Category Archives: tennis

A different sort of tennis backhand

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The recent U.S. Open tennis dust-up between American Taylor Townsend and Latvia’s Jelena Ostapenko—kicked up by Ostapenko over a virtually meaningless gesture that somehow has become fairly common in the sport—begs for the insight of the late Bud Collins.

For more than a half-century before his death at 86 nine years ago, Collins was tennis’ premier historian and conscience, his informative writing and commentary brightening newspaper, magazine and television accounts. He employed humor based on his feeling that “sports wasn’t the end of the world.”

He conjured wonderful nicknames for players, mixed his even-handed and sometimes critical—but never mean—reporting with lighthearted irreverence and sly puns. On one occasion, after an Israeli tennis pro named Shlomo Glickstein executed a winning shot and NBC-TV immediately followed it with a replay, Collins alerted viewers: “Here’s Schlomo in Slow-Mo.”

Collins’ powers of observation included citing the otherwise unnoticed bottle of liquid tucked in the umpire’s chair at Wimbledon, ostensibly to refresh any player in need. In all his years at the tournament, Bud confided, no player had ever touched the stuff.

Bud was known by one and all, thoroughly recognizable with his bald head, big smile, sweater thrown jauntily over his shoulders and pants with patterns so loud they could speak for themselves. A colleague among us sports journalists, Bill Glauber of the Baltimore Sun, once referred to him as “the human press credential,” able to move as freely around those crowded, chaotic competition venues as a Rod Laver or Billie Jean King.

So: What might Bud have said about the Townsend-Ostapenko fracas, in which Ostapenko accused Townsend of failing to acknowledge a lucky bounce during a straight-sets second-round victory? The transgression in question was the routine by a player, benefitting from a so-called net-cord winner—when his or her ball ticks the top of the net and falls, unplayable, to the opponent’s side of the court—offering a (hardly sincere) apologetic gesture of a raised hand or raised racket to the point’s victim.

It was Townsend skipping that little nicety that apparently set off Ostapenko—that and what Ostapenko characterized as Townsend rudely starting their pre-match warmup at the net rather than the baseline. After the match, Ostapenko shook a finger at Townsend and accused her of having “no class” and “no education.”

(Several of her fellow pros noted Ostapenko’s documented history of questionable gamesmanship. In the Townsend match, she appeared to be messing with Townsend’s concentration by taking a lengthy bathroom break, begging a timeout after a lost game and challenging an electronic line call. Plus, there were the condescending optics of Ostapenko, a white Latvian, publicly scolding Townsend, who is Black, about “class” and “education.”)

All this as if Townsend, or anyone else, could be capable of engineering a shot that would catch just enough of the net cord to stop, think, then drop barely into Ostapenko’s side of the court.

That’s the sort of thing Bud Collins surely would have used to put the situation in perspective, as well as adding some real education about the sport and its history. Bud had published, in 1980, a 665-page “Modern Encyclopedia of Tennis,” and in that tome—along with exhaustive accounts of the sport’s notable players and matches—is a detailed glossary of the sport’s rules and all manner of “tennis lingo.” There are basic definitions, everything from “ace” to “Wimbledon,” including what a “net cord” is.

Better, and more up Bud’s alley, is the description of the no-longer extant “net judge”—“An official,” the encyclopedia clarified, “seated at one end of the net, usually below the umpire’s chair, to detect ‘lets’ on serve. During the serve, he rests one hand on the net cord to feel whether the ball hits the top of the net. If it does, he calls ‘Net!’ and the serve is replayed as a ‘let’ if the ball lands in the proper court.”

Bud always called that official “Fingers Fortescue,” though there clearly were different people, men and women, on duty at different events. Alas, technology since has eliminated the job and, anyway, the Ostapenko complaint wouldn’t involve the devoted work of “Fingers” because a ball catching the net already in play—as opposed to one on a serve—remains in play.

Furthermore, Ostapenko’s claim that “there are some rules in tennis which most of the players follow and it was [the] first time ever that this happened to me on tour” clearly mischaracterized previous acts of what is, at most, merely a courtesy. There certainly is no rule requiring the bit of politeness, which hardly is a real apology for winning a point—what former major tournament champion Svetlana Kuznetsov has called a “typical ‘Sorry; not sorry.’”

“Here’s the thing about tennis etiquette,” Aron Solomon posted on the Tennisuptodate website. “It’s not the Magna Carta. There’s no line in the rulebook requiring you to murmur ‘sorry’ after a net-cord dribbler….What is in the rulebook—and what the sport actually has to enforce—is the simple idea that you can’t verbally abuse your opponent.”

In the end, Ostapenko issued what she described as an apology for her outburst, pleading that “English is not my native language, so when I said ‘education’ I was speaking only about what I believe as tennis etiquette….”

Now that is a “Sorry, not sorry.” And Bud Collins would have added a pertinent, probably humorous anecdote. And possibly a quote from Fingers Fortescue.

U.S. Open bottom line

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Was the U.S. Open really in any mortal danger before Jessica Pegula and Taylor Fritz made their unexpected marches to the women’s and men’s championship finals over the weekend? It was the first time in 23 years that both a U.S. man and U.S. woman played for U.S. titles, but was that rarity—two homies simultaneously at last getting close to a trophy—illustrative of the tournament’s atrophy?

Neither Pegula, sixth seed among the women, nor the men’s No. 12 Fritz ever had been past a major tournament quarterfinal before, so shopworn story lines were trotted out as they advanced unexpectedly through the 2024 draw. Those decades-old themes, of the forlorn state of American men’s tennis and the regularly disappointing search for another Serena Williams, merely were paused when Coco Gauff won last year.

For the women, there hardly has been the kind of drought that the men, so long depicted as on a tennis desolation row, have experienced. No U.S. female reached the final between 2002 and ’07, but Serena Williams enjoyed a three-year run as champ from 2012 to 2014 and was runner-up in both ’17 and ’18. And Sloane Stephens claimed the title in ’17. All that, while Andy Roddick was the last American man before Fritz to reach the U.S. championship match, in 2006, as well as the last U.S. male to win it, in ’03.

Still, any lament that the Open suffered from lack of Yankee dominance not only has been overdone but unsubstantiated. As this year’s tournament commenced with the highest seeds coming from Italy (Jannick Sinner), Serbia (Novak Djokovic), Spain (Carlos Alcaraz), Germany (Alexander Zverev)—and, among the women, Poland (Iga Swiatek) and Belarus (Aryna Sabalenka)—a record average of more than 75,000 fans descended daily on the tournament during the first of its two weeks. By the end, more than a million had attended the Open for the first time, even as ticket prices soared to more than $8,000 for a courtside seat.

Open officials, with little expectation of an American player presence on the final weekend, rolled out their first Finals Fan Fest. That offered $28 tickets just to be on the National Tennis Center grounds on the final Saturday and Sunday to attend a watch party at the No. 2 court, Louis Armstrong Stadium, while the championship action proceeded in already sold-out Arthur Ashe Stadium next door.

So the adversity of the Open failing to guarantee an American champion has not been the least bit adverse. The event is one of those American spectacles that lures the In Crowd and In-Crowd wannabes, a place to be seen as well as to see. Furthermore, international tennis—being an individual sport—is personality-driven, celebrity stuff. So, while an added buzz indeed accompanied Pegula and Fritz right through their runner-up finishes, a player’s drawing power at the Open historically has been related more to his or her on-court success and style than country of origin.

The Open, contested on the grounds of the 1939 and 1964 Worlds Fairs, is just that—a world’s fair.

For two decades, Switzerland’s Roger Federer and Spain’s Rafael Nadal were virtual rock stars at the Open as, in the 1990s, were women’s favorites Steffi Graf (Germany) and Monica Seles (who played for her native Yugoslavia before becoming an American citizen). Just as true, more recently, were fan favorites Caroline Wozniacki (Denmark), Maria Sharapova (Russia) and Japan’s Naomi Osaka, the 2018 and 2020 U.S. champ.

Even the athletes themselves in fact are drawn to heroes and heroines with backgrounds and homelands quite foreign to them. Federer once said that his tennis inspiration came “from all around the world, and that was cool,” citing Sweden’s Stefan Edberg and Germany’s Boris Becker. Pete Sampras, the California-raised five-time U.S. Open champ, cited Australian Rod Laver as his example of greatness. And Stephens, a Black woman like the Williams sisters who called them “two of the greatest players ever to play the game of tennis,” nevertheless had Belgian Kim Clijsters as her childhood idol.

So, good for Pegula and Fritz for reviving something of an American tennis dream at the latest edition of the Open. They surely warmed the hearts of U.S. television executives by staying around so long. But the idea that only American champions keep New York’s Grand Slam tournament alive and healthy, or assure a flood of future elite players from the States—that success breeds success and fuels a nation’s thriving sports tradition—is only true until it isn’t.

The U.S. Open is doing just fine. Tickets for the 2025 tournament already are on sale.

Never saw him sweat

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In tennis, people retire—at all ages and sometimes more than once. Not the kind of retirement Roger Federer just announced, in which the 20-time major tournament champion will hang up his sneakers and find other things to do. Not what Serena Williams described as her “evolving away” from competition.

No. In tennis, “retire” is the verb the sport uses to describe a player quitting mid-match, usually because of injury or illness. And here’s the irony to Federer’s definitive farewell to competition at 41. He never, in 1,526 singles and 223 doubles matches over 24 years as a pro, left a match prematurely. Though back troubles and several knee surgeries messed with his playing schedule and kept him away from the tour most of the last two years, once he began a match, he never left until it was over.

In a big way, that sums up Federer’ tennis presence. His persistence. His ability to come up with solutions, on the fly, while appearing dispassionate. His serene air of effortlessness. His intuitive feel for the game.

All the inevitable statistical comparisons now being aired of Federer’s place in history alongside his great rivals Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic aren’t really the point. (Nadal and Djokovic, by the way, did retire from matches multiple times.) Numbers—Grand Slam titles, winning percentages, time spent ranked No. 1—are significant, grist for lively sports-talk arguments, but they don’t convey a sense of what it was like to witness Federer in action.

The late novelist David Foster Wallace years ago wrote of hearing a press-bus driver, during the Wimbledon championships, describe watching Federer play tennis as a “bloody near-religious experience.”

Wallace agreed wholeheartedly. “Almost anyone who loves tennis and follows the men’s tour on television has, over the last few years, had what might be termed Federer Moments,” Wallace wrote. “These are times, as you watch the young Swiss play, when the jaw drops and eyes protrude and sounds are made that bring spouses in from other rooms to see if you’re OK.”

In 2008, when Federer was in the midst of his most devastating run, reaching 22 of 27 major-tournament finals—and winning 16 of them—an 18-year-old American named Devin Britton, in Britton’s first and only Grand Slam tournament match, drew Federer in the first round of the U.S. Open. After the match, which Federer won handily, Britton related that Federer’s forehand “is so pretty” that Britton, fully aware of the danger to him, purposely hit to that forehand at times—“just to watch.”

At the 2007 U.S. Open, when Federer broke out a pseudo-tuxedo look for night matches—all black, with a silvery stripe down the shorts—it seemed to emphasize how his game was worthy of top hat and tails. Serve-and-volley gone to verve-and-volley.

He seemed to glide around the court, noiselessly in an age of grunting workers, moving his opponent from side to side, back and forth—almost casually—adding spin, subtracting pace. He played without histrionics, without bickering over calls or doing touchdown dances or constantly going to the towel.

For so long, playing Federer could be like shooting rubber bands at Superman. His power and control were the kind of things that could make opponents sleep with the lights on. He was the Swiss army knife of tennis, taking apart opponents as if using a blade, screwdriver, toothpick, tweezer and can opener.

Eight-time major-tournament champion Andre Agassi, whose career was winding down as Federer’s long rule peaked, once compared Federer to Pete Sampras—whose previous record of 14 Slam titles Federer surpassed when Federer was 28:

“You play a bad match against Pete, you lose, 6-4, 7-5,” Agassi said. “You play a good match against Pete, you lose, 6-4, 7-5. You play a good match against Federer, you lose 6-4, 7-5. You play a bad match against Federer, you lose, 1 and 1.”

The only incongruous reaction to Federer, which popped up around 2005, before Nadal and Djokovic began to put the slightest dent in Federer’s reign, was that Federer’s stylish supremacy somehow was bad for tennis.

Federer didn’t always win, of course. Both Nadal and Djokovic wound up having winning records in head-to-head matches against Federer. But Federer’s tennis never ceased to be terrific theatre. Seventeen years into his career, he conjured an aggressive, innovative shot—a charging, short-hop return against second serves. A Geronimo! leap that logically would be service-return suicide, but which occasionally buoyed him in dire situations. The shot was dubbed SABR—Sneak Attack By Roger. More legerdemain from the game’s wizard.

But about retirement, the end-of-career sort. Federer started to hear questions about that more than a decade ago, with still multiple major-tournament titles in his future. Around 2018, a tennis website posted an April Fool’s joke “announcing” Federer’s retirement. “No plans to retire,” he assured in response. “Don’t even use that word.”

He always said he had too much enjoyment for every aspect of his job. The matches. The training. The travel. Everything about his lifestyle. But, as always happens in such occupations, age and diminished physical skills eventually win out. So he will retire. For him, another first.

Don’t encourage them

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Midway through the U.S. Open, the level of tennis was brilliant, at turns violent and clever as Nick Kyrgios and Daniil Medvedev battled, hammer and tongs, in their fourth-round U.S. Open match. They needed 24 points just to get through an intense first-set tiebreaker. Riveting theater.

The question was whether anyone among the sellout crowd, going bonkers in Arthur Ashe Stadium, experienced any pause in rooting for either player. Dazzling athleticism aside, Kyrgios, a 27-year-old Australian, once again was reinforcing his reputation as the sport’s premier miscreant—cursing, hurling his racket, snarling at the chair umpire and even his own support team. And Medvedev, 26, was borderline persona non grata, competing unaffiliated because of tennis officials’ decision that, since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, no Russian could compete under his national flag.

Several Ukrainian players have argued that Medvedev and other Russian and Belarussian opponents should have been banned altogether—as they were at this year’s Wimbledon—though it certainly could be argued that Medvedev can’t be held personally responsible for the murderous policies of Vladimir Putin.

Medvedev, last year’s Open champion, did make a poor early impression on Open crowds in 2019 by snatching a towel from a ballboy, displaying a middle finger in response to fans’ booing and being fined for verbal and equipment abuse. At the time, he confessed to having decided long ago to break the occasional racket because he believed spectators “think it’s cool.”

Amid the tumult this time, though, it was Kyrgios who was in full-scoundrel mode, as is his habit. In his brief professional career, he has been fined hundreds of thousands of dollars—for racket abuse, audible obscenities, disrespect of chair umpires, tanking matches, sniping at ballpersons, throwing a chair on court, declaring the men’s tour officials to be corrupt, spitting at a fan. (Off court, he also has been charged with assault of a former girlfriend.)

During a changeover at a match seven years ago, Kyrgios casually informed his opponent (“Sorry to tell you that, mate”) that another player was having sex with that opponent’s romantic partner. The comment was picked up by the on-court microphone.

Greece’s Stephanos Tsitsipas, whom Kyrgios taunted during their match at this year’s Wimbledon, has called Kyrgios’ game “an incessant act of bullying his opponent.” Former Australian star Pat Cash has accused Kyrgios of “cheating, manipulation and abuse.” John McEnroe, long ago christened “Super brat” by British tabloids for his irascible tirades in the 1970s and ‘80s, recently was quoted by The Guardian, “Whenever I watch Kyrgios play and do some stunts, I think, ‘Did I, too? Was I that bad?’”

So, Kyrgios vs. Medvedev: Two guys difficult to root for? Dutch philosophy professor Alfred Archer, in his 2021 academic paper “Fans, Crimes and Misdemeanors,” considered whether it is “permissible to be a fan of an artist or a sports team that has behaved immorally.” Archer argued that there are three ethical reasons to abandon such fandom—because fans’ backing supports the bad behavior, results in a widespread failure to perceive the star’s faults and protects the interests of the star.

But there long has been a rationalization that, in an individual sport such as tennis, spectators yearn for “showmanship” and therefore accept—even are drawn to—outrageous deeds as part of the show. (Though Serena Williams was guilty of a handful of crude eruptions and racket mistreatment during her long career, this historically has been a male issue.)

McEnroe, still a popular figure 30 years after his competitive retirement, was a crazed perfectionist who acted out his frustrations. He and another bellicose past champion, Jimmy Connors—who carried a large chip on his shoulder against a persecuting world—were widely embraced for their “personality.”

And the U.S. Open, which introduced night matches to the major-tournament rotation in 1975, long ago created a howling-at-the-moon chaos that raises the temperature of both fans and players. It was under the lights that the spectators, Medvedev and (especially) Kyrgios threw all restraint to the winds this week.

Kyrgios won, then faced another Russian, Karen Khachanov, in a lower-temperature quarterfinal. Who to root for there? Kyrgios lost that one, but not before flinging three more rackets, slapping a TV camera with his hand and throwing a drink.

Cheers?

Goodbye to all that

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Serena Williams once was asked if there was any player out there whom she feared.

“Yeh,” she said, “Roger Federer.”

We are talking about a tennis superpower here. Gifted, fiery, relentless and justly self-confident. For years—and especially now with Williams’ stated intention of riding off into the sunset after this month’s U.S. Open—the question (albeit hypothetical) regards Williams’ possible status as the greatest tennis player in history. Without necessarily including the “female” qualifier.

It is a sports cliché to traffic in such definitive statements, a fool’s errand to compare eras, especially in what might be the sport most transformed over the decades because of advanced off-court training and revolutionary equipment. (Baseball, for instance, has stuck with wooden bats. Not tennis.)

So it’s all conjecture. But Williams’ 23 titles in Grand Slam events are more than any male player can claim. Rafael Nadal has 22, Novak Djokovic 21, Federer 20. And while the record is 24 by Australian Margaret Court, that total includes 11 wins at Court’s home Slam during a time when top American and European players regularly skipped the grueling trip to Melbourne.

If Williams, who will turn 41 weeks after this year’s Open commences, somehow were to conjure a 24th trophy, she would become the oldest—male or female—ever to win a major title. (Aussie Ken Rosewall, who also benefitted from players’ limited participation at his nation’s Slam, was 37 when he won the last of his 12 major championships in 1972.)

But here’s the deal with Williams: Beyond the current discussion of the gender handicap, her career having been interrupted by pregnancy, and aside from the reality that she hasn’t captured a major since 2017 while the wave of younger talent continues to storm the ramparts, there were roughly two solid decades when it was difficult to fathom how anyone besides Williams ever prevailed in a women’s major.

She has said that she probably should have 30 Slam titles by now and the record bears her out. Since her first Slam appearance 24 years ago, she has missed 18 major tournaments because of various injuries and health issues. She won one Australian Open while some 20 pounds overweight, another while pregnant. Twice in her career, she completed what she coined the “Serena Slam”—winning all four majors in succession—just not in a calendar year.

She has said that “I haven’t lost many matches where the player was playing unbelievably good. Usually, when I lose, it’s because I’m playing unbelievable bad.” A bit self-serving, but true.

The surgical tennis-otomies Williams repeatedly performed on opponents in the biggest matches were so skillfully precise that spectators’ focus typically fell almost entirely on her. On her powerful serve, her paint-the-line backhand, her cracking crosscourt forehand.

Though primarily a baseliner, she always played territorially, moving a step or two into the court as the rallies went on, ready to pounce. When she lost a point, it typically was a product of her aggressively missing wide or long. So often, the opponent was just…there.

It was Williams’ own occasionally uncontrolled passion that cost her at times: Her profane outburst, offering to shove the ball down a diminutive lineswoman’s throat over a foot-fault call, cost her a championship match point in the 2009 Open against Kim Clijsters; her premature celebratory shout in the 2011 Open final against Samantha Stosur resulted in the loss of a crucial game point; her rant against the chair umpire over a penalty point for illegal coaching led to her 2019 Open loss to Naomi Osaka.

In terms of dominating her peers, Williams’ consecutive weeks atop the women’s rankings is a record 186 (equaling Steffi Graf’s previous total). OK, Federer was the No. 1 male for 237 straight weeks. Maybe someone for Williams to fear.

She acknowledged a diminished interest in the tour beyond the majors, passing on plenty of lesser events, and the result is that others have won far more career titles than Williams’ 73—Martina Navratilova with 167, Chris Evert with 154, Graf with 107. But, as the credits roll on the Williams tennis story, it seems appropriate to recall a quote by Larry Scott when he was CEO of the Women’s Tennis Association earlier in the 2000s: “Being a champion is one thing. But being a superstar is another.”

No-vax Novak

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For a guy who has felt underappreciated and un-loved compared to his contemporary tennis superstars Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic hardly did himself any favors in getting himself thrown out of Australia on the eve of the year’s first major tournament. For a fellow who is such a magnificent athletic contortionist—able to bend and twist to counter any opponent’s offensive firepower—Djokovic nevertheless managed to tie himself in knots attempting to dance around the host nation’s pandemic protocols.

The whole bizarre episode, which has ended Djokovic’s legitimate shot to win a record 21st Grand Slam singles title and thus pass both Federer and Nadal, was a public relations disaster. And something of an international incident, with the president of Djokovic’s native Serbia declaring that Australian officials had “humiliated” Djokovic and “actually humiliated themselves.”

Australian tennis officials took a hit, too, after apparently trying to give Djokovic special treatment. They were aware he was unvaccinated and that their government barred unvaccinated foreigners from entering the country, and that the Australian public was exhausted from two years of strict Covid-19 lockdown.

According to Australian journalist Van Badham, the rejection of Djokovic’s visa that followed the Open’s offer of a vaccine exemption was “undoubtedly proving popular” with the Australian public. “So, Novak. Mate. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out, hey?” Badham offered in farewell.

It was reported that 83 percent of 60,000 local respondents favored Djokovic’s dismissal while the hashtag #DjokovicOut had been trending throughout the weeklong drama of Djokovic’s misleading statements and two court hearings. He became “Novax Djocovid” on Australian Twitter.

Far from Australia’s shores, ESPN’s Howard Bryant wrote that Djokovic “has cemented his membership within the pandemic’s most infamous group—the anti-vax multimillionaire athlete who behaves as if his fame, wealth and enormous platform to disseminate misinformation place him above the rest of us.”

The Atlantic’s Jemele Hill concluded that Djokovic “has made a spectacle of trying to bend the rules—thereby showing that, besides Covid, the other sickness the world is fighting is selfishness.” Hill also called Djokovic a hypocrite for having criticized women’s champion Naomi Osaka last year when she refused to attend French Open press conferences, recalling Djokovic’s quote that the press sessions are “part of the sport and part of your life on the tour. This is something we have to do; otherwise, we will get fined.”

With all those rotten tomatoes flying, even the nimble Djokovic couldn’t dodge the trouble he might easily have avoided by getting his Covid jab. And it’s not as if Djokovic is against medical science: In 2018 he revived his career by undergoing elbow surgery, ending a drought of eight straight majors without a title by winning eight of the next 13.

His fellow players, while universally praising Djokovic’s tennis talent, have expressed fatigue over his roguish stance and how it distracted from the tournament, while reminding that Australia’s vaccination requirement was clearly stated. And it’s hardly the first time colleagues found Djokovic’s actions annoying.

In 2008, he had just won his first Slam trophy at 20 when there were complaints that he too often called for trainers on court, took suspicious bathroom breaks and complained of various injuries. During that year’s U.S. Open, then-top-ranked American Andy Roddick sarcastically responded to a question about which ankle Djokovic reportedly had hurt with, “Isn’t it both of them? And a hip? And a cramp? Bird flu? Anthrax? SARS? Common cough and cold?”

At the time, Djokovic also had rankled some peers with his habit of bouncing the ball up to 20 times before serving, and by publicly mimicking the quirks of others on the tour—Roddick’s twitches under a pulled-down cap, Maria Sharapova’s pre-serve hopping and fiddling with her racket strings, Nadal’s long-shorts-and-sleeveless look, Federer’s tendency to flick at his hair while awaiting serve.

Djokovic insisted then that he preferred respect over flat-out popularity, that he wanted to be remembered as a tennis champion and not “a clown.” Much was made of the fact in last year’s U.S. Open final that fans had rallied to Djokovic’s side against Daniil Medvedev during Djokovic’s failed attempt to complete the first men’s Grand Slam sweep in 52 years. That crowd support left Djokovic in tears and proclaiming he “felt something I never felt in my life….The crowd made me feel special.”

Finally, appreciation and love. But it’s important to remind that Medvedev, who was marching to a straight-sets victory, himself was no New York crowd favorite, and that it is typical Open fans’ behavior to willingly switch allegiance, mid-match, if it means they get more tennis.

Whatever. Djokovic may have just sent himself back to Square One in his quest for widespread affection.

Doubt?

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There is no seeing inside someone else’s head. If tennis champion Naomi Osaka feels her mental health has been threatened by being required to engage in post-match dialogue with reporters—if that is at the core of her “long bouts of depression” which she offered as a reason for boycotting French Open press sessions and then withdrawing suddenly from the tournament—who are we to doubt her?

But she does appear to be conflating her insecurities with the routine procedure of press conferences. And, while she said she has been haunted for nearly three years by “huge waves of anxiety before I speak to the world’s media,” and that tennis officials therefore “continue to ignore the mental health” of athletes by subjecting them to those question-and-answer periods, there is no evidence she had raised the complaint before.

In a statement, she said, “I’m not going to subject myself to people that doubt me,” implying that the media—these days so often cast as the enemy by a large segment of the population—had worked at discrediting or disrespecting her.

Immediately, all sides took a defensive stance: The media, which is there because elite professional tennis is newsworthy. Osaka, in response to the $15,000 fine for her press no-show, though it was an action taken many times against many players in the past. And tennis officials, who said Osaka had declined to discuss reasons for her media boycott and first hinted at further sanctions before expression concern for one of their primary meal tickets.

Then came the cacophony of rambunctious voices from that “other” media—social media—many taking Osaka’s side, but plenty willing to give her a flogging as well. For all the postings pleading for compassion regarding Osaka’s situation—exactly what that is, we can’t possibly know—there has been an awful lot of racket casting her as spoiled and simply not in the mood to do what is contractually required of all players.

As a veteran of sports journalism who has covered the New York-based Grand Slam, the U.S. Open, for more than 40 years, I can attest that the sort of nasty accusations in on-line comment sections are not a feature of post-match tete-a-tetes. Yes, some in my tribe can be guilty of harebrained inquiries. There is such a thing as journalistic malpractice.

In general, though, those press conferences run from boring to somewhat enlightening to occasionally humorous. And, in my experience, Osaka was open and thoughtful in that setting. In her return to the U.S. Open in 2019, as defending champion and already ranked No. 1, Osaka described her developing career “as a book. It’s not quite done yet. Currently being written. I don’t know how the ending is going to be. I only know what the chapters are. For me, it’s just reading it, you know. Plot twist. But the kind of plot twist that makes you want to keep reading it.”

Insightful, no? And when she was upset that year in the fourth round by the Swiss Belinda Bencic, Osaka sounded reasonably in control of sport’s ups-and-downs. “I have this feeling of sadness,” she said then, “but also that I have learned so much. I feel I’m more chill now. Like I grew. I don’t feel like I put so much weight on one single match. Of course, to a certain extent I do. But, lesson I’ve learned….I guess not to take myself so seriously. Just to know there’s always another tournament. I’m kind of still figuring it out, honestly, as I go along.”

My first reaction to Osaka’s surprising French drama was that if we ink-stained wretches somehow have sent her around the bend by seeking her thoughts after such upset losses, it’s thoroughly understandable that she do something about it. Preferably that she seek professional help.

Still, the purpose (and effect) of those verbal scrums is to get the players’ thoughts—not to cast aspersions. Reporters are a conduit to interested fans (who pay the freight) which results, to a great extent, in promoting the players and the sport. It was through the media’s public exposure that such pioneering advocates as Billie Jean King long ago were able to agitate for equal pay, and lots of it, for women.

In 2020, Osaka was paid more than any other female athlete in the world, more than $55 million, mostly through endorsement deals that hinge on her visibility. The New York Times recently published a story headlined “How Naomi Osaka Became Everyone’s Favorite Spokesmodel.”

In taking herself out of the French Open, Osaka issued a statement that she “never wanted to be a distraction” and that, by withdrawing, she would allow attention to settle on the other players and the competition. But, in effect, she has done what Serena Williams did to her when Williams’ duel with a chair umpire during the 2018 U.S. Open championship final took the shine off Osaka’s first of four major tournament titles.

It’s pretty obvious that, along with Williams, Osaka arrived in Paris as one of the sport’s two premier attractions, a star whom the tournament badly wanted to keep around as long as possible. Someone all concerned would want to accommodate.

Plot twist, indeed.

Tennis’ working-class hero

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If winning Grand Slam tennis tournaments was easy, anybody could do it. Andy Murray has contributed mightily to the public’s understanding of just how much work play can be at the elite level.

Murray won three major titles during a career, apparently ended now because of a chronic hip injury, that has been enormously successful by any standard. More to the point: His hardly was a primrose path.

He spent the first eight years of his professional career, and his first 27 major-tournament appearances, gnawing at the chains of great expectations. After immediately establishing himself as a member of the sport’s Fab Four—consistently ranked alongside Federer, Nadal and Djokovic—Murray repeatedly faced the insistent question (especially from the clamorous British press) of “When?”

When would he at last win the Big One? His early promise—the 2004 U.S. Open junior title at 17—had raised the likelihood that he would be the first British man to win a major since 1936, and his repeated close-but-no-cigar finishes somehow were seen as a dereliction of duty.

He had arrived on the scene not long after a cartoon in the London press highlighted the irony of Great Britain’s distinction as the sport’s birthplace and host of the game’s oldest and most famous tournament, even as it continually failed to produce championship contenders. Wimbledon, the lampoon went, had become “a fortnight of glorious self-delusion about Britain’s status as a serious tennis nation.”

Britons’ mixed feelings about the Scottish-born Murray were summed up in a ditty by a fellow named Matt Harvey in 2010, when Harvey was hired as Wimbledon’s official poet laureate:

If he’s ever brattish/Or brutish or skittish

He’s Scottish.

But when he looks fittish/And his form is hottish

He’s British. 

Later that summer, Murray entered the U.S. Open as the fittest, hottest player on tour, only to be upset in the third round. Under the usual post-match interrogation of how soon and how he intended to fulfill his enormous potential, he might have responded with a thoroughly reasonable snarl. Something along the lines of: “This isn’t easy, you know.”

But instead of telling the media vultures to go jump in a lake, Murray clarified what should have been obvious. “I have no idea whether I’ll win a Grand Slam or not,” he said. “You know, I want to. But if I never win one, then what? If I give a hundred percent, try my best, physically work as hard as I can, practice as much as I can, then that’s all I can do.

“It’s something I would love to do. I’ll give it my best shot.”

In such settings, Murray speaks in a flat monotone, almost mumbling, sounding a bit detached even when he is anything but. It’s a startling contrast to his on-court voice, fiery shouts of self-deprecation and a body language at maximum volume of annoyance in times of frustration.

Two years after that soul-baring, after four runner-up finishes in majors, he at last had a Slam trophy at the Open and was just as straightforward about his feelings. He admitted that mid-match of his four-hour, five-set victory over Djokovic, “You’re still questioning yourself and doubting yourself.”

He eventually won Wimbledon twice and was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II, but last week’s description of Murray by the U.K.’s Independent as “a human in the land of gods” was a fitting recognition that his successes were hardly pre-ordained. That, to get paid, he had punched the clock. And that he indeed is not immortal.

At 31—young in the population at large but pushing the expiration date for his physically demanding enterprise—Murray now is “meeting the little death,” as novelist John Updike once wrote, “that awaits all athletes.”

But how about this for a nice legacy? The occasional “love” in tennis need not mean one’s labors are lost.

Serena Williams, rules and fairness

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It’s complicated, of course. The Serena Williams incident in this year’s U.S Open championship final has taken us far beyond a discussion of tennis rules and proper sporting behavior. Almost immediately, the debate veered toward male privilege, identity politics, racism and crowd dynamics.

Was Williams the victim of a power imbalance in which a chair umpire is not to be challenged? Was that exacerbated by the fact that the umpire, Carlos Ramos, is a man and the player, Williams, a woman—and a woman of color at that?

Did Williams, without question the superstar of women’s tennis, deserve special consideration regarding the application of the sport’s arcane regulations at such a crucial time in such a big match? Did Williams’ past fits of pique, profanely threatening a lineswoman at the 2009 Open and fuming, “I truly despise you,” to a female chair umpire at the 2011 Open, factor into the Ramos-Williams dispute?

And what about the Arthur Ashe Stadium crowd, which poured fuel on Williams’ fiery protests with sustained booing that ultimately diminished 20-year-old Naomi Osaka’s eventual victory?

That last aspect recalled the chaos of a 1979 second-round Open match between John McEnroe and Ilie Nastase who, by the way, embodied what Williams cited as past behavior by men that she rightly said was worse than her on-court actions. That night, opponents widely disparaged as “Nasty” and “Super Brat” baited each other with whining and childish delays until chair umpire Frank Hammond—unable to control the non-action or the booing spectators—defaulted the match early in the fourth set.

Hammond had struggled to enforce the rules, as well as an order by tournament referee Mike Blanchard to “put Nastase on the clock—or else.” Yet when an exasperated Hammond finally (and correctly) proclaimed a premature end to the match, he was taken out of the chair and replaced by Blanchard to appease the unruly crowd. The craziness resumed toward a McEnroe victory.

Then even Hammond admitted afterwards that the players’ star power had superseded tennis law, calling Nastase, the more guilty of the two parties that night, “very colorful. He’s great for tennis.”

Last Saturday, Carlos Ramos chose not to apply a similar immunity to Serena Williams, in spite of her unprecedented accomplishments and vast popularity. After what amounted to a formal warning when Ramos cited Patrick Mouratoglou‘s illegal coaching hand-signals to Williams—a violation Williams denied but Mouratoglou acknowledged—Ramos docked Williams a point for smashing her racket, then a game when she called him a “liar” and “a thief,” leaving her on the brink of defeat.

Ramos’ series of verdicts were cast by Williams, and many observers, as evidence of a double standard applied to women—not only in tennis but in all of society’s venues.

Rebecca Traister, in The Cut column for New York Magazine, wrote that “a male umpire prodded Serena Williams to anger and then punished her for expressing it….She was punished for showing emotion, for defiance, for being the player she has always been—driven, passionate, proud and fully human.”

Furthermore, Traister wrote, Williams’ rage was an understandable means to “defy those rules designed and enforced by, yet so rarely forcefully applied to, white men.”

It is beyond dispute that McEnroe, Nastase, Jimmy Connors and—early in his career, Andre Agassi—were among male players repeatedly guilty of crass and offensive displays. And that, because large crowds paid to see them, they often got away with such boorish behavior. But Martina Navratilova, whose 18 major-tournament singles titles compare nicely with Williams’ 23, argued in a New York Times opinion piece, “I don’t believe it’s a good idea to apply a standard of ‘If the men get away with it, women should be able to, too.’ Rather, I think the question we have to ask ourselves is this: What is the right way to behave to honor our sport and to respect our opponents?”

A core ideal in sports—theoretically the one true meritocracy, no matter the participants’ ethnicity, appearance, sexual orientation, religion, nationality, economic status—is fairness. The “level playing field” and all that. In protesting Ramos’ application of code violations against her, by complaining, “It’s not fair,” Williams was reminding that sports can be as imperfect as the real world, populated as it is by flawed humanity; that the same rules in fact are not always applied to everyone.

So. In the end, was it fair—to both her and Naomi Osaka—to apply the rules to Williams?

 

 

Tennis seeding: Fair warning?

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Today we’re going to discuss seeding in Grand Slam tennis tournaments. Is it fair to all concerned that Wimbledon officials have included Serena Williams, seven times the event’s champion but currently ranked 183rd in the world, among the 32 seeds? By contrast, had this year’s French Open visited an injustice upon Williams, who hadn’t competed in 16 months while on maternity leave, by refusing to seed her there?

In both cases, it should be noted, Williams was welcomed into the competition. (She withdrew from the French with an injury after winning three matches, two against seeded players.) An essay on the website The Undefeated by Michael Fletcher argued that failing to seed Williams again “would have punished sports fans, who want to see the biggest stars perform on the biggest stages.” Fletcher’s comparison was that Tiger Woods “is eligible to play the Masters and PGA Championships for life” in spite of a long absence from the golf tour because of a back injury, and that the same applies to former champs however far past their prime.

But withholding a seeding position is not the same as banning Williams from the biggest stages. The Women’s Tennis Association, in fact, allows women who miss time because of childbirth to enter events based on their pre-absence ranking—in Williams’ case, No. 1—just without a guarantee of seeding.

And while Williams complained at the French that she should have been afforded a spot among the seeds—that she should not be penalized for becoming pregnant—there hardly is full agreement among her peers. Mandy Minella, a 32-year-old pro from Luxembourg, told the New York Times that she expected to have to earn her seeding, which is based on world rankings, after giving birth last October.

And what exactly does seeding accomplish? Belgium’s Kim Clijsters was unseeded when she won the U.S. Open in 2009, 17 months after giving birth. She had been away from competition for almost three years, but was gladly accepted as a wild card based on her Open title four years earlier.

So, the point?

Theoretically, by seeding the top 32 players in a Grand Slam field of 128, tournament officials “protect” those with the highest ranking against having to face any other seeded player through the first two rounds. That not only is considered a reward for the best players but also a guarantee to spectators and TV executives that the big names will be around longer.

The flip side of that premise is that players good enough to be seeded 17 through 32 might prefer facing one of the top 16 early—when the pressure is on the more accomplished player—rather than in the third round or later, when the stars are rolling.

It was only in 2001 that the major tournaments doubled the number of seeds from 16 to 32. The late Bud Collins, who was the sport’s premier historian as a newspaper and television reporter, said he preferred the maximum of eight seeds in effect prior to 1971. “Why not have some first-round fun?” he reasoned, by putting the best players in immediate danger.

Collins furthermore was mystified by the primary source of women’s seeding, the WTA rankings computer, which he nicknamed “Medusa” after the female in Greek mythology with living venomous snakes in her hair.

But back to Serena Williams.

In 2006, when she was 24 years old and already had won seven of her open-era record 23 major tournament titles, Williams had been kept inactive by a chronic knee injury for so long that her ranking plummeted to No. 91 by the time she entered the U.S. Open. As a consequence, she was unseeded.

Her reaction then? “I don’t really feel like an unseeded player ‘cause I don’t think about it. Obviously, I am. But I just feel I am who I am and I’m out there to perform. I don’t know too many people that see ‘Serena Williams’ next to their name and they’re, like, ‘Yes!’”

No kidding. It’s not as if having an unseeded Williams disables opponents’ alarm systems. Surely that still applies.

So she’s seeded 25th and her Wimbledon draw is a kind one. After her first-round victory over the Netherlands’ Arantxa Rus, ranked 107th, she will face Bulgaria’s Viktoriya Tomova, No. 136. Then, either No. 57 Tatjana Maria of Germany or No. 62 Kritina Mladenovic of France.

Meanwhile, Slovakia’s Dominika Cibulkova, the 2014 Australian Open finalist who was bounced from No. 32 to unseeded when Williams got the 25th spot, must play No. 44 Alize Cornet of France, with the likelihood she next would have to deal with Johanna Konta, seeded 22nd and playing for her British home crowd, in the second round.

And Poland’s Agnieszka Radwanka, who inherited Cibulkova’s apparent No. 32 seed, has dispensed with No. 195 Elena-Gabriela Ruse of Romania and gets No. 66 Lucie Safarova of the Czech Republic next.

“I don’t think it’s the right thing to do,” Cibulkova told BBC before the tournament. “I think it’s just not fair.”

Discuss.