| | U.S. stars ought to be
ashamed
Posted: Tue September 29, 1998 
Sports Illustrated staff writer Jon Wertheim will answer your tennis questions weekly. Click here to send a question.
There were certainly lowered expectations when the U.S.
faced Italy in the Davis Cup semifinals last weekend.
Pete
Sampras,
Andre
Agassi and
Michael
Chang—the top three U.S. players, regardless of what the
rankings might say—all were in absentia.
Jim
Courier, a longtime Davis Cup stalwart and former No. 1 player,
was left off the team. And two of the three Yanks chosen,
Jan-Michael
Gambill and
Justin
Gimelstob, were making their Davis Cup debuts, while the other
member,
Todd
Martin, is a workaday plodder near the end of his career.
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Martin was 10-2 in Davis Cup singles matches before losing to Davide Sanguinetti last weekend.
(David Walberg)
| Still, few expected the weekend to go as badly as it did.
The team played with the wisdom of youth and the energy of
old age. The indoor hard court was molasses-slow, which
played to the Italians' advantage. The crowd support was
lukewarm at best, as
only a few thousand fans filled the seats of crusty Milwaukee
Arena. In their biggest Davis Cup embarrassment since
losing to Paraguay in 1987, the Americans fell 4-1 to an
Italian team that featured no singles players in the top 35
and no doubles players
in the top 100. "It was a big disappointment,"
said U.S. captain
Tom
Gullikson. So much so that Sampras, Agassi and Chang may be shamed
into playing next
year.
One quick note about the
Mailbag: Gentle readers, your once-steady flow of letters has
slowed to a trickle. Granted, this is a fairly dead time
for tennis, but the life of this column depends far more on
you than it does me, so start firing off more
questions.
As for the mail I did receive
...
Do you think Pete Sampras was really injured in the U.S.
Open final or did he pretend to get hurt because he
realized he was going to lose to Pat
Rafter?
—Rob, Carlsbad,
Calif.
What is your view on the perception that Pete Sampras no
longer stays in the best shape he
can?
—Manuel Navas, Potomac,
Md.
Sampras was leading two sets to one when he suffered his
pulled muscle so I think the injury was unquestionably
legit. The real conundrum, though, is why the best player
in the game is less durable than flypaper. I think your
perception, Manuel, is
correct—he could stand to be in better shape. But Sampras
has thrived for years with minimal training. The difference
is that now that he's 27 and has been on tour for nearly a
decade, he can no longer take his fitness for granted.
Sampras, ironically, has a
personal trainer in his
entourage—Todd
Snyder, the former head trainer for the ATP Tour. It's about time
he started earning his
keep.
How old does a player have to be before he or she loses
Grand Slam or top-10 potential (I'm thinking about Todd
Martin and Lindsay Davenport here)? And why are Americans
so nationalistic? Tennis is an individual sport for crying
out loud! (This was inspired by the complaints about Goran
Ivanisevic. How could anybody not have at least some
interest in
him?)
—Jessica Vaughn, Saltillo,
Miss.
You picked the right year to ask this question. Who would
have thought that
Petr
Korda, a 30-year-old husband and dad, would win his first Slam
at the Australian; or that
Nathalie
Tauziat, at age 29, would have her best year on tour and come
within a few points of winning Wimbledon? By the time
players are in their 20s, one generally has a sense of
whether they have top 10 potential or not. But hope springs
eternal, blah, blah, blah.
That said, your man Martin will not be winning a Grand Slam
event anytime
soon.
I'm not sure American tennis fans are nationalistic so much
as they like a certain type of player: a nice-looking,
English-speaking hustler whose game has some color. Rafter,
for instance, is as popular as any American, save Agassi,
at the U.S. Open.
(Incidentally, I've always had the sense that Americans like
Ivanisevic as much for his quirky personality as his
perpetually disappointing game.) What Americans don't like
are players they perceive as robots. They'll take a lesser,
flashier player—like,
say,
Hicham
Arazi over
Ivan
Lendl,
Yevgeny
Kafelnikov or
Richard
Krajicek—every
time.
My question is in regard to the speed of the courts at the
U.S. Open. Many players, including Pete Sampras, complained
that the courts were too fast this year compared to last
year. Three of the four semifinalists were
serve-and-volleyers, including Mark Philippoussis, the
one-dimensional big server. While most of the hard-court
tournaments are trying to slow down their courts, we almost
had grass-court-like finals at the Open. I hope this is not
because the USTA is trying to give Sampras a little edge on
the faster courts. I just cannot think of any other reason
they would like to speed up the
courts.
—Sean, Flushing,
N.Y.
After seeing the U.S. lose to Italy last week on an indoor
surface that made red clay look faster than ice, I have
serious doubts that the USTA is sabotaging the courts at
the National Tennis Center. I'm told it's hard to judge the
speed of a surface
until it is actually laid down and, even then, factors like
rainfall and humidity can affect the way it plays. Overall,
if the U.S. Open's fast surface encourages more players to
serve and volley, I think few tennis fans will complain too
vociferously.
Do weights have anything to do with Lindsay Davenport's
increased
firepower?
—Camilo Vargas,
Colombia
Davenport may be hitting the ball as hard as any woman in
tennis history, but weights are not the reason. Though she
does work out, the driving force behind her firepower has
been improved fitness. Sprinting, running and basketball
footwork drills have
helped her lose some excess cargo, and that's made all the
difference. She's running down balls she wouldn't have made
a move for a year ago, and when she gets there she has more
muscle to use for her
stroke.
I was wondering if you had any thoughts on the women's game
and where it is going. My feeling is that women's tennis
in the next few years is going to become a power game much
like the men's side of the sport. Who do you see emerging
out of the women's game to be No. 1, because Martina Hingis
can certainly
not hold the top spot much longer. She has a lot of finesse,
and attitude, but is that enough these
days?
Also, could you comment on the cockiness of players such as
Hingis, Anna Kournikova and the Williams sisters. How does
it affect the
sport?
—Ken Talley, Altadena,
Calif.
Women's tennis has seen a recent infusion of power, and
ballistic strokes are certainly the way of the future.
Unless Hingis discovers andro (kidding), you're right in
speculating that her reign will soon be ending. My guess is
that
Lindsay
Davenport, who's only 22, will be the world's No. 1 before long.
Still, the women's game is light years away from the men's
boring ace-a-thon. The fact of the matter is that no player
who weighs 120 pounds, even with a high-tech titanium
truncheon, is going to
serve her opponent off the court. Davenport was far and away
the hardest hitter at the Open, and yet even her serve
rarely eclipsed 100 mph.
As for the cockiness, I think there is entirely too much
rationalization going on. "It's not cockiness, it's
confidence," "Cockiness is essential to success
in an individual sport," and "They may be cocky
but they sure put fannies in the seats," are
the knee-jerk responses of choice. I'm convinced, though, that
the Williams sisters would be just as competitive and
popular if they didn't raise the roof after beating lesser
opponents or if they said "Hi" to some of their
colleagues when they passed in
the locker room. Same goes for Kournikova. They ought to take
a look at Davenport and realize that tennis can accommodate
a gracious
winner.
You wrote in a previous Mailbag that John McEnroe vs. Pete
Sampras would decide the best player in history. I don't
think Sampras has played in an era with sufficiently
talented rivals to make that claim. Surely it has to be
McEnroe vs. Rod
Laver.
—Paul Droop, Wimbledon,
England
A lot of people are in your camp. While every other top
tennis player has had a formidable rival, Sampras has had
to compete with ... whom? An aging
Boris
Becker? An erratic Agassi?
Thomas
Muster? Ivanisevic? A one-trick pony like Courier? Finally,
Rafter is emerging as consistent competition, but Sampras
is already 27 and his best years are behind him. Still, I
think it's hard to overlook a player who's so steady and
plays his best tennis
under pressure. Sampras's record of 11-2 in Grand Slam finals
tells me all I need to know about the
guy.
As for Laver, one of the problems with playing sports time
traveler is that conditions are so different. Just as
Wilt
Chamberlain averaged 50 points a game against 6' 8" centers who
couldn't jump over a credit card, Laver played against
beer-bellied foes who served 80 miles per hour with their
wooden rackets. If Laver had to play seven rounds of a
major and beat players like
Ivanisevic, Arazi,
Jonas
Bjorkman, Sampras and
Mark
Philippoussis—as Rafter did at Flushing Meadows—would he have
won two Grand Slams? On the other hand, how much better
would/could Laver have been had he played with a graphite
thunderstick, had his own personal trainer, popped fistfuls
of andro (kidding, again), and
taken a private jet from tournament to tournament? All this
is to say, I'll stick with Mac and Sampras but your point
is well
taken.
Do you know what has happened to the Maleeva sisters? I
know that Manuela officially retired a couple years ago,
but Katerina and Magdalena seemed to have dropped from
sight. How do you think it was possible for their mother,
Youlia, to have trained three daughters into the upper
echelon of women's tennis, especially since Bulgaria has
never been known for
tennis?
—Alden Hayashi, New York
City
You're right. Bulgarian tennis hasn't been the same since
the downfall of the Maleeva sisters. They attributed their
success to their mother's coaching and the fact that they
always had an easily-accessible hitting partner. Don't hold
me to this, but I
believe both Manuela and Katerina are married and living in
Switzerland. Maggie, meanwhile, is a diehard Nine Inch
Nails fan who has been battling some injuries and not
played in a while. She's only 23, so I doubt we've seen the
last of
her.
Send a question to Jon Wertheim, and check back the beginning of each week to read more of his answers.
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