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Ashe Stadium is for the birds Posted: Monday September 02, 2002 11:45 AM
Sports Illustrated senior writer Jon Wertheim will answer your tennis questions every Monday. Click here to send a question. A quick Mailbag in between the raindrops ... I was wondering if you saw this article suggesting that Arthur Ashe Stadium may be the worst in American sports. I must confess to thinking, Can he be serious?, considering that the Vet is still standing, but he does make some good points. What with the concrete, the $26 shrimp salads and the X Games-style promos, have we managed to over-Americanize the U.S. Open? Is it really that bad?
It's worse. (And this is coming from someone who's done plenty of hard time at the Vet as well as the old Riverfront in Cincy.) The "Ashe Heap," as the writer cleverly called it, is an architectural unforced error, a charmless, soulless monstrosity that is little more than a monument to greed and avarice. Any seat above the catered luxury boxes (which are seldom filled) qualifies as a nosebleed. Ambiance is nonexistent. Prices are astronomical. It reeks of exclusion. In short, Ashe would have hated it. It would be a teeny bit more palatable if one felt that all of this cash were going to grow the sport of tennis in the U.S. and worldwide. Unfortunately, there's an inescapable sense that the money is simply being transferred from exorbitant Wall Street salaries and expense accounts to exorbitant White Plains salaries and expense accounts.
(An aside: I'm as guilty of this as anyone. But can we all agree here and now to stop using the catchphrase "You cannot be serious!"? It's fast becoming tennis' answer to the ultratrite "You are the Weakest Link.") If Pete Sampras somehow won the Open, and Sports Illustrated decided to run his mug on the cover and told you to write the headline, what would your top five possibilities be?
Tennis? On the cover of Sports Illustrated? Sampras on the cover? Even if he wins, this is one hell of a hypothetical. I'm quick to point out that writers don't come up with the headlines for their stories. This will be obvious when you see how lame these are: 1. I Know What You Did This Summer
What do you think of former Virginia star Brian Vahaly? I watched him play many times in college, and he was amazing.
Vahaly has been an awfully pleasant surprise, particularly because, given his modest height and size (5-foot-11, 150 pounds), there wasn't any buzz around him coming out of UVa. I spoke recently with a prominent agent who called Vahaly "totally overlooked." In a short time, he's proven himself to be a rock-solid pro who might not make the upper tiers but can certainly hold his own -- much as he did against James Blake in the first round. I could see him being a Richey Reneberg-type pro: a .280 hitter who will never win Slams but will pull the occasional upset, get the occasional Davis Cup call and put together a respectable career. The relatively new system of seeding 32 players at Slams started as an olive branch from the Wimbledon committee, to guarantee seeds to the top 32 entrants but reserve the right to adjust based on grass-court performance. With this in mind, it seems strange that the other Slams have followed suit, but not in terms of adjusting based on surface performance. Is there any move to create an adjustment for stellar performance on clay and hard courts? At the Open, it seems reasonable for James Blake and Fernando Gonzalez to be moved up a few spots, and Roger Federer and Albert Costa to be dropped down the list a little.
The USTA, of course, tried "subjective seeding" several years ago and it was a disaster, nearly leading to a player boycott. Whereas there are clay-court and grass-court specialists (and non-specialists), just about everyone can play on the hard stuff. Sure, a few seeds like Costa were upsets waiting to happen, but is it really worth courting controversy and second-guessing just to demote a small handful of lesser seeds? During the 25,000th episode of a certain unnamed sports show, a few segments featured celebrities recounting their favorite sports memories. I was just wondering what your favorite tennis moment is? I'd have to go with the epic 1991 U.S. Open semifinal between Monica Seles and Jennifer Capriati.
I think I'd say Sampras winning Wimbledon in 2000, for Grand Slam title No. 13. The parents making a rare cameo, the race against the rain, the flashbulbs worthy of The Natural on the final point. All too surreal. What do you know about Lou Noritz, a tennis fanatic profiled in the Sept. 2 issue of The New Yorker? The story says he publishes a list of player rankings based on several factors, and Lleyton Hewitt recently took Noritz to task for not ranking him No. 1. Does this list mean anything to players? Surely you've had some encounters with this guy.
Loyal readers will recall our discussion of Dr. Lou several months ago. The guy is clearly a few games short of a set, but you have to admire his passion. Players get a kick out of him. Most, anyway. I think opinions run from "He's the roll-your-eyes crazy uncle you can't help but like" to "Say what you will, but he genuinely helps my game." The piece on Noritz in The New Yorker -- for my money, the second-best publication on the market -- is definitely worth your while. I'm the last person to support Anna Kournikova, but I wonder if she would do better to put all her efforts into becoming a doubles specialist (à la Lisa Raymond) rather than continue her singles career. She certainly thrives more in doubles, and though it wouldn't give her the solo spotlight of singles, perhaps that might not be so bad. Besides, the spotlight on her was never focused on her play, anyway. Given Martina Hingis as a partner, this could be legendary (if both work at it). What do you think?
Lisa Raymond would backhand you with her Prince if she heard you call her a doubles specialist. Anyway, as I wrote last week, it's clear that Kournikova would be better off if everyone -- herself included -- dialed back the hype and attention. But let's not overdo it. Even though the days of her being a top-10 singles player are in the past, she is among the top 40 singles players in the world. Besides, she already is a top doubles player. Why concentrate all of her efforts in doubles when she already is terrific alongside a partner? Also, let's look at this practically. First, if she bagged singles it would heighten pressure and attention -- "Anna Kournikova: Beauty Queen Who Couldn't Hack it Alone." Second, her sponsors, the WTA Tour and tournament promoters who put her on the show courts would never allow it to happen. You forgot to add to your list of Asian players a former top-40 player, Shi-Ting Wang from Taiwan. There is also Mana Endo, who defeated Lindsay Davenport in the second round of the U.S. Open in the early '90s.
Tamarine Tanasugarn (a surprise loser last week to Bea Bielik) garnered several write-ins. Also, any of you get the feeling that Angelique Widjaja is on her way to making the list? Making the callA few of you wrote in about my obsession with letting players call their own lines. Several, including Rich Gruenberger of Westchester, N.Y., disagreed. But I have chosen not to publish those. (Hey, it's one of the few perks of having your own column.) Instead, here's what a veteran says: I personally would love to see players call their own lines. I think the pressure would be on them to be honest. Because of replays, you could see who would be labeled a cheater and who gives the benefit of the doubt to the opposition. I can imagine the evening crowd at the Open when a cheater makes a close call.
Also, I am only a 4.0 player but I feel like I had plenty of experience seeing balls blasted in and out of play, especially against higher-level players. That said, I noticed some of my former colleagues, who probably never played above 2.5 level, had a hard time making calls. At least in my eyes -- and I was never wrong (wink, wink). It's back!Finally, your reward for reading down this far: Thanks to some legal wrangling (read: groveling) we are able to reintroduce the wildly popular Long Lost Siblings segment. With an assist from my pal Allen St. John of The Village Voice, I'll get the ball rolling with two:
Sports Illustrated senior writer Jon Wertheim covers tennis for the magazine and is a regular contributor to CNNSI.com. Click here to send him a question or comment.
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