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EVENTS
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It's a small man's world
By Jon Wertheim, Sports Illustrated
Yet scanning this list of fast serves, it's hard not to notice that among the first 25 names, not one player remains in the draw. Gunners the size of your average NBA power forward, with names like Rusedski, Mirnyi, Rosset and even Sampras, ran out of ammo rounds ago. In their stead are four players left in the draw who could represent the Lollipop Guild and welcome us to Munchkin Land. Stacked together, Pat Rafter, Andre Agassi, Arnaud Clement, Sebastien Grosjean are shorter than the quartet of women's semifinalists -- Martina Hingis, Lindsay Davenport, Venus Williams and Jennifer Capriati. And the tallest of the bunch, Rafter, ironically enough has the weakest serve. "We are the dwarves," jokes Clement, who, after throwing his shoes into the crowd Wednesday night after a thrilling quarterfinal win, stood 5-foot-7, max. And they are not the only ones on tour. The men's locker room sometimes looks as if it could double as ballboy headquarters. Players like Lleyton Hewitt, Juan Carlos Ferrero and Mariano Puerta -- all top 20 players -- have promising careers as jockeys should tennis ever fail them. So what gives? Why has men's tennis' pending death at the hands of the booming serve been a bigger hoax than Y2K? For one, the same technology that enables a player to serve nearly 135 mph -- as Greg Rusedski did in the second round -- helps undersized players return missiles. Agassi raised an interesting point the other day when he reckoned that a big server would still clobber the ball with a wooden racket, but that a pinpoint returner and "power baseliner" would give up a great deal if forced to compete with a Jack Kramer model. Second, the "dwarves" realized that they needed laser-guided returns and clever, accurate groundstrokes to counter the big serves, so they worked on that facet of their games. As Hingis, who also fits this Randy Newman paradigm, remarked Wednesday: "In tennis now, you can do things to [neutralize] power." Adds Clement: "When you're tall, you can put in a lot of aces, but when you're smaller like me and Sebastien, you can run faster than the tall guy." Also, like Shaquille O'Neal at the free throw line, players with a surfeit of power often have little touch or guile (see: Philippoussis, Mark ). Finally, booming serves (and the riposting returns) often travel so fast that the progenitors are unable to get to the net in time to hit a clean volley. It's interesting that Rafter, the most effective practitioner of serve-and-volley tennis on the planet, has an unremarkable serve in terms of velocity. But it's one that kicks, allowing him that extra step to advance netward. Tennis fans, of course, want it both ways. We're horrified by the prospect of tennis turning into a serving contest, but we scorn at baseliners and treat Rafter's eventual retirement as a wake for serve-and-volley tennis. In time, though, the pendulum will swing back. Just as the class of petite players like Grosjean and Clement worked on their return and baseline games to counter the power of the bionic servers, a new breed will eventually try to unseat the backcourters with clever volleys. Meanwhile, get a peek at players like Clement and Grosjean, both ridiculously quick shotmakers, who play wonderfully imaginative, entertaining tennis. They may be dwarves, but they're growing in stature. Short volleysThe string of epics between Hingis and the Williams sisters came to an abrupt halt Thursday when Martina took out Venus, 6-1, 6-1, in 53 minutes. ... In a move that one can only hope won't swell ticket prices or change the tournament's status as an affordable "people's event," Ford will be reducing its sponsorship commitment to the Australian Open. ... Memo to Pat McEnroe: If you tap your big bro for a Davis Cup doubles spot over Justin Gimelstob and Scott Humphries, who advanced to the semis before losing Thursday, you're flirting with mutiny. ... Trivia: How many of his Grand Slam titles has Agassi successfully defended? Answer: none. Click here to send a question to Sports Illustrated senior writer Jon Wertheim's Tennis Mailbag.
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