Sports Then and Now

Despite a disappointing 2010 season, Andy Roddick is still the top American on the men's tennis tour.

Andy Roddick’s quarterfinal appearance in the Australian Open will not be remembered as one of the finest moments in his career. He has, after all, won the US Open, on three occasions been a Wimbledon finalist, and has twice been one round further at the AO.

It was a noteworthy event for another reason: It was as far as any American advanced in any of the four majors of 2010. Sam Querrey reached the fourth round of both Wimbledon and the US Open, but got no further. John Isner won the longest match in the history of the sport at Wimbledon, but had nothing left for the next round.

It’s a far, far cry from 1995, when four Americans reached the AO semis, none of those four participated in the first round of Davis Cup and the US side went in as the heavy favorites anyway.

What happened to US tennis? Here are a few factors:

The rest of the world caught up: Globalization affects a lot more than who makes our toys, and this is evident when looking at the ATP Tour’s top 5.

Spain has a proud tennis history, but Rafael Nadal has already won more Grand Slams than any other two Spanish players – men or women – put together. Swiss Roger Federer and Serb Novak Djokovic, among their many other accomplishments, are the first men from their countries to win Slams. Read the rest of this entry →

Andy Murray finally got his first tournament victory of the season.

Andy Murray: Can you believe Canada is Murray’s first tournament win this year? Oh, wait, you probably can, since the Scot hasn’t really been dominating the conversation since his run to the Australian Open final. That doesn’t mean, though, that he hasn’t been listening to it.

In response to charges that the Scot was too passive or just didn’t have the weaponry, he stepped up his aggression levels considerably, complementing his natural affinity for counterpunching in dismissing David Nalbandian and Rafael Nadal. Then, in the final, he brushed aside any doubts about his competitive instincts, saving a break point in the final game with some Becker-esque clutch serving.

This can’t be the end, though; Murray must assume that Federer and Nadal (and maybe someone else) will improve between now and the latter round of the US Open. I won’t make a pick for the Open until after the Cincinnati Masters, but if Murray continues at this level, his chances are good. Read the rest of this entry →

More than a decade after last playing on tour, Thomas Muster is back playing with the top players in the world.

Thomas Muster first attracted attention for his strokes. Ivan Lendl, who defeated the then-21-year-old in the semis of the Australian Open in 1989, said the Austrian had one of the hardest forehands on tour.

Those strokes had made him the first Austrian to go that deep in a major or reach the top 10, and he looked likely to keep ascending: Just a couple of months later, he backed up his Australian run by reaching the finals of the Lipton Championships in Key Biscayne, where he was set for another encounter with Lendl.

It was not to be, as Muster was hit by a drunk driver just hours after winning in the semis, leaving him with a severely injured knee. This setback, though, only served to reveal a bigger weapon than his forehand: his determination.

The Austrian became one of the stories of the men’s tour that year as he was videotaped on the courts sitting in a specially designed chair that allowed him to practice hitting as his injury continued to heal. Then, just six months after the accident, he was not only recovered but back on tour, and would win Adelaide, the first event he played in 1990.

Muster would forever be associated with this comeback, and it would be repeatedly cited by those who could think of little else that was nice to say to about him. Read the rest of this entry →

Chris Woodruff reached the semifinals of the 2000 Australian Open.

While playing for the tennis team of my high school in small town West Tennessee, I was occasionally asked about my chances of going pro one day.

I always found this amusing; sure I was usually winning my matches, and sure, I eventually became, in my senior year, the No. 1 seed on our team. And of course, I was a teenager wholly ignorant of the workings of the world outside of the space I’d known in agrarian West Tennessee.

But even I found the idea of my going pro ridiculous. I mean, I wasn’t even the best player in my own family. My brother-in-law Jay had played for a prep school in one of the bigger cities of our state, where tennis is actually regarded as more than an afterthought enjoyed by less popular students not big enough to play football or athletic enough to dunk a basketball.

I had never beaten Jay, and even he had never contemplated going pro. He had a better idea of what that level entailed, however, having run into Chris Woodruff when both were in their pre-teens.

“I couldn’t get back the balls he was hitting,” is how Jay has described their encounter.

Moving Up

Then again, the balls that Chris Woodruff hit weren’t easily retrieved by anyone. Less than a decade after their encounter he was enrolled at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, and was an All-American in his freshman year of 1992. As a sophomore he leapt from one of the best collegiate players in the country to the best of all, taking the NCAA singles title in 1993, and subsequently taking his skills pro.

But by the middle of 1997, traveling the world as a tennis pro had brought precious little glamour to the life of this Tennessean. In his first three seasons he didn’t even win most of the matches he played at the tour level. In 1996 he had reached his first finals in Philadelphia and Coral Springs. Read the rest of this entry →

Roger Federer has dominated at Wimbledon in the past decade. Last year he defeated Andy Roddick in the final.

In the first decade of the 21st Century the sport of tennis saw rapid improvements in racket technology, in preparation and conditioning of players and in style of play on the courts of Wimbledon.

As the courts slowed, players began to find success on the baseline, staying back and dictating play.  Serve and volley in its traditional form faded in effectiveness.

No longer were the middle of courts torn up as they were when players planted themselves close to the net.  Now the baselines, the back of the courts, became chewed and bare as the tournament progressed.

Roger Federer who won his first Championship in 2003 would find himself in the last seven championship matches of the decade, winning six of them.  The Williams sisters would find themselves in eight finals, winning all eight.  Roger Federer, Venus Williams and Serena Williams dominated play on Centre Court during the last decade.

Take a detailed look at the Wimbledon finals of this first decade of the 21st Century year by year.

Read the rest of this entry →

Like most great tennis players, John Newcombe exuded a confidence that bordered on arrogance.

Following a clay court exhibition match against Bjorn Borg in 1978, John Newcombe was asked his opinion on how he would match up with the Swede on grass. He proceeded to explain why he, no matter the surface, enjoyed playing against the man from Stockholm.

“I don’t feel he’s got anything that can really hurt me,” the Australian great said.

At this point in his career, Borg was already a two-time champion at Roland Garros and had also twice lifted the cup at Wimbledon. He was, essentially, the best player in the world. What’s more, Newcombe’s comments came after a 6-2, 6-4 loss to the Swede.

Newcombe, in his next sentence, said that this didn’t mean that he would be able to beat Borg, who played the counterpuncher’s game better than any tennis player ever has. What he meant was that he was he, as an attacking net rusher, would be setting the tone of the point more frequently than the Swede.

Borg might be able to pass him, might be able to lob over his head, might be able to keep chasing balls till Newcombe missed – the Aussie still could and would play the game plan he liked, even in losing.

Still, had there been internet message boards in those days, the “really hurt me” sentence would almost certainly have shown up online with no context attached to show that John Newcombe was either arrogant, disconnected from reality, or both. Tennis has a long history of players who say exactly what they think at the time, and fans online still have yet to grasp that.

In “The String Theory,” David Foster Wallace posed the thesis that tennis players tend to winnow out much of the vagaries of life. They live in a world of nonstop practice, travel, and competition against hundreds of different players, all of whom can consistently drill minute targets on the opposite side of the court while on the dead run.

If they can only hit that bull’s eye 95 times out of a hundred and the other guy can nail it 96 times, they may leave the tournament with empty pockets; they therefor have little time to explore nuances. Wallace arrived at this theory by listening to Michael Joyce, a journeyman player who would never be ranked higher than No. 64, say that an opponent he met in qualifying had a big serve, but “didn’t belong on a pro court.” Read the rest of this entry →