Friday, August 30, 2002
THE WASTE LAND.
That's what I see when I look at the U.S. Open singles draws. I feel good about Lleyton Hewitt, Serena Williams and Venus Williams. The 253 other players are falling stars, underachievers, temporary cripples or none-of-the-aboves.
Last year, the conventional wisdom was that women's tennis had surpassed men's tennis. All those interesting story lines, with the Williams sisters and the comebacking Capriati and the "old" guard of Hingis and Davenport and the still-dangerous Seles, plus the Belgian upstarts Henin and Clijsters.
Going into this year's Open, the story is whether Venus can regain her mastery of Serena. Capriati hasn't been much of a factor since the Australian Open, Hingis and Davenport are coming back from long layoffs, Seles has been away for months and only a minor threat for years, and Henin and Clijsters have fizzled. The identify of the two finalists is more of a sure thing today than at any time since the years of Graf and pre-stabbing Seles.
The men's draw might still be less of a story than the women's, but it never stopped having more depth. The difference is that whereas the parity among top contenders used to be based on positive attributes, today (beyond No. 1 Lleyton Hewitt) it's based on negatives. "Head case" is the most telling diagnosis, and Marat Safin is the king of the head cases. He's a former U.S. Open champion, No. 2 in the world, runner-up at the Australian Open, and nobody expects anything from him.
Marat Safin is at a ping-pong table when his opponents are on a tennis court. He's so big, his strokes are so effortlessly powerful, that he could saunter over to the ball every time and give it a minor poke and he'd never lose. But somehow he makes it difficult. He glances away at the last second and lets that 100-mph minor poke drift wide. He convinces himself he needs to hit spectacular shots when nothing could be farther from the truth. He cannot see the forest for the trees, enraged losing unimportant points but seemingly unconcerned about losing entire matches over and over and over to lesser players.
Today Safin plays Gustavo Kuerten, the Brazilian for whom my wife named our second cat. Safin and Guga (Kuerten's nickname and the cat's name) were neck and neck for No. 1 two years ago. Now, Safin is No. 2 pretty much by default and Guga is in the rankings netherworld after injury and surgery. Because Guga wasn't seeded, he was at the mercy of the draw. Should be a good match, if their hearts are in it. (A big "if.")
That's what I see when I look at the U.S. Open singles draws. I feel good about Lleyton Hewitt, Serena Williams and Venus Williams. The 253 other players are falling stars, underachievers, temporary cripples or none-of-the-aboves.
Last year, the conventional wisdom was that women's tennis had surpassed men's tennis. All those interesting story lines, with the Williams sisters and the comebacking Capriati and the "old" guard of Hingis and Davenport and the still-dangerous Seles, plus the Belgian upstarts Henin and Clijsters.
Going into this year's Open, the story is whether Venus can regain her mastery of Serena. Capriati hasn't been much of a factor since the Australian Open, Hingis and Davenport are coming back from long layoffs, Seles has been away for months and only a minor threat for years, and Henin and Clijsters have fizzled. The identify of the two finalists is more of a sure thing today than at any time since the years of Graf and pre-stabbing Seles.
The men's draw might still be less of a story than the women's, but it never stopped having more depth. The difference is that whereas the parity among top contenders used to be based on positive attributes, today (beyond No. 1 Lleyton Hewitt) it's based on negatives. "Head case" is the most telling diagnosis, and Marat Safin is the king of the head cases. He's a former U.S. Open champion, No. 2 in the world, runner-up at the Australian Open, and nobody expects anything from him.
Marat Safin is at a ping-pong table when his opponents are on a tennis court. He's so big, his strokes are so effortlessly powerful, that he could saunter over to the ball every time and give it a minor poke and he'd never lose. But somehow he makes it difficult. He glances away at the last second and lets that 100-mph minor poke drift wide. He convinces himself he needs to hit spectacular shots when nothing could be farther from the truth. He cannot see the forest for the trees, enraged losing unimportant points but seemingly unconcerned about losing entire matches over and over and over to lesser players.
Today Safin plays Gustavo Kuerten, the Brazilian for whom my wife named our second cat. Safin and Guga (Kuerten's nickname and the cat's name) were neck and neck for No. 1 two years ago. Now, Safin is No. 2 pretty much by default and Guga is in the rankings netherworld after injury and surgery. Because Guga wasn't seeded, he was at the mercy of the draw. Should be a good match, if their hearts are in it. (A big "if.")
Wednesday, August 28, 2002
THE U.S. OPEN (tennis, not golf) started Monday in New York, and so I'll be a tad preoccupied over the next two weeks.
I was all set to write a blog entry in defense of Anna Kournikova when Anna went and lost in 40-something minutes in the first round to an unknown 17-year-old from Indonesia. Disgraceful. A horrible performance. Still:
It's dumb-jock-sportswriter horseshit to call Anna a bad player who doesn't belong on the tour. She's an underachiever, yes. A disappointment, yes. Squandering her talent? No doubt. But to say she doesn't belong on the tour with all those non-fashion-model players is nonsense. Even in her understandably distracted state, she's among the top 50 female tennis players in the world by any measure. In terms of talent, she's in the top 10, maybe the top five (hence the "underachiever" business). She has the shots, but she lacks a certain psychological ability to understand how to parlay those shots into victories. (I can relate.)
At the very, very least, Anna is a doubles superstar who has had lesser success in singles. That's still pretty select company.
John McEnroe makes a huge production out of the fact that x player is ranked y despite a mediocre, perhaps losing, record. I love John McEnroe, but if he looked at the records of all the players (and perhaps took a statistics class) he'd find out that not only do a lot of world-class players have losing records, but also that it's mathematically impossible for everybody in the top 128 of what is not much more than a 200-player universe to have a winning record. Half the players who play on any given day are losers. Batting .400-something in pro tennis is pretty darn good.
I was all set to write a blog entry in defense of Anna Kournikova when Anna went and lost in 40-something minutes in the first round to an unknown 17-year-old from Indonesia. Disgraceful. A horrible performance. Still:
It's dumb-jock-sportswriter horseshit to call Anna a bad player who doesn't belong on the tour. She's an underachiever, yes. A disappointment, yes. Squandering her talent? No doubt. But to say she doesn't belong on the tour with all those non-fashion-model players is nonsense. Even in her understandably distracted state, she's among the top 50 female tennis players in the world by any measure. In terms of talent, she's in the top 10, maybe the top five (hence the "underachiever" business). She has the shots, but she lacks a certain psychological ability to understand how to parlay those shots into victories. (I can relate.)
At the very, very least, Anna is a doubles superstar who has had lesser success in singles. That's still pretty select company.
John McEnroe makes a huge production out of the fact that x player is ranked y despite a mediocre, perhaps losing, record. I love John McEnroe, but if he looked at the records of all the players (and perhaps took a statistics class) he'd find out that not only do a lot of world-class players have losing records, but also that it's mathematically impossible for everybody in the top 128 of what is not much more than a 200-player universe to have a winning record. Half the players who play on any given day are losers. Batting .400-something in pro tennis is pretty darn good.
