Sports Then and Now

The tennis of Federer and Nadal looks, tastes, and sounds very different.

From the style of their game, to their on-court personas, the physical tools of their success could not be more different.

Rafa exudes passion, energy, intensity, utter commitment in every pump and jump and gesture. Roger exudes a stillness, a calmness, an easy control of emotions: serious and contained almost to the point of self absorption.

One is an explosion of fearsome emotion, the other a still millpond, deep but deadly.

Where Rafa explodes with color and emotion like a Van Gogh painting, Roger is a complex interweaving of subtle tints like a Cezanne.

Yet the canvases of their games are both the result of the same palette of colors, the same brushes, the same obsession.

Start with the raw material: family, roots, upbringing. Read the rest of this entry →

Not one, but two Masters tournaments, the firsts of the year.

The only ATP events of the month, both centered in the sunshine of the United States.

These are the last hard courts before spring ushers in the clay. No more of the artificial, punishing surfaces until the tour heads back to North America in late July. Many, indeed, will postpone their transfer from the all-too-brief grass season until August.

So it is little wonder that Indian Wells and its Miami sister two weeks later draw the big names, the big crowds, the big coverage.

Indian Wells, in particular, is set like a sapphire in the Californian desert, a jewel in the tennis crown. More people soak up the tennis at this tournament than anywhere outside the Grand Slams.

It’s a place drenched in blue, wholly in tune with its watery origins. This most favored stop on the tennis tour, attracting the very best from both the ATP and WTA tours, offers a serene mountainous backdrop, cloudless skies, dry heat, clear air. It’s as close to paradise as wealth can bring to the desert.

More than 300,000 flock to the Indian Wells Tennis Garden. It overflows with tropical flowers, trees, and fountains, and the courts themselves sit like miniature Aegean Seas within their grass-green surroundings.

The pale violet and blue peaks of the distant Santa Rosa range provide a glorious setting as this oasis bursts into flower with a bouquet of wonderful prospects. Read the rest of this entry →

Everything about the climax of the tennis’s “Golden Swing” glowed.

It was played out in the Mexican heat, under brilliant floodlights, on the deepest of orange backgrounds.

It brought together two golden-skinned Spaniards in their second final in six days.

And it delivered up a treasure chest of outstanding tennis.

But start with the protagonists: David Ferrer and Juan Carlos Ferrero.

Not just compatriots: They both come from the Valencia region of Spain.

Not just Davis Cup team mates, but business partners: They jointly back the newly-branded Valencia 500 tournament that moved to the stunning Agora building in 2009.

Not only two of Spain’s most successful tennis players: They are close friends who play and practise together.

These numerous bonds made for not one but two helpings of fast-moving, sporting, and intense tennis on the clay of Latin America in the final days of February.

For drama, the match could not have promised more. These are two men who have been around the block a few times, have seen their fortunes ebb and flow, but have both expressed their desire to get back to the top 10.

Ferrero, who turned 30 just days before winning the Brazil Open three weeks ago, has reached an ATP final in every year since 1999. He won titles every year between 1999 and 2003, including four Masters and the French Open, which took him briefly to No 1 in the world. It was another six years before he claimed his next title: Casablanca last year.

Now, coming into this closer of the “Golden Swing,” he could boast not one new title but two in consecutive weeks. And here he was, aiming to add a third.

Ferrero has worked hard on his fitness and stamina off court in order to taste success on court again. It has reaped riches. From a ranking of 115 during that Casablanca tournament, he has now reached his highest ranking—14—since October 2004.

Then there is the back story for Ferrer.

He is two weeks shy of his 28th birthday, and has reached an ATP final in every year since 2002, bar one. What he has lacked in Ferrero’s shot-making flair he has made up for in terrier-like determination.

Hard-working, a power-pack of muscle and energy, he came closest to touching pure gold in the finals of the Masters Cup of 2007. His last ATP title was back in the spring of 2008, and he’s won only one ATP 500 title in his career.

Ferrer’s main victories in 2009 were in Davis Cup ties: He won all six matches he played. But since last spring, aside from those ties, he has experienced a real slump in what seemed to be a devastating loss of confidence. Now, though, he’s almost back to his No 16 ranking of a year ago—just two short of Ferrero.

The positive side to his narrative is that, with an upturn in form, he can rake in the points throughout this year.

Their first meeting was in Bueno Aires. Read the rest of this entry →

Roger Federer's records tower over those of his contemporaries.

I remember the GOAT talk starting when Roger Federer crushed Lleyton Hewitt to win the US Open in 2004, his third major of that season. His contemporaries, Hewitt and Andy Roddick, were clearly not equipped with the tools necessary to stop him, or even to slow him down. He struggled more on clay, but it seemed only a matter of time until he figured that out.

Still, I remember thinking that the field would inevitably evolve to catch up with Federer, at least slowing his progress if not stopping it. To an extent that has happened; Rafael Nadal proved a long-term impediment to Federer’s goals of winning in Paris, while Andy Murray and Juan Martin del Potro appear more imposing adversaries than Hewitt and Roddick did.

Yet Federer endures, now with wins at all four majors and 16 total Grand Slam titles, two more than any other player in history. Is there any legitimate metric left to deny him the title of the greatest ever? Read the rest of this entry →

There are names so ingrained into the tennis consciousness that one feels they’re still to be found gracing the Royal Box on Wimbledon’s Centre Court. The commentary team helpfully points out the faces to match the names. Rod Laver, Margaret Court, Ilie Nastase, Billie Jean King: They have become like family, like old friends.

Such is the case with Don Budge. A Grand Slam will not pass, nor a reference to “the greats of tennis” be made without his name being mentioned. And just lately, promoted by Roger Federer’s record-breaking feats, his name has appeared with ever greater frequency, bracketed alongside potential contenders for the “greatest ever” crown.

There is good reason for Budge to be one of those constants in the game. He was born way back in the Great War, achieved the first ever Grand Slam just as World War 2 was fermenting (and Rod Laver just a month old), and spanned the amateur and the professional age.

He played against the icons of tennis—Fred Perry, Bill Tilden, Frank Sedgman—and against modern greats such as Pancho Gonzalez.

As recently as 1973, aged 58, he teamed up with Sedgman to win the Veteran’s Doubles title at Wimbledon, so would have shared the locker room with men’s seeds such as Jimmy Connors and Bjorn Borg.

He lived—just—into the 21st century. Yet to modern fans, he is little more than a name. It’s time to put that right.

Budge came from good stock, from a bold father who upped sticks from Scotland at the turn of the 20th century for a healthier life in the warm climate of California.

Donald was born in 1915 and inherited his father’s sporty genes. Budge senior had played reserve for Rangers football team before he left for the New World.

Don was also bright—he went to the University of California at 18—and he was over 6’1” tall. He was, in fact, the perfect package for tennis.

As for his character, well Time magazine, which first featured Budge on its cover in September 1935, summed him up as:

“A phlegmatic, gentle youth, so homely that even his mother smiled when a friend said that, if not the best tennis player in the world, her son was certainly the ugliest, young Budge is likeable but undistinguished off a tennis court.”

His road to tennis was a familiar one. Budge tried, and was good at, many other sports, and excelled at baseball. It was his elder brother, Lloyd, who was the tennis player, and who persuaded Don to apply his fearsome bat-swinging prowess to a tennis racket.

He learned his trade quickly on the public hard courts of the West Coast and at just under 15, he won the California U15s Championships. That was his incentive to give up baseball.

By 18, he had won the National Junior Championships by beating the top contender Gene Mako, from a two set deficit.

At 19, he was picked for the Davis Cup auxiliary team and with that beckoning success, walked away from university to devote himself to tennis. Read the rest of this entry →

Spanish sherry is a sorely undervalued wine. Tainted by associations with the syrupy brown tipple of yesteryear, its variety, delicacy, subtlety and vitality is one of the revelations of travels through Spain.

And just as these glorious wines represent the diverse and sunny personality of that country, so do their tennis players. One look at Spain’s all-conquering Davis Cup squad, and you are spoilt for choice.

The dry, crisp, light fino might be Tommy Robredo. The bold salty tang of a manzanilla could sum up Feliciano Lopez. The nutty golden amber of an amontillado is Rafael Nadal. But the most perfect analogy is between the dark, intense oloroso and Fernando Verdasco.

There are plenty of the female persuasion who would nod at the suitability of the word for the most sultry of athletes: Oloroso is Spanish for “fragrant.”

But its appropriateness is more than skin deep. It has just as much to do with how this richest of sherries is produced. The long and unique maturing process makes this mellifluous wine suit Verdasco perfectly.

The deeply flavoured dry oloroso ages slowly, becoming darker and stronger as it matures to coppery bronze. What’s more, its natural sugars convert, through long fermentation, to the sherry family’s highest alcohol content.

So in colour, strength, and development, Verdasco emulates the finest oloroso. He is a man and a tennis player who seems to have grown more slowly and matured more steadily than the rest. Read the rest of this entry →