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Wednesday, July 8, 2009 12:18 AM
Former champions add lustre to Wimbledon
A lot of things get written and said about the greatness of Wimbledon, but an incident that took place last weekend speaks volumes about how special it really is.
When Bjorn Borg, Pete Sampras and Rod Laver, great champions all, were about to have their pictures taken with Federer and the gold-plated Challenge Cup shortly after the final, one of them, it may have been Sampras, said he wanted to touch the trophy. Soon Borg and Laver had joined him as all three had their hands on the trophy held by Federer.
It was the child-like excitement of those three – men who have won a total of 16 Wimbledons among them – with the trophy that really said something about the mystique of the event.
The player who would have loved to have been there with those legends, was Roddick.
He deserved the highest praise for a terrific effort against Federer – losing 5-7, 7-6 (6), 7-6 (5), 3-6, 16-14 in Sunday’s final.
Roddick has not lived up to expectations, which were falsely set much too high, after he won the U.S. Open in 2003. The main reason is that Federer came along and was just so much better than everyone, not only the American, that he won virtually all the major titles played on surfaces other than clay.
You heard it here first, but Roddick’s inspired effort in losing Sunday should eventually earn him a membership in the All England Club someday. Losing three times to Federer (also in 2004 and 2005), and especially having this year’s match be so thrilling and memorable, should be enough for the committee at the All England Club to extend the same honorary membership to him that it does to the annual winner of the tournament. Ken Rosewall, the Australian great who was runner-up four times between 1954 and 1974, was afforded just such an honour for his noble performances in losing finals to Jaroslav Drobny (1954), Lew Hoad (1956), John Newcombe (1970) and Jimmy Connors (1974).
Roddick could probably care less about the possibility of an honorary membership, but in 20 years, when he is allowed into the inner sanctum of the All England Club to fraternize with old pals like Federer and Rafael Nadal, he will appreciate it in a way he cannot today.
And it wouldn’t really cost the Club too much. With Federer winning six of the last seven titles, it has been spared the need to dole out a bunch of new honorary memberships.
Summing up Wimbledon ‘09, it was an excellent year, even if the women’s event lacked the punch and panache of the men’s draw. There were record crowds and, in Britain, the tournament sparked a lot of interest because of semi-finalist Andy Murray, who was probably the most legitimate title contender – apologies to Tim Henman – from the host country since the last patriot to win – Fred Perry in 1936.
The real oddity of the fortnight was the almost complete lack of rain. Even though there was only the briefest of showers and positive forecast for the rest of the evening, Wimbledon officials chose to close the new Centre Court roof on Monday, June 29, for the finish of the Dinara Safina–Amelie Mauresmo match and then for all of Andy Murray–Stanislas Wawrinka.
While eventually they would have needed the roof for its artificial light because the sun set more than an hour before the Murray–Wawrinka match actually ended, by playing the entirety of a five-set match under the retractable roof, they got the chance to show off their approximately 100-million-pound ($187-million Canadian) investment.
Imagine if they had not closed it that evening, the two weeks would have gone by without it being used even once. All the publicity about its innovative qualities, and all the money spent to build it, and everyone would have had to wait another whole year (at least) before finding out what the roof looked like in real Wimbledon competition conditions and if it really worked.
Link to this postSunday, June 21, 2009 06:52 PM
Talking tennis on forum
Yours truly took part in a Global Forum put together by New York Times tennis writer and columnist Christopher Clarey on current tennis topics in the lead-up to Wimbledon next week.
Other writers involved in the Forum were Stephen Bierley from Britain, Juan Jose Mateo from Spain and L. Jon Wertheim of the United States.
Here is the link for the first of four parts, the others to follow over the next three days.
Part 2 can be found here.
Part 3 can be found here.
Part 4 can be found here.
Monday, June 15, 2009 07:54 PM
Federer revival could go all the way to the top
It was supposed to be a Rafa run through the French Open on his favourite red-clay surface and then on to a solid summer, starting at Wimbledon, and by the U.S. Open he would have the No. 1 ranking wrapped up for the second year in succession.
That all changed when Rafael Nadal was upset in the round-of-16 at Roland Garros by Robin Soderling, and now he could lose his No. 1 ranking as soon as the day after Wimbledon ends on July 5.
Nadal had a 4,490-point lead over second-ranked Roger Federer going into the French Open, but following Federer’s historic victory in Paris, that has been cut by more than half to 2,070 points.
The ATP’s statistics super sleuth, Greg Sharko, has done his usual number-gnashing and come up with the fact that if Federer manages to win a sixth Wimbledon in seven years, he will become No. 1 if defending champion Nadal fails to reach the semi-finals.
Even if Nadal does not play, and everyone is aware that knee problems have made that at least a possibility, Federer must still win Wimbledon to get back the top spot he lost last August to Nadal after holding it for 237 weeks in a row.
Unless Nadal again wins Wimbledon and Federer bombs out early, there is a good chance the Swiss will regain the No. 1 ranking sometime this summer before the U.S. Open.
The rankings work on a rolling system with points coming off and going on in a 52-week cycle.
After Wimbledon, Nadal has three results coming off that are worth a total of 2,250 points before the U.S. Open, while Federer has three results counting for only 360 points coming off before Flushing Meadows.
Those results are Nadal winning the Rogers Cup (Federer loses in second round after a bye), being a semi-finalist in Cincinnati (Federer loses third round) and winning the Beijing Olympics (Federer loses in the quarter-finals).
So, Federer, who not long ago (before his win in Madrid a week before the French Open) looked in danger of slipping behind No. 3 Andy Murray and/or No. 4 Novak Djokovic, has a real shot at regaining the top spot he held for four-and-a-half years.
But the U.S. Open, and the 2,000 points he earned by winning it in 2008, could be a major factor in determining how long he can stay there.
For Murray fans, and he made a few more by winning at Queen’s Club last Sunday, he can do no better than No. 2 by winning Wimbledon.
Closer to home, Aleksandra Wozniak is currently at career best No. 23 in the WTA Tour rankings with 1,954 points.
After losing last week in the second round of the grass-court tune-up event in Birmingham, she is playing in Eastbourne this week and then at Wimbledon.
Wozniak has the points from a second-round finish at Wimbledon from 2008 to defend, and then faces a huge challenge when she plays the Bank of the West Classic in Palo Alto, Calif. (Stanford University) at the end of July. She won the title there a year ago and has 470 points to defend.
If, worse case scenario, she loses in the first round, the 21-year-old from Blainville, Que., will drop to somewhere in the mid-40s. That would obviously be disappointing – but still not a bad position from which to mount another assault on getting into the top 20, one of her goals.
Monday, May 25, 2009 08:42 AM
No point to these points
The ARAG ATP World Team Championship currently going on in Dusseldorf, Germany, has always been viewed as a kind of garden party approach to the French Open.
It involves eight national teams invited according to the rankings of their players, but in fact has little to do with the actual rankings because few of those countries’ top players choose to play. They prefer to tune up in a less formal way the week before the second Grand Slam of the year.
Pete Sampras was an exception. He played the event nine times during his career, but mainly as a laid-back way to ease into the red clay before the French Open. With only one semi-final in 13 appearances at Roland Garros, it did not seem to be much of a help to the great American.
Held at the Rochusclub in Dusseldorf, the event is by all accounts well run and there are some competitive matches. But it certainly doesn’t pass the smell test for the awarding of ATP ranking points, which is what is happening for the first time this year.
A player who did really well in Dusseldorf could earn as many as 250 points, roughly the equivalent of winning an ATP 250 level tournament such as Indianapolis, Halle (Germany) or Stockholm.
What is wrong here is that the event is not open to all players, only those who qualify based on the rankings of their top players – even if they don’t play.
There is a dramatic example of that this year. Russia’s two top players are Nikolay Davydenko, ranked No. 10, and Marat Safin, No. 22, but it is being represented by No. 102 Evgeny Korolev and No. 1137 Stanislas Vovk, a player whom even the most hard-core of tennis fanatics have never heard of.
Canada, with Frank Dancevic currently ranked No. 110 and Peter Polansky at No. 273, do not have a chance to make the field and thus be eligible for ranking points. But the unheralded Vovk is getting an opportunity to add to his modest total of points.
Why do they award points? It’s all politics. Notice the ATP in tournament title, so by awarding rankings points the ATP is trying to attract the players and help out an event that offers a substantial amount of prize money – 1.35 million euros ($2.1 million Can.).
On the subject of names, the actual world team championship for men is, of course, the Davis Cup. That event will also receive ranking points for the first time this year – but only for the 16 nations in the elite World Group who actually play for the Davis Cup, and the eight other countries that get involved in the World Group playoffs in September.
Again, the awarding of points gives unfair advantage to stronger nations who have better players and compete in the World Group and the World Group playoffs.
An example from the other end of the spectrum is Great Britain. World No. 3 Andy Murray is on a very weak team compared with the rest of the world’s big four – Rafael Nadal of Spain, Roger Federer of Switzerland and Novak Djokovic of Serbia.
After losing in the first round to Ukraine, Great Britain will now play in Poland in September to try to remain in Europe/Africa Zone Group 1 in 2010, with no ranking points being offered.
Murray could soon be in contention for the No. 1 ranking, certainly for No. 2, and hypothetically be beaten out by Nadal, Federer or Djokovic based on the points those three earn playing Davis Cup. There are as many as 500 points available to a successful player on the winning team.
“With the introduction of ranking points for World Group and World Group playoff ties in 2009, players will have more incentive, if any were necessary, to perform at their absolute best in this year’s competition,” claims International Tennis Federation (ITF) president Francesco Ricci Bitti of Italy.
Despite the inherent injustice to players such as Murray, Dancevic and Polansky who will not have a chance to earn them – not to mention players from Aruba or the U.S. Virgin Islands playing in Americas Zone Group IV – it looks as if points were introduced as a kind of quid pro quo for the ATP and its players getting the Davis Cup dates it wanted. In particular, instead of being two weeks (as the ITF would have preferred) after big events like Wimbledon and the U.S. Open, the players wanted Davis Cup to be played just one week later. They got their wish. That means, this year Andy Roddick of the United States could play the Wimbledon final on grass on a Sunday, July 5, and then have to go indoors on red clay in Porec, Croatia, five days later for the World Group quarter-finals.
The ranking points are also being used as a carrot to encourage players to commit to Davis Cup. When they were introduced in 1973, ATP computer ranking points were awarded to reward players for their results, and to end a system where subjective selection could determine who did and did not get into a tournament, and who did or did not get seeded.
Giving points for ARAG ATP World Team Championships and for Davis Cup is a regressive step in the ranking system of world-class tennis players. The system, which was introduced to end favouritism and unfair practices, has begun to lose its way by awarding points to the privileged few. It is a dangerous sign.
PROPS: Philip Bester, 20, of North Vancouver, B.C., was highly-touted as a junior but has struggled mightily as a professional. After several years of disappointment, there may be light at the end of a long tunnel after he won his first tournament last weekend in Tampa, Florida. It was only a $10,000 Futures event but Bester, who possesses an explosive all-court game, did not lose a set in winning five matches. Though he is ranked just No. 743, the win is a sign that he may yet live up to his early promise.
POTSHOT: Allowances must be made for it being a first-year event, but last week’s inaugural Madrid Open apparently fell badly short of the standards worthy of $4.5 million (U.S.) ATP Masters Series and WTA Tour Premier mandatory events. There were slippery, bad-bouncing courts, a desperate shortage of practice courts and generally just a ‘not-ready-for-prime-time’ feel to the tournament. Promoter Ion Tiriac is a savvy, experienced tennis veteran who should be able to make the necessary improvements for the 2010 edition.
Wednesday, May 20, 2009 04:33 PM
Is the 'real No.1' healthy?
The name of the game in women's tennis is the health of Serena Williams.
A 10-time Grand Slam singles champion, Williams is now on a four-match losing streak, largely the result of her left knee. She had surgery of the knee in August, 2003. At the time, she had won five of the previous six Grand Slam championships and was utterly dominant.
Since the surgery, she has won four Grand Slam titles out of 17 events played. When her knee is right, or close to it, she is still a cut above her peers, including her sister Venus. When it is not, as it has not been since the Sony Ericsson Open in Miami in early April – her movement was laboured during a 6-3, 6-1 loss to Victoria Azarenka – she is vulnerable.
In the match against Azarenka, Williams visibly limped and it was clear she was incapable of playing close to her best tennis.
This week in Madrid, after losing 6-2, 1-6, 6-1 to Patty Schnyder in Rome last week, she again went out in her opening round, retiring with a knee-related problem after losing the first set 6-4 to Francesca Schiavone. “I was just really hindered,” she said. “My movement was hindered as a result of an injury I've been struggling with for some time.”
Williams went on to complain about having to play Rome and Madrid back-to-back because of the tour's new rules that require players to enter certain number of events, including Madrid, one of four Premier Mandatory (the word says it all) tournaments. Williams even whined that she would lose $75,000 (all figures U.S. dollars) if she didn't play, which is not entirely accurate because she could perform services (promotional appearance in the event city etc.) and get out of paying the fine.
“I don't really have a choice whether to play or not,” she said. “I'm going to be throwing thousands of dollars away. I'm remodelling a house. I don't know about anyone else but $75,000 is a lot of money to me. That's like the whole furniture bill, some stairs, rugs...”
Anyone who saw Williams lose to Azarenka in the Miami final was astounded that she followed kept her commitment to play in Marbella, Spain, the very next week. It seemed extremely unlikely that she could be ready four days later, and on another continent and another surface (hard court to clay), to play again. She wasn't, and lost 6-4, 3-6, 6-1 to Klara Zakopalova, a pesky, diminutive, No. 95-ranked Czech who she would normally hit right off the court.
It is reasonable to presume Williams received an appearance fee that went well into the six figures for the Andalucia Tennis Experience in Marbella, which somehow puts that $75,000 in remodelling costs into perspective. A more sensible approach in terms of her physical health would have been to skip Marbella, at the tour's lowest-level with only $220,000 in prize money, and try to be ready for the following week in Charleston, S.C., where she was supposed to play and where she was the defending champion. Charleston, the storied Family Circle Cup, has been downgraded in the WTA Tour's revamping of its schedule, and could really have used Williams as a star attraction in a down year. It is the only clay court event of any stature in the United States and has a proud history dating back to 1973. It offered $1 million in total prize money.
Williams's left knee has been an ongoing problem, and sometimes it seems semi-miraculous that she is able to get it fit enough to allow her to play her peerless brand of first-strike, attacking tennis. Even against Schynder in Rome last week, in the second set she took the Swiss's second serves and dismissively blasted them for winners as if she was playing a second-rate hacker. But she just couldn't maintain that level.
Whether the knee will allow her to play near her best over the next two months, the most vital in tennis with Grand Slam glory available at Roland Garros and Wimbledon, is impossible to predict.
But every time she is about to be counted out, she somehow resurrects her career.
Who can forget her victory at the 2007 Australian Open after playing just four tournaments in 2006 and not having even been in a final in two whole years.
Despite her current four-matching losing skid, if Williams can win the upcoming French Open and Wimbledon events, she will have the second “Serena Slam” of her career. With victories at the 2008 US Open and at the Australian Open in Melbourne in January, she is halfway to that unique accomplishment.
Williams, who ranked as low as No. 140 in July, 2006, mercilessly defeated current No. 1 Dinara Safina 6-0, 6-3 in the Australian Open final three months ago. She has recently been saying that despite the tall, powerful Russian earning enough points to reach the top spot, everyone knows that she herself is the “real No. 1.”
At her best, no one would argue with that. But can she get healthy enough to make another Serena statement at a big event? History says never write off Williams. But one of these days her physical frailty is going to beat her in a way no opponent possibly could.
DIFFICULT DRAW: As a result of Davis Cup results last weekend – Ecuador defeating Peru 3-0 at home and Brazil beating Colombia away from home – Canada will play in Peru from July 10-12 to protect its spot in Americas Zone Group One competition for 2010.
Those dates are going to be tough for doubles standout Daniel Nestor. They are just five days after Wimbledon ends and it is unlikely he will be keen to travel to South America after returning home from what will likely be 12 consecutive weeks in Europe, especially because he and wife Natasha have a five-month old daughter.
It may be the same for veteran Frederic Niemeyer, who also became a father within the past year.
So it could fall to Frank Dancevic, 24, and Peter Polansky, 20, to lead the Canadian team. Hopefully for the visitors, as was the case when Ecuador defeated Peru, the Peruvians will not have their top player, Luis Horna, available.
Should Canada lose to Peru, it will have one last chance to avoid relegation to Americas Zone Group Two for 2010 – and that involves a trip to Uruguay from September 18-20, which is the weekend after the US Open ends.
Friday, May 15, 2009 03:06 PM
Time to end on-court coaching experiment
What is it going to take to have the WTA Tour come to its senses and do away with its ridiculous policy of allowing on-court coaching.
Everyone knows the majority of the top players believe that a tennis player should be able to manage her performance on the court without getting during-the-match advice from a coach or friend.
But WTA Tour officials have bowed to pressure from television to allow it, despite the fact that most of the conversations these days take place in Russian, Spanish or some other language that the majority of television viewers don't comprehend.
Recently, Nigel Sears, a prominent British coach who used to work with former top-five player Daniela Hantuchova, made a compelling point about a troublesome aspect of on-court coaching. He suggested that if a coach goes out during a change-over, or at the end of a set, and starts talking to a player about details of her game and her weaknesses, then everyone watching on television – including her peers on the tour – will learn about them. Does it make sense for other players to get insight on their future opponents by listening in on player-coach conversations that should be confidential?
There is also the spectacle of the coach coming out of the stands and walking over to his or her player. The person necessarily looks like an intruder on the heretofore sacrosanct field of competition that is the tennis court.
On top of the above-mentioned criticisms, there is something that is truly making a mockery of the women's game. That is the sight of middle-aged men walking out and giving advice to the young female players, and most uncomfortable of all is when the man is the female player's father.
That is been highly visible of late as regards rising stars Caroline Wozniacki of Denmark and Sabine Lisicki of Germany. Particularly in Wozniacki's case, when her father Piotr walks out onto the court, usually in the middle of a set, and begins to yammer away at her. Everyone has been a child and had their parent, or parents, try to talk sense into them. But having the parent do it in front of a large crowd, and with hundreds of thousands more watching on television, is not something any child would want to experience.
Worst of all, on the women's tour, there is the shameful, well-known history of abusive, control-freak fathers who double as their daughter's coach. Just this week another instance of that came to light when Jelena Dokic went public in an Australian publication with revelations that her father, Damir, abused her.
Doesn't the WTA Tour get it that the image of a father coming out on court and giving (sometimes barking) advice to his daughter has a highly negative connotation.
It is uncomfortable and unnecessary to be subjugated to watching these fathers on camera, and makes the women's game look amateurish because on-court coaching would never happen on the men's tour. The ATP experimented with it several years ago and it was roundly vetoed by players and almost everyone concerned.
At a time when the women's game is going through a down phase with no consistently dominant players that fans can identify with – compared with the men and Rafael Nadal, Roger Federer, Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray – something like on-court coaching only serves to accentuate the discrepancy between the tours.
Happily, on-court coaching is not permitted at the Grand Slam tournaments, so tennis fans will not have to witness this needless charade at the upcoming French Open and then at Wimbledon.
And here's a final anecdote that highlights the lunacy of on-court coaching.
On Tuesday, when Patty Schnyder upset Serena Williams at the Italian Open 6-2, 2-6, 6-1, believe-it-or-not Schnyder called for her husband/coach Rainer Hofmann to come on the court at the change-over WHEN SHE WAS IN TOTAL CONTROL AND LEADING 5-0 IN THE FINAL SET against a downtrodden Williams, who would be justified if she thought they were just plain old rubbing it in.
WHAT'S UP WITH THAT? Surely only the WTA Tour knows
Friday, May 15, 2009 02:42 PM
Coria's career a tale of what ifs
It was shaping up to be one of the most one-sided French Open finals in history when Guillermo Coria led fellow Argentine Gaston Gaudio 6-0, 6-3 in the 2004 championship match.
In hindsight, it was also a singular opportunity to win the world's premier clay-court title because, a year later, Rafael Nadal would come along and begin an era of total domination on the terre battue of Roland Garros.
Coria, who had won on clay in Buenos Aires and Monte Carlo earlier that year, took an 18-match winning streak against Argentines into the final with Gaudio. After two sets, the Court Philippe Chatrier crowd were restless because Gaudio, always something of a faint-hearted competitor, seemed incapable of making a match of it against the nifty, creative and precise tennis of the 5-foot-9 Coria.
Named after Argentine legend Guillermo Vilas by his tennis coach-father Oscar, Coria had been banned from tennis for two years (reduced to seven months) in 2001 for testing positive for the drug nandrolone. He adamantly insisted he had been falsely punished.
When he was close to winning the title he most coveted on that Parisian afternoon in June, 2004 – he had won the Roland Garros junior event in 1999 – Coria succumbed to nervous cramps.
He ended up losing 0-6, 3-6, 6-4, 6-1, 8-6 in what turned into one of the most dramatic finals in the history of the French Open.
The cramps hit early in the third set but he still managed to forge a 4-3 lead. In the fifth set, after cramps struck full bore in the fourth set and made it tough for him to move and serve, he revived and held two match points leading 6-5. But Gaudio, who thought he had no chance when Coria totally controlled the first two sets, steadied and won a long rally on one of them and finally emerged victorious.
It was a crushing defeat for Coria, 21 at the time. He later tearfully admitted, “I couldn't control this nervousness. I was trying to forget the cramps, but I knew they would come back because I was nervous. I was cramping all over.
“After what happened to me because of the doping [suspension], I was dreaming of this situation. I remember what people did to me at the time.
“I really wanted to win this tournament, to try to forget everything I have deep inside. I would like to have revenge against those who gave me these contaminated vitamins [supplements]."
In 2007, Coria settled a $10-million (U.S.) lawsuit with an American company that he accused of tainting its product with nandrolone and is believed to have received a multi-million-dollar sum.
By then Coria's career was basically over. He had right shoulder surgery just two months after the French Open final in 2004 and he was never again quite the player he had been – frequently suffering serious bouts of double faulting that were painful to watch.
When he announced his retirement this week, it did not come as a surprise.
He had one final hurrah at the French Open last year when he played on the Court Philippe Chatrier and, for a final time, showed his exceptional racquet-work as he took the first set from Tommy Robredo, dazzling with his ability to hit the ball early and outmanoeuvre his opponent with placement as much as with power. But it didn't last, and lack of competitive play caught up with him. Robredo prevailed 5-7, 6-4, 6-1, 6-4.
He would only play four more tournaments after that – the final one in March when he lost in the first round of a Challenger tournament in Bangkok to Harel Levy of Israel.
His last official match victory was in Casablanca, Morocco, in May, 2008, when he defeated Peter Polansky of Thornhill, Ont., 4-6, 6-4, 6-3.
Coria reached No. 3 on the rankings in May, 2004, and had nine career titles, including Masters Series victories in Hamburg in 2003 and Monte Carlo in 2004.
The most impressive stretch of his career came in 2003 during the European summer clay-court season when he won events in Stuttgart (Germany), Kitzbuehel (Austria) and Sopot (Poland) in consecutive weeks. His sets won/loss record over those three weeks was 32-0.
An example of his sensational and utter domination was the Stuttgart tournament. Here the results of all five rounds: 7-5, 6-3 over Paul-Henri Mathieu, 6-1, 6-1 over David Ferrer, 6-0, 6-0 over Mikhail Youzhny, 6-4, 6-0 over Feliciano Lopez and 6-2, 6-2, 6-1 over Robredo in the best-of-five-sets final.
He also played in one of the greatest clay-court matches ever – a 6-4, 3-6, 6-4, 4-6, 7-6 (8) loss to Nadal in the 2005 Italian Open final. It was a sublimely competitive battle that lasted 5 hours 14 minutes, still the record for the longest final on the tour.
In his retirement statement, Coria said, “In 2005, I began to feel less and less like competing. My passion just wasn't the same and it's impossible to do things well when it's like that. In this sport, you have to be at 100 per cent.”
Sadly, that bum shoulder probably prevented the crafty Coria from having a chance to redeem himself after the debacle of the 2004 French Open final. He is just 27, the same age to the month as David Nalbandian, his compatriot whose career could be in jeopardy as he struggles with a hip injury, possibly requiring surgery. Another 27-year-old, Roger Federer, must be pleased that the fates have, at least thus far, been kinder to him.
PRAISE: In the absence of Serena and Venus Williams, 19-year-old Californian Alexa Glatch stepped in and won two matches decisively in the American team's 3-2 Fed Cup semi-final upset of the Czechs last weekend in Brno, Czech Republic. Glatch, ranked No. 114, defeated No. 29-ranked Eva Benesova 6-1, 6-2 and No. 48 Petra Kvitkova 6-2, 6-1. Her teammates Liezel Huber and Bethanie Mattek-Sands saved two match points on the way to defeating Benesova and Kveta Peschke in the decisive doubles match to propel the U.S. team into the final against Italy next November.
Glatch won the Tevlin Challenger event at the Rexall Centre in Toronto last October.
POTSHOT: This is delivered with a cushion-covered fist to Marat Safin. The lovable Russian is 29 and clearly on the downside of a career that features titles at the 2000 U.S. Open and the 2005 Australian Open. In his last three tournaments, Miami, Monte Carlo and this week at the Italian Open, he has blown double service-break leads in a set that would have given him a victory in matches against Gael Monfils, Nicolas Lapentti and Tommy Robredo. Near the end of a 2-6, 7-6 (2), 6-1 loss to Robredo on Tuesday in Rome, it all got a bit too much. He missed a service return on the penultimate point when a spectator cried out just as he was about to hit the ball. Upset because of that and because of yet another pitiful unravelling on court, on the ensuing match point Safin merely let Robredo's serve go past him without making any effort at all to hit the ball.
Of course, you shouldn't do that. But Marat is Marat, the man who once smashed more than 50 racquets in one season. In many ways, he has evolved into the player who best embodies tortured frustration on the tennis court. It is hard to come down hard on him when so many people find it easy to sympathize with his exasperation.
Apparently even tournament officials felt that way – Safin was not fined.
Wednesday, April 22, 2009 08:56 PM
Fab Four begin grueling stretch
The men’s tennis tour is just beginning its 12 toughest weeks of the year.
Starting last week in Monte Carlo and going through until the end of Wimbledon on July 5, there are a dozen weeks with very few to be taken off by the current Fab Four of Rafael Nadal, Roger Federer, Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray.
Best positioned in terms of their weeks off heading into to the French Open are Federer and Murray. They will play one week on and one week off until Roland Garros – last week in Monte Carlo, this week off, next week in Rome, a week off, Madrid, a week off and then the big one on the avenue de la Porte d’Auteuil beginning on Sunday, May 25.
Nadal and Djokovic are basically being forced into playing three weeks in a row by obligations in their homelands. After winning in Monte Carlo last week Nadal would probably have preferred to have this week off – like Federer, Djokovic and Murray – but he feels obliged to play in Barcelona. Because next week’s Italian Open is an ‘automatic-entry’ Masters Series event, the world No. 1 then has little choice but to play three weeks in a row.
That could be 15 matches in 19 days if he reaches the final in both Barcelona and Rome, which is certainly an overload at a time when it would be preferable to building up more slowly to Roland Garros.
At least he will have a week off before Madrid and then another before the French Open.
A footnote here, Nadal has expressed some reservations about Madrid, a brand new extravaganza Masters Series event at a site featuring three retractable roof stadiums, because it is played at altitude. He fears that, with the ball flying a bit more than at sea level, it may not be the ideal preparation for Roland Garros.
How ironic that this fabulous new event is viewed with some ambivalence by far-and-away it’s No. 1 star attraction.
Djokovic will face a Nadal-like situation when he plays three weeks in a row – Rome, Belgrade and then Madrid. In his case, the obligation to Belgrade is even stronger than Nadal to Barcelona because his family owns the brand new ATP 250 event in the Serbian capital.
Men’s tennis is flourishing at the moment and it is to be hoped all top-four players arrive at the French Open in good physical shape. If Nadal or Djokovic is diminished in some way, it may be possible to trace that back to playing for three consecutive weeks on the clay with its long, gruelling rallies.
Following the French Open, there is little rest for the game’s leading quartet. The week after Nadal wins his fifth Coupe des Mousquetaires in Paris – almost a foregone conclusion barring injury – he and Murray will switch to grass and play the Wimbledon warm-up event at Queen’s Club in London. Federer and Djokovic will head to Halle, Germany, to play the Gerry Weber Open, the only grass-court event other than Wimbledon to have a rain cover over its main stadium court.
All four players will then take a week off before The Championships begin on June 22.
It will wind up being a huge amount of pressure tennis in a 12-week period on two different surfaces. As fit as the top guys try to be these days, it is likely one or more of the Fab Four will pay the price at either Roland Garros or Wimbledon.
Note: The ATP’s statistics savant, Greg Sharko, has done an interesting analysis of the Fab-Four and how their rankings could shake down over the next few months. Here’s the link: http://www.atpworldtour.com/tennis/1/en/news/newsarticle_3289.asp
PRAISE: With her runner-up performance at the WTA Tour event in Ponte Vedra, Fla., two weeks ago and a second-round finish last week in Charleston, S.C., Aleksandra Wozniak of Blainville, Que., has moved her ranking up to a career-high No. 26.
That puts her ahead of Patricia Hy-Boulais, No. 28 in 1993, on the list of top Canadians on the WTA Tour since it introduced computer rankings in 1975.
Carling Bassett-Seguso (No. 8 in 1985) and Helen Kelesi (No. 13 in 1990) remain in the No. 1 and No. 2 spots.
Kudos to Sharon Fichman of Toronto, 18, for winning the $25,000 (U.S.), clay-court Challenger event in Osprey, Fla., last week. Fichman’s ranking is up to No. 238 after a 6-4, 6-1 victory over former top-100 player Yuliana Fedak of Ukraine in the final.
POTSHOT: The new mixed Madrid event, scheduled for May 10-17, is considering changing its classic red (ochre) clay courts to blue and will have a demonstration blue clay court on the site this year for trial by players. The blue is said to fit in better with the colours of Mutua Madrilena, the tournament’s main sponsor.
This is a hair-brain plan, another example of tennis shooting itself in the foot. Two weeks before the sport’s grandest clay-court showcase, the French Open, does it make sense for people all over the world to be watching an event on blue clay. Would the final big lead-in event to The Masters golf tournament ever be played on a course with blue fairways and greens?
Stupido – as they say in Spanish.
Friday, May 15, 2009 02:17 PM
Fab Four being grueling stretch
The men's tennis tour is just beginning its 12 toughest weeks of the year.
Starting last week in Monte Carlo and going through until the end of Wimbledon on July 5, there are a dozen weeks with very few to be taken off by the current Fab Four of Rafael Nadal, Roger Federer, Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray.
Best positioned in terms of their weeks off heading into to the French Open are Federer and Murray. They will play one week on and one week off until Roland Garros – last week in Monte Carlo, this week off, next week in Rome, a week off, Madrid, a week off and then the big one on the avenue de la Porte d'Auteuil beginning on Sunday, May 25.
Nadal and Djokovic are basically being forced into playing three weeks in a row by obligations in their homelands. After winning in Monte Carlo last week Nadal would probably have preferred to have this week off – like Federer, Djokovic and Murray – but he feels obliged to play in Barcelona. Because next week's Italian Open is an ‘automatic-entry' Masters Series event, the world No. 1 then has little choice but to play three weeks in a row.
That could be 15 matches in 19 days if he reaches the final in both Barcelona and Rome, which is certainly an overload at a time when it would be preferable to building up more slowly to Roland Garros.
At least he will have a week off before Madrid and then another before the French Open.
A footnote here, Nadal has expressed some reservations about Madrid, a brand new extravaganza Masters Series event at a site featuring three retractable roof stadiums, because it is played at altitude. He fears that, with the ball flying a bit more than at sea level, it may not be the ideal preparation for Roland Garros.
How ironic that this fabulous new event is viewed with some ambivalence by far-and-away it's No. 1 star attraction.
Djokovic will face a Nadal-like situation when he plays three weeks in a row – Rome, Belgrade and then Madrid. In his case, the obligation to Belgrade is even stronger than Nadal to Barcelona because his family owns the brand new ATP 250 event in the Serbian capital.
Men's tennis is flourishing at the moment and it is to be hoped all top-four players arrive at the French Open in good physical shape. If Nadal or Djokovic is diminished in some way, it may be possible to trace that back to playing for three consecutive weeks on the clay with its long, gruelling rallies.
Following the French Open, there is little rest for the game's leading quartet. The week after Nadal wins his fifth Coupe des Mousquetaires in Paris – almost a foregone conclusion barring injury – he and Murray will switch to grass and play the Wimbledon warm-up event at Queen's Club in London. Federer and Djokovic will head to Halle, Germany, to play the Gerry Weber Open, the only grass-court event other than Wimbledon to have a rain cover over its main stadium court.
All four players will then take a week off before The Championships begin on June 22.
It will wind up being a huge amount of pressure tennis in a 12-week period on two different surfaces. As fit as the top guys try to be these days, it is likely one or more of the Fab Four will pay the price at either Roland Garros or Wimbledon.
Note: The ATP's statistics savant, Greg Sharko, has done an interesting analysis of the Fab-Four and how their rankings could shake down over the next few months. Here's the link: http://www.atpworldtour.com/tennis/1/en/news/newsarticle_3289.asp
PRAISE: With her runner-up performance at the WTA Tour event in Ponte Vedra, Fla., two weeks ago and a second-round finish last week in Charleston, S.C., Aleksandra Wozniak of Blainville, Que., has moved her ranking up to a career-high No. 26.
That puts her ahead of Patricia Hy-Boulais, No. 28 in 1993, on the list of top Canadians on the WTA Tour since it introduced computer rankings in 1975.
Carling Bassett-Seguso (No. 8 in 1985) and Helen Kelesi (No. 13 in 1990) remain in the No. 1 and No. 2 spots.
Kudos to Sharon Fichman of Toronto, 18, for winning the $25,000 (U.S.), clay-court Challenger event in Osprey, Fla., last week. Fichman's ranking is up to No. 238 after a 6-4, 6-1 victory over former top-100 player Yuliana Fedak of Ukraine in the final.
POTSHOT: The new mixed Madrid event, scheduled for May 10-17, is considering changing its classic red (ochre) clay courts to blue and will have a demonstration blue clay court on the site this year for trial by players. The blue is said to fit in better with the colours of Mutua Madrilena, the tournament's main sponsor.
This is a hair-brain plan, another example of tennis shooting itself in the foot. Two weeks before the sport's grandest clay-court showcase, the French Open, does it make sense for people all over the world to be watching an event on blue clay. Would the final big lead-in event to The Masters golf tournament ever be played on a course with blue fairways and greens?
Stupido – as they say in Spanish.
Friday, May 15, 2009 01:53 PM
Like brother, like sister
On Monday, April 20, Dinara Safina will ascend to the No. 1 ranking in women's tennis.
She is largely doing it by default because current No. 1 Serena Williams played with an injured left leg while losing the Sony Ericsson Open final in Miami two weeks ago and then, still hurting, lost in the opening round in Marbella, Spain, last week. She has withdrawn from this week's WTA Tour event in Charleston, S.C.
Safina, who becomes the 19th woman to hold the top spot since computer rankings were introduced in 1975, has not played well this year, except for reaching the Australian Open final where she was outclassed 6-0, 6-3 by Williams.
Most of her points were amassed from last May to September when she won tournaments in Berlin, Los Angeles, Montreal and Tokyo and finished as runner-up at the French Open (to Ana Ivanovic) and at the Olympics (Elena Dementieva).
Somewhat overlooked in her making it to the top of the rankings is the fact that a great feat has been achieved – a brother and sister both getting to the pinnacle of their sport and holding the No. 1 ranking.
Safina, 22, joins brother Marat Safin, who held the ATP's No. 1 ranking for a total of nine weeks in late 2000 and early 2001. Safin, currently No. 21, is very likely in his final year before retiring.
The odds are that Safina, who started slowly in 2008 but was 44-7 from Berlin in May until the end of the season, is unlikely to match those results and be able to defend the ranking points she earned a year ago.
She is fundamentally a streaky player and limited by her emotional make-up and high-risk game style. At nearly 6-feet tall, Safina is not a good mover and relies on powerful, low-margin-for-error ground strokes to out-manoeuvre opponents. Additionally, her serve, characterized by an unusually high ball toss, is inconsistent and often produces equal measures of slashing aces and bumbling double faults.
Her temperament and technical fragility make it doubtful she will have an extended run at No. 1, but she will reach the top spot and be able to share that achievement her mercurial 29-year-old brother. That means the siblings of the Safin household in Moscow are now jointly in the record books.
Historically, the only even comparable sister-brother combinations were Nancy and Cliff Richey of the United States and Arantxa Sanchez-Vicario and Emilio from Spain.
Nancy Richey was No. 2 in the unofficial world rankings in 1968, while younger brother Cliff reached No. 6 in 1970.
Sanchez-Vicario was No. 1 for six weeks in the 1995 WTA Tour computer rankings and the older Emilio got as high as No. 7 in the ATP rankings in 1990.
But neither pair had the charisma and craziness of Safina and Safin. Marat is as renowned for on-court combustibility as he is for his engaging personality. Dinara, in many ways, is a more demure replica of her beloved brother.
Asked during the Indian Wells, Calif., tournament in March about learning from Marat, she joked, “Just not do like he's doing. Do completely opposite from him.”
Both originally the product of their tennis-teaching mother Raouza Islanova, they are close, even if they usually go their separate ways. Marat did not interrupt his grass-court training in London to fly across the Channel to see his kid sister play in the French Open final (losing to Ana Ivanovic) last June, and Dinara said at this year's Australian Open, “I don't like to bother him, to go for dinner. He has his company. I have my company. Once the tournament is finished, we can go together.”
She remains very much in his shadow. During Indian Wells, she said, “Today one person is coming up to me, asking me if I'm Marat's sister. I'm like ‘Yeah.' [They ask] ‘Are you playing tennis?' I look at them like ‘Yes, I'm also a tennis player.' I'm still known more as his sister.”
A major difference between her and Marat, a bon vivant who enjoys a drink and a smoke, was revealed before Dinara's 2009 Australian Open final against Serena Williams. She had the following exchange with a reporter at Melbourne Park:
Q: When Marat won his first Grand Slam (2000 U.S. Open), he had some chilled vodka brought in. I'm wondering what your preferred celebration beverage might be if that happens?
Safina: "I don't drink any alcohol. The most you will see me drinking is some pure water.”
PRAISE: Aleksandra Wozniak, of Blainville, Que., turned in an excellent performance at the WTA Tour event in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla., last week, reaching a career-high ranking of No. 29.
She upset top-seeded Nadia Petrova in the semi-finals and survived a match point to defeat Tamira Paszek of Austria in the quarter-finals. While the 6-1, 6-2 loss in the final to Caroline Wozniacki was disappointing, it was a good comeback week as she continues to recover from a right shoulder injury that kept her out of action in February.
POTSHOT: This week's Family Circle Cup in Charleston, S.C., will be without its top attraction, Serena Williams. When Williams lost in the Sony Ericsson Open to Victoria Azarenka two weeks ago, she spoke about having to take two weeks off to get over a leg injury that hampered her in the final.
Then she proceeded to go and play (and apparently receive a large appearance fee) in Marbella, Spain, four days later, losing to little-known Klara Zakopalova of the Czech Republic.
No surprise she withdrew from the storied $1-million (U.S.) Family Circle event, in its 37th year, depriving the biggest American event on clay of a home-grown star.
Match Tough Contributors
Tom Tebbutt
Tom Tebbutt has covered more than 90 Grand Slam events, including the past 55 in a row as the Globe's tennis writer, as well as all the Canadian Open tournaments in Montreal and Toronto since 1974. He is also well known for his broadcast work, having done commentary on RDS tennis coverage for the past 20 years as well as reporting to various radio outlets in Montreal and Toronto in English and French. A former editor of Canadian tennis publications Racquets Canada and On Court, Tebbutt was on the board of directors of the International Tennis Writers Association from 2000 to 2007. In his recent book, A Champion’s Mind, about tennis great Pete Sampras, veteran American writer Peter Bodo described Tebbutt as "an enterprising journalist and tennis nut from Toronto."