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London calling
Posted: Monday June 26, 2000 11:32 AM
Sports Illustrated staff writer Jon Wertheim will answer your tennis questions weekly. Click here to send a question. LONDON -- Cheerio from England. Just arrived here after a week's vacation. Lots of questions piled up. Sorry I can't get to all of them ...
Has Martina Hingis created her own worst enemy? Mary Pierce's volleying ability has greatly improved since teaming with Hingis in doubles. Pierce has always had the power to beat Hingis, but at the French she showed she is very skilled at the net, which helped win her the title. Maybe Hingis should have stayed with Anna Kournikova, who may have been less of a threat. Any thoughts on this? After she and Pierce won the French doubles title, Hingis was essentially asked the same question. Endearingly candid, as always, Hingis claimed that if Pierce got much closer to No. 1, Hingis would have to club her with a serve while they were playing doubles together. I'm not sure Hingis has "created" her own worst enemy. As well as Pierce can volley in doubles, she still doesn't attack enough in singles. (To her credit, she admits as much.) The bigger issue is this: Hingis and Pierce clearly have cultivated a friendship through their doubles partnership. Does Hingis not lose some of her intensity and fire when she competes against her buddy? It sure seemed like it in Paris.
How do you think these recent losses will affect Pete Sampras' chances at Wimbledon? Do you think his confidence is running a little low these days, especially after that loss to Lleyton Hewitt, whom he never lost to before? Good question. Sampras' results since Key Biscayne have been tepid at best. And unlike last year, he didn't breeze through a grass tuneup to give him an extra jolt of confidence before coming to Wimbledon. Then again, for most of the '90s he has simply been a machine here.
What do you think about Pete Sampras' engagement to Bridgette Wilson? Has he just lost his mind or what? Have his predecessors taught him nothing? If you don't want to look back in time, there is plenty of evidence in the present that suggests that the words marriage and pro tennis do not belong in the same life. Look at Tim Henman and Andre Agassi. And while we are drooling over Gustavo Kuerten and Marat Safin, is Pete not thinking about his female fans? (He isn't bad looking either.) As we've said in the past, the longstanding pet theory here is that once a male player gets married, he's effectively announced his retirement. As for Pete's sex appeal, particularly since one of you (charitably) likened me to Sampras a couple weeks ago, I only say that he is unequivocally the most breathtakingly handsome player the sport has ever known.
Arvind Parmar recently gave a few glimmers of hope to a nation let down by Tim Henman and Greg Rusedski's recent form, taking a set off Pete Sampras and efficiently beating Cedric Pioline with a great serve and an erratic but vicious forehand. Do you reckon he's the real thing? Or just a two-week wonder? Top-50 material? Or even higher? Arvind Parmar (to relation to Arnold Palmer) is on my short list of players to watch this week. He seems to be generating a good deal of excitement here after he beat Pioline and hung with Sampras in tuneups. The son of Punjabi immigrants, he still lives at home outside London and seems to be an easy-to-root-for guy. The knock on his game is that he doesn't train sufficiently hard and lacks a killer instinct. My killer instinct, on the other hand, says that he's top-50 but not top-20 material. Let's reserve some judgment, though, and see what he can do here.
How encouraging to see mid- to late-20s "veterans" like Arantxa Sánchez-Vicario, Conchita Martinez and Mary Pierce play big at Roland Garros. Will this finally put to rest the ridiculous notion that teenagers like Venus Williams and Anna Kournikova are "running out of time" in winning either their first Grand Slam or first tournament? There was speculation that this year would be curtains for players like Martinez, Sánchez-Vicario and even Monica Seles. All three have shown that just because you've hit 25, it ain't all necessarily downhill. This, of course, is to say nothing of Nathalie Tauziat, the oldest singles players on tour, who achieved the highest ranking of her career earlier this year. No question, success can come later in one's tenure on tour. Still, the point with the Williamses is the following: As often as one hears that they could have the same impact on tennis that Michael Jordan had on hoops or Tiger Woods on golf, they've achieved relatively little thus far. There's plenty of time to win titles, but they really need to get a move on if they want to enter the legends pantheon. Let's not forget that when Graf hit 20, she already had six Slams, including all four in one dominant year. Seles was a three-time French Open champ and a three-time Aussie champ before she was stabbed, and even Hingis had won five majors before her 19th birthday.
Now that Gustavo Kuerten has won his second Grand Slam title, do you think he will get the credit that he, for so long now, deserves? I mean, outside Brazil, I think he's somewhat underrated. I could be wrong, but what do you think? He certainly is one of the dangerous clay-court cats on the tour, but do you think that his success can spread to other surfaces (he did reach the quarters in Wimbledon, U.S. Open and the final at Ericsson)? Kuerten's popularity, or lack thereof, remains something of a mystery to me. He's young; he's handsome; everything from his mop of hair to his soccer outfit screams personality; he has a moving story (his father passed away while umpiring a junior match and his brother, who collects Guga's trophies, has a form of cerebral palsy); and, oh, yeah, he's one hell of a player, too. Yet while Guga-mania rages in Brazil, it's hardly an epidemic elsewhere. Possible reasons:
Again, I'm stumped. I think the guy's great for men's tennis and gives the folks in the ATP Tour's marketing department a go-to guy when Pete and Andre retire. Perhaps a strong showing at Wimbledon and the Open is all he needs.
My question is about Mirjana Lucic. You have written about her in your Mailbag before, I believe, and you just mentioned her in your June 12 Hot List as "Say, didn't you used to be ..." I don't think that even applies to her. She doesn't play enough to have once been anybody. From what I can tell, she plays the Grand Slams and maybe two more tournaments a year. Out of nowhere last year she made the semis at Wimbledon and then disappeared into the night once again. She can't still be under age-eligibility restrictions -- she's supposedly 18, right? What's the deal with her? She plays plenty of events these days -- she just can't seem to get out of the first round. Lucic is the source of much speculation, even among her peers. First, there are questions about whether she isn't older than she alleges. More important, she is gifted with loads of talent and a colossal frame and yet she has been losing to the most unremarkable opponents lately. (If she doesn't acquit herself reasonably well at Wimbledon, watch what will happen to her ranking.) One feels uneasy making this point in regard to a teenager, but her, ahem, conditioning needs improvement. She also gets down on herself way too easily. An early service break and she throws in the towel.
Now that the year is half over and after watching the likes of Gustavo Kuerten, Martina Hingis, Lindsay Davenport, Mary Pierce and Monica Seles give their all on the court, it occurs to me that what is really missing from the Williams sisters is a passion for the sport. I've never had the impression that any of the aforementioned players were in it for the money, but with Venus and Serena it seems that that is what they are after, and I don't get a sense they really are striving to be great tennis players. Am I alone in this feeling? Yes and no. I don't think the sisters are motivated by the money ( Richard on the other hand ...). If so, they'd be playing expos, demanding "promotional" fees and withdrawing less frequently, particularly from Slams. But I think you're right to observe that tennis isn't nearly as important to them as it to the other players you mentioned. I think I've written this before, but their top three priorities are family, religion and education. If tennis ranks fourth, it's a distant fourth. On the one hand this is refreshing: We've complained for years that American tennis players in particular are Nick Bolletieri- bred automatons who have the personality and intellectual curiosity of an umpire's chair. What's wrong with top players who'd rather design evening gowns than work on crosscourt forehands? On the other hand, to quote Agassi, something I rarely do, "In tennis, there's no substitute for hard work." Applied to the Williams siblings: You can't attend fashion school, practice tennis sporadically, play zero tuneups, fail to scout your opponent and then expect to blaze through a draw at a Grand Slam. Sadly, my sense is that when they retire, both Venus and Serena will come to regret the nonchalance with which they regarded their careers.
Now that Mary Pierce is fitter and mentally tougher than before, do you see her winning another Slam this year? Plenty of you guys feel she can win Wimbledon. Her history and her background notwithstanding, the French was hardly an obvious choice of major for her to bag. Cue the Sinatra: "If she can make it there, she can make it anywhere." What impressed me most about her title is that it didn't come cheap. On a surface that favored her opponents, she stayed uncharacteristically patient and beat Seles, Hingis and Martinez. Before we anoint Pierce as the next queen, let's not forget that in the event prior to Roland Garros, she lost her opening match to the always-fearsome Germana Di Natale, a player so esteemed she had yet to crack the top 100. Pierce has also fallen to Lilia Osterloh this year. At 4-all in the third set here against Davenport, would her confidence waver? Stay tuned. 1. I've always been dumbfounded why Martina Hingis fails to win the French Open. With her type of game, it's clearly the one she should have won first, yet it's oddly the one still missing from her trophy cabinet. Why do you think this is so? And, it's been a year since she's won a Grand Slam. What do you think is wrong? Or was she overhyped at the start?
2. What's with Magnus Norman? Is he Agassi's and Sampras' replacement? Hingis isn't in Sampras' league yet at the French. But you're right, if you saw her play for the first time and then were asked which of the four Slams she's never won, you wouldn't guess the French. Let's give her some credit: She doesn't exactly bomb there. She's made the semis four years running and, had she kept her head, she very easily could have won in 1997 and 1999. She's won on clay before and I think eventually she'll add this to "her trophy cabinet," as you put it. Was she overhyped? If so, only marginally. The field has gotten much deeper than it was in 1997, when she nearly won the Grand Slam; but, as her ranking attests, she's still a damn good player. Uh, is there a middle ground? It's hard to envision any player on tour today as a replacement for Sampras or even Agassi. But I like Norman's game as well as his chances of being a top player, maybe on par with a Jim Courier. Norman plays well from both wings, he's a good athlete and he trains like a madman.
You once mentioned that Marat Safin's broken English might keep him from becoming very well known. How about Gustavo Kuerten's English? As much as I like the guy, I could hardly make out what he said in his interview with Bud Collins after winning the French. As a matter of fact, with the exception of Magnus Norman, most non-English speakers on the men's tour might as well speak their own languages and use a translator. Then we might get to know them better. One response is that we should be brushing up on our Portuguese and Russian more than they should be working on their English. I agree with you entirely, though. I've heard Kuerten give a press conference in Portuguese and put the room in stitches. I sat down with him for 15 minutes during the French for a one-on-one in English, and while he was affable as could be, I sensed that our dialogue was hindered by the language barrier. I spoke with several French journalists who had the same problem with Pierce. Because of her halting française (and their halting English), they felt they didn't get such an insightful portrait of her. There's obviously an extra layer of logistics (and expenses) involved, but if players could communicate in their native tongue and then translate the responses to English, it might work best for everyone.
You might have missed them because you're over in Europe, but Nike has been airing a series of commercials starring Marion Jones, the world's fastest woman. In one of them she asks why everybody is so upset when a basketball player like Kevin Garnett turns pro without going to college, but nobody says anything about tennis, baseball and hockey players who do so. Is there a societal double standard, particularly with regard to tennis players? And if so, why? As a leading commentator on both basketball and tennis, I would think that you might have an insightful perspective on this. I haven't seen the commercial; in fact, I don't think I've seen a minute of television in the past two weeks. But the question has come up before. Why do we wring our hands when basketball players like Garnett and Kobe Bryant eschew college, yet we are generally indifferent when tennis players turn pro at 16? (To take that a step further, we assume that any tennis player who opts for college at age 18 has made a vocational error.) This question is a dissertation topic, but here's a quick answer: There is a racist (or, at the very least, classist) assumption that basketball players who forego college are jeopardizing the chance of a lifetime, an opportunity for four years of education that wouldn't otherwise afford itself to them. If they don't make it in the pros, the thinking goes, they have "nothing to fall back on." With tennis players, we assume that they come from good stock -- and in truth, they usually do -- and even if they don't attend college after their playing days end, they can still transition into the working world just fine. If, say, Andy Roddick doesn't make it on the ATP Tour, we don't worry how he'll support himself and his family for the rest of his life. A less-controversial explanation is simply historical. Though more tennis players used to compete in college before turning pro, teenagers have been part of the tour for decades. With the NBA, only recently have we seen such a proliferation of teenagers pass directly from high school to the NBA without passing GO. As more players like Bryant, Garnett, Rashard Lewis and Tracy McGrady make the leap successfully, the alarmists will retreat.
I've seen two interviews recently where high-ranking players stated they logged on to CNNSI.com to keep up on sports results while on tour. Do you think they read Mailbags, and what weight would they give to your opinions or to the users who write in their thoughts? Secondly, what's with all these injuries? I've watched since the '70s, and I can't think of a time in the last 25 years when so many get injured so often. This question wasn't a plant. Honest. I'm pretty certain that if in fact they read the Mailbags, most pro athletes have as much use for our snarky question-and-answer sessions as the Kournikova household has for a trophy shelf. As for the rash of injuries (and the injury of rashes), it's not just you. I wrote about the epidemic in Sports Illustrated after the first week of Roland Garros.
Send a question to Jon Wertheim, and check back the beginning of each week to read more of his answers.
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