The news-style crawl flashing its way around London's O2 arena as Rafael Nadal prepared to serve, down 4-5 in the second set after having lost the first to Robin Soderling said it all: Match Point! In garish, electric white letters, no less.
Somehow, it seemed like a metaphor for whatever was going on inside Nadal's head, for the evidence seems to mount with each passing tournament that Nadal is no longer the carefree, free-swinging, choke-proof monster of yore. He hasn't been quite the same player since he took that long layoff to rest his stressed knees this summer.
You'll remember that it was this same Robin Soderling who punched Nadal out of the French Open way back in June, ending Nadal's undefeated streak on Roland Garros clay at 31, inflicting the first best-of-five clay loss of Nadal's career. If you remember back a few more weeks, Nadal had handled Soderling in the Italian Open, 6-1, 6-0.
Between Rome and London, much has transpired -- most of it good for Soderling, most of it lousy for Nadal. So the 6-4, 6-4 beating Soderling inflicted on Nadal on Monday adds credence to the theory that these men are like two trains heading in different directions. Granted, Soderling might never win a major; he got to just his first Grand Slam final in Paris, and it was cause for celebration. Nadal already has six Grand Slam singles titles, and it would take paranoid reasoning to argue that he's done.
What he seems to be (almost) done with is a year of which he might say, to borrow a line from that other lefty with big guns, Martina Navratilova, "If it were a fish, I'd throw it back."
It started out so well for Nadal, with that magnificent win over Roger Federer in the Australian Open. But the wheels began to fall off in Madrid, where, already hurting, Nadal was beaten by Federer. He gave up some valuable psychic territory in that one, and when Soderling put Nadal out of Roland Garros a few weeks later (in a fourth-round match), the trunk, doors and even the hood ornament flew off, too.
Add up the toll of the frustrating tendinitis that played a part in Paris and forced Nadal to give up his hopes of successfully defending his Wimbledon title, the emotional turbulence caused by the divorce of his parents ("For one month, I was out of the world," he said of that sad turn of events), and the emergence of Juan Martin del Potro (Nadal has met him twice since returning to action during the U.S. hard-court season and has failed to win a set), and you can see where Nadal might be feeling a little persecuted. Or at least discouraged.
That presumably explains how shaky Nadal has looked at times this fall, despite being in the hunt at most events. He's getting to semis and finals, but coming up strangely blank at that last, important step. In his past three tournaments, which ended in two semis and a final, Nadal hasn't won a set in his last match -- this from a kid who until now has been one of the game's most dogged and lethal bare-knuckle fighters.
Strange things happen when you lose confidence and begin to fear losing. Inhibitions begin to assert themselves, and pretty soon your fear of match point is so strong it might as well be written in ice-white letters, going round and round in an arena, or in your own head.
And it looks as if that's just what's happening to Nadal.
Let's cut right to the chase: The men to beat at the Barclays ATP World Tour Finals are Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray, a pair of guys right out of a David Bowie song, "All the Young Dudes." Together, they have a grand total of one Grand Slam title -- that won by Djokovic back in 2008.
This prediction might seem pretty bizarre, given the implied diss of Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and even Juan Martin del Potro, who aren't exactly old dudes and happen to own a joint collection of 22 Grand Slam trophies. How can this be?
It's simple, Djokovic and Murray have gone out of their way to screw up at the majors but have demonstrated on a month-in, month-out basis that they're legitimate contenders for the No. 1 ranking. They've done everything but win major titles; in fact, the bigger -- but not quite major -- the title, the better they've done. The year-end championships is the next-biggest title after a Grand Slam, ergo …
But there's loads more evidence that the Tennis Masters Cup will wind up in either Murray's or Djokovic's hands. Let's take the facts, one by one:
• Federer, a four-time TMC champ, hasn't been entirely focused on tennis lately, and if he has, it's all the worse. There was no sin in losing to Djokovic on his home turf in Basel a few weeks ago, but that first match (technically, second round) loss to Julien Benneteau in Paris was a shocker, and suggests that Federer has retired his mojo for '09.
• Nadal has had one of the weirdest years in tennis, abandoning his Guns-R-Us sleeveless T's for a standard-issue polo, and often playing like a standard-issue ATP pro. Throw in the injury that played a part in his loss to Robin Soderling at the French Open and his resulting decision to skip Wimbledon (where he was defending champ), and you have to wonder, how is it possible that this guy can still finish the year at No. 1? I don't think even Nadal feels he deserves that top ranking this year, and I think he's going to make that clear in London.
• Del Potro will probably win many big titles, but it's unlikely that this is going to be one of them. He's still suffering U.S. Open hangover, and savoring the joy that attended his first win at a major. It's going to take some time before he gets the big picture of his career back into focus.
• Djokovic is the defending YEC champion, and he's won his past two events, beating pretty much everyone who stood in his way, including Nadal and Federer. He's a terrific indoor player, and he knows that he failed to step up at the majors this year. It's time to salvage the season and fully restore his good name as a legitimate rival to Federer and Nadal. Can anyone have more motivation?
• Murray is a combined 17-5 against the three guys in his A group, and that includes a 6-3 advantage over Federer. Like his fellow young dude, Djokovic, he needs to wipe away the aftertaste of a solid but disappointing Grand Slam campaign highlighted by a truly listless, puzzling loss at the U.S. Open. And while he's a Scot (and danged proud of it, he'll have you know), the London crowd definitely will be in his corner.
So I see the YEC as a two-man race, and this time their names aren't Federer and Nadal.
Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the annual MV3 award. As you know, it's the one night of the year when the No. 3 -- a very high number when it comes to sports, if a pretty low one when you're standing in line at the deli -- gets the recognition it deserves.
And please, join me in welcoming your fellow numerals, including the Roman delegation. It's great to have you with us. Now before I introduce the Most Valuable 3 for 2009, let me say a few words.
No. 3 is the twilight-zone numeral -- the number nobody cares about, the hopeful but irritating party-crasher's number, the monument to irrelevance. Nobody asks, "Who's the real No. 3?"
Our language is filled with subtle put-downs of No. 3: I'd go, but I don't want to be the third wheel! Two's company, three's a crowd!
When have you ever been lured by the offer to buy two, get the third one free!
Hey, who finished third in the National League West this year? This is a question asked by absolutely no one, except maybe San Diego Padres fans.
And when it comes to tennis, we all know that the numbers that really count in tennis are 1 and 2, although sometimes even the No. 2 has no more significance than, say, 4, or 8, or 22. Lately, though, the No. 2 has had a good run in tennis, when you consider the jockeying we witnessed between the likes of Serena Williams, Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and that natural-born No. 3, Dinara Safina.
This No. 1 versus No. 2 thing is as old as the hills, in everything from the rental car industry to pro sports -- think Yankees-Red Sox, Celtics-Lakers, Patriots-Colts (Belichick, you IDIOT!). We sports fans live for the question, can No. 2 catch No. 1? Are you a Federer guy, or a Nadal guy? A Williams gal or a Safi … never mind.
But every once in a while, you get a guy who makes the battle between Hertz and Avis look irrelevant; every once in a while, you get a guy who takes both John McEnroe and Jimmy Connors to the woodshed. (Hey, Ivan? Is that you out there?) Every once in a while, you get a No. 3 who really matters. And that was the case this year in men's tennis, the sport that produced our honoree, Novak Djokovic.
You know what they were saying about Novak Djokovic not so long ago, when he clowned his way through Wimbledon and the U.S. Open, just like all those others who give our No. 3 a bad name. You heard the whispers: "Guy will never be nothin' more than No. 3. He just wants fan-love. He's happy goofing around, taking the big money, saying 'No, thanks!' to the call of greatness. He's gone soft. He's lost his game. He's thinking of opening the first Hummer dealership in Serbia."
Surprise! In the course of just a couple of weeks in October and November (hey, did you know they play tennis in November?), Djokovic struck a blow for No. 3s everywhere. He forced the spotlight to shine beyond No. 2. He won back-to-back titles at Basel and at the Paris Masters, striking a blow when it was least expected for all those hardworking, deserving No. 3s everywhere.
As Novak said in his victory speech in Paris on Sunday, "I almost feel like a player now!"
Just kidding. What he really said was, "Winning back-to-back titles at this level is a huge achievement for me, and adding to that, beating the world No. 1 and No. 2. I really feel that I'm in great form right now."
So without further ado, here to present the familiar pewter trophy to the 2009 MV3 trophy is someone you all know and love, and one of Novak's closest friends on the tour -- please give it up, folks, for Scotland's very own … Andy Murray!
Oh, Julien Benneteau, how could you do it to Roger … how could you do it to … us?
That was the cry that went up from the Roger Federer faithful, who take the psychological process of "identification" to new heights, as soon as Benneteau wrapped up his win over Federer at the BNP Paribas Masters -- the last 1000-series tournament of the year and the prelude to the year-end Tennis Masters Cup.
The reaction was a perfect case in point illustrating the marriage of two frequently voiced theories: The rich get richer and greed is good. For it seems that Federer's most die-hard supporters just never tire of sticking their virtual faces into the trough of Ws. In this, they are very different from their idol and icon, and setting themselves up for some disappointing times.
Since winning his record-shattering 15th major title at Wimbledon, Federer has shown signs of serious metal (or is it "mettle"?) fatigue. He took his eyes off the ball and committed the unforgivable sin of changing a winning game in his U.S. Open final against Juan Martin del Potro, and found himself outhit and outmuscled in the late stages of that match.
Some critics thought the decision betrayed the whiff of the arrogance some attribute to Federer -- a hubris that leads him to play any way his opponent wants, confident that he can still adapt and win, or simply do the same thing as his opponent, only better -- the latter being the challenge-seeking man's way of making a point.
But I put that turnaround in the U.S. Open final down less to arrogance than a lack of paying sufficiently close attention to what was happening on the court, happening to him -- the greatest of all time -- at the hands of a still-raw, relatively inexperienced aspiring champion. Somehow, if Federer were looking to bag his first (as opposed to a record sixth straight) U.S. Open, I don't think he would have felt so confident abandoning the containment strategy he'd successfully pursued early in the match.
When you turn your back on the containment strategy, you'd better be ready to reach out and aggressively grab the match; del Potro prevented Federer from doing that in New York, and in his subsequent tournament appearances, against lesser players than the U.S. Open champ, Federer simply didn't follow that aggressive mandate. He lost the final at Basel to Novak Djokovic and his first match in Paris. Don't think he doesn't understand why.
"It wasn't a bad performance," Federer said. "I think Julien, he went out and got the victory. You know, I definitely had chances. I missed them. Seems to happen a bit to me now, you know, looking back at the Basel final or the U.S. Open final. I just have to make sure I don't let chances go by like this all the time."
Metal fatigue causes many a breakdown in high-performance motorcycles and cars; mettle fatigue causes the same in champions. Federer fans may as well get used to the idea.
When times get tough, it's always good to have a little bit of something stored away to help pull you through. It's true when it comes to finances, and it's also true when it comes to your character and reputation. And Sunday night, on "60 Minutes," Andre Agassi demonstrated that he has a lot of reputation capital.
What might have been a grim, off-putting journey into tales of father hatred and drug abuse was instead turned by interviewer Katie Couric into a personal journey saga from which Agassi emerged looking like he'd fully earned his status as leading cultural figure. Even if you didn't like many elements of his story, you ultimately had to admire the winding road leading to this moment.
Long before Agassi sat down to write his poisoned pen letter to tennis (although, in all honesty, there's nothing bitter in Agassi's book, which went sale Monday, or in the words he spoke Sunday night), he earned an advance ticket to redemption through his outstanding work as a charter-school creator and advocate.
If you're a cynic, you might think Agassi devoted so much time, energy and money to his efforts in education as a prelude to making his bombshell confession. It's a flat-out absurd idea. What Agassi did was rise above his looming fate as a washed-up former tennis star (and that's the fate of all athletes after they retire: the radar is constantly turned to the new and different, even though people talk a good game about past champions). He did it because he felt a pressing inner need and desire to finally do something he loved, and in which he could believe.
Andre was very convincing last night, and he had plenty of reason to impersonate a deer in the headlights. The firestorm over his admitted use of crystal meth in 1997 was something he couldn't have anticipated. But in his first official appearance since the story broke, he was temperate and open, but not at all defensive or smarmy. He was measured and calm, not antsy or guilt-stricken. He made the case that his book and the revelations it made were not calculated to cause sensation, but to tell those who might be interested what it was really like to be Andre Agassi in that most visible period of his life.
Agassi haters have been with us forever. I've covered his entire career, and I never saw a punk 17-year-old get roughed up as badly by the media as did Agassi: He was a gutless player impersonator. He was an image-obsessed mall rat. He was an insolent child millionaire. He was a tool of Nike, or used Nike as a tool to promote himself. When Agassi the pitchman spoke those infamous words, "Image is Everything," legions of pundits and fans thought them a brazen confession, rather than a throwaway pitch line.
I knew as soon as the "60 Minutes" segment opened with Agassi and his wife, Steffi (er, Stefanie) Graf, hitting tennis balls that things were going to be OK. Unlike the unfortunate athletes and celebrities who hadn't amassed reputation capital before they went spinning out of control, or admitted that they had, Agassi had a life that any of us could admire or envy to fall back upon when hard times came along. It took some time to cover all the bases that demanded to be touched, which reduced the unsavory parts to just what they are: anecdotes from a rough time.
For a kid who zoomed around in a private jet and once owned a garage full of exotic, expensive automobiles, it turns out that Agassi did an awful lot of saving for a rainy day when it came to essence of his character. On Sunday, we saw the interest it earned.
Just when you thought tennis couldn't possibly come up with yet another twist in the cops and robbers game played between real or imagined drug-using players and doping control officers, we get news that two Belgians, Yanina Wickmayer and Xavier Malisse, had been slapped with one-year bans from tennis for …
Well, for not being available to take drug tests, as per the Anti-Doping Administration and Management System (AAMS) protocols that require players to tell officials where they will be at a chosen hour each day for a three-month period.
That highlights one of the differences between a high-profile pro tennis player and you and me; we know danged well that we'll be sitting in front of this computer screen in this cubicle for the next three … heck, the next 30 years!
Seriously, though, is it reasonable to demand that kind of availability from players accustomed to making last-minute plane reservations on any given day, who spend as much time on airplanes shuttling between continents as they do in their "office" (the tennis court), and to whom the schedule on so many days revolves around the order of play? Heck, tennis players are rarely sure when they'll eat next, never mind where they'll be at 3 p.m. next Wednesday.
Miss a flight, get suspended. I exaggerate, but not by much.
Wickmayer, 20, is ranked No. 18 in the world, and is playing the best tennis of her young life (she was a surprise semifinalist at the U.S. Open a few months ago). Now she's looking down the barrel of a 12-month suspension.
Malisse, now 29 and in ranking free fall, was once hailed as a potential Grand Slam champ, but didn't have the determination or consistency to make good on the prophecy. This would seem to be a career-ending punishment inflicted on Malisse for having missed one doping test.
Wickmayer's infraction was, literally, three times as serious. She went AWOL three times, and that's a little disturbing. You can't expect the teacher to believe that your dog ate your homework three nights in a row. And there's this: These two players aren't the only ones who have to jump through the doping hoops. If Roger Federer, Serena Williams & Co. all have abided by these demands, why should Wickmayer and Malisse get an exemption?
The two players were slapped with the seemingly draconian penalty just weeks after it seemed that they would get off with a mere reprimand. What we're looking at here is a career-threatening suspension for doping in which doping has played no acknowledged part.
This has the makings of becoming an inexplicable mess, and both players have announced their intent to appeal. Maybe the doping control folks saw the appeals coming, so they made the penalty extra harsh to begin with, figuring it may be negotiated down. And the timing, in the wake of the Andre Agassi crystal meth controversy, sure seems convenient if you're inclined to believe the lords of tennis can exercise their most Machiavellian muscle in the name of damage control.
Still, Malisse has struggled to get back in the mix, and his time is running out. And if Wickmayer's hide-and-seek game coincided with her meteoric rise in the rankings, the sport would be remiss in backing away from the suspensions.
My immediate reaction -- that this is a case of overkill -- has been changing even as I've typed these words. I'm going to suspend judgment until the appeals are formally submitted, but it would be terribly unfair to all those players over whom Wickmayer has leapfrogged if her apparently conscious effort to avoid those tests represented something more than youthful irresponsibility.
Someone reviewing the major stories of the WTA season could be forgiven for looking back on the brouhaha attending Dinara Safina's tenure as the No. 1 player, scratching his head and asking: What was that all about?
The smoke has cleared on the battlefield, and Serena Williams is the last woman standing. She's right where she said she belongs, and where most pundits feel she deserved to be -- on top. Serena pounded the bejesus out of all comers at the Australian Open in January and then finished as the year-end No. 1 again.
But the top story in the WTA in 2009 isn't so much that Serena reclaimed her No. 1 position by year's end; it's that nobody was able to topple her along the way. For there hasn't been a less dominant, dominant player in a long time. Every week in '09, it seemed, those who doubted Serena's commitment, fitness or game had a legitimate case to make. Many weeks, Serena proved them right. But she remained in the hunt all along, knowing that one thing -- and one thing only -- matters when it comes to rankings: who finishes No. 1 at the end of the year.
So let's take a quick look at how the contenders and pretenders managed to allow the top ranking to slip through their sweaty little fingers:
Dinara Safina: She consistently came up short when she had the opportunity to consolidate her hold on the top spot or to make an authoritative statement validating the ranking. You can criticize her for reaching the top position without having won a Grand Slam title, but that happens in tennis.
The critical and disappointing failure was the way she found creative ways to bail out when she was in a position to prove her mettle. In tennis, for all but the very top players, it's all about windows of opportunity. But when the window opened for Safina, she walked over and closed the shutters. I wouldn't want to be her, embarking on 2010 with Kim Clijsters back in the hunt and Justine Henin also poised to return to the tour.
Jelena Jankovic: Maybe she did overtrain at the end of last year, explaining her horrific start to 2009. But that rationalization, accurate though it may be, has a short shelf life. It certainly doesn't explain her patchy, ragged, up-and-down year.
Jankovic is coy, a bit of a game-player. You can shuffle and slip and slide and sneak your way to a big title or two -- or even to the No. 1 ranking. But you can't become a dominant force in the game that way. She needs maturity, and she needs to simplify things and focus on the task at hand, week in, week out.
Elena Dementieva: It's funny how someone who seems like a no-nonsense player with great athletic gifts can find so many ways to avoid bagging a Grand Slam title or piecing together a run that takes her to the No. 1 ranking and keeps her there for good. My guess: She sabotages herself at some obscure emotional level.
Venus Williams: The demand of greatness is tough enough to begin with; it's that much more crushing a burden when your heart isn't exactly or entirely into it. (Just ask Andre Agassi.) Venus has become an error-prone and somewhat sloppy player, which tells you that she's mentally played out. And her problems were further exacerbated by the fact that her kid sister, Serena, simply appeared to want the top ranking more.
Victoria Azarenka: She started strong but faded, consistently falling victim to her emotions. But unlike the self-pitying and easily broken down Zvonareva, Azarenka is a fighter who may learn to channel her anger and frustration in a positive manner. I'd watch out for her next year.
Caroline Wozniacki: Her game may not blow you away, with its moon-balling, retrieving defensive cast. But she's got a great attitude and took enormous strides in accepting her success with an impressive degree of composure and maturity. She shows signs of becoming a crafty, reliable and solid player who has what most of her peers lack -- the ability to find a way to win.
Wozniacki will have her work cut out for her in 2010, what with Serena, Kim and Justine in the picture. But "solid and reliable" can go a long way, if not all the way to the top, these days in the WTA.
When it comes to celebrities, especially that very special class of much-loved super-celebs (think Michael Jordan, or either of two Joes, Namath and Montana), a little bit of disclosure goes a long way. Still, the media tsunami unleashed by Andre Agassi's disclosure that he'd experimented with crystal meth was startling in force and sweep.
I respect Agassi for coming clean about his experiment with a drug that's wreaked havoc, especially in rural America (precincts that figure mostly as a curiosity for the mainstream coastal media). Crystal meth, unlike cocaine, is no fashionable accessory for high-maintenance supermodels and the men who pretend to love them. It's a nasty, blue-collar drug; nothing glamorous about it.
And let's remember that Agassi, in many ways, has always had a blue-collar heart, even after it grew bigger than that. He was a kid with a mullet, whose youthful idea of fine dining was pointing the nose of the Camaro at the drive-through window at Taco Bell. Credit Agassi as remaining true to himself in the drug that seduced him. Many people would have been ashamed to admit the gritty truth.
Owning Up
Andre Agassi's midcareer crisis illustrated his flaws. What do his revelations say about his character and career? Ford »
There are basically two kinds of confessions when it comes to autobiographies, especially those of celebrities: tell-somes and tell-alls. The former always seem coy, and suggest that they were just dropped in there at the insistence of a publisher terrified of taking a bath on the book, or the conscience of the author. The tell-alls seem more heartfelt and often have a glow of genuine honesty, except when they're milked to death for the shock value.
Agassi's disclosure is in the tell-all category, and I admire him for the way he handled it, even if it disappoints. (My own question to those who feel let down: How could you think that a rebellious kid who had serious issues with his father and a game that was rammed down his throat -- even though he was great at it -- wouldn't have done something like that?) Agassi chose "Open" as the title for his book, and he delivered what he promised.
I don't want to sound jaded or degenerate, but as confessions of self-destructive behavior go, this was a good one -- "good" in the sense that Agassi not only handled the subject matter correctly, he walked the fine line between glorifying his stroll on the dark side (given the drug, "sprint" might be a better word) -- and he was trying to use that experiment as a platform for preaching about the lunacy of his conduct. I like that he rejected the cloak of the righteous reformed.
I've read similar revelations that had a bunch of caveats attached, most of them rationalizations suggesting: This wasn't the real me, it was just something that … happened. They've always left me cold. So have confessions that devolve into lessons for "you kids out there," which make the revelations sound like PSAs. There's a time and place for that, of course, but not in the context of an adult autobiography.
I found Agassi's confession pitch-perfect, and I'm not enough of a cynic to doubt the authenticity of that voice. Agassi didn't throw the incident out there and then run away from it; it's pretty clear that the first line of meth sent him into a spiral that lasted for a significant period. But he didn't work that time in his life for all the drama and pathos it must have contained. That would have been cheap.
I thought it both poignant and true to life when Agassi wrote that as soon as he ingested the drug for the first time, he felt overcome by a vast wave of sadness. You can't make that up; it comes with the territory when you fall from grace.
But Agassi's story is a tale of falling up toward grace, which is why no PSA is required.
With the season-ending championships coming up, let's look at what the stakes are for each of the eight qualifiers who have convened in Doha, Qatar, to hold a tug-of-war for the WTA Sony Ericsson Championships title -- theoretically, the most important title after the four majors. We'll take the eight qualifiers in the descending order of their ranking:
Dinara Safina
Anything can happen in tennis, and Safina certainly has both the game and time to win one or more Grand Slam events in her career. Still, this tournament has "must win" written all over it. She's like a bus that has labored up a very long, very steep hill only to start rolling backward, the brakes no longer holding, with the top in view.
If Safina can take this title, it will provide a very welcome balm for an ego that was kicked around a lot this year during the WTA rankings controversy. It wouldn't exactly hurt her confidence for 2010, especially if she counts coup on either or both of the women named Williams.
Serena Williams
A win in Doha cements her claim to the No. 1 ranking and further underscores the suspicion that it was truly hers all along. That would ordinarily be enough incentive for any player, but let's remember, this is Serena. She's won only two titles this year, but they represented 50 percent of the majors. If her competitive spirit decides to sleep in at Doha, anything can happen; if she gets a bee in her bonnet over Safina or the upstart Wozniacki, watch out!
Svetlana Kuznetsova
She's a little like the person who turns up at every party -- the only person whom nobody in the room knows, leaving them asking, "What's she doing here?" Her most accurate answer to that might be, "I had nothing better to do." Kuznetsova has never exactly burned with ambition; she's no score-settler or point-prover (which is exactly what many people like about her). She just happens to be very good at what she does, and she could be especially dangerous because of her moody nature. Let sleeping dogs lie, girls. This one does have a bite.
Caroline Wozniacki
She's plugged along very nicely after that enchanted run to the U.S. Open final (where she lost to Kim Clijsters, who didn't qualify for this event, mainly because of her lack of playing opportunity). This will be a big test for her. It's an opportunity because while nobody confuses the event with a do-or-die major, it's still a good one to put on the growing resume of a young talent and a definite step toward legitimacy as a top player.
Elena Dementieva
She's capable of anything, including nothing, and ranks as the best active woman player not to have won a major. I don't think the SEC trophy would compete for space on her trophy shelf with her Olympic Games gold medal (for singles), but Dementieva has a way of catching fire and inserting herself back into the mix at the top. This would be the right time to do it, and a win at the SEC would position her nicely for 2010.
Victoria Azarenka
When she bagged the singles title in the big dual event in Miami, everyone moved to the edge of his or her seat to see whether she was the new Maria Sharapova. But the pressure of her newfound status seemed to unnerve Azarenka, and she never did get a handle on the temper that has been such a mixed blessing for her. She's got one more shot this year to show that Miami was more a foretelling than a fluke, and she'd take a giant step, reputation-wise, if she found a way to sneak up on the favorites and snatch the title.
Venus Williams
Like Serena, Venus has two titles. Only hers aren't majors, and her play has been generally uninspired. She may have too many miles on the odometer to run one more great race. It's hard to see her motivation and confidence rise to the level necessary to beat some of the women who have far more at stake.
Jelena Jankovic
Can anyone stop her? Well, maybe nobody has to. After all, she backed into the tournament when her main rival for the last spot, Vera Zvonareva, was crushed -- by a qualifier, no less -- in Moscow. And this being wild and crazy Jankovic, you get the feeling that she might just go and win the entire thing.
OK, let's forget about Rafael Nadal and this nagging sense that he hasn't been quite the same player since he jettisoned the sleeveless shirts and pirata pants. That he's not superstitious we already know, after all: He recently cut off a lot of that long hair that once showered the court with beads of perspiration that flew like diamonds. For a long time, the guy could do no wrong.
But in Shanghai on Sunday (or whenever it was; if you ever figure out the time zones, send a memo), Nikolay Davydenko was the player with the Midas touch. And what we wouldn't give to see our old friend, aka Kolya the Obscure, showing off his guns and sporting fashionably long shorts.
Never happen, of course, because that would be a very un-Kolya thing to do. Davydenko not only looks like he wouldn't say "boo" to a ghost, he has made a career of flying beneath the radar. If you're a tournament promoter facing the tricky situation of having to move a quarterfinal match off a show court, no problem -- send Davydenko out to Court 23 and just hope the guy he's playing won't object, because you know Kolya won't.
Got a semifinal that you have to get in but must start at 9 a.m., before anyone who doesn't actually work at the tournament has arrived? Kolya's your man. Need to throw someone to the lions, to keep all the starstruck Roger Federer and Andy Roddick and Nadal fans happy? Call in Davydenko.
For most of his career Davydenko has been a heavy bag for the top players, even though he technically is one of them. But things have changed a bit over the past two years. This is a guy who has won three Masters 1000 titles, and the last two have no asterisks. He earned his first Masters 1000 title in Paris in 2006, beating Dominik Hrbaty in the final. In Miami in 2008, he beat Roddick (who had taken out Federer) and then shocked Nadal, who was on the verge of winning a Channel Slam -- taking the Roland Garros and Wimbledon titles just months later.
This week, Davydenko's final two victims were Novak Djokovic and a resurgent Nadal. Say what you will about Davydenko: He looks more like the postman in a small Russian village, the one the dog invariably bites, than a pro tennis player. He has shown a tendency to come up small, a victim of his own anxieties, on Grand Slam stages. You could make the case that Davydenko is the Woody Allen of pro tennis, and that's somewhat accurate. Both of them are enormously successful, even if that doesn't seem to be the most significant thing about them.
Just listen to how Davydenko described his own good fortune in the course of his postmatch presser: "On the final day, last match, you want to give everything in this match, 100 percent what you can do. And really, I lost five finals, and I won 17. That was my 18th ATP World Tour title. Now it's really amazing. Really, in finals I play very well."
You could be forgiven for thinking Kolya was trying to justify himself -- that he was reacting to the real or imagined question people have asked on a few other occasions: "He won? Davydenko?"
That's all right. Let the man blow his own horn a little, because the one thing we know for sure is that no one else will. Like Woody Allen, he's accustomed to starring in his own movies.
The Tennis Masters Cup, the ATP Tour's year-end championships, is bearing down on us, with a new home in London's brand-new O2 Arena. The Shanghai experiment (the YEC was played there for the past four years) now looks like a woefully unsuccessful misadventure -- a notion underscored by the fact that the ATP pulled the plug on the event one year before the original contract expired.
The mainland Chinese made a good effort to get up to speed with state-of-the-art, Western-style sports promotion, but certain difficulties proved insurmountable. The most significant of these was this painful reality: The Chinese equivalent of your typical tennis fan simply didn't have the disposable income to buy a ticket, because the prices were comparable (in real dollars) to our own. In China, the event was something like a futuristic novelty.
It will be different in London's 02 Arena (officially, the 02), which has been busy hosting, among other things, concerts by rock acts like Green Day, and the world gymnastics championships. As early as mid-August, only 20,000 tickets to the TMC (out of 250,000) remained unsold. Say what you will about Western ways, there's a certain value to having a hype machine -- and an enormous, regional fan base whose constituents are intimately familiar with the sport -- and can afford tickets to go watch it.
The media presence in Shanghai was also sparse; organizations that routinely send reporters abroad simply found Shanghai offered too little bang for the buck at a time of year when budgets were already busted. So much for spreading the tennis gospel via the media. And does anyone know whether the Nikolay Davydenko versus Gilles Simon match will be broadcast at 2 or 4 a.m.?
The ATP positioned the move to Shanghai as a forward-looking gamble based on China's burgeoning economy and the nation's rapidly growing interest in tennis. There was a distinctly progressive air about moving a tournament second in status only to Grand Slam events to an emerging, unprepared market. It fit nicely with tennis' global aspirations.
Beyond those noble reasons lay a less glowing one: the drive to maximize the monetary return to the ATP in terms of fees and royalties. It's the same consideration that has landed the Sony Ericsson WTA Tour Championships in Doha, or Dough-ha. Basically, the ATP went for the best deal, not necessarily the best venue for increasing the visibility, credibility and appeal of the game. It isn't as though tennis hasn't been through this before, either. Remember when the ATP World Tour Doubles Championships were played in the Australian "residential resort" of Sanctuary Cove?
Although it's great to take tennis to emerging or ex-urban markets, the most important events should be held in mature markets and big cities. Ignoring this truism (it's impossible to imagine that the ATP honchos don't agree with it) has cost the ATP in the long term, regardless of any short-term gain. The TMC in Shanghai was out of sight, out of mind. Hardcore tennis fans navigated the formidable time zone issues and managed to watch many of the matches, but that's like bringing coals to Newcastle.
An event that aspires to be the world championships of anything must be held in an appropriately high-octane city, unless there's a great reason for taking a different tack. The entire YEC concept gained traction because of the wildly successful Grand Prix Masters tournaments held in Madison Square Garden in mid-January for a dozen years, ending in 1987. Although the tour finals were also a success in later years in the German cities of Frankfurt and Hannover, New York remains the high-water mark for the event.
No matter how much the ATP earned in China, it squandered a tremendous amount of credibility capital by going to Shanghai. The good news is that it may not be all that difficult to earn it back in the O2 Arena.
So here's a much-deserved "thanks" to Etienne de Villiers, who saw that the YEC deserves an appropriate stage and took the leading role in bringing it back from the tennis sticks.
Peter Bodo has been covering tennis for more than 30 years, most of them with TENNIS.com and TENNIS Magazine, where he is a senior editor and author of the popular blog, Peter Bodo's TennisWorld. A two-time WTA writer of the year, Bodo has also written numerous books, including "Tennis For Dummies" with U.S. Davis Cup captain Patrick McEnroe.
Peter Bodo
