Author Archives: nrota

Celebrity Tennis: Gambling, Blow, and Poison

Join us for the WTA Championships final! We’ll be blogging live this Sunday, November 11th, 2:00pm Los Angeles/5pm New York.

Gambling, cocaine and poison provide more than enough content for a celebrity tennis show.

If Jim Rome is talking about tennis, then tennis is definitely cool again. Rome is the spoken word king of daily sports radio in the U.S. and he talks about tennis about as often as he talks about the ballet.

Why was he talking about tennis? How about this: Tommy Haas believes he may have been poisoned during Germany’s Davis Cup semifinal against Russia in Moscow earlier this year. German Davis Cup player Alexander Waske reported that a Russian man casually told him that Haas had been poisoned.

Haas became sick after losing his first match in the event and had to withdraw. He plans to get medical tests to see if there is any evidence of poison in his system: “I want to find out if any poison can be traced or confirmed,” he said. The International Tennis Federations (ITF) – which runs Davis Cup, is investigating the charge.

There’s a reason that Deadspin.com gets a gazillion hits every day. If you want to know everything about O.J. Simpson’s latest legal problem or read Big Daddy Drew’s Thursday Afternoon NFL Dick Joke Jamboroo, that’s the place to go. Controversy sells. Sex sells.

The top online celebrity site, TMZ.com, is so popular that it now has its own television show. If breaking news means cutting to Britney Spears making an illegal left turn from Coldwater Canyon onto Mulholland Drive – an actual feature on TMZ this week, be sure to tune in.

Celebrity, controversy, and sex are now making they’re way to the tiny screen – your cellphone. CBS’s mobile entertainment division introduced a show focusing on fashion and gadgets but they scrapped that idea when they noticed that viewer numbers went up when celebrities were on screen. They now have a twice daily show focusing on celebrity gossip.

Don’t think tennis isn’t affected by the world of cellphone entertainment. I can now watch Wimbledon on my tiny screen. All I have to do is hook up a Slingbox, record Wimbledon on my DVR, and the Slingbox will beam Andy Roddick to my cellphone screen. It doesn’t matter if I’m lying in my backyard or cruising the back roads of Baja.

If original tennis programming makes it to cellphones, it’ll probably focus on players such as Martina Hingis who recently retired after testing positive for cocaine – known on the street as “blow” – and retired. Check out this hilarious cartoon. It shows Martina snorting the sideline of a tennis court.

Dour, camera shy Nikolay Davydenko would be a regular on our Celebrity Tennis show. Suspicious betting patterns on Davydenko’s match with Martin Vassallo-Arguello in August of this year kicked off the current controversy over gambling on the professional tennis tour.

This week’s Davydenko episode would focus on the ATP’s demand that Davydenko turn over records for all of the phones he owns or uses. Davydenko’s lawyers have refused to comply.

The next episode would feature an interview with Davydenko’s lawyer, Professor Frank Immenga, who blasted the ATP this week for conducting a witch hunt against Davydenko by fining him $2,000 for “not trying” in one match and warning him about the same infraction in another. I have to agree with the professor on this one. The betting pattern in the August match clearly showed the fingerprint of a fixed match, but if the ATP can’t prove that the match was fixed and Davydenko was involved, don’t hound the guy to death.

Since Andy Roddick actually is a celebrity, he’d turn up on Celebrity Tennis because he complained in his blog this week that he was fined $20,000 for skipping Paris while Davydenko was only fined $2,000 for not trying. Roddick said he was recovering from a “tweaked” ankle and wanted to be sure he was prepared for next week’s year end championships in Shanghai. As you can see, Roddick didn’t accuse Davydenko of not trying but he did have a problem with the ATP:

…in essence they [the ATP] are setting the precedent that preparing and getting healthy for their year end event is worth a 20 grand fine, but tanking (again I have no opinion on guilt or innocence here) only warrants 2 grand….

Alessio di Mauro would be the star in today’s episode of Celebrity Tennis. The Italian tennis pro was suspended from the tour for nine months and fined $60,000 by the ATP for betting on tennis matches from November 2006 to June of this year. Di Mauro never bet on his own matches and reportedly his bets were small.

Wow, maybe I should produce Celebrity Tennis. I’ve already got a week of programming in the can.

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WTA Championships: Can Anyone Here Play The Game?

Join us for the WTA Championships final! We’ll be blogging live this Sunday, November 11th, 2:00pm Los Angeles/5pm New York.

Performance enhancing drugs, match fixing, and now poisoning (I’ll get to those in my next post). There’s too much going on in tennis so I’m a day late in catching up with the WTA Championships. I hope to get back on track tomorrow. Meanwhile, let’s look at the second evening of round robin matches.

I was looking forward to some good tennis as I settled in to watch the evening’s fare at the WTA Championships in Madrid. The top eight women in the world are here – minus Venus Williams – so it seemed like a safe bet.

It wasn’t. I don’t know if it’s the altitude or just plain nervousness but I had to wait until the very end of the last match before anything exciting happened.

Justine Henin started the evening off by swatting Jelena Jankovic, 6-2, 6-2. Jelena was completely out of rhythm. Here forehand went long, her backhand went into the net, and her return of serve was all over the place. Except for the serve and volley – which weren’t working so well either – that’s pretty much all there is to the game of tennis.

Jelena is 0-8 against Henin. Part of the problem is psychological and that’s fixable. Part of the problem is firepower and that may not be fixable. Jelena is a wonderful defensive player and a very smart strategist but she doesn’t have any big weapons short of her quicksilver feet. It worked for Lleyton Hewitt round about the turn of the millennium but it doesn’t work today.

Here’s an example. Jelena lost the first set 6-2 and was down 0-1 in the second set when Henin served her way through an interminable nine deuce game. Out of those nine deuces, Jankovic had only three break points. Jelena can hang with Henin but she can’t apply enough pressure to beat her.

After the match, Henin understandably said “I was feeling tired on my serve” in the game and yet Jelena still couldn’t take advantage of it.

Jankovic is the number three player in the world. Her fellow Serbian Ana Ivanovic is right behind her at number four, and Ana has two big weapons: serve and forehand. Jelena should stay around the top ten for some time if she wants to, but I can’t see her getting to number one. Given her quirky self, that might be enough reason for her to ride off into the sunset sooner than another player might because she has a life outside of tennis.

Serena Williams is actually in Shanghai and I was really excited about that. I figured she’d dust off Ana Chakvetadze in her first match and then I hoped she’d exact revenge on Henin for beating her at the French Open, Wimbledon, and the U.S. Open this year. No doubt Serena is pissed off by that.

Serena has eight slams, one WTA Championship and an Olympic gold medal in doubles. Henin has seven slams, one WTA Championship, and an Olympic gold medal in singles. I’m sure Serena does not care to fall behind in that race. Watch this youtube video to gauge Serena’s true feelings about the matter.

When Serena’s match with Chakvetadze started, she looked pretty bad too. First of all Serena came out with athletic tape that wandered down her thighs then circled both knees. She looked like she had on a skeleton suit and was on her way to the nearest Halloween party. What was all that tape for? “Prevention,” she said, “just prevention.”

Yeah right. Serena had trouble getting her serve into the court and she was spraying the ball. She asked for new rackets because the tension wasn’t right. To be fair, Madrid is at altitude and the ball carries further in thinner air.

By the time Serena was down 3-5 in the first set, she looked like she was going to cry. The trainer came out and Serena told her, “I can’t move. I’m really in a lot of pain.” The pain was in her left knee. Her surgically repaired left knee.

The professional tennis injury charade continues. Two and a half weeks ago Serena retired from her first round match with Patty Schyder in Zurich. Schnyder was ahead at the time, 6-0, 3-0. Players never divulge the extent or nature of their injuries until they can’t hide it anymore.

Clearly Serena wanted to play in Shanghai but the tape job gave the game away. No doubt the double leg tape job was designed to confuse the issue. She gets so much crap for not playing enough tournaments that it’s hard to give her crap about trying to play. But now that she’s withdrawn, her substitute, Marion Bartoli, is in a very tough position because she only gets to play Serena’s two remaining matches and that’ll make it very difficult for her to advance to the semifinals.

And I’m bummed because now I have to wait until the Australian Open to see Serena go at Henin. Actually, I think I should stop looking forward to anything and just prepare myself for a Serenaless Australian.

I was lying when I said I had to wait until the end of the third match to see some tennis. Daniela Hantuchova pulled herself together after losing the first set to Ana Ivanovic, 6-2, and played an excellent second set. It was the second set tiebreaker, though, that redeemed the evening.

Hantuchova twice challenged calls and got both points replayed. Ivanovic hit a killer serve to get her first set point at 6-5 then Hantuchova fought off an excellent return of serve to save the set point. Ivanovic hit a superb running passing shot that clanked off Hantuchova’s racket to get to 8-7 and it went on like this.

Ivanovic kept getting set points and Hantuchova kept saving them then getting her own set point. Every single time. In fact, when Hantuchova finally hit an approach shot into the net to lose the tiebreaker 11-9, it was the first time in the entire tiebreaker that the server lost a point.

How often do you see that happen?

Someone here really can play this game.

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Paris Masters Live Blog Broadcast

Good morning everyone. Welcome to the Paris Masters final on this beautiful Sunday morning (or afternoon as it may be). This tournament usually features the second tier of players but now that the ATP is “encouraging” the top players to turn up by promising $1.5 million dollars if they win the most Masters Series points AND play both Madrid and Paris, we have a fantastic title game: David Nalbandian and Rafael Nadal.

Nalbandian has improbably risen from the ashes by winning in Madrid – and beating Rafa along the way and Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic – after reaching only one quarterfinal this year.

What are the issues here? Can Nadal and his knees hold up for an entire tournament? Can Nalbandian hit the ball hard and fast enough to take time away from Nadal and WHO is that woman in the spacy silver outfit who looks like she was imported from Las Vegas?

Nina: First off, a quick poll. Who’ll win this match: Nalbandian or Rafa? I’ll fall behind my co-writer Pat Davis (who is here today) in the ATP fantasy tennis game if Nalbandian wins so, of course, I’m all in for Rafa.

Pat: Good morning everyone, are we living yet? God, the things I do for Nalbandian! I did not see that girl in the silver outfit, Nina, but she probably WAS imported from Vegas. The French would love to think they can compete on the Las Vegas front, no?

Nina: Didn’t Paris start it all with the Folies Bergere? Whoa, I knew Andy Roddick was thinking of opting out of Shanghai but it never occurred to me that Nalbandian could end up in Shanghai if Roddick did opt out. Bad news for Federer and his number one ranking.

Nadal 2-1

Nina: Routine holds of serve so far. Rafa seems to be dialed in on his forehand and Nalbadian is serving well. Two things that both players had trouble with in their matches yesterday.

Nadal 3-2

Curious to me that Nalbandian appears to be attacking Rafa’s backhand. Most players attack his forehand because it takes him so long to wind up that extreme topspin forehand stroke.

Nadal 4-3

Pat: Apparently Nalbandian is the first alternate??? So if Roddick decides to pull out of Shanghai, David is in, I presume. That would be something, because if anyone deserves to be in that field, it’s him. Nalbandian earlier had an easy ball at the net and I thought for sure he would go inside out up the line with his forehand, but instead he knocked it to Nadal’s backhand and he was there and ended up winning the point. He is serving well, I like his chances so far.

Nina: Nalbandian is the first alternate if he wins today. How can someone deserve to be in Shanghai if they had only one quarterfinal going into the last three weeks of the year? To me that is not a good thing.

Pat: Nalbandian has beaten much of the field already for Shanghai, he is hot right now and playing good tennis so I’d like to see more of him. I think he could emerge there as the best player of them all, and that would be utterly fantastic. Frankly Roddick may have earned a place based on earlier play in the year, but lately he has come a cropper and I don’t expect him to have much of a good time in Shanghai. But Nalbandian will have to win today apparently.

Nalbandian 5-4 (broke Nadal’s serve)

Nina: Oooh, Rafa was luck Nalby put the ball into the net at 30-30. Nalby is able to get Rafa on the run pretty regularly now and that’ll be the main determinant in this match. Rafa was losing badly to Baghdatis yesterday until he started playing more aggressively but it’s not clear that Nalby will let him play more aggressively. Especially if Rafa hits second serves. And that’s precisely what happened, Nalby winner off a second serve and he gets the first break in the match.

Nina: Wow, Nalbandian got a second serve gift and he certainly made the most of that return! Lovely backhand up the line, he and Murray did lots of that this week off the service return. Now, can David close the deal?

Nalbandian 6-4

Nina: He did indeed close the deal and that sharp angled slice volley duel at the net was fantastic. Nalby is doing exactly what he should be doing: attacking second serves and hitting hard flat shots to the corners. I cannot believe that this guy – who is terrible in important matches and is known to have problems closing out sets – doesn’t seem to be having problems with either of those issues. Whats the explanation for that? Can’t just be a new coach, can it?

Nina: Roddick only played in one fall tournament. His game is well-tailored to playing on indoor hard courts and it seems that he is “saving” himself for Davis Cup. Have you ever heard of anyone skipping the year end championship to play Davis Cup by the way?

Nablandian 1-0 (broke Nadal’s serve)

Nina: Whoa, I looked away for a moment and it was 0-30 on Nadal’s serve. I thought Rafa might have been alright with the slower court but apparently not. Of course, Nalby is playing perfectly. How many unforced errors does he have? Can’t be many.

Nina: By the way, readers, feel free to leave comments and we’ll put you right into the discussion.

Nalbandian 3-0 (broke Nadal’s serve)

Pat: So Nadal was up 40-0 serving, and Nalbandian fought his way back to break! That’s the knife in the heart, that one, 3-0 now. Nalbandian is just feasting on those second serve returns. I notice he is playing nearly on the baseline, Nadal is getting backed behind it.

Pat: I read that Roddick was “saving” himself for Davis Cup, I guess Pat McEnroe should be thrilled, no? If that is what he really wants, then I say he should stub his toe in Shanghai and let Nalbandian into the field. Let him have Davis Cup and Nalbandian can go to Shanghai. Fair enough?

Nalbandian 4-0

Nina: Two breaks in a row for Nalbandian. He’s just dominating. He’s doing what everyone else does to Nadal indoors but he’s just doing that much better. I did say at the beginning of the day that I wasn’t sure Rafa can last through to the end of hard court tournaments. His body seems to break down. Particularly as Rafa has an excellent record in finals historically but is now having trouble in the later stages of hard court tournaments.

Nalbandian 5-0 (broke Nadal)

Nina: Okay, now this is ridiculous. Nalby is looking like Rafa. He retrieved an impossible shot and hit a winner off it.

Pat: Hhmmm, do you smell bagels baking somewhere? I smell bagels in the works. Utterly awesome play from Nalbandian. Roger is watching somewhere and thinking, “I don’t feel so bad now.” The serving (or lack thereof in Nadal’s case) has been the story of the match. And some absolutely wild and crazy angled shots.

Nalbandian wins the match, 6-4, 6-0

Nina: A bagel in the second set. Are you kidding me? I have to go back to my point, Rafa cannot seem to play out in hard court events. What say you Pat? Nalbandian played exceptionally well but Rafa couldn’t get his first serve in and he couldn’t get his forehand deep. Nalby, my god, here’s a guy who’d never had a Masters Series win (except for his Masters Cup win over Federer in 2005) and only had five career titles and now he has two Masters Titles in three weeks? This is absolutely awful of me to say and you can all pile on me but I have to say that I didn’t think to myself – performance enhancing drugs. Awful I know but I’ll forget about that for now and enjoy this fantastic dance performance by these very cool women and men. Why don’t they do that for every title ceremony?

Pat: Nina, we kid you not! I looked at Nadal carefully to see if he showed any signs of knee/leg problems but he seems to be moving ok. Nalbandian just rose mightily to the occasion today. It is somewhat puzzling to me that Nadal does not play better on the hard stuff, although I still find these courts not really very “hard” in the sense of that word. He plays so well on grass that I guess I expect that to translate to other fast surfaces but it doesn’t.

Pat: Do you think this loss was as thorough as Nadal’s to Nalbandian last month?

Nina: Well, if you look at Nadal’s record on hard court this year, he had trouble in Montreal and Cincinnati and left after the fourth round at the U.S. Open clearly having trouble getting around. Quarterfinals at Madrid – I don’t know if that was a worse match than this, the second set today was a dominating turn by Nalby. I’m not sure how well Rafa will be able to do on hard court the rest of his career.

Pat: Performance-enhancing drugs?? Nina, shame on you! (lol) I think we can probably safely say, without fear of contradiction, that Nalby is probably being tested RIGHT NOW as he walks off the court. Still the question would come up, given his amazing run.

Pat: So I take it you really like his chances already at the Australian Open in January? I do too. And somehow I think David will find a way into that draw in Shanghai. I am praying to my tennis gods!

Pat: Nadal’s stats were something like only 18% of points won on second serves? Positively anemic by anyone’s standards and certainly by his. And only 5 winners I think. I’ll go back and compare today’s stats with three weeks ago but this may be the worst of the two drubbings Nalbandian served up.

Nina: The announcers suggested that Nikolay Davydenko might drop out with his elbow problems but I have a hard time seeing Davydenko drop out of anything. I also cannot see the ATP letting Roddick “drop out” of Shanghai. Anyway, whatever happens, it’s been a fascinating tennis season so far and now we have what everyone has been clamoring for since Federer took over the game: a tossup in Shanghai and a real possibility that the Australian Open will be competitive for a change.

Thanks Pat, see you at the Shanghai final (what ungodly hour will that be?).

Some Thoughts on Baggy and Rafa

Join us for the Paris Masters final! We’ll be blogging live this Sunday, November 4th, 7:30am Los Angeles/10:30am New York/3:30pm London (remember to set your clock back one hour Saturday night if you live in the U.S.).

You can beat Rafael Nadal on fast courts but it’s not easy as Marcos Baghdatis found out in Paris today.

Rafael Nadal beat Marcos Baghdatis today in the semifinals at the Paris Masters, 6-4, 4-6, 6-3. (David Nalbandian continued his improbable indoor court success by beating Richard Gasquet, 6-2, 6-4, in the other semifinal).

In preparation for tomorrow morning’s live blogging broadcast of the Paris final – a format that is usually a chain of thoughts rather than a cohesive narrative – I’m going to lay out a chain of thoughts on today’s match between Rafa and Baggy.

How to Beat Rafa on Fast Courts

Mikhail Youzhny and Tomas Berdych can tell you exactly how to beat Rafa on a fast court: attack his forehand. People attack Rafa’s forehand because he has such a long wind up that it’s hard for him to prepare properly. On a clay court he patrols miles behind the baseline which gives him time to rev up his windmill topspin forehand. On fast courts, players like Youzhny and Berdych hit hard flat shots so the ball gets there too fast for Rafa to stay behind the baseline.

Having said that, it’s not easy to beat Rafa on a fast court.

Paris is Slow

If you look at the court speed rankings on tennisform.com, you’ll see that Paris is the fourth fastest court on tour, ten places in front of Madrid, averaged over the past ten years.

If you look at the court speed ranking for Paris on tennisinsight.com’s Tournaments page, you’ll see that Paris has slowed down over the past few years to the point where it is now slower than the court in Madrid.

Clearly the ATP has slowed the court down. I don’t know if the balls are different (the measurements above are based on the number of games played per set, not a physical measurement of the court) or they have physically slowed down the court. No doubt both. In either case, that makes it harder to beat Rafa.

Don’t underestimate the importance of speed. Rafa is 14-6 on indoor hard court for his career but only 8-8 on carpet which is usually faster. Baghdatis is the opposite: 6-6 on indoor hard court and 16-4 on carpet.

Rafa Never Wears Out

Even if you’re much better conditioned than Baggy, and most players are, you’ll get tired because Rafa runs everything down and he’s a master baseline player so he’ll run you all over the court.

This is a problem because you have to attack Rafa else he’ll control the point. That means you’ll make lots of errors going for big shots and the more tired you get, the more errors you’ll make.

Baggy got tired. He needed to win this match in two sets. At the end of the first set and beginning of the second, Baggy won eight out of nine games. He was sucking air by the fifth game in the second set and Rafe won six of the next seven games.

Baggy got a second wind at the end of the third set and the last game of the match was magnificent. Baggy had to have the break of serve to stay in the match and he was slamming the ball while Rafa was retrieving everything in sight. Baggy hit a beautiful touch volley but Rafa followed that up with a passing shot thread through the smallest of windows.

Rafa’s OCDness

Rafa has more than a touch of something known as an obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). He has to be the last one on the court for the coin toss, he has to place his water and sports drink bottles in exactly the same place. There’s also the wedgie diving, the sock pull, and the frequent towel dry off. At one point he was sitting in his chair and inspecting his towel to make sure he didn’t lay it across his knees in the wrong configuration. Later in the game I saw him do it again.

It’s obsessive but it’s a deep part of his game and it helps him weather adversity such as Baggy’s win streak without losing psychological momentum. Lanny Bassham is a well-known expert on the mental aspects of sports. He’s an Olympic gold medalist in rifle shooting and he helps professional golfers, among other athletes. He strongly suggests that you bathe yourself in rituals like Rafa’s because it’s important to occupy the mind.

Have you ever sat down and meditated on a candle or followed your breath? Your mind will take off in a million different directions by the time you bring it back to the candle or your breath. An unoccupied mind in the middle of a tennis match will go down the road of doom given the opportunity. Your opponent wins three or four games in a row? Your mind thinks you’re the worst tennis player even to walk the earth.

I suppose there are people whose mind always moves towards the positive but I have yet to meet them. For the rest of us, if we can keep our mind occupied with ritual and rehearsal – visualizing your serve or your next return for instance – we can keep our mind from harping on our insecurities and move forward in the match.

Baggy Postscript

If Baggy hadn’t gone awol for a month earlier this year – he lost in the first round in Dubai and two consecutive Masters Series events, Indian Wells and Miami – it would have been an excellent year for him. He might well have been on his way to Shanghai instead of Gasquet.

He’s been ranked as high as number eight but he’s seems unable to stay there. I won’t promise that he’ll get to Shanghai next year but I do think he’ll end up in the top ten.

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Federer Is Ordinary and Davydenko Is Crumbling

Join us for the Paris Masters final! We’ll be blogging live this Sunday, November 4th, 7:30am Los Angeles/10:30am New York/3:30pm London (remember to set your clock back one hour Saturday night if you live in the U.S.).

Will Roger Federer win the Australian Open and will Nikolay Davydenko ever get the ball into the service box?

Federer Looks Ordinary

I took a closer look at David Nalbandian’s win over Roger Federer in this week’s Paris Masters Series event. Nalbandian beat Federer yesterday to get to the quarterfinals.

Federer had lost the first set and had just been broken to go down 4-5 in the second when it hit me: Federer will not win the Australian Open next year.

A prediction on my part for sure and Federer actually broke Nalbandian in the next game to even the second set at 5-5. But Federer looked very ordinary. He couldn’t take control of the points consistently while Nalbandian was able to move Federer wide then hit winners to the open court again and again.

Nalbandian won the match in straight sets, 6-4, 7-6(3), and it was a rather routine win.

I don’t know what Nalbandian’s excuse is for playing so well considering that he hadn’t reached a semifinal in almost a year before he won Madrid two weeks ago. Evidently he was having some physical problems and couldn’t train properly.

I do know what Federer’s excuse is. This is his third tournament in a row and he doesn’t like doing that. He played Paris because Rafael Nadal is breathing down his neck. Nadal is into the semifinals in Paris and if Federer doesn’t do well in the year end championships in Shanghai, Nadal could be in position to take over the number one ranking early next year.

The surface at Shanghai is superfast so it’s unlikely that Nadal will do well there, but then it was unlikely he’d reach the semifinals in Paris. Luckily for Federer, Nalbandian will not be in Shanghai.

Who’ll beat Federer in Australia? At this point, Nalbandian and Novak Djokovic are the best candidates. Nalbandian just beat him twice in a row and Djokovic beat him in the final at the Montreal Masters which is an outdoor hard court event. Nadal reached the quarterfinals at this year’s Australian Open but his knees probably won’t hold up through a two week long hard court slam.

What do you think? Does Federer win the Australian? If not, who’ll beat him?

Davydenko Is Crumbling

The Nikolay Davydenko situation is getting ridiculous. Chair umpire Cedric Mourier warned him about his lack of effort while he was in the process of hitting ten double faults in his loss to Marcos Baghdatis in Paris yesterday. The ATP seems to be punishing Davydenko for his part in a suspicious match he played against Martin Vassallo-Arguello in August. There were irregular betting patterns on the match that made it look like the match was fixed. The ATP is still investigating the matter.

How else can you explain it but punishement? Last week the ATP fined Davydenko $2000 for lack of effort during a similar run of double faults. I understand how betting patterns can lead you to think that a match was fixed, but what’s the evidence here?

It looks to me like Davydenko is getting Guillermo Coria’s disease. He can’t get the ball into the service box. In Coria’s case the problem was a lack of confidence. I think Davydenko has finally succumbed to the pressure of constant scrutiny about the alleged fixed match. He gets asked about it at every tournament he attends and he’s not a guy who’s good with the media. He’s not smooth or well-spoken, he’s cranky if anything.

It would be surprising if it didn’t finally get to him. That’s immense pressure to face week after week. It’s not that I’m necessarily sympathetic. That match looked for all the world like a fixed match and until someone shows me an alternative explanation, I’ll be very suspicious.

But give the guy some resolution one of these days. That match was in August and he’s still twisting in the wind.

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