Andy Roddick is flying high this week with a title in Dubai. Let’s see why.

Our reader Gabs has been trashing us forever because we gush over Roger Federer and give home-grown Andy Roddick a hard time. We’re trying to change our ways Gabs, honest we are, but you know, Andy hasn’t give us a whole lot to crow about except for Davis Cup and I, for one, sat there in tears as the boys ran around the arena in Portland celebrating a Davis Cup title.

Now we have something to crow about.

I told you Andy Roddick could beat Rafael Nadal if he played a bit better from the baseline and served a few more aces. Well, it worked. I would have said no such thing about his next opponent – Novak Djokovic – but Andy is on a roll and he rolled all the way into the Dubai final against Feliciano Lopez and the two of them played an inspiring match.

The crowd was crazy the whole evening. The entire female population – and some of the men, hopefully – screamed when Andy changed his shirt late in the second set. Lopez played an inspired tiebreaker to win the first set 8-6 but Andy has his own mojo working this week and he was undeterred. He took the second set 6-4 then broke Lopez to start the third set.

Andy outsteadied Lopez from the baseline and ripped off passing shots like nobody’s business. One of those passing shots gave him his second break in the third set after which the crowd broke out again, this time with chants of “RODDICK RODDICK RODDICK…” Andy had won his second title of the year by the score of 6-7(8), 6-4, 6-2.

To what do we attribute Andy’s resurgence at a tournament usually dominated by the top two or three players? Two things: the coaching bump and temblor theory.

Andy announced this week that he’d split with his coach, Jimmy Connors. Players often get a bump in their performance after separating from a coach. If they fired the coach they want to prove to themselves that they made the right decision. If the coach resigned, they want to show the coach that he gave up too soon.

In this case, it appeared to be a mutual decision. Connors didn’t want to travel as much and Andy couldn’t talk to him about a match that Connors hadn’t seen on TV. What’s the matter Jimmy, you don’t have streaming video :0). I think Connors did give up too soon and that brings up temblor theory.

A temblor is an aftershock to an earthquake. After the big earthquake, the earth rumbles up smaller earthquakes for days after to complete the process of releasing the pressure built up by shifting tectonic plates. It’s not a tremor or a rumble but a combination of the two – a temblor.

Andy Murray’s victory over Roger Federer was an earthquake and Roddick’s and Lopez’ victories are temblors – the sounds of upset and reorganization that come after confirmation of a deep reorganization in the structure, in this case, Roger Federer’s current vulnerability.

Novak Djokovic’s victory over Federer in the Australian Open in January wasn’t the earthquake because Federer had food poisoning preceding the tournament and couldn’t prepare properly, but he was totally prepared for Dubai, now his home tournament, and he still went out in the first round and now every player has some of that little voice in his head that says, “I can do it, I can beat Federer.” Especially Roddick, one of Federer’s most hapless victims. (Sorry Gabs but it’s true.)

There is one problem with my theory. Federer is in New York for his Monday night grand exhibition with Pete Sampras at Madison Square Garden and he started the proceedings off by announcing that he has had mononucleosis for the past few months. Thanks to Pat (Digger) Davis for passing this info on, by the way. She’s becoming a real news aggregator.

This is a little puzzling to me because mononucleosis usually knocks you out for a solid period of time and though Federer says he first saw signs of it in December, he did get to the semifinals in Australia and he did import U.S. junior Michael McClune to Dubai for an intense ten day training session in February which was amply documented by McClune’s coach, Nick Fustar.

Now I’m wondering about that training diary… Maybe I’ve been reading about fictional memoirs too much in the past week. A white woman named Margaret Seltzer passed herself off as a foster child raised in a mixed race family in gang-ridden South Central Los Angeles when, in fact, she was raised on the other side of town in the San Fernando Valley by her birth family and attended a private Episcopalian high school.

I’m kidding about doubting the veracity of Fustar’s diary but I will say this. Mononucleosis is caused by the Epstein-Barre virus. Most of us have viruses floating around in our body – despite what most personal ads say, but those viruses don’t bother us until our immune system gets suppressed. Physical and emotional stress suppresses our immune system and though Federer has certainly played a lot of tennis in the past four years that he’s been ranked number one, he’s played fewer matches than any other top player, so I’m guessing the emotional pressure of being top dog is getting to him.

The cracks are beginning to show and players are ready to rush in and take full advantage of his situation. And that’s why it’s too bad Jimmy Connors didn’t stick around. Roddick may have taken Federer’s best shot but he’s still standing and playing better than ever. And that’s a high, high complement.

Gabs, do you have something to add?

Andy Roddick is flying high this week with a title in Dubai. Let’s see why.

Our reader Gabs has been trashing us forever because we gush over Roger Federer and give home-grown Andy Roddick a hard time. We’re trying to change our ways Gabs, honest we are, but you know, Andy hasn’t give us a whole lot to crow about except for Davis Cup and I, for one, sat there in tears as the boys ran around the arena in Portland celebrating a Davis Cup title.

Now we have something to crow about.

I told you Andy could beat Rafael Nadal if he played a bit better from the baseline and served a few more aces. Well, it worked. I would have said no such thing about his next opponent – Novak Djokovic – but Andy is on a roll and he rolled all the way into the Dubai final against Feliciano Lopez, and the two of them played an inspiring match.

The crowd was crazy the whole evening. The entire female population – and some of the men, hopefully – screamed when Andy changed his shirt late in the second set. Lopez played an inspired tiebreaker to win the first set 8-6 but Andy has his own mojo working this week and he was undeterred. He took the second set 6-4 then broke Lopez to start the third set.

Andy outsteadied Lopez from the baseline and ripped off passing shots like nobody’s business. One of those passing shots gave him his second break in the third set after which the crowd broke out again, this time with chants of “RODDICK RODDICK RODDICK…” Andy won his second title of the year by the score of 6-7(8), 6-4, 6-2.

To what do we attribute Andy’s resurgence at a tournament usually dominated by the top two or three players? Two things: the coaching bump and temblor theory.

Andy announced this week that he’d split with his coach, Jimmy Connors. Players often get a bump in their performance after separating from a coach. If they fired the coach they want to prove to themselves that they made the right decision. If the coach resigned, they want to show the coach that he gave up too soon.

In this case, it appeared to be a mutual decision. Connors didn’t want to travel as much and Andy couldn’t talk to him about a match that Connors hadn’t seen on TV. What’s the matter Jimmy, you don’t have streaming video :0). I think Connors did give up too soon and that brings up temblor theory.

A temblor is an aftershock to an earthquake. After the big earthquake, the earth rumbles up smaller earthquakes for days after to complete the process of releasing the pressure built up by shifting tectonic plates. It’s not a tremor or a rumble but a combination of the two – a temblor.

Andy Murray’s victory over Roger Federer was an earthquake and the victories by Roddick and Lopez are temblors – the sounds of upset and reorganization that come after confirmation of a deep reorganization in the structure, in this case, Federer’s newfound vulnerability.

Novak Djokovic’s victory over Federer in the Australian Open in January wasn’t the earthquake because Federer had food poisoning preceding the tournament and couldn’t prepare properly, but he was totally prepared for Dubai, now his home tournament, and he still went out in the first round and now every player has some of that little voice in his head that says, “I can do it, I can beat Federer.” Especially Roddick, one of Federer’s most hapless victims. (Sorry Gabs but it’s true.)

There is one problem with my theory. Federer is in New York for his Monday night grand exhibition with Pete Sampras at Madison Square Garden and he started the proceedings off by announcing that he has had mononucleosis for the past few months. Thanks to Pat (Digger) Davis for passing this info on, by the way, she’s becoming a real news aggregator.

This is a little puzzling to me because mononucleosis usually knocks you out for a solid period of time and though Federer says he first saw signs of it in December, he did get to the semifinals in Australia and he did import U.S. junior Michael McClune to Dubai for an intense ten day training session in February which was amply documented by McClune’s coach, Nick Fustar, here.

Now I’m wondering about that training diary… Maybe I’ve been reading about fictional memoirs too much in the past week. A white woman named Margaret Seltzer passed herself off as a foster child raised in a mixed race family in gang-ridden South Central Los Angeles when, in fact, she was raised on the other side of town in the San Fernando Valley by her birth family and attended a private Episcopalian high school.

I’m kidding about doubting the veracity of Fustar’s diary but I will say this. Mononucleosis is caused by the Epstein-Barr virus. Most of us have viruses floating around in our body – despite what most personal ads say, but those viruses don’t bother us until our immune system gets suppressed. Physical and emotional stress suppresses our immune system and though Federer has certainly played a lot of tennis in the past four years that he’s been ranked number one, he’s played fewer matches than any other top player, so I’m guessing the emotional pressure of being top dog is getting to him.

The cracks are beginning to show and players are rushing in and taking full advantage of his situation. And that’s why it’s too bad Jimmy Connors didn’t stick around. Roddick may have taken Federer’s best shot but he’s still standing and playing better than ever. And that’s a high, high complement.

Gabs, do you have something to add?

A few more thoughts about Roger Federer’s first round loss to Andy Murray at Dubai and a look at Andy Roddick’s first trip to the very same locale.

I just bought a laptop so I could watch streaming video of tennis matches around the world. After all, it won’t be long before our laptops are our televisions. Already I can buy a gold-brick sized Slingbox to wirelessly funnel my television feed to my laptop whether I’m sitting at home in my pajamas (or less) or sitting on the veranda at the Four Seasons Hotel in Istanbul (anyone been there by the way? If so, please report in.)

After I flipped open the laptop, the first thing I tuned in were camel races in Dubai. Wow, those riders look tiny perched on the back of those camels, you can barely see them. I had a small fright as I wondered whether I was watching the child camel jockeys that were used for centuries before countries recently began to outlaw the practice.

No, it was weirder than that: the camels were controlled by robotic jockeys. Can you believe it? Wow, after centuries of using child slave labor, camel racers have skipped straight to robots in a matter of a few years thereby totally avoiding the tiresome need to pay for human labor. I’ve seldom seen such a huge cultural leap due to technology in such a short time.

The robots were developed by a Swiss company called K-Team. No word on whether they took part in the development of Roger Federer’s Wilson [K]-rackets and, please, no jokes about Fed’s robotic on court personality, o.k.?

Besides, we’ve recently established that Fed is unraveling a bit and I’d like to say a bit more about his loss to Andy Murray in the first round at Dubai earlier this week. My co-writer Pat Davis has become a real digger – a term originally applied to DJs who dig around in old record stores looking for quirky music samples. Pat uncovered this training blog of Fed’s activities.

Fed imported young U.S. player Michael McClune to hit with him in Dubai for ten days in February. McClune’s coach, Nick Fustar, chronicled the training sessions and the record shows that Federer is in fine fettle. He worked his way through intense two and half hour hitting sessions without appreciably raising his heart rate according to Fustar.

If Fed’s not suffering from physical problems, the mental wear of being ranked number one for four consecutive years may be getting to him. In the past, Fed could lift his game to another level when he needed it and now he can’t. He’s riding a one speed balloon tire bicycle instead of the ten speed he used to sport.

Does Fed need a coach? From the heartbroken way he described his breakup with previous coach Tony Roche, the company of a new sidekick might lift him mentally. It looks like he might need a boost to get him through the next phase of his career. At the rate he’s going this year, we could see him grinding out his last few slams which should make him think twice the next time he dismisses someone like Murray by calling him a grinder.

It’s too bad Mats Wilander questioned Fed’s manhood after Fed’s loss to Rafael Nadal in the 2006 French Open final because Wilander looks like he’s positioning himself to be the next uber-coach. Wilander was sitting in the stands during the match between Paul-Henri Mathieu and Andy Roddick in Dubai because he’s coaching Mathieu.

Mathieu is another of those players who was supposed to be the savior of French tennis. It makes me worry about his fellow countryman Jo-Wilfried Tsonga. Jo-Willy smashed his way onto the scene with a transcendent run to the Australian final and there are now huge expectations for him and he hasn’t even won a tournament yet. It also makes me appreciate cranky Murray just that much more. Murray is the only hope in the U.K. – they don’t have a Mathieu, Richard Gasquet, and a Tsonga – and yet Murray’s pulling if off and he’s doing it at 20 years old by throwing off the British tennis association’s plans for him and choosing his own crew. I believe, for instance, that Wilander is under contract to the French tennis association. Does anyone know for sure?

A graphic on the pixellated screen showed that Roddick has about 1.7 sec to get his racket on his opponent’s return of serve when he hits one of his humongous serves. That’s less time than counting out “one elephant two elephant…” This came up in John Isner’s match yesterday in Las Vegas because Isner hit a 148mph (238kph) serve. That kind of speed makes it hard to serve and volley because the ball gets to the opponent so quickly the server doesn’t have time to get to the net.

The big servers are usually the bigger, taller guys and they’re not the best movers so it’s harder for them to pick up a well-struck return. That puts all the more pressure on them to serve big and further limits their game. Of course, you don’t expect your opponent to return a huge serve but the top players can return anything just below the upper limits of servedom and that explains, in a nutshell, Fed’s dominance over Roddick.

On this day, though, our much maligned Mr. Roddick was getting in his quota of big serves and he kept the ball in play long enough for Mathieu to make errors. Roddick played an excellent match and won it in straight sets, 6-3, 6-4. Next up for Roddick is Rafael Nadal. If Roddick can play even better from the baseline and throw in a few more aces, he has a chance to beat Mr. Nadal too.

Today we have a guest column from Sean Bugg. I ran across his buggblog and really enjoyed it. Sean is a freelance writer, car reviewer, book addict, amateur tennis player and part-time caterer. He’s also co-publisher of Metro Weekly, Washington, DC’s gay and lesbian newsmagazine, if that wasn’t enough. His language is a bit more salty than MVN likes so I’ve inserted some **’s where appropriate. Sit back and enjoy.

I’ve had a couple of non-tennis-oriented readers ask me what the big deal was with Andy Roddick’s behavior in his match against Kei Nishikori that I complained about earlier this week. Without some sort of context — either experience seeing Roddick’s a**hole act in operation or knowledge of the spoken and unspoken rules of on-court tennis behavior — the “just stick me with it next time” thing doesn’t translate well, I suppose.

Jon Wertheim at Sport Illustrated takes on the exact subject in response to a reader who notes, rightly: “Bad news for Andy Roddick if he has to resort to blatant intimidation to win a match over an 18-year-old newcomer.” Wertheim, who I think generally maintains a great balance in criticizing players’ stupid behavior while defending them from unrealistic expectations, doesn’t completely agree about the Nishikori incident — “I’m not sure this episode rises to the level of ‘felony trash talk'” — he does go on to flat-out state that Roddick has morphed from a tennis golden boy into an abrasive a**hole.

The dirty secret in men’s tennis is that the guy has been fairly insufferable lately.

This isn’t just from the grumps in the media. This has been noticed by everyone from ATP personnel to former Grand Slam champs to current players. And this diminishing reputation has nothing to do with match results or a stagnating game. It’s all about disposition.

I haven’t hidden my fondness for Roddick over the years. But it’s probably about time he got called on his you-know-what. And heeding Roddick’s advice to Nishikori, we’re going to stick him with it: I cringed as Roddick dressed down Jo-Wilfried Tsonga and winced as he sucked down champagne and blew off the Portland, Ore., kids seeking autographs at the Davis Cup, and bristled at this laughable, Connors-ian me-against-the-world routine.

But he completely lost me in Australia. Roddick’s tirade against the umpire — some poor guy with kids watching at home — was not only low-rent, but also played to every Ugly American stereotype. Roddick played the role of posturing bully frat boy, even when he didn’t have right on his side.

The Tsonga match Wertheim mentions was from the 2007 Australian Open, and marks the point where I pretty much gave up on Roddick. It was an appalling display on Roddick’s part, and it just made it all the sweeter this year when Roddick went out early and Tsonga made the final. And this year’s behavior by Roddick was demonstrably worse, as Wertheim points out.

This is disappointing on two levels. First, as Wertheim labors to explain, Roddick has done a lot of good during his career. He launched a worthwhile foundation, he devotes his time to charity (including annual appearances playing tennis with Elton John for his AIDS foundation), and generally has used his wealth and fame in positive ways that many athletes — hell, most people period — can’t be bothered with.

Second, in the ever-more-distant past he provided an engaging and entertaining face to American men’s tennis. He brought an aw-shucks, corn-fed, Midwestern attitude to a sport that too often gets caught up in its own stuffiness (in the U.S., at least). And in an age when the American presence in tennis has become increasingly less relevant by the day, he was one of the bright lights who could help motivate and bring attention to the game.

Now, however, he’s fully bought into the boorish, combative and self-centered attitude that so often made Jimmy Connors a narcissistic blight on the tennis court. I actually think Roddick’s descent into a miasma of machismo began during his tutelage with Brad Gilbert, but Connors bears responsibility for bringing it into full flower. Many seem to believe that Roddick’s attitude is born from his frustration with being blocked by Federer from winning Grand Slams — problem is, it’s not Federer who’s been stopping him over the past year. From known young stars such as Richard Gasquet to unknowns who flare into greatness for one Slam match, Roddick keeps aiming for the Master but getting his hat handed to him by also-rans (or, in the case of Gasquet, potential future masters). It’s hard not to suspect that those losses, combined with Coach Connors, have totally stoked Roddick’s inner boor.

I’ll admit, I’m a bit of an outlier on this issue at times because I have such disdain for Connors, et al. I don’t believe trash talking, a**hole behavior belongs on the court. Competitiveness, yes. Loud cursing? You fucking bet. I don’t think I could make it through a match without at some point saying, “You stupid son of a bitch.” But I’m always saying that to myself — if I were saying it to my opponent, I would deserve to have my ass kicked from here to sundown.

Perhaps, as Wertheim speculates, Roddick’s current behavior is a phase that he’ll pass through before he turns into the second coming of American tennis’s other reborn hero, Andre Agassi. I truly hope he does. I’ve always thought Roddick took too many hits for his “unimaginative” game — accomplishing what he has so far proves he has something special in both his strokes and his head. Too bad he’s chosen to obscure that by becoming a petty, brutish oaf.

Dubai is raging and everyone is wondering what’s happening with Federer and we’ll get back to that, but I wanted to post this guest commentary on my column about Monica Seles. Michael Klarner, who lives in Germany, is our writer and he has a background in history as well as an appreciation for tennis history. I think you’ll enjoy his comments. You can also see his unique video diary here.

My thoughts broke out of me because one finds all these speculations about the rivalry of Graf and Seles so often… What would have been if….

It’s nice to speculate but it’s amazing that these people very often think so statistically. They kind of freeze the three years when Seles dominated and project these circumstances towards an imagined future. This way, Seles becomes a pure ideal projection. But in my experience that’s not how real life goes.

I am really passionate about tennis as a sport. I also started my passion with being a fan of some specific players. Then my perspective shifted towards tennis in a historical perspective… towards a longer perspective – besides the passion for the current moment. My interest shifted also towards all these great players we never saw playing (such as Suzanne Lenglen, Helen Wills Moody and many others) who were also considered as being the greatest ever (in their period).

I am a historian by profession and a historian learns that we have to understand specific phenomena of a specific period by the framing conditions. It’s difficult to compare and to speculate because there are always so many additional factors.

In the case of the Seles-adoration, very often all the other factors are excluded – even if these factors are so obvious! For example, Seles had some great periods in her second career but she was injured almost permanently. I remember that some tennis experts predicted very early that Seles’ double handed game could result in a lot of injuries and physical burn out. Why? They argued that the double-double handed player always had to go one additional step on both sides of the court. This worked well with Graf because Graf could not make the game fast on her backhand side. But it was a disadvantage with other players playing the same style but one handed.

In my opinion, this was also one of the reasons why Seles did not play that successfully on the young hard hitters. These players were strong on both sides and they had to go one step less in order to cover the court.
People are so quick in stating this or that player would have been the best ever. They see them playing a specific moment and they are passionate about what these players brought to the game. I was always asking myself: How can they do this if they never saw the great champions of the past? Most of them even don’t even know their names. So I asked myself: how can someone compare players of distinct periods by only counting what they won, by comparing only statistics?

If one reads the reports about the time when Suzanne Lenglen and Helen Wills Moody met, one will discover one of the greatest rivalries in sports history!

Moreover, I don’t like the fact that people forget so easily how dominant Graf had been from 1988-1991. Nina writes in her column that Seles dominated as Federer did today. But Graf did even more so! I remember when Graf came up, she broke into the circuit like an orca. The other players were afraid of Graf’s forehand and journalists counted her dominance by the minutes she needed to win a match. In 1988 and 1989, Graf lost only three and two matches all year. Not to mention, she won a Golden Slam – and lost only two sets in 4 Majors.

Not only Seles but also Graf revolutionized the game. If one has a look at the Wimbledon matches between Navratilova and Graf in 1988 (look on youtube), one will see a quality which we don’t see even today. At this time, Graf hit an amazing topspin backhand – because she had to! She went to the net – because she had to!

In the longer perspective, we find the real interesting and dramatic things: how rivalries change the players and their way of playing. How great champions are challenged and forced to adapt. The best example is the competition between Evert and Navratilova. Both say that this rivalry forced them to reach new levels of their game.

I personally think that this is the saddest part of the Seles-Graf story. As Pam Shriver put it: the public lost the rivalry of a period. And neither player was forced to improve and to reach the best that they would have been able to give to the game.

I believe that the all-time-greatest players (Seles is one of them) would have been able to succeed in all periods and under all possible conditions because they had the talent and the willpower to adapt their game to each possible challenge.