| |
 Substance over style
Posted: Tuesday August 03, 1999 10:20 AM
Sports Illustrated staff writer Jon Wertheim will answer your tennis questions weekly. Click here to send a question. So, how about that Pat Rafter era? ... Sunday's match in L.A. between Pete Sampras and Andre Agassi featured some of the highest-quality tennis you're ever likely to see. Makes you wonder how great a rivalry this could have been had Agassi's career been less of a yo-yo ... Say this about Gil Reyes , Agassi's strength coach-cum-bodyguard: the man can accessorize ... Sampras' 7-6, 7-6 defeat kept the streak alive. No top-seeded player has won an ATP Tour event this year ... If you've run into Carlos Moya 's game, alert the authorities immediately. He's been looking for it since March ... We know, we know. Lindsay Davenport lost all that weight and improved her training. But watching the No. 1-ranked player run roughshod over Venus Williams , you wonder why she didn't win her first Slam until last year ... The news keeps getting worse for the WTA Tour also-rans. Davenport, never known for her serving wattage, belted four straight aces against Amy Frazier in the semifinals ... Did anyone else who caught the Alexandra Stevenson interview with B. Walters come away thinking the daughter is infinitely better adjusted than her mother? ... If you get a chance to watch Romamian Andrew Ilie play this summer, take advantage of it. On to the bag: Is Anna Kournikova ever going to amount to anything? She seems to have very
little substance. From what I have seen, she has all the shots, no majors yet.
And way too much publicity for her ranking and career record.
No majors yet? How about no anything yet? Here it is three years since her pro debut -- nearly a decade since her signing with IMG -- and Empress Anna has won bubkas . You're right that she has all the strokes and, despite her Bolletieri tutelage, she plays with a fair amount of creativity. But she still hasn't figured out a way to close out matches, infiltrate that next level and become anything more than a No. 11-15-ranked player. After getting her hat handed to her by Venus Williams 6-1, 6-3 last weekend, she has to wonder if she's ever going to break through. My thought? First, everywhere Kournikova goes, she is hounded by the "when are you going to win your first tournament?" question. Why not enter a lower tier event and get the monkey off your back? Also, it's obviously not so easy to tell an international celebrity to focus more on the tennis and less on the image, but if Kournikova could spend as much time working on her second serve she does working on her tan, she'd be a lot better off. Could you possibly do a feature on Lisa Raymond? I have always respected her
decision to graduate before joining the tour. Graduate from college ,
that is! I've always been a firm believer that the girls get started way too
young.
Not sure what you mean by a feature, but here are some assorted thoughts on Lisa Raymond, perhaps the most maddening player on the women's circuit. First, she turned pro in May, 1993 after winning consecutive NCAA singles titles and spending two years at Florida. I'm pretty sure she never graduated. But let's not quibble. Raymond is one of the more exciting players on Tour, a great athlete, who volleys well, takes chances, and makes some breathtaking shots. Problem is, she suffers from a monstrous crisis of confidence and has no clue how to win a match. Consequently, she's a chronic underachiever who can play any top player close but rarely if ever comes out victorious. A series of sessions with Dr. James E. Loehr , psychologist to the sports stars, would do her a world of good. Meanwhile, she's forever fodder -- albeit always in three sets -- for the Amanda Coetzer s of the world. Embrace the points race? That sounds dandy compared with the idiotic best-14
(it's not best of 14 -- you take the best 14 of countless results), but will you
be singing the same tune when Brett Steven is crowned the world's No. 1 player
for winning Auckland in January of 2000? The analogy is often made to team
sports, where standings work the same way, but teams play roughly the same
number of games at the same pace. No two tennis players play the same schedule,
so the basis for comparison will always be faulty. And the authorities will have
to keep a "real" ranking system, similar to the current one, in order
to seed players fairly, won't they?
What with Niners' training camp opening in Redwood City, where do you find time to fire off questions to the mailbag? To be sure, the points race isn't without its flaws and you raise one of the biggies: will the system not lose credibility when it's Jan. 12 and we're taking about No. 1 ranked Rainer Schuttler or Brett Steven? Still, I think fans will ultimately grow to realize the system will yield some silly results early on and then it will correct itself. Just as no one considers the anonymous PGA Tour golfer who wins the year's first event to be better than Duval, Woods, and Leonard, no one will make the case that the Auckland winner is better than Sampras. Similarly, no one is anointing the L.A. Clippers NBA champs when they start the season 2-0. By the time Lipton rolls around -- when tennis fans, at least in the States, really start to pay attention anyway -- I'm betting the top ten will feature a lot of familiar names. What about a player like Sampras, you ask, who amassed scant points this winter and spring and, based on the points race system, would have been something like No. 90 at Lipton? Good question. The points race also comes equipped with mandatory appearances at the Slams and Super Nines, so any top player who is remotely healthy is assured of playing in the big ticket events. A few of you asked about this and yes, the old 52-weeks rankings will be used for seedings and draw cut-offs. Otherwise, of course, the best players in Qatar and Adelaide will suddenly be the top seeds. A stickier issue is that of bonus points. Currently players who defeat the No. 1 ranked player get an extra stash of points. Should the player who has the good fortune of playing Rainer Schuttler in the Australian Open get this windfall? Do you think there is any chance at all that Steffi Graf will play her final
Grand Slam event at the Australian Open next year?
True to form, Graf is being mighty coy about this retirement business. She won't give any sort of timetable, she's refused to address her retirement in any depth in interviews and WTA Tour personnel say they wouldn't be surprised if she called it quits tomorrow. Smart money say she plays out the year, does a farewell junket indoors in Europe and makes the Chase championships her swan song. Especially for a player who has never closely aligned herself with the Australian Open, there's virtually no chance she plays her final Slam in Melbourne. Who do you think are the most promising young players in men's tennis? And
do you think they will have the necessary "media-appeal" in order to
re-popularize the sport, especially in the USA? I mean, players such as
Jan-Michael Gambill, Marat Safin, Xavier Malisse or Tommy Haas could be capable
of attracting the crowds, as long as they are successful.
Good question. For better or worse, Sampras is proof positive that just being a surpassing player doesn't cut it and "necessary media appeal," as you put it, is essential for popularity. Of the players you've listed, Gambill would be a great candidate but I'm afraid his tennis can't keep pace with his looks and charisma; Safin has loads of potential and his game is fairly sexy, but his halting English could be a drawback; Malisse, who hails himself as tennis' answer to Dennis Rodman , is too much of an unknown at this point; Haas will be a top ten player before long but his personality seems to be something other than cork-popping. Here are a few more possibilities: Lleyton Hewitt , still a teenager, is reminiscent of a young Agassi -- and not simply because his current hairstyle will one day cause him great embarrassment. He's a little guy who hits a big ball, takes shots on the rise, and has a certain presence many of his colleagues lack. James Blake , who turned pro after his sophomore year at Harvard, is delightful kid whom the public will love if he can make a splash. Also, with the points race system requiring the clay court specialists to play all surface events, maybe one of these Mariano Puerta s or Arnaud Di Pasquale s, who post big results overseas but are unknown commodities in the States, will come to the fore. It's gotta be hurting Anna Kournikova's ego that the Russian Fed Cup team
made it to the finals without her help. Will she try to join the team now? Or
will she not even be invited?
For the record, Kournikova has availed herself for the Fed Cup match against the U.S. Whether her comrades (note: Russian allusion) want to "pull a Gully" or let her back in the singles line-up remains to be seen. After watching the Williams sisters stomp Italy (with Monica Seles and Mary Joe Fernandez on the bench) I can't imagine Russia, with or without Anna, having much of a chance. I think Davis Cup should not be held every year. If it were moved to a once
in a four-year event, you would not see top ranked players avoiding Davis Cup
like the plague. In many ways I cannot blame pros for skipping Davis Cup, given
the demands of the circuit and limited rewards associated with Davis Cup
participation. If the event were held once every four years, I would think more
U.S. players would participate ... and I would have zero sympathy for ones who
skipped the event (unlike my current
opinion).
I think I've addressed this before, but the Davis Cup is played in more than 100 nations. Many of the smaller countries rely on revenues from Davis Cup to fund their junior tennis programs and federations, so it would be a real blow to them to only hold the Cup every other year. My preference would be to reward players with ranking points for their participation. The issue here what to do about a player like Marcelo Rios , whose native country, Chile, is almost assured of an early round exit. Being the quintessential tennis aficionado, I was following The Bank of The
West Classic on the Bank's Website (www.bankofthewest.com) for lack of TV
coverage. They were running a few polls on that website, and I was more than a
tad amazed to see that the results of the polls indicated tennis fans gave
Lindsay Davenport no chance of winning the tournament (polls favored Kournikova
at the beginning of the tournament), and no chance of being No. 1 at the end of
the year. This in spite of the fact that Lindsay is No. 1 in the world, having
just recently won Wimbledon. Do you share the feeling that Lindsay gets NO
respect among tennis fans, and if you do, why?
I always used to wonder why a horrific song like Boogie, Oogie, Oogie was No. 1 in the MTV viewer's call-in poll. Then a friend riddled me this question: what kind of idiot pays $1.50 to call and vote for his favorite song? The same kind of idiot who likes the lyric, beat and dance-ability of Boogie, Oogie, Oogie. The point is this: don't put any credence in an on-line poll. I think Davenport gets her share of respect, especially among her peers. She's not as well known worldwide as Kournikova, the Williams sisters and Martina Hingis , in large part because she won't vamp for GQ in a micro-mini, she doesn't make outrageous " I'm the best ever " statements, and has such a lack of marketing savvy that she's prioritized her tennis, not her tan. Her Q-rating among testoseroneous teenager boys is probably negligible, but her level of RESPECT among tennis fans is, as it should be, plenty high.
Send a question to Jon Wertheim, and
check back the beginning of each week to read more of his answers.
| |||||||||||||||||
Copyright © 1999 CNN/SI. A Time Warner Company. Terms under which this service is provided to you.
| |||||||||||||||||
