Saturday, August 23, 2003
PETE SAMPRAS'S LEGACY, to a lot of people, is all that understated-classy-guy crap. I don't buy it, but I do admire Sampras for another reason. To me, this is his legacy:
Pete Sampras is the last No. 1 player to play tennis essentially the way we were taught to play tennis when I learned to play tennis. He's almost the last top player, period, although Henman's still around. I'm thinking largely of the forehand grip. "Shake hands with the racket" was probably the first tennis tip you got if you learned to play tennis in the 1960s or 1970s. That's the Eastern grip: If Sampras extended his arm with the thumbnail pointed toward the sky, you'd see a racket face perpendicular to the ground. He could drive a nail with the edge of the racket.
Most players nowadays use the Western grip, which demands a more baroque stroke but affords more topspin and more power on high-bouncing balls. If you'd get an Eastern from picking up a racket balanced precariously on its edge and its grip, you'd get a Western from picking up a racket simply lying face down on the ground.
With the Western, my thumbnail-pointed-up demonstration would produce a racket face parallel to the ground, like a chef preparing to flip an omelette. Imagine the ball being struck with the bottom of the frying pan, a stroke that places the meaty butt of the hand firmly behind the racket handle rather than over it. Most Western players rotate the racket 180 degrees to find their backhand grip, allowing them to hit forehands and backhands with opposite sides of the racket just like non-Western players (Eastern players do a similar rotation, but they don't have nearly as far to go). The classic Western technique, however, from the days when almost nobody used that grip, is to simply keep the same grip and strike the backhand with the same face of the racket as the forehand. Vince Spadea is the only current pro I know of who uses that same-side technique.
Even more old-fashioned than the Eastern grip, by the way, is the continental. This is the grip you're still supposed to use for serves and volleys, but such all-time great players as John McEnroe, Stefan Edberg and Fred Perry used it for all strokes. Recent retiree Gianluca Pozzi was able to confuse younger opponents not used to having flattish continental strokes coming their way. (Rod Laver used something approaching the continental.) With the continental, the meaty butt of the hand is pretty much in front of the racket handle. The thumbnail-up pose would produce a racket face open to the sky at a 45-degree angle, as though a seated pupil were showing his strings to a standing teacher. The continental grip is versatile, obviously, because of that whole never-change-grips thing, and it is ideal for scooping low balls up over the net, but it is a fundamentally weak grip, especially on high balls, and it tends to be erratic, because it demands good timing for a solid hit.
For a while there, the natural order of things seemed to be that baseline players used Western grips and two-handed backhands while serve-and-volley players looked like Sampras or McEnroe or Edberg. As the Western grip and, to a lesser extent, the two-handed backhand have become the norm, however, players of an attacking bent have simply built attacking games that incorporate these baseliner tools.
Me, I try to keep up but I remain a child of the '70s. I recently switched from the continental grip to something between Eastern and Western, but on the rare occasions when I play on a fast, low-bouncing surface such as grass or artificial grass, I switch back to the continental and let my inner McEnroe free (though usually minus the tantrums).
Pete Sampras is the last No. 1 player to play tennis essentially the way we were taught to play tennis when I learned to play tennis. He's almost the last top player, period, although Henman's still around. I'm thinking largely of the forehand grip. "Shake hands with the racket" was probably the first tennis tip you got if you learned to play tennis in the 1960s or 1970s. That's the Eastern grip: If Sampras extended his arm with the thumbnail pointed toward the sky, you'd see a racket face perpendicular to the ground. He could drive a nail with the edge of the racket.
Most players nowadays use the Western grip, which demands a more baroque stroke but affords more topspin and more power on high-bouncing balls. If you'd get an Eastern from picking up a racket balanced precariously on its edge and its grip, you'd get a Western from picking up a racket simply lying face down on the ground.
With the Western, my thumbnail-pointed-up demonstration would produce a racket face parallel to the ground, like a chef preparing to flip an omelette. Imagine the ball being struck with the bottom of the frying pan, a stroke that places the meaty butt of the hand firmly behind the racket handle rather than over it. Most Western players rotate the racket 180 degrees to find their backhand grip, allowing them to hit forehands and backhands with opposite sides of the racket just like non-Western players (Eastern players do a similar rotation, but they don't have nearly as far to go). The classic Western technique, however, from the days when almost nobody used that grip, is to simply keep the same grip and strike the backhand with the same face of the racket as the forehand. Vince Spadea is the only current pro I know of who uses that same-side technique.
Even more old-fashioned than the Eastern grip, by the way, is the continental. This is the grip you're still supposed to use for serves and volleys, but such all-time great players as John McEnroe, Stefan Edberg and Fred Perry used it for all strokes. Recent retiree Gianluca Pozzi was able to confuse younger opponents not used to having flattish continental strokes coming their way. (Rod Laver used something approaching the continental.) With the continental, the meaty butt of the hand is pretty much in front of the racket handle. The thumbnail-up pose would produce a racket face open to the sky at a 45-degree angle, as though a seated pupil were showing his strings to a standing teacher. The continental grip is versatile, obviously, because of that whole never-change-grips thing, and it is ideal for scooping low balls up over the net, but it is a fundamentally weak grip, especially on high balls, and it tends to be erratic, because it demands good timing for a solid hit.
For a while there, the natural order of things seemed to be that baseline players used Western grips and two-handed backhands while serve-and-volley players looked like Sampras or McEnroe or Edberg. As the Western grip and, to a lesser extent, the two-handed backhand have become the norm, however, players of an attacking bent have simply built attacking games that incorporate these baseliner tools.
Me, I try to keep up but I remain a child of the '70s. I recently switched from the continental grip to something between Eastern and Western, but on the rare occasions when I play on a fast, low-bouncing surface such as grass or artificial grass, I switch back to the continental and let my inner McEnroe free (though usually minus the tantrums).
Friday, August 22, 2003
THE 15 MINUTES for which the women's game was more interesting than the men's is over. Please stop repeating the cliche.
Women's tennis was interesting when Williams and Williams and Capriati and Hingis and Davenport were all playing well, with old Seles and the young Belgians able to occasionally rise to the occasion. It was interesting when the idea of Kournikova winning a tournament seemed a little less like the idea of Al Sharpton winning the presidency.
Today, even if you forget about Serena missing the Open, all we really have on the women's side are the Williamses and the Belgians. Clijsters is No. 1 without having won a Grand Slam title, which is mathematically defensible but intuitively just plain wrong. At least Henin is fun to watch, even if she is a big cheater. Clijsters is sweet as all get-out and works her butt off, but her style is boring.
Look at men's tennis, on the other hand, and things are very interesting. No longer is Hewitt dominating by default while the others nap. Agassi still seems strong, Ferrero finally has a major, and no fewer than three players -- Federer, Roddick and Coria -- are on significant hot streaks. Then you have Schuettler, Nalbandian, Philippoussis and Grosjean taking turns as major threats, plus the resurgent Ferreira and the newly surgent Mardy Fish. And I'm not ready to count Hewitt out either.
Too bad Safin's in exile and Kuerten's floundering.
Women's tennis was interesting when Williams and Williams and Capriati and Hingis and Davenport were all playing well, with old Seles and the young Belgians able to occasionally rise to the occasion. It was interesting when the idea of Kournikova winning a tournament seemed a little less like the idea of Al Sharpton winning the presidency.
Today, even if you forget about Serena missing the Open, all we really have on the women's side are the Williamses and the Belgians. Clijsters is No. 1 without having won a Grand Slam title, which is mathematically defensible but intuitively just plain wrong. At least Henin is fun to watch, even if she is a big cheater. Clijsters is sweet as all get-out and works her butt off, but her style is boring.
Look at men's tennis, on the other hand, and things are very interesting. No longer is Hewitt dominating by default while the others nap. Agassi still seems strong, Ferrero finally has a major, and no fewer than three players -- Federer, Roddick and Coria -- are on significant hot streaks. Then you have Schuettler, Nalbandian, Philippoussis and Grosjean taking turns as major threats, plus the resurgent Ferreira and the newly surgent Mardy Fish. And I'm not ready to count Hewitt out either.
Too bad Safin's in exile and Kuerten's floundering.
Saturday, August 16, 2003
AS YOU WATCH BRAD GILBERT as Andy Roddick's coach this week in Cincinnati and beyond, don't forget what an accomplished hard-court player Gilbert was. ESPN keeps mentioning his 21-1 run-up to the U.S. Open in the summer of 1989, and so I looked up those results at Tennis Corner.
One week -- in Cincinnati, as it happens -- Gilbert beat Pete Sampras, Michael Chang, Boris Becker and Stefan Edberg in succession to win the title. All in three sets. Wow.
He then went to Flushing Meadows and lost in the first round to Todd Witsken, proving the axiom that you don't want your Grand Slam warm-ups to go too well.
One week -- in Cincinnati, as it happens -- Gilbert beat Pete Sampras, Michael Chang, Boris Becker and Stefan Edberg in succession to win the title. All in three sets. Wow.
He then went to Flushing Meadows and lost in the first round to Todd Witsken, proving the axiom that you don't want your Grand Slam warm-ups to go too well.
Monday, August 11, 2003
FABRICE SANTORO gets some ink from Sports Illustrated's Jon Wertheim. Allow me to elaborate, starting with a primer on spin:
Most good players, not only today but throughout the modern history of tennis, drive their forehands. They hit off that side either flat or with topspin. When good players slice the ball, hitting it with underspin, it's almost always on the backhand side. The slice was once the prevalent backhand stroke even among the pros, but today almost all players are capable of hitting flat and topspin backhands as well as slices, and the slice is reserved for desperation "gets" or tactical change-ups.
Topspin causes the ball to dip into the court and then jump off the court when it lands. It allows players to swing harder and create more power without hitting the ball long. Underspin slows down the ball, causing it to "float," which enables players to get decent depth with less effort. The ball tends to stay low after bouncing; depending on the roughness of the surface and the degree of underspin, it skids, stops or even bounces back toward the striker.
All right, then: On the backhand, where slice tends to live and breathe, Santoro is almost boring. He hits a two-handed stroke, but utterly conventional and usually a drive with moderate topspin.
It's on the forehand side that things start to get weird. The right-handed Santoro essentially hits a cross-handed left-handed slice when the ball is on his right. Picture the normal two-handed-backhand grip, right hand on the bottom. From there, Santoro draws the racket up and to his right, slices through the ball, and lets go with the right hand, leaving him with a choked-up left-handed grip on the follow-through.
Not only that, but you could hit the ball harder than Santoro typically does with this forehand. The glacial-paced underspin shot has been known to mesmerize some of the best players in the world (Marat Safin, even when he was playing well, is notorious for collapsing against Santoro).
As Wertheim says, see him if you get the chance.
Most good players, not only today but throughout the modern history of tennis, drive their forehands. They hit off that side either flat or with topspin. When good players slice the ball, hitting it with underspin, it's almost always on the backhand side. The slice was once the prevalent backhand stroke even among the pros, but today almost all players are capable of hitting flat and topspin backhands as well as slices, and the slice is reserved for desperation "gets" or tactical change-ups.
Topspin causes the ball to dip into the court and then jump off the court when it lands. It allows players to swing harder and create more power without hitting the ball long. Underspin slows down the ball, causing it to "float," which enables players to get decent depth with less effort. The ball tends to stay low after bouncing; depending on the roughness of the surface and the degree of underspin, it skids, stops or even bounces back toward the striker.
All right, then: On the backhand, where slice tends to live and breathe, Santoro is almost boring. He hits a two-handed stroke, but utterly conventional and usually a drive with moderate topspin.
It's on the forehand side that things start to get weird. The right-handed Santoro essentially hits a cross-handed left-handed slice when the ball is on his right. Picture the normal two-handed-backhand grip, right hand on the bottom. From there, Santoro draws the racket up and to his right, slices through the ball, and lets go with the right hand, leaving him with a choked-up left-handed grip on the follow-through.
Not only that, but you could hit the ball harder than Santoro typically does with this forehand. The glacial-paced underspin shot has been known to mesmerize some of the best players in the world (Marat Safin, even when he was playing well, is notorious for collapsing against Santoro).
As Wertheim says, see him if you get the chance.
Saturday, August 09, 2003
IT'S NOT QUITE the "I should never be losing to this guy" moment that occurred when John McEnroe fell to Brad Gilbert in the 1985 Masters in January 1986 -- a match that would become the opening to Gilbert's book, "Winning Ugly," and spark a seven-month sabbatical for McEnroe -- but Andre Agassi's comments after his loss to Rainer Schuettler in Montreal had the same sort of ring. Agassi said the match would be his last before the U.S. Open, no doubt pissing off more than a few tennis fans in Cincinnati. Like McEnroe, he won the first set before unraveling.
It couldn't have helped that Agassi knew his first-round opponent next week was to have been Thomas Enqvist, against whom he has a losing record in a series that began with a first-round U.S. Open upset in 1993.
So Schuettler faces David Nalbandian in the semis, with the winner meeting the winner of Andy Roddick vs. Roger Federer, which is a rematch of the Wimbledon semifinal. It's also a third interesting stylistic duel in a row for Roddick. In the round of 16 he beat Sebastien Grosjean, a thinking man's player in the Mikael Pernfors mold -- all spin and variety. In the quarters he beat Karol Kucera, a very different thinking man's player -- smooth, flat strokes taken early with pinpoint accuracy, in the Miloslav Mecir mold. (Yes, anything I talk about has to be addressed in 1980s terms.)
Federer, of course, who rolled over Roddick at Wimbledon, is an elegantly effortless striker of the ball with a lot more power than Grosjean/Pernfors or Kucera/Mecir. Not exactly a thinking man's player (he looks like an idiot when he's having an off day), but one whose artistry you have to appreciate.
IN CASE YOU don't subscribe to the "you never know" theory of junior tennis: Today I was watching a rebroadcast of the 1984 McEnroe-Connors U.S. Open semi. Early on, CBS commentator John Newcombe announces:
"Mark Kratzmann, the young Australian, won the United States junior championship this afternoon, 6-3, 7-6 over Becker, the German boy. That gives Mark the Wimbledon and United States titles. I got a feeling we're going to be calling a semifinal for Mark Kratzmann one day out here, too, in the Open."
Kratzmann's U.S Open record: 1-3. First round 1986, first round 1989, second round 1990. Becker, the German boy, won once at Flushing Meadows and made the semis on three other occasions. (But he never had to play Kratzmann as a pro.)
It couldn't have helped that Agassi knew his first-round opponent next week was to have been Thomas Enqvist, against whom he has a losing record in a series that began with a first-round U.S. Open upset in 1993.
So Schuettler faces David Nalbandian in the semis, with the winner meeting the winner of Andy Roddick vs. Roger Federer, which is a rematch of the Wimbledon semifinal. It's also a third interesting stylistic duel in a row for Roddick. In the round of 16 he beat Sebastien Grosjean, a thinking man's player in the Mikael Pernfors mold -- all spin and variety. In the quarters he beat Karol Kucera, a very different thinking man's player -- smooth, flat strokes taken early with pinpoint accuracy, in the Miloslav Mecir mold. (Yes, anything I talk about has to be addressed in 1980s terms.)
Federer, of course, who rolled over Roddick at Wimbledon, is an elegantly effortless striker of the ball with a lot more power than Grosjean/Pernfors or Kucera/Mecir. Not exactly a thinking man's player (he looks like an idiot when he's having an off day), but one whose artistry you have to appreciate.
IN CASE YOU don't subscribe to the "you never know" theory of junior tennis: Today I was watching a rebroadcast of the 1984 McEnroe-Connors U.S. Open semi. Early on, CBS commentator John Newcombe announces:
"Mark Kratzmann, the young Australian, won the United States junior championship this afternoon, 6-3, 7-6 over Becker, the German boy. That gives Mark the Wimbledon and United States titles. I got a feeling we're going to be calling a semifinal for Mark Kratzmann one day out here, too, in the Open."
Kratzmann's U.S Open record: 1-3. First round 1986, first round 1989, second round 1990. Becker, the German boy, won once at Flushing Meadows and made the semis on three other occasions. (But he never had to play Kratzmann as a pro.)
Wednesday, August 06, 2003
HAPPY RETIREMENT DAY!
Tuesday at the men's Canadian Open (or, to you corporate tools, "Tennis Masters Canada"):
Tim Henman d Fernando Gonzalez (14), 6-2, ret.
Feliciano Lopez d. Guillermo Coria (7), 6-3, ret.
Wayne Black (Q) d. Wayne Ferreira, 6-4, 2-1, ret.
Henman-Gonzalez, of course, was a rematch of Sunday's Legg Mason Tennis Classic final, and Ferreira was the winner in Los Angeles. Montreal may be a Masters Series event, but the U.S. Open starts later this month, and those retirements should make it abundantly clear just how much more important the Grand Slams are than any other tournament.
In other results of note:
One of my favorite players, Sebastien Grosjean, won for the first time in his last four meetings with Fernando Vicente, 6-3, 6-3.
Roger Federer (3) came from behind to beat Gaston Gaudio, 6-4, 3-6, 7-5.
An old smoothie, strictly in a tennis sense, beat a young in-the-other-sense smoothie: Karol Kucera d. Jan-Michael Gambill, 7-6, 7-6.
Random thoughts:
It's nice to see Agassi, Ferrero, Federer, Hewitt and Roddick sticking around.
Ancic will start winning matches someday, right? Right?
Tuesday at the men's Canadian Open (or, to you corporate tools, "Tennis Masters Canada"):
Henman-Gonzalez, of course, was a rematch of Sunday's Legg Mason Tennis Classic final, and Ferreira was the winner in Los Angeles. Montreal may be a Masters Series event, but the U.S. Open starts later this month, and those retirements should make it abundantly clear just how much more important the Grand Slams are than any other tournament.
In other results of note:
Random thoughts:
Monday, August 04, 2003
Friday, August 01, 2003
WITH THE LEGG MASON TENNIS CLASSIC in town, I was all set to make my big move, to march into the Washington Post sports editor's office and volunteer to contribute my 25 years' worth of tennis fandom to help Washingtonians navigate their way to the best matches rather than blindly and blandly following the crowds to the stadium court.
But then I looked at the draw. Bor-ing! For me, that meant not so much that good players didn't show up (although Federer's pullout really hurt), but that the lovable oddballs whom I'd hoped to showcase weren't there. No Santoro! Pozzi's retired!
Looking at the quarterfinals, however, I have to say this might be the best Legg Mason ever. No Kenneth Carlsens this year:
Agassi vs. Blake.
Gonzalez vs. Mirnyi. (That one almost meets my oddball criterion!)
Henman vs. Srichaphan.
Roddick vs. Fish.
This would be the one year I probably won't be attending. Jacqueline and I have some extensive U.S. Open plans, so we're pacing ourselves. Maybe if the final looks particularly good we'll show up, but probably not.
But then I looked at the draw. Bor-ing! For me, that meant not so much that good players didn't show up (although Federer's pullout really hurt), but that the lovable oddballs whom I'd hoped to showcase weren't there. No Santoro! Pozzi's retired!
Looking at the quarterfinals, however, I have to say this might be the best Legg Mason ever. No Kenneth Carlsens this year:
This would be the one year I probably won't be attending. Jacqueline and I have some extensive U.S. Open plans, so we're pacing ourselves. Maybe if the final looks particularly good we'll show up, but probably not.
