Monthly Archives: March 2008

Indian Wells, Jimmy and Andy, Offshore Gambling

What’s happening in Indian Wells, what does Jimmy Connors want, and how long will it take Europe to end the ridiculous U.S. ban on offshore gambling?

Indian Wells

Okay, so who is Barry Tompkins other than Fox Sports Net’s lead commentator for the Indian Wells broadcast? First off he mispronounced Jelena Jankovic’s last name, and worse, he’s not Patrick McEnroe or Cliff Drysdale. Mr. Tompkins is a storied sports commentator with a long history in boxing and football and I may eventually be happy to make his acquaintance, but right now I want my McEnroes. ESPN has dropped Indian Wells and Miami from its schedule and PMac and Cliffy are gone too.

Not to worry, though, I’ll be at Indian Wells in person on Monday and I’ll do my best to put you there too. Nothing particularly exciting has happened yet except that Donald Young won his first two matches and is now into the third round against Rafael Nadal. Also, I was surprised to see Janko Tipsarevic go out so easily.

Tipsarevic was in the same quarter with Ivan Ljubicic and Tommy Robredo so he had a good chance to get to a fourth round meeting with Roger Federer, and we were all looking forward to that because Tipsy almost took Federer out at the Australian Open. As far as Federer is concerned, if he goes out early in this tournament then he’s still recovering from mononucleosis. As far as everyone else is concerned, if he goes out early that means the feast will continue and all those titles that Federer used to gobble up are still fair game.

This is hardly news considering that Federer has lost two straight Masters Series events and a slam, but the ATP has a group psyche just like any other group and there will be a slight crack in the ATP psyche if the players let Federer float through this tournament and take the title because it means that the predictions of his demise are a tad premature.

On the women’s side, Maria Sharapova is cracking the WTA psyche. She hasn’t lost a match this year and while Justine Henin joins her as the only other player with two wins, Sharapova’s wins came at the Australian Open and Quatar, Tier I events, while Henin’s were both Tier II events.

Every top player on the men and women’s side got through their first match rather easily except for Tomas Berdych – he lost in three sets to Stanislaw Wawrinka. I suppose it’s not surprising because he lost his first match here last year too, but it’s pretty amazing how he manages to stay around the top ten so consistently without winning much of anything.

Novak Djokovic had a bit of trouble with Andreas Seppi. He lost his serve twice at the end of the second set and had to go to a tiebreaker, but he probably had more trouble with the wind than Seppi. I’ll be sure to pack my down jacket along with my sunscreen because even though Indian Wells is in the desert, you can often see snow on the mountains from the stadium and it gets bloody cold at night.

Jimmy and Andy

There’s a mixed message coming from the Andy RoddickJimmy Connors split. On the one hand, Connors said he retired because he couldn’t tolerate the international travel required to coach someone on the far flung ATP circuit. Now he says that he’d welcome the challenge of grooming the next American tennis champion.

Okay, but at what stage does he want to groom the next American tennis champion? Does he want to be like Robert Lansdorp – the coach who developed Pete Sampras, Maria Sharapova, and Lindsay Davenport from the time they were wee’uns? Or does he want to be like Marian Wajda – the coach who travels all over the world with Novak Djokovic?

Djokovic trained at Nikki Pilic’s academy in Germany but Wajda took over when it came time to travel the world and figure out how to win on the ATP tour. I can’t see Jimmy with a training academy – I think he’d intimidate the hell out of those little kids and besides, he’d have to spend too much time sucking up to zealous sports’ parents let alone placating them. And he says he doesn’t want to travel the world, so that leaves me wondering: What exactly does Jimmy want?

He reminds of ex-athletes who want to go into coaching to recapture the glory of their playing days but don’t want to work as hard as they did when they were playing. U.S. football coaches, for instance, are famous for working 12 hour days, 7 days a week. Family life be damned because it’s an all consuming job. Tennis is nowhere near as bad as that but Tony Roche had the same problem and Federer fired him because Roche wasn’t putting as much into the job as Federer needed.

I Want My Betfair

I told ya it was coming. Last year the tiny Caribbean nation of Antigua got a successful judgment from the World Trade Organization against the U.S. for banning its citizens from betting on Antigua’s online gambling sites. The U.S. doesn’t allow its citizens to gamble on offshore sites.

At the time, I told you European countries were likely to follow suit because the U.S. policy is an egregious example of protectionism. U.S. citizens can bet on horse races on U.S. based sites therefore it should allow other countries to compete in its market. The New York Times reported this week that the European Union has started an investigation into the situation because European betting companies are complaining.

You bet they are. In July, 2006, the U.S. government detained the CEO of Betonsports.com, a Britain-based gambling site, while he was changing flights in the U.S. Carruthers is, I believe, still under house arrest in the U.S. It wasn’t a very smart move because the U.S. had already failed to comply with the WTO ruling in the Antigua case. Almost by definition, every superpower in the world has a healthy disdain towards other nations, but this is bearing on the ridiculous.

I have personal interest in this matter for one reason and one reason only. My gambling addiction stops at fantasy tennis, but those betting sites stream live video of tennis matches around the world and I’d love to get my hands on those. Why shouldn’t I have access to them, everyone else does.

Federer, Sampras and Tennis in America

Roger Federer and Pete Sampras put on a show in Madison Square Garden on Monday night. What did it mean?

Everybody is hunting down Roger Federer these days. David Nalbandian beat him back to back in Madrid and Paris last fall. Novak Djokovic took him out in the semifinals at the Australian Open. Andy Murray dropped him in the first round at Dubai last week.

If that’s not bad enough, the past is hunting him down too. Just as Federer gets close to Pete Sampras’ record of 14 slams, Sampras wants to remind everyone that he used to be the greatest player of all time. He knows how it is. We have short memories. The player we see today is the best ever because we forget the player of yesterday. Pete wants us to remember

You know what, that’s bull.

Sampras has exhibitions with Marcelo Rios and David Nalbandian next month. What does he have to prove to them? Nothing. No, something else was going on.

The Garden was crammed and all the big people were there: Donald Trump, Rupert Murdoch, Stan Smith, Ivan Lendl, Roy Emerson, Billie Jean King (in a nice suit for once, God love her), Tiger Woods, the Davis Cup – yes, the Cup was the guest of honor. The courtside reporter was Justin Gimelstob and therein lies the story.

ESPN will not be broadcasting Indian Wells or Miami. Both tournaments will be broadcast on Fox Sports Net. This is how far tennis has fallen in the U.S. Instead of listening to Patrick McEnroe, Cliff Drysdale, and Mary Jo Fernandez in the broadcast booth, we’ll be listening to rookie Gimelstob and Chandra Rubin.

There is evidence of a resurgence of tennis in the U.S. – more people are playing the game – but the measure of popularity is always in the advertising numbers and clearly tennis’ numbers are not keeping up with the rest of the U.S. sports world.

ESPN can talk about wanting to focus on March Madness instead of Miami and the inconvenience of the Davis Cup schedule – Davis Cup has already migrated from ESPN to Versus – but that’s pure politeness. If tennis brought in enough advertising income, Indian Wells and Miami would still be on ESPN. At the very least, ESPN would be sharing the broadcast schedule with the Tennis Channel. By the way, the ATP year end championships have moved to Fox Sports Net too.

In my opinion, the match at the Garden was an opportunity to remind us how big tennis used to be in the U.S. It was like a prize fight. Everyone turned up for the spectacle. Everyone wanted to be seen there.

Like many prizefights, the match itself wasn’t necessarily that entertaining. The organizers set the Sampras – Federer exos up with a handicap for Federer. He didn’t have his right hand tied behind his back but the matches were played on faster surfaces than he sees on tour and that meant Sampras’ could stick to serve and volley and be competitive.

I’m not sure why people like John McEnroe say that Sampras could do some damage at Wimbledon. The grass courts at Wimbledon have slowed down since Sampras retired and the ball they now use is bigger and fuzzier. The Garden court on Monday night was so fast that four games passed before there was a substantial groundstroke rally. Sampras couldn’t get away with that at Wimbledon.

Sampras was a nervous wreck in the first set and couldn’t keep anything in the court. Federer fooled around in the second set. He gave Sampras a point on an out ball that the ballperson missed and he kept hitting slices for passing shots. It did get interesting in the third set though.

Federer went from a break up to a break down. He went through a sloppy patch but managed to gather himself to the tiebreaker. Just so you know how fast the court was, Federer hit four straight aces at one point in the third set. How often does he do that in the real ATP world?

Federer won the third set tiebreaker 8-6 to win the match, 6-3, 6-7 (4), 7-6 (6), but we’re no closer to knowing whether Federer is slipping or not, we won’t know that until he faces Murray or Nalbandian at Indian Wells. And we already know that Federer will surpass Sampras even if he stops at 14 slams because he has two French Open finals and Sampras has none.

No, this match was a celebration of U.S. tennis history and its possible future. More tennis events are planned for the Garden. For now, though, as Federer said, “The winner was tennis. The winner was tennis in America.” I hope so.

An American Sweep

U.S. players won all three ATP and WTA events last week. Can you believe it?

Whoa, what a week it’s been for U.S. tennis and it ain’t over yet. Pete Sampras and Roger Federer will meet tonight in the mecca of U.S. sports arenas, Madison Square Garden. MSG, by the way, was the site of the ATP and WTA year end championships for many years. Sampras is, of course, retired, and while I’m not exactly sure what he’s doing popping up all over the place in the past few years after a few years of hibernation, I am definitely not one of those people who think Sampras is planning a return to the ATP tour.

That would be sad indeed. Is U.S. tennis in such bad shape? Luckily it’s not. For the past few weeks the poll on our site has asked the following question: Which player will win his first ATP tournament this year? Jo-Wilfried Tsonga got the most votes with 22. Sam Querrey tied for last place with two votes.

Turns out we were all wrong. Querrey is the winner after he took the title in Las Vegas on Sunday. He overcame an early bout of grumpiness to beat South African Kevin Anderson in the Las Vegas final, 4-6, 6-3, 6-4.

If you were wandering around Las Vegas you might have thought it was a basketball tournament not a tennis tournament. Querrey is 6ft6in (198cm), Anderson is 6ft7in (200cm), and John Isner, who went out in the second round, is 6ft9in (205cm). We knew tall tennis was coming when we first saw those 7ft (213cm) three point shooters in the NBA – those huge hulking guys who are allergic to hard contact and prefer to set up far beyond the key instead of under the basket where they might get pushed around. Still, I’m not happy about it. I’d rather watch the smaller, scrappier David Ferrer run all those tall boys silly.

Las Vegas had a women’s challenger running alongside the ATP event and there I saw the future of U.S. women’s tennis. Asia Muhammad got all the way to the final before losing easily to veteran Camille Pin. Muhammad looks like a young Venus Williams. She’s long and gangly and she has a good serve, strong ground strokes, and a killer overhead. She’s got a funky hitch in her serve – she drops her racket before completing her backswing – but there’s lots to work with and she’s in a challenger final at age 16. One thing she has that Venus doesn’t have is a willing net game. She actually works at getting to the net. Hooray.

Muhammad gets financial assistance from Andre Agassi’s foundation and she regularly hits with Steffi Graf and Darren Cahill. You never know who’ll turn into a champion but she won’t fail for lack of support.

Speaking of Venus, I’m really sorry I couldn’t find footage of the match between Venus and her sister Serena in the Bangalore semifinals last week. Did anyone watch it? If so, please report in and we’ll post it. This was the first match they’ve played that went to a third set tiebreaker and it was their first meeting since 2005. Serena won the match, 6-3, 3-6, 7-6(4), and went on to beat Patty Schnyder in the final in straight sets despite a bout of cursing and racket smashing. I like that because Serena is very tough to beat when she’s mad.

Why did Venus and Serena travel to the other side of the world to play in a small tournament the week before Indian Wells? Serena needed matches because she hasn’t played since the Australian Open. And both of them needed a tuneup for Miami because they’ve refused to play Indian Wells since 2001. Venus pulled out of a semifinal match against Serena that year and the crowd booed Serena mercilessly as she beat Kim Clijsters in the final.

Indian Wells will be a required tournament for WTA players next year so the sisters will have to work out an agreement with the WTA since they flatly refuse to ever play Indian Wells again, and they certainly don’t want to pay a sizable fine for skipping a required event. I won’t see the sisters in Indian Wells next year but I will see Justine Henin. She skipped last year and isn’t bothering to turn up this year either.

Dubai was the biggest event of the week – eight out of the top ten ATP players turned up – and a U.S. player won that event too. Andy Roddick surprisingly plowed through Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic before finishing off Feliciano Lopez in the final in his first trip to Dubai. Roddick looks like he’s at the top of his game and his timing couldn’t be better now that Federer is showing some vulnerability.

Three titles, one challenger final and a legend. Things are looking up.