic.

Novak Djokovic’s Quarter

Djokovic is in the final against Federer today so he he’ll be tired. He did reach the Indian Wells final then win Miami which are consecutive Masters Series events, but they’re two week events, not one. Still, there’s really no competition in his part of the quarter so you have to take him.

Lleyton Hewitt and Richard Gasquet should meet in the second round and that’s a tough pick. Hewitt beat him last year at the US Open but Gasquet is the better player, it’s just that he’s so maddeningly inconsistent.

Tommy Haas got to the third round in Montreal before losing to Stepanek so he could easily get one round further. He plays Mario Ancic in the first round but Ancic has never done well on this hard court swing.

Since the Gasquet-Hewitt match is a tossup and either one could be gone early, I’m going with Haas.

Andy Roddick’s Quarter

My writing partner, Pat Davis, is picking Stepanek to beat Roddick. Stepanek almost beat Roddick in Washington and I like Stepanek’s game but I’m not picking him for two reasons: the court is fast and he could be out of kilter emotionally because his engagement to Martina Hingis was called off.

I’m not picking Davydenko because he’s got that stress fracture in his foot and hard courts are hard on feet. I think he played well last week to prove that he doesn’t tank matches and that motivation is now gone.

Tomas Berdych is something of an enigma. He plays better on clay and grass than he does on hard court. You can’t count on him to reach a quarterfinal in the summer hard court swing. His main competition here is Paul-Henri Mathieu but you can’t count on him to reach a hard court quarterfinal either. Berdych and Mathieu have never played each other.

Mathieu is 11-7 on hard courts this year while Berdych is 7-6 so Mathieu is my pick.

Rafael Nadal’s Quarter

Mikhail Youzhny beat Nadal the last two times they met on hard court but Nadal is now better on that surface and Youzhny is not.

James Blake has an abdominal muscle pull and they’re notorious for taking a long time to heal. Nicolas Kiefer isn’t available for ATP fantasy tennis because his ranking dropped too low due to injury and he’ll probably take out Marat Safin in the first round.

I don’t want to pick Fernando Gonzalez till he straightens himself out but he has a 3-0 record over Ferrero on fast courts so Gonzalez it is.

Cincinnati draw

My Picks

Here’s my team: Federer, Ljubicic, Djokovic, Haas, Mathieu, Roddick, Gonzalez and Nadal.

Happy fantasies!


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Sania Mirza’s Fiery Forehand

What dictates a player’s game: temperament or skills?

I wandered over to one of the outside courts yesterday so I could check out Sania Mirza and see what makes that forehand such a weapon. And how the hell does she get those sharp angles? Is it the wrist action that Martina Hingis demonstrated in her belly dancer imitation after she lost to Sania? Or is it something else?

What I found was something else and it doesn’t have much to do with the forehand. Sania fussed and fumed and finally lost to 52nd ranked Virginie Razzano after struggling through a slow start and running into a big problem in the second set tiebreaker.

Sania had lost the first set 6-1 and was down 0-1 in the second set tiebreaker when she hit a backhand approach that appeared to land on the sideline. The chair umpire disagreed and overruled the call costing Mirza the point. She dropped her racked in disbelief. The chair umpire had just overruled a call on the sideline farthest from her chair and she did it in a tiebreaker:

By the time Sania regained her composure, she was down 5-1 in the tiebreaker. She fought back to 6-6 but Razzano hit a winner and Sania sent an angry return flying past the baseline and the match was over.

Did Sania’s temper lose her the match? Here’s what she said afterwards:

I’m a very short-tempered person off the court. On the court I’m not so bad but sometimes I just let it out and today was one of those days when I wasn’t playing well and then finally I was fighting so hard. …I hit a clean winner and she overruled the far sideline so what can you do? I got pissed and I lost.

Now we know. Sania is one fiery being and that’s what I found when I went looking for her forehand. It’s not the technical things that make it a strong stroke – apart from the wicked racket head speed of course. That same fire that undid her today is the same fire that makes her an ultra-aggressive player and no doubt adds some speed on the radar gun to the forehand.

Compare her with Razzano for instance. Razzano is a good, steady defensive player without a big weapon. She’s extremely annoying because she’s good enough to jump on errors and put the ball away but she can’t force her offense on you. She has to be calm and steady because she doesn’t have enough weapons to come back from a deficit

Mirza, on the other hand, tries to end points as soon as possible. Balls go flying all over the place as she tries to hit winner after winner.

What dictates a player’s game: is it temperament or skills?

For instance, does the fiery temperament come first or does a player tailor they’re game to their skills.

Look at Roger Federer. He had a terrible temper as a junior but winning is his first priority and now, as Debra our reader says, you can hardly hear him when he plays whereas other players are grunting and groaning and yelling. Bjorn Borg too. He used to insist on playing games with his father when he was a child then throw a complete fit if he lost.

The answer, then, is neither. The overriding factor for the aggressive play and strong strokes is the desire to win and players who want to win badly enough tailor their temperament to get the best results. If screaming makes you play better – think of John McEnroe – then that’s what you’ll do. If unnatural calmness works, then a player who wants to win strongly enough will become an unnaturally calm player regardless of his or her fundamental temperament.

This is my theory. Feel free to weigh in with yours.

Oh, and about those sharp angles that befuddled Hingis. Sania goes for winners which means she goes for lots of angles. And when she hits an angle, her opponent will often go for more angle. I’m not observant enough to know if her shot is particularly wristy or not but if you create angles, you get a lot more opportunity to hit them.


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To read more about Sania, Martina and Marion, check these out:
Hingis Compares Herself to Chakvetadze
Bartoli is Out of Sorts in Los Angeles
Los Angeles, Montreal, Lego Man and Bud Collins

Ana and Jelena Square Off in Los Angeles

Ana Ivanovic and Jelena Jankovic have opposing styles both on the court and off.

We got a double dose of the Serbian women today here at the East West Bank Classic just south of Los Angeles. One after the other. First Ana Ivanovic defeated Maria Kirilenko, 6-4, 6-4, and then Jelena Jankovic defeated Victoria Azarenka, 6-4, 6-7(5), 6-2. They’ll meet in the semifinals tomorrow but the contrast in their personalities is as fascinating as any match they’ll play.

Ana has model good looks in that baby-face way that made Anna Kournikova so deliciously appealing. It’s that combination of openness and sensuality that literally pulls you in. She’s very affable and eager to cooperate. Ask her about her match and she’ll spill out a summary that could end up in tomorrow’s sports pages without any further editing. For example:

I was 5-2 up with a double break and she played an unbelievable game on my serve. She was just going for her shots and I was mostly running and defending in that game and then she served well. On a break at 5-4 I was trying to focus on what I have to do and just realizing that I have still to be aggressive and not wait for her to miss because she was on a run. Yes, I served very well that game and I was really happy I closed the match.

And then there is Jelena. She has exotic looks with a long, distinctive face instead of that round baby face. Rather than being eager to please, she says whatever comes to her mind and doesn’t care what you think. And she won’t hesitate to call you out if you’re wrong. For example, when someone asked her how she felt about playing Ana tomorrow she said:

It’s just like any other match for me …it’s just another girl on the other side of the net.

Is that a bit of antipathy on Jelena’s part towards her countrywoman? No it’s not and if you think that, you can blame the media:

The media, most of the time, you guys, you make some kind of, like when we get off the court we kind of hate each other for no reason. Nothing really happened between us…I think that’s wrong.

When one of us accursed media suggested that people were just interested in a rivalry she said the following:

I don’t want to look behind me, you know, I want to look in front of me. I am the number three player in the world and I’m looking at number two and number one.

Ana is ranked number five by the way. Can you really blame the media?

They’re playing style is different too. Ana depends on a big serve and forehand and she likes to end points quickly. If Jelena can get her into long rallies tomorrow, she could beat her with her speed.

They don’t even agree on their first meeting. Ana says they met at that famous swimming pool when Jelena was 10 and Ana was 8. There weren’t many tennis facilities in war-torn Serbia so a swimming pool was emptied and converted into a few tennis courts. Ana says that Jelena beat her easily.

Jelena says that is completely wrong because she didn’t even start playing until she was 9 ½ years old and was still only a beginner at 10 years old. She did play in the swimming pool, though, and she won a tournament there. Instead of a trophy she received a watermelon.

As Jelena left the media room, she picked up a deflated oversized rubber tennis ball in the shape of a watermelon and asked if anyone wanted an autograph.

Not yet, we’ll just keep watching the rivalry. That’s more fun.


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To read more about Sania, Martina and Marion, check these out:
Sania Mirza’s Fiery Forehand
Hingis Compares Herself to Chakvetadze
Bartoli is Out of Sorts in Los Angeles
Los Angeles, Montreal, Lego Man and Bud Collins

Los Angeles, Montreal, Lego Man and Bud Collins

Is Sania Mirza a belly dancer? Can anyone win in Montreal? Who is the Lego man? And where did Bud Collins end up?

The big news here at the East West Bank Classic just south of Los Angeles is the flu. Jelena Jankovic just finished taking antibiotics last night but dispensed with Peng Shuai rather easily. Eleni Daniilidou has been sick for four days herself. She battled back from a break to get to a first set tiebreaker with Maria Sharapova then got up 3-0 in the tiebreaker before making a few errors and losing it 7-5. By the time she was down 1-3 in the second set, she was done, she couldn’t breathe any more.

Daniilidiou’s short media session was heartbreaking. She could barely answer the questions through her tears. She didn’t have to come to a media session; I think she just wanted us to know how badly she wanted to play Sharapova:

We are working for this kind of match, to play with top players and to play in such a good atmosphere. …I wanted to step on court and give my best.

I often complain about players reneging on commitments to tournaments at the last moment but this the other end of the spectrum. I have nothing but admiration for Daniilidou’s desire and her pride.

Sania the Belly Dancer

Yesterday was pretty exciting too. Maria Kirilenko beat number six seed Marion Bartoli and Sania Mirza beat number seven seed Martina Hingis.

I remember Hingis from her first swing around the tennis world when she won five slams before she took three years off to recover from foot problems. The early version of Martina was brash, brazen and, frankly, obnoxious. Her mouth was legendary.

After Amelie Mauresmo came out as a lesbian at the 1999 Australian Open, Hingis called her half a man. In 1998 she dissed Steffi Graf with the following: “She is old now. Her time has passed.” That was the year before Graf beat her in the final of the French Open.

Today, though, Hingis is one of the elders and she’s been absolutely delightful and engaging throughout this entire event. After Mirza beat her last night, Hingis walked up to the net and asked her how she hits such sharp angles with her strokes. In the media session afterwards, she jokingly theorized that Mirza must have studied belly dancing and developed those angles from the exotic wrist curls associated with the form.

Belly dancing has roots in India among other cultures and speaking of India, when I was at the ATP Los Angeles event, I interviewed Vijay Amitraj and asked him about the explosion of tennis in his home country. India now has two WTA and two ATP events and Bangalore recently bid on the WTA Championships.

Amritraj said the recent growth in the Indian economy was responsible for the tennis explosion. When I asked Mirza the same question, she had a slightly different answer.

I like to think I play a little part in that….I think if a girl from Hyderabad – where tennis is not the sport to be playing – comes up from there and is playing against the likes of Hingis and the Williamses and the Sharapovas, I think people start believing that they can do it as well.

Mr. Amritraj thinks it’s the economy and Sania thinks she plays a part in it. It’s the economy because big prize money is luring tournaments to Eastern Europe and Asia and now India. Countries around the world outsource call centers and software engineering to India and the country is developing a larger affluent class.

But Sania is part of it too. Last year when I visited the country for a few weeks, even the smallest villages had images of her in ads for the telephone company. And when more female tennis players from India come along, she can take more than a little part of the credit.

Those Montreal Picks

One word: atrocious. We all expected upsets at the ATP Masters Series event in Montreal because it’s the first hard court event after the clay court season for most European players and those players are dropping like flies. Gone already: Tomas Berdych, Andy Murray, Richard Gasquet, Tommy Robredo and Jarkko Nieminen, Europeans every one. Fernando Gonzalez lost too and James Blake is out with an abdominal muscle strain.

The U.S. Open Series has become an opportunity for the lower ranked U.S. players to fatten up on hard court events then watch as the Europeans turn up and take over the Masters events and the U.S. Open.

Instead of two Masters events in a row – the Cincinnati Masters follows next week – isn’t it time to move one of those events a few weeks earlier and establish some significance to the U.S. Open Series? That way those early losers in Montreal will drop in at Washington or Indianapolis or Los Angeles and play a few rounds.

By the way, I’ll go full bore on Cincinnati next week once the WTA event in Los Angeles is finished.

The Search for Lego Man

Last week I stopped off at Legoland on the way home from the Acura Classic. I was the only single adult I could see and now I’m wondering when U.S. entertainment conglomerates will start building theme parks for the elderly. Aren’t we this country’s fastest growing population and don’t we deserve some fun too?

This morning I see that an eight foot high Lego man washed up onto the shore at Zandvoort in Holland. The big guy has that gas can head, those c-clamp hands and the words “NO REAL THAN YOU ARE” etched on his belly. Unless mutant fish species are spawning Lego characters in the bottom of the North Sea, I think this might be an artist’s installation and I translate those awkward words to mean that Lego man is no more real, nor less, than you and I.

Bud Collins and ESPN

Bud Collins was unceremoniously fired by NBC at the end of Wimbledon after 35 years of loyal service. ESPN has been nice enough to hire him and that’s a smart thing. A lot of younger viewers don’t like Collins’ shtick, it looks a bit too much like country club silliness with his funny pants and quirky bits, but Collins brings tennis history with him and sports fans love to argue about who’s the best player of all time and figure out who was the last player to win Wimbledon and the U.S. Open in the same year four times in a row.*

Collins will cover the Australian Open, the French Open and Wimbledon for ESPN2 and report tennis for SportsCenter and ESPN radio. I was on mvn.com’s daily live radio show talking about tennis gambling last week and the wonderful host, Brandon Rosage, said this in his introduction: “We’re going to talk – yes! – tennis and I’ll explain why,” as if there needed to be an explanation. I, for one, will be happy to hear more tennis on radio. Welcome back Bud.

*The answer is no one. Roger Federer was the first to do it three times in a row.


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