| Tanks for coming
Posted: Mon August 24, 1998 
Sports Illustrated staff writer Jon Wertheim will answer your tennis questions weekly. Click here to send a question.
Granted, there's a fine line between parity and tanking, but did anyone else out there find it a tad suspicious that the ATP Tour's top four players—Marcelo Rios, Pete Sampras, Pat Rafter and Petr Korda—all lost early-round matches on the same day last week? This is just further proof that—as many of you have complained in weeks past, including Mike Pollard of Farmington, N.Mex.—there are just too many tournaments on the calendar and, as a result, there is little incentive for the players to give their best showing at every event.
The bottom line is that all parties lose. Take what happened last week: fans get ticked off when they pony up big bucks for tickets and then see Sampras half-ass a match against Leander Paes. With so many other events for players to chose from, tournament organizers have to shell out appearance fees to lure the top guns. Butch Buchholz, for instance, reportedly gave Sampras a six-figure guarantee to play in the New Haven tourney, which, inexplicably, is held the same week as another top-caliber hard-court event in Indianapolis. Players must either tax their bodies by playing more matches than they ought to, or else swallow an ignominious defeat to a lower-ranked player. And television networks are scared away, knowing that they may end up broadcasting a final between Karol Kucera and Goran Ivanisevic, as was CBS' ill fortune on Sunday.
More events attract more sponsors which generates more publicity and more prize money for more players. Fair enough, but eventually there's a point of dilution. When the top four players in the game lose on the same day, we've reached that point.
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Monica Seles could be primed for a U.S. Open run after winning the du Maurier Sunday in Montreal.
(AP)
| Meanwhile, to borrow a phrase from Magic Johnson, the Ishtar of television-talk-show hosts: Give it up for Monica. Seles, that is. A week ago I saw her play brutally against Lindsay Davenport in L.A., spraying shots like a malfunctioning fire hydrant. She bounced back to win the du Maurier Open in Montreal on Sunday, after beating Martina (I haven't won an event since May) Hingis in the semis and Arantxa Sanchez Vicario in the finals. If you're not rooting for Seles, you need to have your heart checked out by a geologist. I'm not sure I can see her grinding out seven straight matches on hard courts to win her first Slam since the 1996 Australian, but I'd love to be wrong.
Speaking of, I'm going to hold off on my Open predictions until after the draw comes out Wednesday. Stay tuned. On to your questions and comments...
Hey, Jon, a few weeks back you said that men and women deserve equal prize money in Grand Slam events. That's ridiculous. The men spend twice as much time on the court as the women. Let the women play best-of-five sets before they start whining.
—Charles Richards, Union, N.J.
Hey, Chuck, Dances With Wolves was nearly twice as long as There's Something About Mary. Think a wimp like Kevin Costner deserves to be paid more than Matt Dillon? Chauvinists like you ought to be forced to watch five sets of Ivanisevic playing Richard Krajicek.
Is Andre Agassi still capable of winning a Grand Slam? And how many years do you think he has left in his career? One more thing: The way I saw Pete Sampras play in the final of the ATP Championship was an embarrassment. Do you know what caused such a performance?
—Ziad Chreih, Lebanon
Agassi, who makes the Asian economy look stable, is either brilliant or horrific, often in the same match. If Korda can win a Slam at age 30, though, Agassi, 28, surely has a few good years left. The caveat is that he has to sustain his motivation. When his focus diverges from tennis, his game doesn't just suffer, it breaks down altogether. After seeing his ranking plummet to 140 last year, Agassi is back in the top 10 and ought to make some noise at the Open. Where he'll be a year from now, who knows?
I'm guessing your displeasure with Sampras has something to do with his failure to shake the umpire's hand after his loss to Rafter in the finals of the ATP Championship in Cincinnati. Sampras got some bum calls all day, including one on match point. But I agree that his gesture, though uncharacteristic, was lame.
The U.S. Open is the only Grand Slam that requires singles competitors to play semifinals one day and the finals the next. The other Grand Slams allow a day of rest in between, which allows players to compete at their optimum on championship day. I think Boris Becker even warned against a possible boycott of the U.S. Open one year for this very reason. Why does the USTA stand behind this scheduling decision?
—Jason, Carrollton, Texas
I've got a two-letter answer for you: TV. CBS, which has been televising the Open since the Pleistocene Era, wants to fill both weekend slots with men's tennis. And the USTA isn't in a position to negotiate. On top of that, with the return of the NFL to CBS, the Open is going back to the old "Super Saturday" format, where the men's semis are sandwiched around the women's finals. Not only is this insulting to the women, but it puts the winner of the late men's match at a huge disadvantage the following day.
What's with Mary Pierce? She's had her moments, but all in all, she's just a bundle of inconsistency. It doesn't seem to be her fitness. Is it her mental attitude? What do you think she can do to improve her rather erratic results?
—Adrian Asis, Manila, Philippines
Yes, there is something about Mary. Though she has a Grand Slam title to her credit, Pierce is the Mark Philippoussis of the WTA. Plenty of game and plenty of power and little clue how to win. Now No. 13, Pierce is still capable of top-tier tennis—she beat Hingis in three sets two weeks ago—but not on a regular basis. Now that her fitness level is the least of problems, I'd like to see her hire a coach who will leave her strokes alone and teach her how to strategize.
Martina Hingis has lost quite a few games this year. Do you think she can come back to be as invincible as she was last year? How about Steffi Graf? Do you think she can still play amazing tennis like she did? Also, what's the deal with Thomas Enqvist? Two years ago, I thought he was gonna crack the top five of the ATP ranking, but he has not lived up the potential I thought he had. The final question is about Michael Chang. Is he fully recovered from the injury he suffered early this year? I really miss his play these days.
—Ivan Lo, Waterloo, Ont.
Lo, that's an awful lot of questions, Ivan. In order:
Hingis has lost more matches since May than she did all last year. Players are catching on to her tendencies and figuring out how to exploit her lack of power.
Graf's problem seems to be one of timing as much as anything else. Her game is struggling right now but if she can get back in the grove and stay healthy, I could see her winning another Slam or two. Yes, she's 28, but remember that at various points in her career, she went months without playing a match. Even as recently as two years ago, she was better than any player on tour is right now.
Enqvist has been a major disappointment for the past few years. Once a top-five player, he won't be seeded at the Open. He's had some nagging injuries but his real problem is confidence. The guy just doesn't get the job done on big points, which precludes any serious success on tour.
Talk about keeping a low profile. Chang has had rough year with injuries but he's played very few matches and his ranking is now down to No. 21. It would be nice to see him make a dent at the Open, but my suspicion is that he'll go quietly into the night. Maybe even for good.
After defeating Pete Sampras in straight sets at the Pilot Pen Invitational, do you think Leander Paes' game will reach full potential?
—Kiran Modak, Pune, India
Save Agassi and Sampras, I get more questions about Paes than any other male player. The truth about Paes is that even though he's a great guy and an exciting, attacking player, his potential in singles is limited by an average serve and a lack of a bread-and-butter shot. He's capable of playing great tennis—even though his big win last week was cooled somewhat by Sampras' malaise—but he's been on tour for seven years now and didn't win his first title until last month. On the other hand, he's made a small fortune as an excellent doubles player and, as you no doubt know, is wildly popular in India.
How can Marcelo Rios be ranked No. 1 when Pete Sampras made the quarterfinals of the du Maurier Open and then the finals of the ATP Championship? Rios lost in the first round of the ATP and still Sampras, by losing the final, was left in the No. 2 spot. How do they run the ranking system—with a Magic 8-Ball?
—Scott Lovrien, Brooklyn, Conn.
Close to it. What they really do is take the numerical value of letters in a player's name, multiply it by his grip size, and take the square root of his best score in Tetris. Bonus points are awarded for aptitude playing the glockenspiel and participation in a pagan blood-drinking ritual. How else to explain how a yutz like Rios stands atop the charts?
Send a question to Jon Wertheim, and check back the beginning of each week to read more of his answers.
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