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Gaga over Guga
Posted: Monday May 29, 2000 12:29 PM
Sports Illustrated staff writer Jon Wertheim will answer your tennis questions weekly. Click here to send a question. Polishing my français before heading across the pond. Be sure to check out my previews for the French Open men's and women's draws, and come back at the end of the week for daily reports from Paris.
WOW!!!! WOW!!!!! and WOW!!!!!! MAN! Where has he been all this time??? That Gustavo Kuerten is GORGEOUS!!!!!!!!!!! Tell me, is he taken???? As in married?? Engaged??? With kids??? He is sooooo handsome!! How come I never saw him before?? What tournaments has he won??? I know he's been a French Open champ and just won in Hamburg. Is he good??? And why do they call him Guga?? Is that his nickname or does that mean something in Portuguese???
I noticed in the interviews after the Italian Open that Monica Seles kept referring to her coach. I know she was looking for a new one a while ago, so I'm wondering who she found, how long have they been together, do you think it is a good match, etc.? Any info? With Jimmy Arias unable to travel with Seles full-time, the bulk of the coaching duties have fallen to Bobby Banck. One of the bona fide good guys in the sport, Banck is a soft-spoken Floridian who worked previously with Mary Joe Fernandez. He seems particularly well-suited to Seles's delicate situation. He's not an in-your-face type, but neither is he a babysitter. He's been gently encouraging Seles to get in shape and is trying to get her to lose the hitch in her serve.
As you know, men's tennis in the late 1970s and early '80s was dominated by four players with distinctive playing styles (Bjorn Borg, Jimmy Connors, John McEnroe, Ivan Lendl). They were divided into the "good guys" (Borg, Lendl) and the "bad guys" (Connors, Mac), producing a legendary four-way rivalry. It seems most of the male pros today are indistinguishable in terms of style -- western forehand, two-handed backhand, go for the lines. And, in terms of temperament, most seem like mild-mannered check collectors. Have you observed any up-and-coming players with signature playing styles and temperaments? And if you could pick four or five current players to carry the sport into the future, who would they be? (I like Marcelo Rios and Gustavo Kuerten, for starters.) I'm not sure I agree with your premise. In terms of cork-popping personalities, these might be sluggish times for men's tennis. But I see plenty of variety. Granted, they've never had a smoldering four-way rivalry, but the the stylistic differences among Pete Sampras, Patrick Rafter, Andre Agassi and, say, Cedric Pioline or Rios or Kuerten are as appreciable as those among Borg/Mac/Connors/Lendl. In any event, keep an eye on Marat Safin (now that he seems to have made up his mind that he wants to be a tennis player when he grows up), Lleyton Hewitt (think Agassi-like talent with McEnroe's sense of decorum), J.C. Ferrero, Andreas Vinciguerra (who's as slender as a netpost, but still hits a heavy ball) and Andy Roddick (the great American hope). There you have five players from five different countries who, in some combination, could well form great rivalries for the next decade.
Everyone has seen or heard about the Tiger Woods commercial with him bouncing the ball on his wedge. I was wondering what pro players, past or present, are known to be trick-shot artists -- and I don't mean the standard between-the-legs shot. As a rule, any player described as a "shotmaker" (Agassi, Henri Leconte, Ilie Nastase, Hicham Arazi, Andrew Ilie, Pioline) is usually a pretty good trick-shot artist as well. For my money, the best of them all is Mansour Bahrami, currently on the senior tour. If you haven't seen this guy play, do so at all costs. Not only does he have the most unbelievable pair of hands you've ever seen, but he isn't shy about unleashing his bag of tricks during matches. (Finally, a senior tour player who takes himself less seriously than Eddie Vedder.) I've seen him hit overheads from his knees, drop shots that bounce and return to his side of the net, and through-the-leg winners. His specialty is hitting the ball a mile in the air and catching it in his pocket. The guy's a great story in his own right -- as a boy in Iran he learned to play using a rake and he couldn't turn pro until his late 20s because of the Ayatollah. He never cracked the top 100 on the ATP Tour but is now a top senior who regularly beats up on former Grand Slam champs like Andres Gómez, Borg and Mats Wilander.
I saw that Martina Navratilova won her first doubles match with Mariaan de Swardt. I have to say I'm not surprised. I watched de Swardt team with Jana Novotna at the Pilot Pen a few years ago. When they came out for warmups, I kind of thought, You've got to be kidding! de Swardt certainly didn't have a "standard" tennis champion's body -- neither the svelteness of Steffi Graf nor the muscles of the Williams sisters. Then they started playing. Novotna was not having a good game at all, and their opponents were reasonably good players. de Swardt carried them through the first set, and, in the second, when Novotna was more into it, they clobbered their opponents. de Swardt has a very good serve and outstanding doubles instincts. She also has better speed than I would have expected from first impressions. Martina could have done a lot worse! I wasn't going to say anything, but since you brought it up ... yes, you're right, de Swardt doesn't exactly have the "standard" tennis body. Though she's never done much in singles, she's been a formidable doubles player for years. I still have my reservations as to whether she and Navratilova can beat an established team like Lisa Raymond and Rennae Stubbs but, yes, de Swardt is no slouch.
So perhaps it's time to get out the old gossip hat once again. The BBC recently reported that Andre Agassi and Steffi Graf were no longer an item. Then the New York Post said the very same thing. If it's true, maybe this is the reason Agassi pulled out of Hamburg and why his game has suffered a bit lately. And I thought I had the item of the week with the Guga centerfold bit. The truth will no doubt come out the day of Agassi's first press conference in Paris.
"Muster Says Has Not Quit Despite One-Year Absence" (Reuters May 23 2000 9:13PM ET) Is this a joke? He can't have any points, he says in the article he's only played about 10 times in the last year, he's 32. I was a fan of Thomas Muster's, especially after he came back from that freak car accident. I was inspired by the pictures of him in a wheelchair hitting forehands. But somebody must have translated wrong. Martina Navratilova is playing doubles, John McEnroe answers questions coyly about inserting himself into Davis Cup ties -- is tennis on the verge of becoming boxing, where athletes prove they aren't dead by embarrassing themselves and marring our memories of them? Saw that, too. How hard it must be for athletes to come to the irreducible conclusion that their skills have abandoned them, that they're not immune from the assault of time? A lot of you gave me grief for expressing similar sentiments about Martina a few weeks ago. But I'm with you, Alex: You gotta know when to exit stage left with grace (see: Edberg, Stefan). Call me exceedingly cynical, but as I see it, these comebacks are no-win propositions. If Muster ever plays again -- surely with wild-card dispensation from the gods on high -- one of two scenarios unfolds. Either he gets his clock cleaned by some whippersnapper and is mocked for having the hubris to think he could compete after such a long absence. Or, less likely, he wins a few matches. In that case, he isn't hailed as tenacious player who made a heroic comeback; rather, the quality of competition on the ATP Tour comes under scrutiny. My suggestion to the burgeoning number of yesteryear's stars who can't countenance retirement: There's some good cash to be made on that senior circuit.
Do you know anything more about Barbara Schett's condition? It sounds somewhat serious, but perhaps it is too early to say. What a shame. I hear mixed reports. Just last week, her agent was telling reporters that she was suffering headaches and might even recover in time for the French. Sources at the WTA Tour say she has a semi-serious heart condition that can be treated with antibiotics but may sideline her for a good chunk of the summer. She's still in the Roland Garros draw so I take that as a good sign she's well on the road to recovery.
I love the Mailbag and look forward to reading it each week. I wanted to point out a tennis movie that wasn't on your list. Do you know the movie Pat and Mike? It's a great Katherine Hepburn-Spencer Tracy comedy. Hepburn plays a professional golf and tennis star, and Tracy is her manager. In the movie, Don Budge, Alice Marble and Gussie Moran play themselves. You should check it out when you can. Thanks. Also, Jim Bartle of Huaraz, Peru, wrote in saying he thought either Bill Cosby or Robert Culp used tennis as a cover for subterfuge on I Spy.
In all fairness, your list of best tennis movies probably should have included Alfred Hitchcock's 1951 thriller Strangers on a Train. Farley Granger stars as a nationally ranked tennis player entangled in a murderous web. By the way, a John Wertheim out here is running for U.S. Congress. He's a Democrat. Subhadeep Gan of West Lafayette, Ind., was kind enough to submit the same suggestion. As for the "other" John Wertheim, ironically enough, he was three years ahead of me in college and was forever receiving my mail. Nice guy. Vote for him. He's running for Congress; I'm compiling lists of tennis movies. Who do you think made the vocational error?
There once was a young tennis star, The Anna Kournikova Poetry Slam has officially commenced. Any other Pindars out there?
Send a question to Jon Wertheim, and check back the beginning of each week to read more of his answers.
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