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 The return
Posted: Tuesday June 01, 1999 06:10 PM
Sports Illustrated staff writer Jon Wertheim will answer your tennis questions weekly. Click here to send a question. Okay, I'm back. For the slightly flattering, slightly disturbing number of you who asked, the honeymoon was in Tuscany and the Amalfi Coast and it was swell. Thanks for your concern. Much as I love Italy, the tennis coverage in that country was a little spotty. Still, here are some random observations from Week 1 at chez Roland ... Why don't the folks at the French Open just start seeding male players alphabetically? There'd be more logic to that system than to blindly following the rankings, paying no mind to a player's aptitude on clay. ... Give it up for South American men. Marcelo Rios, Gustavo Kuerten and Fernando Meligeni all make the quarters. ... Mary Pierce makes Pete Sampras look as durable as Cal Ripken Jr. ... Speaking of Mr. Furry Tummy (Sampras, not Ripken), back in the far-off days when he was winning, we dismissed his nonchalance as the stoicism of a champion who was more concerned with trophies than marketing. Now it looks like he simply doesn't care. ... Justine Henin, a Belgian teenager, is a player worth remembering. ... Patrick Rafter's paint-splattered shorts went out of style about the same time as Ivan Lendl's argyle togs. ... Give it up for Austrian women. Both qualifier Barbara Schwartz and little-known Sylvia Plischke make it to the second week. Add Barbara Schett to the mix, who some idiot (okay, this idiot) picked to make the semis, and you've got the makings of a formidable Fed Cup team. ... Far be it from me to toot my horn, but how do you like that Dominik Hrbaty pick I made before the tournament started? ... Like, say, Wayne Newton, folks will forever wonder how another Las Vegan, Andre Agassi, is so damn popular. Here's one reason: When he's on his game, he looks like tennis' answer to Mozart. Sheer, inimitable genius. When he's off -- which can also be several points later in the same game -- he looks like a balding weekend hacker. ... Speaking of AA, has anyone else noticed the "coincidence" that the last time he made it to the quarters of a major was prior to his marriage to Brookie? ... Don't get much doubles coverage from the French, do we? ... Much as we media types are breathless about the Sisters Williams, there's no getting around the fact that their combined record in Slams barely stacks up against the Maleevas . ... I'll stick with my initial picks, by the way: Guga and Martina Hingis. What do you make of Serena Williams' early exit from the French? Is she just
not experienced on clay, or is there something else going
on?
Serena's third set against Mary Joe Fernandez (!) was plain brutal. Balls flying all over the place. No time to decompress between points. A total abandonment of what little strategy she employed earlier in the match. Given her firepower, Serena should never lose a set 6-0, much less to a 27-year-old with a powder-puff serve and a defensive style. Let's not forget, too, that Serena is 0-6 now in advancing past the fourth round of a Slam. Consider that by the time she played her sixth Slam, Seles was not only younger but had two semifinal appearances and a French Open title to show for her efforts. One hopes it's not the case, but after witnessing a detonation like that, at some point you wonder whether Serena isn't destined to be the Shaquille O'Neal of tennis: Unparalleled power. Plenty of fodder for the highlights. A great specimen. But not much excellence at crunch time -- and, consequently, not much in the trophy case. There have been a lot of ideas proposed to slow down the men's game such as
granting a limited number of second serves, playing with bigger tennis balls and
using wooden rackets. I think they all have merit but my question is, why don't
they take the first step and freeze racket technology where it is today? If they
had done this a few years ago, the pros wouldn't be using "extended"
and "titanium" rackets today. At the rate racket technology is
improving, it will take tennis balls the size of softballs to slow the game down
in the
future.
Freezing technology is a little Big Brotherish, if you ask me. Also, as I think I've written before, the tennis industry carries too much weight to submit to a ban on the latest craze, be it wide-bodies, ludicrously large Prince classics, or the newest titanium thundersticks. But tennis can emulate the PGA Tour and put a moratorium on techno-enhanced equipment among the pros. Let the club players swing away with titanium but demand that the pros use nothing more potent than enforced graphite? I'm all for it. When people criticize the game's lack of personalities, they blame the
players. However, I've heard several news conferences and the questions asked by
reporters are always the same: "What did you think of your game
today?", "Are you looking ahead at winning the tournament?", etc.
Don't you think the reporters share as much blame for the lack of personality in
the game, mainly because they don't ask good
questions?
Never thought about it, but that's actually a good point. Tennis journalists seem to be of two species. The first are the local reporters who don't otherwise cover tennis and are scrambling to learn the game over the course of a week. I was at the event in Indianapolis a few years and a local clown was asking Sampras about "the game" -- not realizing, of course, that he meant to say "match." The exchange was like Abbott and Costello doing tennis. Local Bumpkin: Pete, how did you feel about today's
game?
The other species is the permanent beat writer, often foreign, who follows a particular player on tour. The guys -- they're overwhelmingly male -- know their stuff, but have a precarious relationship with the athlete they cover. If you're, say, the journalist from the Prague newspaper and you manage to piss off Jana Novotna, you're pretty much worthless to your paper. So then after she squanders a 5-1 lead and loses a tight match, you don't dare ask about choking. Instead you offer softballs like, "When did you feel the momentum slip away?" One more criticism: Tennis journalists also tend not to interrogate so much as they converse. Instead of saying, "Why did you serve-and-volley down match point?", they say, "Can you talk about your decision to serve-and-volley at 30-40?" The latter is obviously less confrontational but also induces less thoughtful responses. Steffi Graf says she's just playing for the enjoyment of the game. While that
attitude is commendable, she seems to have lost the sting that enabled her to
win titles in the last few years, even battling injuries. Is my assessment
right?
Ask me in a few days, when she gets done vying for her 22nd Grand Slam singles title. Graf is tennis' Greta Garbo. She seems to revel in being angst-ridden. The fact is, even with her bazillion injuries and ever-shuffling priorities (remember when she wore a ring because she got "married to herself"?) she is still incredibly driven. Her game may have lost a little sting -- not much -- but so long as she's still motivated to beat the pants off Hingis, in particular, she'll stay out there. Is Patrick Rafter the best "athlete" in the men's game today? I
haven't seen much of Michael Chang this year, but I think, at this moment,
Rafter moves a lot better than
Chang.
Rafter is definitely up there. Chang is (was, anyway) certainly quick enough but I'm not sure I'd qualify him as a top-tier athlete. Therein lies the problem of terming tennis players athletic: It all depends on your definition. Agassi is preternaturally gifted and has such great instincts, but I wouldn't qualify him as athletic per se. Similarly, consider a player like Lendl or Jim Courier, who worked harder than anyone else off the court and, consequently, had superior stamina. Certainly, endurance is a component of athleticism, but it is made, not born. Anyway here's my starting
five:
Cedric Pioline would probably make my list too somewhere. Why is it that Pat Rafter seems to be able to beat quality players on clay
(Agassi, Felix Mantilla, Thomas Muster) with his fast-court game, yet greats
such as Boris Becker and Sampras often fail to do so. Also, given his Grand
Slam successes in the U.S., do you think he has a real shot on the lawns of SW19
this
year?
Here's one thought: While Sampras always seems tentative and awkward on clay, second-guessing his decisions and refusing to hit out even at 40-0, Rafter seems to adjust very little from surface to surface. I saw him play a few times last week and he came in as frequently as he did on hard courts and played the same angles he did at the U.S. Open. I think one reason Rafter hasn't fared better at Wimbledon is that even though he is a surpassing serve-and-volleyer, he wins few cheap and easy points (à la Richard Krajicek, Goran Ivanisevic and Greg Rusedski ) with a thunderous serve. Still, he's overdue for a good showing at the All England. In Colombia, everybody follows Fabiola Zuluaga's career. What is your opinion
about
her?
For a player whose highest ranking entering the year was No. 93, Zuluaga has made quite a splash this season. Before seeing her play at the Lipton -- where she had an excellent tournament -- I assumed she was a typical South American retriever who played deftly on clay. And clay only. You obviously know that isn't the case. Clay might be her best surface, but she has a strong all-court game, a big serve and moves deceptively well for a player who's 5'8" or so. Not sure she's a future top-10 player, but she's already emerged as a dangerous floater who no seed likes to see in her segment of a draw. What are the chances that tennis legend Martina Navratilova will enter
Wimbledon this year, at least in the doubles or mixed doubles? I've seen her
play recently and it seems like she hasn't lost her touch. She's seen hanging
out at Wimbledon each year, so why not
play?
Martina does seem to be loitering an awful lot at Wimbledon these days, come to think of it. But she has little to gain from a gratuitous comeback at this point. First, she's not in match shape, so even with the kindest of draws, she wouldn't make it past a round or two. A guest appearance in doubles is more likely, but I think she has too much good taste/sense to know when to get off the stage. Always leave 'em wanting more. What's more, the women's game hardly needs an infusion of personality. If John McEnroe entered the men's doubles draw, well, then you'd have a story. I love watching Sampras play and I'm a fan of his, but this is getting
ridiculous. What's the big deal with clay? Does it cause players to play
so differently that they can't beat players who aren't even ranked on the
charts? Bottom line, what does Sampras have to do to win the French Open? Will
he ever? Or will we have to get used to hearing about a no-name getting a big
check every
year?
Quite simply, the French Open will always elude Sampras. Clay is the equivalent of his kryptonite. He's just freaked out by the surface, and once his socks get red and dirty his game goes to pieces. And unlike, Lendl vis-à-vis grass, Sampras is unwilling to do the requisite work to exorcise his surface demon. Since we are in the middle of the French Open, I was wondering who you
thought were the top five male and female clay-court players of all time -- and
I would assume Bjorn Borg and Chris Evert top the
list.
I'm open to suggestion since most of these names predate me. But here goes: Men
Women
Send a question to Jon Wertheim, and check back the beginning of each week to read more of his answers.
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