Alright, I know it’s ridiculously early in the clay court season, and Mardy Fish probably won’t keep the place he earned as King of the Clay with his surprising win in Houston last Sunday. If you’re a Fish Fan, regular TW comment poster Greg Feirman does you (and me) a real service in the comments section of my “Critical Mass” post below, linking to some compelling stories on Fish’s resurgence.
Once again, Charlie “I Cover the Waterfront” Bricker leads the way with a solid, very Inside Tennis piece on Fish. My take: Fish is a really interesting player. Note that this is not a comment on his potential, although I think he has plenty of it. What do I mean by “interesting”? Well, let’s try this: a player who finds unconventional and individualistic ways to succeed, often in spite of the obvious shortcomings of his game or competitive temperament. In Fish's case, that means that bizarro world forehand. . .
Marat Safin is an interesting player because of his temperament, but not because of his game - a game so clean you could eat off it. Fabrice Santoro is an interesting player because of his game, as was Miloslav Mecir (to me, "the Big Cat" was one of the most interesting of all). He appeared never to run and just seemed to be standing there, waiting for the ball, shot-after-shot, even in the most intense rally.
The ultimate interesting player, I suppose, was Steffi Graf, except in a totally counter-intuitive way. Her game was coyote ugly (think of that high ball toss, that off-the-hip, late forehand!), but nobody noticed because she won so darned much. By that same measure, I have to admit that her husband Andre’s game was not interesting at all (however, his temperament, in the early years, was), except in really subtle ways having to do with reflexes, eye-hand co-ordination, things like that.
And before all you irate Andre KADs start firing off the comments, let me add that Pete Sampras’s game wasn’t all that interesting, either. Too much perfection. I hesitate to say the same of Roger Federer, though, despite his near-perfect technique. The Mighty Fed is unique: His game is seamless and smooth, but his variety is so fetching that it compensates for the sterility of his well-schooled, disciplined technique.
Rafael Nadal? The thing that keeps him from being interesting is his brutal efficiency; his technique certainly is idiosyncratic bordering on radical (how about all those pictures of Nadal, with his racquet so wrapped around his shoulder that it looks like his he's busting his own jaw). But I don’t get mesmerized by Nadal, in that “Now, how did he do that?” way.
I know how he did it. With dazzlingly fast feet, and gobs of lefty power and spin.
Nadal brings us back to the early clay-court season. It’s much too soon to read anything into the results so far, which is as good a reason as I can think of for reading things into results. Safin and his countryman Nikolay Davydenko are out in Monte Carlo, and slumping David Nalbandian is whining (Does anybody else think he can't handle the pressure of being the King of the Second Tier?)
My prediction is that this clay-court season is going to be one of surprises. Nadal could prove me wrong, but the spectre of injury is something he has to live with as surely as Elena Dementieva has to live with the spectre of double faults.
Parity has arrived in tennis in a big way; the only place that has managed to keep it at bay until now is Wimbledon, where a smooth transition has been affected between two overlords, Pete Sampras and TMF.
I know that Nadal is capable of sweeping all the big clay-court titles, I just don’t think he’s going to do it, again. Last year, he was a kid on the rise. Today, he’s a vested champ who has clearly decided that his Alamo will forever be Roland Garros. The big difference now is that he doesn’t need to prove anything going in.
At the same time, Guillermo Coria has slipped a few notches, and nobody else seems on the verge of having a dominant clay-court campaign. It’s a recipe for parity or chaos, depending on which description you prefer.
I want to add one thought, though, which is bound to make some of you gasp in horror. I had a real epiphany during the semifinal between Nadal and TMF at Roland Garros last year, and the substance of it was that clay-court tennis is boring (a litany of mine) only when the players are not of the first rank.
I don’t have a tape of the Federer/Nadal semi, but if memory serves, I don’t think any rally went more than 10 or 12 strokes.
It was eye-opening. Here were two guys raised on clay, one of whom (Nadal) is about as classic a “clay-court specialist” as you could design. Yet not one rally went on interminably, as it would in, say, a match between Albert Costa and Mariano “Just Say Yes” Puerta. What does this tell you?
Only this: if you put two guys who like to make things happen, and are looking to end points, on clay, you just may get the best tennis you'll ever see.
So why not take that intel to the next level? Hence my modest proposal to institute a “possession arrow”, comparable to the one used in basketball, at clay-court tennis tournaments.
In other words, if a rally goes over, say, 15 strokes, some official in a blue blazer and a straw boater blows a whistle and play comes to a halt. The point is awarded to either competitor, on an alternating basis, and we get on with the match.
No rally in tennis, even on clay, need go beyond 15 or so strokes. Nadal and Federer demonstrated that last year.
So let’s get on with it!