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All England remains in Dark Ages Wimbledon continues to award more prize money to menPosted: Monday May 05, 2003 2:05 PM
Sports Illustrated senior writer Jon Wertheim will answer your tennis questions every Monday. Click here to send a question. Annual Player of the Week honors go to Juan Carlos Ferrero, who won his ninth career title in Valencia. The hometown favorite and top seed beat Christophe (brother of Ollie) Rochus in the final. ... Lucas Arnold and Mariano Hood beat Brian MacPhie and Nenad Zimonjic in a three-setter to win the doubles crown. ... In Warsaw, Amelie Mauresmo took the title when Venus Williams retired in the third set of the final with an abdominal strain. It marks Mauresmo's first win over Venus, who was down a set and 0-3 to Italy's Francesca Schiavone in the quarterfinals before rallying to win. ... Venus promptly withdrew from Berlin, and you have to wonder if she'll play again before Roland Garros. ... Liezel Huber and Maggie Maleeva beat Eleni Daniilidou and Schiavone in the doubles final. ... In Munich, top-seeded Roger Federer rolled over Jarko Nieminen in the final. Federer hasn't had a quality Slam performance in more than a year, but you sure have to like the way his game is shaping up as the French draws nigh. ... In the doubles, Wayne Black and Kevin Ulyett beat Josh Eagle and Jared Palmer. ... Vera Zvonareva continues her assault on the rankings, winning her first career title in Bol, Croatia, to move into the top 20. How the mighty have fallen: While the WTA Tour circus is in Berlin this week for a Tier I, Anna Kournikova -- she of the gold exempt status -- is in the outback of Georgia quietly playing a $25,000 Challenger. ... In a press release issued late Friday night (an old trick Richard Nixon's administration used to use), the ATP revealed that Bohdan Ulihrach tested positive for a Class I steroid and faces a two-year-suspension. Given that Ulihrach is 28 and hasn't been a top player for years, one suspects this might mark the end of his career. ... The USTA announced that Eliot Teltscher and Debbie Graham will be the men's and women's tennis coaches for the Pan Am games, Aug. 1-16 in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. ... By now you've surely seen the announcement that Wimbledon is doing away with one tradition and sustaining another. Players no longer will be expected to bow and curtsy before the Royal Box. On the other hand, the prize money will remain less for the women than for the men. The announcement was actually made in October, but it took a while for the gents at the All England to send it via Western Union to St. Joseph, Mo., from where the Pony Express then disseminated it. (See below for more on the Wimbledon prize issue and the Paleolithic Era.) ... One of you suggested we try and devote more space to college tennis. So here goes: Ken Flach, the former U.S. Davis Cup star and '88 Olympic doubles gold medalist with Robert Seguso, has coached Vanderbilt to a top-10 national ranking. Prior to this season, Vandy had won just 32 SEC matches in 21 years. A big reason for the Commodores' success has been junior Bobby Reynolds, who has lost just one match since January and recently climbed to No. 1 in the national singles rankings. ... A music recommendation to pass along: Pianist-cum-F.O.M.-cum-Andre Agassi lookalike Anthony Molinaro has a new CD out, a collaboration with Grammy winner Howard Levy, who is a founding member of Bela Fleck and the Flecktones. Go to anthonymolinaro.com for more info. ... As long as we're shamelessly plugging our friends, anyone with an interest in Eastern Europe will enjoy Marc Howard's riveting new potboiler The Weakness of Civil Society in Post-Communist Europe. Don't let the dry title fool you: As Jeffrey Kopstein of the University of Toronto breathlessly writes, "Howard's study will surely become a standard work for students of civil society and democracy." Mary Joe speaks outA few of you wrote in expressing surprise that Mary Joe Fernandez's name surfaced when a disgruntled former USOC employee released a list of athletes whose positive drug tests were concealed. My instinct was to let the issue die: Fernandez "tested positive" for pseudoephedrine, from a Sudafed pill she had ingested -- completely legally -- months before the Barcelona Games, and she never should have been grouped with bona fide drug cheats. The following is a letter she submitted that ran in last week's Sports Illustrated; hopefully it will put the issue to rest once and for all.
When Wade Exum leaked the names of athletes who'd tested positive, the most prominent were track star Carl Lewis, soccer player Alexi Lalas -- and me. SI reported that I'd tested positive for pseudoephedrine, a substance found in some cold remedies. But when papers picked up the story, it was often distilled to Mary Joe Fernandez tested positive for a banned substance in 1992. Sometimes the accounts mentioned pseudoephedrine but didn't say it was in a cold remedy. A Reuters headline read U.S. HAD DRUG CHEATS. My parents were very upset; my friends were supportive, some wondering what was up. Let me be clear: I have never taken a drug to enhance performance. In 1992 Sudafed wasn't banned by tennis's governing bodies. When I was tested by the USOC that March -- five months before the Games -- I told the authorities beforehand I'd taken Sudafed for a cold. I did test positive for pseudoephedrine three weeks later but tested clean before the Olympics and again after. The U.S. Tennis Association and the International Tennis Federation affirm this. My biggest worry is that 10 years from now my 16-month-old daughter, Isabella, will go on the Internet and then say to me, "Mom, I didn't know you did drugs." I'm like everyone else. Before this happened, when I saw that an athlete had flunked a drug test, I put him or her in a box labeled FOREVER SUSPECT. But now? Knowing firsthand that an incident can be reduced to a distorting sound bite? I'll never think that way again. Question timeI was disappointed that Wimbledon has decided once again to award the women less prize money than the men. This really infuriates me and makes me very reluctant to support the tournament. Surely I'm not alone. Will the women ever seriously consider a boycott until they get equal pay?
Be assured that you are not alone in your frustration with the All England Club. Last week's announcement was hardly shocking, but it was disappointing nonetheless. Quite apart from simply doing the right thing (and, in the process, not alienating half the field), you'd think that by now the women have justified themselves economically. If memory serves, didn't the women's doubles final achieve superior worldwide TV ratings to the men's singles final last year? Does anyone really think that men's runner-up David Nalbandian generated more buzz last year than his female counterpart, Venus Williams? Wimbledon trots out this "scientific evidence" that fans prefer men's tennis to women's. You get the feeling that some guy straight out of a P.G. Wodehouse novel stood outside Centre Court after Tim Henman had played and asked 20 of his friends if they prefer men's tennis. What's particularly exasperating is that the difference is so minimal, it's more symbolic than anything else. A few hundred thousand dollars -- the budget for petunias, a member joked a few years ago -- would extinguish the entire controversy. But this has echoes of Hootie Johnson-like defiance. One suspects the members are saying to themselves, We'll give equal prize when we bloody well feel like it. Not at the point of a Wilson Hammer. Someone ought to explain to these guys that you can sustain tradition without being socially regressive at the same time. Having said all that, the odds of a boycott are less than slim. Even if it were possible to organize the players (after that, we'll invent a perpetual-motion machine), the stakes are too high. The Slams have the players -- and the tours -- over a barrel. Despite the inequity, WTA players are still paid better at Wimbledon than at any other event this side of the U.S. Open. Despite the inequity, there are still beaucoup ranking points at stake. Despite the inequity, it's still Wimbledon! The average pro will play at the All England, say, eight times in her career. Is she really going to miss a turn over a political issue? To his credit, Larry Scott, the WTA Tour's new CEO, who seems to have significant early support among his constituents, issued a statement condemning the unequal wage scale: "While I am somewhat encouraged by Wimbledon's decision to increase singles prize money by an amount that exceeds that of recent years, I am disappointed that Wimbledon has once again failed to address the longstanding inequity between men's and women's prize money." I'm not sure if you're aware of Jelena Dokic's dilemma. Apparently, she wants to represent Australia at next year's Olympics. I blame her father completely for all the media fiascos and her leaving Australia. Do you think Dokic's intentions are a sign that she has grown up and realized the errors of her father's ways (not to mention the $500,000 Tennis Australia invested in her), or do you think that since she is ineligible to represent Serbia or Montenegro she may as well represent Australia for a bit. I'd be glad to have her back if it meant a long-term commitment. I think her representing Australia at the Australian Open would be a start.
Thanks for the update. I've had college roommates who changed their undergarments less often than Dokic changes her nationality. Her father is, indeed, largely to blame for her woes, and it's an encouraging sign that she seems to be distancing herself from him and extricating herself from his influence. But let's see her play in the Australian Open before she represents the country in the Olympics. If I'm a fair dinkum Aussie like Alicia Molik or Nicole Pratt and my spot is being taken by a player who has publicly castigated both Tennis Australia and the entire country, I'm hoppin' mad, as Crocodile Dundee said. I am in the middle of studying for finals at UCLA, but I am an aspiring tennis agent and wanted to ask you who are the best and worst agents in the sport?
There's a saying in the NBA: "Players get the agents they deserve." I think there's more than a little truth to that and, as a rule, the same holds in tennis. But as agents go, in tennis you're talking about an entirely different phylum from the agents in other major sports. Some may traffic untruths from time to time, but the landscape is clear of Sugars (from Jerry Maguire), to say nothing of the Tank Blacks and Drew Rosenhauses. More important, here's a foolproof tip for a college final: Use the term transformative at least twice and prevailing hegemony at least once and you won't get worse than a B. Because he skipped Houston, do all signs now point to Pete Sampras officially giving up on a run (stab) at Roland Garros? As a fan, I'd love to see him give it another shot. But at this point is he most likely preparing for a Queen's Club/Wimbledon swan song?
You no doubt saw that Sampras pulled out of Rome, too. For the life of me, I can't imagine that Sampras would end his hiatus and/or launch his last-hurrah comeback at Roland Garros, a venue that has, of course, bedeviled him throughout the years. Again, I wouldn't be shocked if we never saw him again. But apparently he is practicing at UCLA's facility, which suggests that perhaps he'll give Wimbledon another shot. Unless you have a heart the size of a pea, you wish Sampras well. But, man, it's hard to see him coming back from such a long layoff and making a credible run at a Slam, even on grass. How do you think John McEnroe would have fared if he didn't have the advantage of being a lefty? I say he would have made it to the top 10 but would have nowhere near the number of Slam titles. Without his lefty can-opener server to bail him out, I believe players like Bjorn Borg and Ivan Lendl would have eaten him alive on most days. I think the same argument would hold true for Rod Laver. If Laver were a righty, I say Ken Rosewall would have owned him.
I think you're overstating the advantage of being a lefty, especially in an era when power was less vital and easy to come by than it is today. No doubt Mac's southpaw, sidewinding delivery was an asset, but so was his tactical superiority, his underrated athleticism, his preternatural feel, his competitive instincts and his picturesque forehand (kidding on the last one). If being left-handed is such a decisive asset, why have there been relatively few lefty champs since? And why aren't more lefties currently in the sport's upper reaches? (I have a hard time naming five on the WTA Tour off the top of my head.) Sure, some hard-serving men like Goran Ivanisevic, Greg Rusedski and Wayne Arthurs get extra bang for the buck when they go lefty. But next time you watch the run-of-the-mill lefty -- Patty Schnyder, Emilie Loit, Hicham Arazi, Marcelo Rios, Feliciano Lopez -- ask yourself how many extra points he/she is winning because of southpaw strokes. Now that Lindsay Davenport is married, is she changing her name? Is it Lindsay Davenport-Leach, Lindsay Leach-Davenport, Lindsay Leach? Or will she stick with Lindsay Davenport? Or will she follow in Madonna's footsteps and just be called Lindsay? I don't really like the sound of Lindsay Leach.
Lindsay Davenport will remain Lindsay Davenport. For those interested, People has a shot from Davenport's wedding in its current issue. Australian legal system note: Public figures do not have to prove malice in defamation cases. They do, however, have to prove it lowered public opinion of them, which is tough in Hewitt's case, because he doesn't really have a particularly good public persona anyway. So I still think Hewitt has no hope in hell of winning the case, and truth is an absolute defense down here, too.
If the Mailbag responses are any indication, Hewitt has inflicted more damage on his reputation with this frivolous suit than anything the ATP Tour could ever do. There were lots of Hewitt harangues but we're printing yours since you have the most memorable hometown (and, of course, were kind enough to provide some substantive legal background). How soon do you think it will be before a top player on the men's tour will speak openly of his gay orientation? Would this really create such a stir? Is significant homophobia present on the ATP Tour?
I think we may have covered this a few years ago, but it's a good question so we'll gladly revisit. Call me naive, but if a male player were to come out or speak openly about his gay orientation, it would hardly create a stir. In fact, I'll go a step further: It would do wonders for his popularity. He instantly would become an icon both among gay fans and fans who simply admire his courage. Unfortunately, I think we're a still a long way from an athlete in a team sport coming out -- too many Neanderthals in the locker room, too much a prevailing macho culture, too many homophobic fans at road games, too many "team chemistry" issues. Tennis is different. Players don't need teammates to pass them the ball. They don't have lockermates. There isn't this alpha-male culture. Though Ivanisevic had an ugly habit of using the word faggot, I haven't seen much evidence of homophobia on the ATP Tour. But it's almost irrelevant. One of the beauties of tennis is that it's a real meritocracy. Players -- straight or gay -- need not ingratiate themselves to anyone. Just win matches and you'll be fine. What about Natasha Zvereva? If you're going to include Todd Woodbridge in the Hall of Fame because he dominated doubles and was a strong singles players, I suggest you include Natasha Zvereva. She has 80 doubles titles, 18 of them are Grand Slams. In singles, she reached No. 5 in the world! A finalist at Roland Garros and a semifinalist at Wimbledon, she surely deserves a spot.
Fine. She's in. Though I'm starting to worry that the Hall of Fame will become as exclusive as Mike Price's Pensacola hotel room. In fact, if you played No. 2 singles or higher on your J.V. team, send your credentials into Newport ASAP. The first time I saw Taylor Dent play, I was excited about the fact that his game is so similar to Pete Sampras', and I felt I had somebody to root for if Pete were to retire. However, Dent is older than Sampras was when Sampras became big on the tour. Do you think Dent can have the dominance over other players the way Sampras did over his generation?
I like Dent on grass (and in Memphis). Otherwise, he makes too many errors -- both unforced and tactical -- to be a consistent threat. A little Dent trivia as long as you brought him up: He is the first cousin of Misty May, the number No. 1 beach volleyball player in the world. Long Lost SiblingsPetr Korda and Beavis, of Beavis and Butthead.
Andy Roddick and Lark Voorhies as Lisa Turtle on Saved by the Bell. *Just wanted to check if all Saved by the Bell references really would make it.
(Ed. note: Tiffani-Amber Thiessen and Michael Chang? Yeah, I can see that ...)
Tim Henman and Billy Elliot star Jamie Bell.
Tommy Robredo and Tom Cruise.
Have a good week, everyone!
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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