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Making it easier to double down
Sports Illustrated senior writer Jon Wertheim will answer your tennis questions every Monday. Click here to send a question. I probably should have mentioned this last week, but check out When Billie Beat Bobby Monday night on ABC. A jockumentary, if you will, about the Battle of the Sexes, the flick airs at 9 p.m. It's a tad heavy-handed and the tennis scenes are painful to watch, but a buff Holly Hunter is her usually endearing self and Ron Silver is great as Riggs, the contemptible yet somehow sympathetic chauvinist hustler. ... Speaking of the silver screen, reader Lesley Morrissey of Ossining, N.Y., has called to my attention that Carlos Moya currently has a role in a James Bond knockoff titled Torrente 2: Mision en Marbella. Apparently, he plays -- suspend your credulity for a second here -- a handsome tennis instructor who gives lessons to a beautiful woman. ... Argentina's Juan-Ignacio Chela, who gave Pete Sampras a good workout at the Australian Open, has been suspended three months after testing positive for steroids last year. ... Conchita Martinez has lost five straight matches. ... From the You Cannot Be Serious Dept.: Rights to John McEnroe's book allegedly sold for $750,000 last week. ... Steffi Graf has announced that from now on she wants to be called "Stefanie." No word on whether she'll answer to S. Diddy as well. To paraphrase Marty DiBergi (or is it Artie Fufkin ?), enough of my yakkin'. Let's Tap into your questions.
The ATP Tour's move to increase the number of top singles players in the doubles draw has generated some controversy, especially among doubles specialists who feel threatened with banishment from la vida tennis. Who wouldn't want to see marquee players spend more time on the court? How about giving any player who is seeded in singles (at the deadline for tournament entry) an automatic entry into the doubles draw, if requested? Also, any two singles seeds who team up would be seeded in doubles.
In a sport where it's easier to pass a kidney stone than significant legislation, the ATP deserves credit for the new change in doubles draws. Doubles may be entertaining to a discriminating fan, but as things stand now it is a huge financial drain for tournaments. Because there's good money to be made playing alongside a partner, too many anonymous players -- all of whom receive comp lodging, meals, green fees, etc. -- do so, resulting in a class of little-known specialists who have no ability to sell tickets. Event directors like to point to Sandon Stolle as an example: Ranked outside the top 1,000 in singles, he's made more than $1 million over the past two years. And yet he could walk around the grounds of an event wholly unnoticed. It's almost like there are two different sports on tour, doubles and singles. Within two years, many of the changes you propose will be enacted. Most significantly, players will be able to play in the doubles field based on either their singles or doubles ranking. For singles players in, say, the top 50, this means they could enter doubles draws at will. Not only will this (hopefully) lure more "big names" to play alongside a partner, but it also will enable events to cut down on expenses as fewer total players will be in both draws. Here's one of the few drawbacks: As players progress through the singles draw and need to conserve energy, they're going to become increasingly uneasy about honoring their doubles commitments. Case in point: At the Ericsson, Pat Rafter and Lleyton Hewitt played together, a boon to the fans and the promoter alike. However, when they both advanced to the semifinals in singles, they scrapped doubles. In the end, it won't much bolster the credibility and profile of doubles if team after team gives its opponent a walkover late in the draw.
Do you think the Davis Cup format should be changed to have more players participating in each tie? Perhaps it would be more exciting that way. The tournament wouldn't need reverse singles and fans would have more matches to watch. Although it would be difficult to get a commitment from so many players, it might be worth a try.
Not a bad idea, but here's the problem: What do you do about a country like Zimbabwe, which has two competitive players but no one in the top 500 after that?
Tennis Week recently had an article on the Hollywood set and tennis. The premise was that while other celebrities -- musicians, politicians, etc. -- have no problem discussing their limitations with the game, actors and actresses have this need to lie about their talent. Some of the more ridiculous claims include Dustin Hoffman saying that he had Jimmy Connors out of breath in a match, and Paul Sorvino boasting to have bashed a 128-mph serve. I was just wondering if you heard any similar stories while covering the tennis beat.
The phenomenon of celebs and politicians exaggerating their athletic achievements is hardly unique to tennis. Consider North Korean president Kim Jong Il's claim that he once shot a 38-under-par 34 at the Pyongyang Golf Club. This would have broken the PGA Tour record by a mere 25 strokes. (His playing partner, oddly enough, was Richard Williams. ) Most of the tennis-related boasts I've heard are from athletes in other sports. Former NBA coach John Lucas, one of the all-time great guys, still maintains he could have won Wimbledon had he stuck with tennis. (He was an NCAA champ at Maryland.) Joe Dumars, who's actually an excellent player, spoke at one point about trying to play on the senior tour. Dick Vitale claims he plays a mean game. The other boasting one hears are the club pros who claim that they used to beat up on today's pros in the juniors. Listen to American teaching pros aged 28-32 and you'd think Pete Sampras had never won a match until he turned 19.
Sandra Cacic recently put together a string of singles wins on the women's tour. I hadn't heard her name in years since she's been playing mostly doubles. Is she yet another American woman who can break into the top 50 or better?
Just as chances are you're a redneck if you've ever lost a relative to kudzu, chances are you're a hardcore tennis fan if you're asking about the prospects for Sandra Cacic, who finished 2000 ranked No. 140. A top-40 player just seven years ago (seems like yesterday), Cacic might well be another American to crack the top 50. A sometimes sparring partner of Monica Seles, Cacic does nothing spectacularly but is a steady veteran who seems to have gotten a second wind after some injury-addled seasons. Here's another little-known American with top-50 potential: Rhode Island's Jill Craybas, a former standout at the University of Florida.
Who is your pick to rule the upcoming men's clay-court season? Will Andre Agassi be able to continue his domination? Will Gustavo Kuerten be able to recover from his Davis Cup humiliation? Will one of the French musketeers (Sebastien Grosjean, Arnaud Clement, Nicolas Escude, etc) emerge? Who are the darkhorses to win the French?
It's a little early for French predictions, but here are some scattered thoughts. Despite his "Davis Cup humiliation," Kuerten has to be a favorite to repeat in Paris. As we discussed last week, he's a different player on a clay. Agassi would be my next pick. Far and away, he's the best player in the world now. It remains to be seen how well he'll transition to clay -- particularly since he pulled out of the Monte Carlo Masters Series event. On the other hand, all of that fitness training ought to pay off handsomely on the dirt. (Just hope Karol Kucera isn't in his side of the draw.) As for the Frenchies, there will be a lot of hype surrounding Clement, Grosjean and, to a lesser extent, the dangerous Escude. Clement, in particular, is a legitimate contender, but can he handle immense pressure? Here's a darkhorse: Gaston Gaudio. Take it to the BNP.
With all the recent talk about the recreational activity of golf and the debate concerning Tiger Woods and his supposed Grand Slam, I was wondering what your feelings were regarding tennis. If Sampras were to win the French (a bit of a stretch, I know, but bear with me), Wimbledon and the U.S. Open this year, and then start next year with the Aussie title, would he have a Grand Slam?
Never mind your Sampras hypothetical. There's actually a precedent for this in tennis. Martina Navratilova won six straight Slams, from Wimbledon of 1983 through the U.S. of 1984 (the Australian was the year's fourth major back then). But she has never been a considered a Grand Slam winner the way Graf was in 1988, when she ran the table and won a gold medal at the Seoul Olympics for good measure. As I see it, four consecutive majors is a Grand Slam; that they didn't occur in a single year is simply an accident of history. I know the counterargument: If a player hit 36 home runs from July to September of one baseball season and another 36 from Opening Day to June 30th of the next, we would never say he's broken Mark McGwire's record. My response: This is less a single-season record than a "consecutive" record. If a baseball player hit safely in 56 straight games over two seasons, we might well contend that he broke Joe DiMaggio's record.
Does it make sportswriters petulant (see, I'm doing it, too) when something astounding is going on in a sport they don't cover? I am, of course, referring to the Tiger Woods business. And if there is a tendency toward envy, it can't help matters that a knucklehead like Alan Shipnuck gets to write about Tiger.
No petulance. A knucklehead like Shipnuck got to cover Tiger last week. At the end of the day, it was still golf. Tennis writers this week got to cover Amelie Mauresmo kicking off the clay-court season by winning in Amelia Island. I'd say that's a tossup.
Here's a question for you. Whatever happened to Nduka Odizor, the hard-serving Nigerian who always seemed to make a splash at Wimbledon?
I have no idea how Nduka Odizor is spending la vida post-tennis. A free CNNSI.com T-shirt -- I would say a sweatshirt, but have you seen the AOL TW stock price lately? -- to the first reader who can help. As long as you brought him up, two apocryphal stories about the Duke. One, as an undergrad at the University of Houston who starred on the tennis team, he played a significant role in recruiting Akeem (now Hakeem) Olajuwon. The other: As a Wimbledon semifinalist in 1983, he was asked whether his father was a Nigerian "chief" or a Nigerian "chef," as it said in a media guide. "It really doesn't matter," Odizor responded drolly. "He's dead anyway."
Click here to send a question or comment to Jon Wertheim.
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