We all need a little time to recover from the exhaustive, six-week march that begins in Paris at Roland Garros and ends in London right around the Fourth of July. Our emotions are drained. Our eyesight is strained, but gluttons that we are, we just can't wait for the hard-court season to build up steam with the two Masters events, Montreal and Cincinnati.
The only person who could be forgiven for seeking more rest is Andy Roddick, who backed out of this week's Indianapolis Tennis Championships because of his lingering right hip-flexor injury.
This is a small-scale disaster for Indianapolis, a tournament accustomed to hard luck. Roddick is a Nebraska native, so he's more inclined to get juiced up about Cornhusker football (as tough as that is these days) than Hoosier basketball, but he's an American, and a pretty good model for a straight-forward, hard-working, square-shouldered, Midwestern youth busy doing something he loves -- competing.
Pity Indianapolis. The tournament has been held in one form or another since 1920, when it was called the Western Open, which tells you something about U.S. demographics and geographical notions of the time. By the heyday of Jimmy Connors, the event had morphed into the U.S. Clay Court Championships, and it had a good run with strong support from the top players (including non-Americans who were proficient on clay, like Guillermo Vilas) and outstanding backing from the local community, which is a signature, commendable feature of most Midwestern tennis enterprises. Abandoning clay and embracing hard courts might have been a necessity as the pro calendar evolved, but it has come at a heavy price.
Indy's big problem is Cincinnati, which is exactly 103 miles away. Cincinnati is the home of the hugely successful Western and Southern Financial Group Masters 1000 (an ungainly title for a great hard-court tournament that is perfectly positioned as the key warm-up event for the U.S. Open). Cincy's prestige and consistently top-drawer field helps define Indianapolis, but not in a good way. Which tournament would you attend, Terre Haute, Ind.?
Indy is a Masters 250 (the bottom tier of sanctioned ATP main-tour events); it's hanging in there and trying to trade on it's role as the first event in the USTA's U.S. Open Series -- a sound strategy undermined by the fact that the USO Series concept just hasn't gained enough traction with anyone (players, media, the public) to make much of a difference.
It isn't as if 250-grade events with imbalanced fields (one or two marquee names, struggling former stars -- Marcos Baghdatis is playing Indy -- and a pile of journeymen) are doomed to fail or be ignored. Bastad, the Swedish tournament won on Sunday by Robin Soderling, is a great example of a small tournament that has managed to carve out a niche.
Granted, Bastad has some advantages and charms that Indianapolis can't match, like a seaside setting in July. A cornfield along the Interstate just doesn't have the same magnetic appeal. The promoters of Bastad somehow realized that they would never be able to compete for the Roger Federers and Rafael Nadals of this world, so they focused on enhancing what they realistically were able to offer: a thoroughly pleasant tournament experience for both diehard and casual fans. Estoril, another resort-destination event, has pretty much done the same thing.
Indianapolis, despite all that the town has to offer, can't provide sandy beaches or a picturesque, elite tennis club setting. And the diminishing number of top U.S. players means the tournament can't rely on the drawing power of its best domestic players. Now that Roddick is out, can you imagine a U.S. player taking Indy?
You want proof of the importance a homegrown talent has on a tournament like Indianapolis? Consider this: The event was named "Tournament of the Year" by the ATP rank-and-file a record 11 times, including a 10-year run from 1988-97. OK, the tournament was famous for the lavish "goody bags" showered on the players ("You want a Harley-Davidson hardtail, no problem, Juan Ignacio!"), but let's remember that the U.S. tennis presence in that decade was still overarching.
The last time Indy was named TOY was in 2001, when Pete Sampras (ranked No.1 the previous September) and Andre Agassi ( would be No. 1 again in April of 2003) were still around.
The promoters of Indy better start looking for a new American super-talent or begin importing sand by the truck load.
Peter Bodo
