“Always a Girl”

U.S. Open Player Party Presented by Heineken - Arrivals

Heard at the lunch table outside the media/player’s restaurant today – a new term: Nadal years. If a dog ages seven years for every human year, then Nadal ages two years for every year of an average professional tennis player’s career due to his hard style of play.

Bob Larson of TennisNews.com joked about taking credit for the term but it actually came from Lornie Kuhle who was sitting next to him. If that name sounds familiar it’s because he was Jimmy Connors longtime friend and practice partner.

Nicole Vaidisova retired from the WTA tour yesterday at the age of 20. Yes, 20, and the retirement is not due to injury. Vaidisova joined the tour in 2003 when she was 13 years old so with a career length of seven years she’s operating in Nadal years too but for a different reason: the pressure that comes with the current tennis star making machinery.

There are lots of things we could point to – sixth youngest title winner and 12th youngest player to reach top ten – but let’s look, instead, at Kim Clijsters response to the retirement announcement. After Clijsters lost to Alisa Kleybanova on Monday, a journalist suggested to Clijsters that Vaidisova never seemed to have fun playing. Here’s Clijster’s response:

I think with her we never really had that feeling that she was out there for the fun of it. I think she felt a lot of pressure as well.

Clijster couldn’t say whether the pressure came from her entourage or from Vaidisova herself in the form of expecting perfection. Either one would be enough make you want to run away and get married which is exactly what Vaidisova is doing. She’ll marry Radek Stepanek later this year.

Vaidisova also had the requisite parental coaching figure in her stepfather and his comment on the retirement was rather interesting:

Her agent told me last week. She’s fed up with tennis and that’s understandable. She started very young.

If it’s that understandable shouldn’t we develop young players more slowly? Granted, it’s expensive to send a kid to a tennis academy, but if a player doesn’t look like she’s having fun when she’s younger, when will she have fun? Clijsters also said something else about Vaidisova:

You know, she was always a girl, especially in matches, was very down and showed a lot of emotions.

Forgetting the gender stereotyping, especially from one of our own, that tells me that Vadisova’s tennis matured long before she did and when there’s that much of a lag between the two, early success means later distress.

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Baggy is Back, Almost

BNP Paribas Open

I’m not sure whether I’m more surprised that Roger Federer lost or Marcos Baghdatis won last night here at Indian Wells. Wait, I am sure. It’s the latter.

Baggy walked on the court to face Roger last night after a long and bumpy road that tumbled him out of the top 100 at one point. Every time he stepped onto the court it seemed like something else broke – a knee or his back or, after he won Sydney earlier this year, his shoulder in the form of tendinitis.

Is Baggy injury prone or is he having trouble figuring out that hitting the top ten in a sport with an 11-month season requires prodigious practice habits? Baggy reminds me of Allen Iverson, the recently retired American basketball player who was as famous for the passion and heart he showed during games as he was for his disdain for practice. Iverson will be forever remembered for a two minute rant in which he spits out the word “practice” 19 ½ times. As if 19 weren’t enough.

Baggy is all heart on the court too. When Roger started overhitting towards the end of the second set – Roger looked like he was rushing so he could get on to something that counts, a slam maybe? – Baggy not only took advantage of the errors but he valiantly fought off a number of tough shots off the baseline. And, except for a bad game early in the fourth set, his serve was consistently good.

Baggy also fought off 6 of 8 break points but we expect that because that’s what performers do – they rise to the occasion. It’s the boring stuff they have problems with such as focus. When someone asked Baggy if growing up had something to do with his win over Roger he said:

Experience. Experience. Experience…. I think I needed some time to understand those things, and I hope I continue this way.

Intoning the benefits of experience is a whole lot better than complaining about practice but I would recommend that Baggy make friends with Andy Murray and join him for his offseason sprints in muggy hot insufferable Miami. Murray has had his share of injuries too and he still gets exhausted as shown by his recent one month break after the Australian Open, but Murray consistently works at his conditioning and so far it’s pushed him to two slam finals, one more than Baggy.

And Baggy clearly has more work to do. Today he went down to Tommy Robredo in three sets after bageling Robredo in the middle set.

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Depression and Dubai

trophy for Djokovic

[correction appended]

Depression

I’ve had a weird weekend. It’s been all about depression. Not my own but our current understanding of it.

First there was the review of a book which concludes that we are not, contrary to popular opinion, overmedicating our children with Ritalin, Prozac, etc. And this is despite the fact that the author went into the book convinced otherwise.

Then an article by Louis Menand in The New Yorker about the medicalization of depression. Studies show no discernible difference in recovery between people who take antidepressants versus those that get therapy but, Menand asks, would you really want to take a pill to avoid mourning the loss of a loved one? No, I would not.

And now, an article in the New York Times suggesting that treating depression with antidepressants can take away a valuable opportunity to solve difficult problems in our lives. Reminds me of my friends who skip the depression of ending a relationship by immediately jumping into another one thus keeping themselves in an endless pattern of bad relationships because they learn absolutely nothing from their past mistakes. Honestly, the only thing keeping me from doing the same thing is my difficulty in finding dates.

According to the last article, a helpful treatment for mild depression is writing a personal essay about your feelings. I’m depressed about Dubai. I’m going to write about it.

Dubai

Roger Federer didn’t show up in Dubai, neither did Rafael Nadal, and though Andy Murray did, he used it as a practice session for the slams and went out in the second round.

Juan Martin Del Potro has a wrist injury as does Nikolay Davydenko. Novak Djokovic isn’t sure he wants to be number one. He pulled out the title over Mikhail Youzhny today in three sets but he has a ton of points to defend in the coming months and doesn’t look up to the task.

Most depressing of all: Dubai was presented with the award for the 2009 ATP World Tour 500 Tournament of the Year.

Let me think about this for a minute. Dubai refused entry to Andy Ram and Jonathan Erlich in 2008 though we don’t know why because neither the players, nor their management, nor the tournament, nor the ATP would talk about it. Dubai refused entry to Shahar Peer in 2009 because, the tournament organizers said, they couldn’t guarantee Peer’s safety.

One week later Andy Ram was given a visa to play in the men’s event and thus Dubai is crowned tournament of the year.

Dubai takes care of its players. It’s a rich tournament that plays hefty appearance fees and it has great attendance, but what was the ATP thinking? The ATP and WTA may have played their diplomatic cards correctly by allowing the men and women’s events in Dubai to continue in 2008 and 2009 after players were denied entry. Clearly they were successful because Ram got his visa and Peer played in this year’s event.

But the timing of this award makes it look like the ATP is rewarding Dubai for something it should have done long ago. And it’s not like Dubai doesn’t feel loved. This is its sixth Tournament of the Year award and 14th ATP award. I can’t imagine the players are happy about this and there are three player representatives on the ATP Board of Directors. Were they consulted?
[correction: Scratch that. The players vote on their favorite tournament and this is the one they choose. Now I can be mad at the players too. What were they thinking?]

The sports world can’t help but find itself smack dab in the middle of the world’s political conflicts. Last year alone the Davis Cup match between Israel and Sweden had to be played to an empty stadium due to widespread protests in Sweden, and Australia refused to play in India after terrorists attacked Mumbai in late 2008.

This is a tough thing for the tennis world to negotiate and there are no easy answers. But the Tournament of the Year award should have been easy. The ATP should have had the spine to give it to someone else.

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Underwear and Pressure at the Australian Open

Sports News - January 23, 2010

The mystery has been solved. Venus Williams was wearing underwear at the Australian Open but you had to look pretty close to see it because it matched the color of her skin as you can see here. It was rather risqué. I like it. Now on to more important things.

Nikolay Davydenko of Russia

The last time Nikolay Davydenko reached a quarterfinal at a slam was 2007 so I was a bit surprised to see him take the first two sets against Fernando Verdasco in their fourth round match. Kolya won the year end championships last year but all the top players are usually so exhausted by then I didn’t think much of it. Plus I figured they must have poured honey over the courts in London or something similarly sticky for them to be slow enough for Kolya to beat Soderling, Federer, and Del Potro all in one go.

Kolya beat Federer again in Doha this month and I didn’t think much of that either as it was Federer’s first full tournament of the year. He beat Nadal in the Doha final but I figured he’d melt when faced with a tough fifth setter in the Melbourne summer heat. And he nearly did.

Kolya gave up a break to Verdasco in the third set and he looked like he was wiped out. He was hitting easy balls into the net and looked disorganized physically. Lucky for him Verdasco started feeling the pressure.

After winning the third set, Verdasco hit a double double to give a break back and his second serves were sailing dangerously close to the baseline. To his credit, he righted himself by going for big serves instead of pulling back – otherwise known as choking or taking your foot off the pedal or whatever it was I did on Saturday when I double faulted away a chance to reach a second set tiebreaker in the first round of the San Fernando Valley Championships. You may have heard of it.

Verdasco won the fourth set but gave up a break in the fifth and Kolya, the least shaky player of the two, is on to the quarterfinals. I’m still not on the Kolya bandwagon, I still expect him to melt against the top power guys, but I am curious to know what is responsible for his current burst of success. I mean he still looks like the same 150lb (68kg) runt to me so what’s the difference?

Justine Henin

Justine Henin said she was inspired to come back by Kim Clijsters’ U.S. Open win. Inspiration is one way to put it. Cijsters went into the U.S. Open only seven matches into her second career and came away with her second slam title. Easy pickings is another way to put it. Henin’s eyes must have bugged out at the huge opportunity that is the current WTA Tour.

I could also imagine Henin’s mind refusing to let Clijsters get one over on her. They both reached their first slam final in 2001 and their careers are inextricably linked as two Belgian players – one a hard nosed champion and the other beloved but, let’s say, less skilled in the face of pressure.

And that’s how it’s playing out in Melbourne. Clijsters suffered her most lopsided defeat ever in the third round while Henin keeps coming from behind and is now into the semifinals. I’m definitely on Henin’s bandwagon and I’m betting heavily that Clijsters will be the first of the two to retire a second time. And if anyone from Belgium wins a slam in the next few years, it’ll be Henin or Yanina Wickmayer, not Clijsters.

See you after I figure out whether Marin Cilic can close out this match with Andy Roddick and reach his first slam semifinal. By the way, did you know that Cilic’s middle name is County?

Tennis Wayback Machine 2009

Apple's Time Machine

When you start up Time Machine, the Mac computer’s backup program, screen windows recede back through time till they reach the swirling center of a galaxy as you can see in the image above. We probably don’t need to travel light years for our year-end tennis memories but it is the end of a decade so we need to fly at least ten years into the past.

The Associated Press chose Tiger Woods as its Athlete of the Decade instead of Roger Federer even though Roger beat Tiger out for majors (15 to 14) and set the record for career majors by passing Pete Sampras. Tiger still has four majors to go before he passes Jack Nicklaus, by the way.

Serena Williams is the AP Female Athlete of the Year. She finished first in singles and she and her sister Venus won three of the four doubles slam titles in 2009. That is ridiculous and if I were asked for the most improbable tennis event of the decade, I’d have to say it’s Serena’s resurrection. Very seldom do you see someone recommit to the sport and run away with it though my argument is weakened slightly by the tennis book of decade – Andre Agassi’s Open – which describes, among many other titillating things, his return to number one, winning a French Open to complete a career golden slam, and winning five slams, all after the age of 29.

Justine Henin is back within the week and she could follow in Serena and Andre’s footsteps but I’m getting ahead of myself.

What was the biggest influence of the decade? Technology, and I don’t mean rackets and strings. The technology is the internet and the tool is Betfair.com and its brethren online betting exchanges. On a betting exchange you don’t bet against the house, you take bets from other gamblers and Betfair is the biggest such site. Betfair is the Facebook of the gambling world. It made gambling easy, personable, and cozy.

Nikolay Davydenko kicked things off with a 2007 tennis match in Sopot, Poland, whose Betfair betting pattern screamed “fixed match.” A few hours before the match Davydenko was the prohibitive favorite over his decidedly underdog opponent Martin Vassallo-Arguello. Within half hour of the match bettors had made Vassallo-Arguello the favorite and he remained the favorite even after Davydenko won the first set. Vassallo-Arguello won the second set and Davydenko retired early in the third.

It wasn’t the first such match in tennis history but the technology marked it. Online gambling not only allows you to make bets easily, it easily records betting patterns and this is the effect technology had on sports – no one could get away with anything.

Just ask Tiger. Text message, voicemails, and, yipes, a nudie pic all captured by the many women he carried on with lo these past years. Where exactly did Tiger think those digital memories would end up – in the digital trashcan? Not with terabytes of memory floating around at very affordable prices they didn’t.

Actually, Davydenko and Vassallo-Arguello did get away with it – if it was a fixed match. The ATP couldn’t connect either player to a gambler so they had no case. But the rapid speed of information has changed the game forever.

When Caroline Wozniacki injured her hamstring in a first round match at the Luxembourg Open this year, her father/coach Piotr came onto the court and advised her to quit the match even though she was winning it going away. He knew she wouldn’t be able to play the next round so he wanted Caroline to let her opponent, Anne Kremer, advance instead. His advice, in Polish, was picked up by microphones and bettors immediately started throwing money on Kremer.

This is probably the single biggest reason to allow on court coaching and require coaches to wear microphones. Liberate the information – let all the gamblers get their hands on it. And, as I’ve often said, require detailed injury reports so that everyone knows if Davydenko has an injured foot before he steps on the court in Sopot.

I saw the movie Avatar last night. In 3D of course. I went with two friends, both of whom are college professors. In light of the movie’s heavy dose of colonialism one of my friends couldn’t resist proclaiming “a straight, white, disabled Marine” as the new god of the planet Pandora. Having said that, I did feel as if I’d been dropped into the most luscious, tactile alternative world I’ve ever visited and it made me wonder if I’d ever travel to another planet.

Given my, um, digestive difficulties with airplane travel and my advanced age, probably not. But if I were to design the pro tennis tour world video game for the next decade, two players would not break the record for career slams as they did in the past decade – the aforementioned Pete Sampras in 2002 and Roger Federer in 2009.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGX72GOjHC4

A second member of Roger’s Gillette Trio was felled by technology. I already described Tiger’s problems but soccer player Thierry Henry got caught too. Millions of television viewers saw his handball goal eliminate Ireland from World Cup this year while officials on the field saw nothing.

And that is the second thing I’d bet my house on. Maybe I still have remnants of the blind hero worship that made it so shocking to learn about Tiger’s escort service escapades, but I’d wager that Roger will not be caught sexting with a hostess from his Dubai neighborhood restaurant or feeling up cocktail waitresses on a Las Vegas junket with his buddies Tim Henman and Dominik Hrbaty.

And I can guarantee that Roger’s post-retirement memoir will not discuss – as Agassi’s did – his underwear.

I’m afraid I can’t go out ten years from now but I’ll do my best. Roger will probably win three more slams before he’s done in 2012, Juan Martin Del Potro will only get better, Novak Djokovic has finished his mental health growth spurt and will take another slam or two in the near future. I’m betting on Marin Cilic beyond that though, unfortunately, I can’t cash in on Betfair because the U.S. doesn’t allow online gambling on foreign sites – another thing that will change in the next decade.

I’m just not sure about Andy Murray. He’s competitive enough but he’s a bit physically delicate for the task. It’s a brutal task to win a slam and he’ll do it but I just don’t see him doing frequently.

As for the women, Justine will probably kick Serena’s butt and Kim Clijsters will shrink back into Justine’s shadow. The WTA will, meanwhile, have time to groom a few giant killers to take up where Serena and Justine leave off but I have no idea who that will be. I bet you do. Let me know.

Who’ll be the next tennis power? No one. Asian countries will develop more players but large cash prizes will continue the current trend of diversity. Spain is the only country with more than one player in the ATP’s year-end top ten

I suppose China could take over tennis just as they appear to be taking over the rest of the world. General Motors sold engineering technology for certain Saab models to one Chinese company and Ford Motor Company is in the final stages of selling Volvo to another Chinese company. All of which goes to show you that the main result of embracing capitalism is a much longer commute.

I would find it more interesting to see if tennis can push China into making a few political changes. Dubai was forced to change a long standing policy of refusing visas to Israelis by allowing doubles player Andy Ram entry to its 2009 ATP event a week after refusing Shahar Peer entry to its WTA event. Chinese players managed to wrestle a bigger share of their winnings away from the Chinese Tennis Association in the past few years by threatening to quit the national team just as players from the Soviet Union fought to keep their winnings in the late 1980s.

I’m not expecting a second Glasnost – China isn’t going to embrace democracy in the next decade just because a few tennis players want more money – but sports has a way of de-isolating countries and that is usually followed by change.

What thrilled you the most in the past decade? I’m happy to hear about the 2008 Federer – Nadal Wimbledon final but go a bit deeper. What little things fed your tennis passion? What pissed you off most? What’s the most exciting thing that will happen in the next decade?

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