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Headed for Newport These active players are destined for the Hall of FamePosted: Monday April 14, 2003 1:58 PMUpdated: Monday April 14, 2003 7:47 PM
Sports Illustrated senior writer Jon Wertheim will answer your tennis questions every Monday. Click here to send a question. This week's annual Player of the Week award goes to Justine Henin-Hardenne, who did what no one else previously had done this year -- beat Serena Williams -- to win the Family Circle Cup outside lovely Charleston. Said JHH: "It's still very tough to beat Serena and today I just kept fighting and finally won the match, but she's No. 1 in the world and she deserves that so much. But I agree that for me on the clay court it's much easier than on the other surfaces because we could see that I had much more time to organize my game." ... Henin-Hardenne (and, in fact, all the players on the WTA Tour) owes a debt of gratitude to Emilie Loit. In the first of Serena's 21 straight wins to start 2003, Loit pushed Serena deep into the third set by junking up the rallies, varying speeds and spins, and slicing-and-dicing and inducing errors. Albeit with more precision and power, Henin-Hardenne deployed a similar strategy Sunday and it worked to perfection. ... Sayeth Serena: "Sometimes you need to lose. I'm so motivated now, I can just feel it coming again. So you gotta watch out." ... If there were a runner-up for Player of the Week honors, it would go to American Ashley Harkleroad, who reached the semis in what sure looked like a breakthrough tournament. Outside the top 100 when the tournament started, Harkleroad beat Elena Bovina, Meghann Shaughnessy and Daniela Hantuchova (badly) before losing to the eventual champ. Hello, automatic ins. ... The juggernaut duo of Virginia Ruano Pascual-Paola Suarez took the doubles title by upending the team of Janette Husarova-Conchita Martinez. ... In Casablanca, France's Julien Boutter won his first career title, beating hometown fave Younes El Aynaoui in a three-set final. ... Russia's Nikolay Davydenko captured his second ATP title of the year with a victory over Argentina's Agustin Calleri in the final of the Estoril Open. ... In the women's draw, Spain's Magui Serna won her second straight Estoril title by defeating German qualifier Julia Schruff. Think Kim Clijsters is down to earth? In the weekend before last, the WTA's No. 2 player (yes, you read right; she'll overtake Venus Williams this week) accompanied her beau, Lleyton Hewitt, to the Australia-Sweden Davis Cup tie. Clijsters occupied her time not by luxuriating in her suite, but by shagging balls, fetching towels and -- get this -- even mixing the Gatorade for the Australian team. ... Speaking of Australian Davis Cup info, we're told that the site of the Aussie-Roger Federer, uh, Australia-Switzerland tie will be Vodafone Arena in Melbourne. ... Speaking (more) of Davis Cup, lots of you guys roasted me for saying that Argentina has the deepest team. My thinking: There are a raft of Argentines in the top 50 or 60, including last year's Wimbledon runner-up and guys like Guillermo Ca–as who do just fine on hard courts. If Carlos Moya were somehow unfit to play and the tie were on a surface other than clay, Spain might be in some trouble. Guess we'll see how this plays out. Regardless, these next two rounds ought to be a lot of fun. ... If Goran Ivanisevic didn't exist, we'd have to make him up. Last week the Croatian underwent ankle surgery; seems he managed to get a piece of shell embedded in his foot while on the beach during the NASDAQ-100. ... An assiduous reader (whose name I've misplaced) reports seeing Anna Kournikova and Enrique Iglesias backstage at a recent Bon Jovi show in Fort Lauderdale. ... Organizers of the San Diego event announced last week that Tommy Bahama is coming aboard as a presenting sponsor. ... Nice touch by the WTA Tour last week in honoring Serena's "Serena Slam." While the cognoscenti debated whether hers was a legit Slam or not, too many people lost sight of just how momentous an achievement it was. ... This has started out as a rough year for Tim Henman. "Their Tim" missed the Australian Open and last week suffered another shoulder injury that could keep him off the court for several weeks. ... I hope I don't regret writing this, but sources tell the 'Bag that the Tennis Channel is finally set to launch. If so, it's a good day for our fair sport. Onward ... I saw that the International Tennis Hall of Fame induction ceremony will take place later this summer. I'm wondering what active players you think will get in when their careers come to a close?
I think we may have done this before, but it's a fun question.* Again, these are active players (or Martina Hingis and Pete Sampras), and this assumes the voting would take place today. I'm betting that Clijsters, for instance, eventually gains the requisite credentials, but if she quit playing tomorrow, she wouldn't make it. I have an unfortunate feeling I'm missing someone obvious, but here goes: WOMEN No-brainers
Good chance
Borderliners
MEN No-brainers
Good chance
Borderliners
*As an aside, it's astounding how many questions we get pertaining to the Hall of Fame. Will Player X get in? Who has a better shot, Player Y or Player Z? Was there a vast conspiracy to exclude to Stefan Edberg? One seldom hears players make the slightest mention of the Hall of the Fame or list enshrinement as a career goal. But among fans the place has real currency, and the selection criteria and process seem to be a source of great interest. Just an observation. Was the Family Circle Cup the breakout tournament for Ashley Harkleroad? Isn't it a top-tier tourney? Does this mean all the hype might be prophetic?
Again, hats off to Harkleroad. Indeed, the Family Circle Cup is a top-tier tourney and Harkleroad acquitted herself awfully well, beating three seeded players, including a 6-2, 6-1 pasting of the faltering Hantuchova. Harkleroad has yet to turn 18, but even so, she has had a strange go of it already. It was hard to distinguish how much hype pertained to her game and how much was a product of this "American Anna" garbage. Harkelroad didn't give us much clue, either. She would lose in the qualifying round one week and then score a win over a quality player like Anne Kremer the next. Then she'd lose again only to come up and serve a double-bagel to a Marlene Weingartner. Although Harkleroad's (euphemism alert) conditioning can fluctuate, clearly she has some talent. For a physically unimposing player, she hits a pretty ball and competes well. Was this a breakout performance? Guess we'll see, but you sure have to be encouraged by her results last week.
I enjoyed your article about the Illinois tennis team. Louisville hosts the National Indoor Championships every other year, so we get to see the best programs compete. College tennis is a lot of fun to watch because of the team atmosphere and a more vocal and rowdy audience. Unfortunately, college tennis gets very little coverage in the press. What needs to be done to bring this exciting format into the mainstream? First off, I completely agree with your premise. College tennis is great fun and the overlay of an individual sport in a team format often makes for gripping theater. Why does college tennis often fly beneath the radar? Interesting question. I suppose one reason is the (often erroneous) perception that if the players were really any good, they'd already be on the pro circuit. Of course we can tick off a long list of quality pros (James Blake, Todd Martin, Mal Washington, Brian Vahaly, Byron Black, etc.) who showed no ill effects of spending at least a couple of years on a college campus. Right or wrong, I think the image of college tennis has taken a hit from the rampant recruitment of overseas players. It's also unfortunate that the NCAA championships invariably seem to conflict with the French Open. The season builds to a crescendo and then is lost in the agate type. But again, I'm with you on this. College tennis is really an unmined gem and I think the average fan would be impressed with the quality of play. One hopes that the sport's inherent appeal, the success of new programs such as Illinois, and the success of former college players will make college tennis more popular in the near future. With Pete Sampras asking for a wild card into the Queens Club tournament, do you think that his plan is to play Queens and Wimbledon, then call it a career?
I wouldn't read too much into this. Sampras has entered a number of tournaments this year (San Jose, Scottsdale, Indian Wells, Houston, etc.) only to withdraw the week before the event. If he has any inclination to play Queens Club, he'd have to ask to for a wild card because his ranking wouldn't necessarily get him in and he sure ain't going through the rigors of trying to qualify. I'm pretty sure, too, that it was the tournament -- as opposed to Sampras' camp -- that made the announcement. The guy has really gone J.D. Salinger on us since winning the U.S. Open, but one could definitely see him trying to make one last go of it on grass and exorcising the memory of losing to George Bastl.
I am soooo disappointed to hear that one of my favorite players, Magnus Larsson, has retired. I saw him play for the first time when he won the Grand Slam Cup in 1994 (he absolutely drilled Andre Agassi along the way); after that he always gave top players a really tough match but never seemed to beat any. Any comments on his career? Will he be remembered as an underachiever? Anyone who moved like Larsson (he had great mobility as well as a name befitting a contestant on the World's Strongest Man contest) and still turned in his results won't go down as an underachiever. Larsson unquestionably was skilled and his tennis epitaph is that of a dangerous floater. The guy was never a real threat to string together six or seven straight matches and win a big event, but he had a ton of talent and was the type of player none of the top brass wanted to see in a draw. I recall watching him run roughshod over Sampras in Indy a few years ago (if memory serves, he lost to Wayne Ferreira in the subsequent match). Likewise, he knocked Marcelo Rios out of the U.S. Open a few years back when Rios was a threat. Losing to a qualifier or beating a top player, Larsson's facial expression and body language didn't change in the slightest. Please explain your obsession with Fabrice Santoro. I admit that I've never seen him play, but I haven't been impressed with his results and he's been out there for years. What am I missing?
Obsessed? Ahab was obsessed with the whale. Tom DeLay is obsessed with tax cuts. Bill O'Reilly is obsessed with himself. From time to time, I merely profess a fondness for Santoro's game, and suddenly I stand accused of having a psychiatric disorder? Seriously, if you've never seen Santoro play, make a point of doing so. (Lucky for all of us, he is an exceptional doubles player, so the opportunities abound.) Quite apart from his physical appearance (a nondescript guy who might be 5-foot-10 and who wears an Izod buttoned all the way to the top, in a manner that would have made him a social outcast in high school circa 1982), he plays the sport like no one else. A forehand slice, two hands off both wings, lots of shotmaking and a host of clever, capricious points. One of his favorite tactics is the drop shot/topspin lob combo that seemed to have gone out with wooden rackets. I'm telling you, he's a one-man Harlem Globetrotters of tennis. In fact, at some matches he's been known to sneak behind his opponent's chair at the changeover and douse him with a bucket of paper confetti. What's up with the Swiss lefty Patty Schnyder? Is she having personal problems or is she just in a slump? Either way, she gets far less media attention than a player of her ranking and caliber deserves. Last year Schnyder single-handedly knocked out four of the biggest names at the Family Circle Cup, while at this year's tournament she lost her first match to a virtual unknown. She seems to have quite a dark side to her. I love watching her clever, artistic game and I bet her story would make a fascinating read. Do you have the skinny on her?
In late 1998, when she cracked the top 10 as a teenager and her career was on the upswing, someone described Schnyder to me as a "the female Rios." Both left-handed; similar clever, artistic game; similar temperament; and, it turned out, a similar career trajectory. Schnyder has never been the same player since she hooked up with that self-styled "guru," Rainer Harnecker, in early 1999. From there the story took even weirder turns. It seems that Schnyder's parents hired one Rainer Hofmann as a private investigator to help extricate Schnyder from Harnecker's clutches. He did. So much so that he and Schnyder subsequently fell in love and became engaged. Hofmann traveled with Schnyder, sometimes served as her coach and was a fixture on the WTA Tour. Hofmann, however, recently was found guilty of defrauding a German telecommunications company of $1.3 million and was sentenced by a Frankfurt judge to 18 months in jail. (His lawyer told the German media that he pleaded guilty to spare Schnyder the embarrassment of a trial.) Recent reports also suggested that Schnyder's estranged parents were launching a defamation action against Hofmann. I'm not sure whether Hofmann has begun his sentence, etc., but it's easy to see how this could all be a bit, um, distracting to Schnyder. How can a BIG TENNIS FAN find out the addresses and contact info to send regular mail to top-level tennis players (i.e., Serena Williams, James Blake, Alexandra Stevenson, etc.?
My advice for a BIG TENNIS FAN would be to contact the players via their agents, who would be happy to put the mail in their alligator-skin briefcases and make a hand delivery. In the case of the aforementioned, you could address your mail to the player: c/o IMG Tennis Division
In the interest of equal time, the addresses for Octagon (the agency for players such Hewitt, Hingis, Kournikova and Amelie Mauresmo, among others) and SFX (Andy Roddick, Jan-Michael Gambill, Paradorn Srichaphan, et al.) are: Octagon
SFX
Herr apparentIn response to last week's question regarding the whereabouts of Boris Bachert, we received a few responses. Thanks to all who wrote in. I heard that he's starting a seniors tour with Stefan Edburg and John McEnrow.
Bachert stopped playing after a 2001 Morocco satellite tour event because of an ankle injury and bad results. Seems that old Boris only managed a few satellite tour wins, accompanied by one appearance in an ATP Tour event, where Rainer Schuettler beat him in straight sets.
To the fan who was losing sleep over the nail-biting dramas, twists and turns of Boris Bachert's tennis career: Find a new object of interest, bub. Suffice it to say that Boris would not quite reach the dizzying heights of his namesake and countryman. Never even achieving so much as flash-in-the-strudel-pan status, Boris Bachert played one ATP Tour match on July 27, 1998, at a clay-court event in Kitzbuhel, Austria, against fellow German Rainer Schuettler. Bachert lost 6-4, 7-6 and apparently was so despondent over this stinging defeat that he actually never played another professional match. The upside? There is a rumor that he is now full-time pool-boy for a certain Barbara Feltus.
Boris Bachert was ranked 103rd in Germany last year, when he played in the second division of the German tennis league for TC Wolfsberg-Pforzheim. I don't know whether he's playing there in 2003, however (the new season starts in June). Apparently, he's one of the many players who showed some promise but just didn't make it.
Long Lost SiblingsFinally, we hear that Hollywood mogul (and tennis fan) Arnon Milchan has agreed to make yet another sequel to American Pie, casting only from the WTA and ATP tours. (Not really true: just a conceit for this week's Long Lost Siblings.)
Sports Illustrated senior writer Jon Wertheim covers tennis for the magazine and is a regular contributor to SI.com. Click here to send him a question or comment.
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