by Pete Bodo
Maybe I'm alone in this, but I don't find anything magical about the box, or Caja Magica, where the Madrid Masters is presently underway. In fact, I think it's pretty awful looking, albeit in a fashionably industrial way. All that perforated aluminum and stainless-steel and glass...what do they do in the Caja Magica when they're not playing tennis, assemble Fiat's line of mini-vans?
Nor do I like how antagonistic the stadium is toward the sun, blue skies, and the pleasant breezes of Spring. Okay, moving air isn't a tennis player's best friend; I'll grant you that. But at its best, tennis is an outdoor game and what the hail, this is Madrid, in May, and the courts are of red clay. If you're so afraid of the sun, just bring a hat and plenty of SPF-60.
But I have to give the architects and forward-looking designers a tip of the hat for truth in advertising. The place is, indeed, a box. And watching Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal scampering around in it today I was pleasantly reminded of childhood days, when my friends and I would catch mice and other rodents and put them in a cardboard box to watch them hit topsp—whoops—watch them scurry around vainly seeking an exit. You see what I mean.
But to my mind, the tournament has bigger problems, and in that regard I feel bad for the driving force behind the event, Ion Tiriac. I've known him for a long time. He's a very tricky character with a healthy streak of amorality, but it's hard not to like him and respect his intelligence, realism, and his basic, lifelong love for the game of tennis—something that hasn't been left by the wayside as he transformed from a nearly broke, down-at-the-heels, scary-looking Romanian former ice hockey player into one of the leading entrepreneurs in eastern Europe, a billionaire.
Tiriac started in tennis as a tough-as-nails journeyman, a passable doubles player (he partnered with Ilie Nastase to win the French Open doubles in 1970) who went on to become a coach and, ultimately, business manager to many players. No coach from any era boasts a more impressive list of proteges, among them Nastase, Guillermo Vilas, Henri Leconte, Goran Ivanisevic, Boris Becker and Marat Safin.
Tiriac's activities as a manager and agent enabled him to get a start in the business world, including tennis promotions. His WTA event in Stuttgart once attracted all the top players. He promoted the ATP Championships as well as the Romanian Open. For ages he wanted to create a men's event that would rival the Grand Slams and, as the 10-day mini-Slams at Indian Wells and Miami evolved, he found a way to transform his fall indoor event in Madrid into the mini-Slam of the Euroclay season.
But is it really? That's a question that's been bugging me over the past few days, as I've waited patiently, jingling the change in my pocket and tapping my toes, for someone other than a Pere Riba or Potito Starace to start smacking balls around on the red clay. The tournament finally seems to have begun on this, the sixth day of play, what with Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic and Roger Federer all on display for the first time this year in the Caja Magica. Now they'll sprint to the finish line, playing a match per day until the Sunday final.
Somehow, I don't think that's what Tiriac had in mind when he determined to create an event that would have a measure of gravitas comparable to that of a major. I'm not entirely sure about this (it's difficult to confirm), but my guess is that the late start for the stars isn't the tournament's idea. The sooner you get a Rafa or Roger out there, the sooner you start selling those general admission tickets.
On the other hand, Tiriac told me last year that his various "series" and VIP packages (the kind scooped up by corporate and other interests with a budget for client entertainment) always do very well, and that's really where the big money is (outside of broadcast rights). So a Wednesday through Sunday extravaganza, with the top players in action every day makes a certain amount of sense for the expense-account crowd. And it would be just like Tiriac to figure that out and exploit it. This is the same man who told me that no tournament needs a draw bigger than 32. "I don't know how many cars are in the Indianapolis 500," he said, "but in Formula I, you have 18 cars and 18 drivers, not 128. You have just the best in the world."
But Tiriac has also told me that given the level of play these days, players ought to have a day off between matches, which was another of his reasons for limiting the ideal draw to 32. Maybe he's just trying to juggle the conflicting demands of the tour with how he would prefer to operate.
All that nonwithstanding, I have to think it's the top players who wanted the Wednesday start, even if only one of them (Novak Djokovic) played an event last week (Federer hasn't played since he lost in the quarters of Monte Carlo, and Nadal had a full week off after he won Barcelona). It's like setting aside one afternoon to take care of all the things on your to-do list, which doesn't do much to convince anyone that the Madrid tournament is critically important.
If you look at the history of Tiriac and Madrid, you can see the pattern developing. Tiriac started out with the Stuttgart Indoor men's tournament, moving it to the fall when he acquired the rights to the week of the failing Stockholm Open. That enabled Stuttgart to become a Masters Series event, but faltering attendance ultimately convinced the ATP to allow Tiriac to move the event to Madrid. No sooner was that move accomplished than Tiriac began searching for a way to move Madrid from the fall into a spring slot, where (some said) he might even be ble to challenge the ascendancy of the French Open. After all, he had the civic powers of Madrid in his corner, and an amazing, state-of-the-art facility in the Caja Magica.
Now, it almost looks like Tiriac outsmarted himself. Madrid is a nine-day dual event, but with Rome and Roland Garros still to come, it just doesn't feel that important. As much as the timing of the Indian Wells and Miami events is awkward, they occur after a fairly long spell of low-key events and before the curtain falls for good on an entire quarter of the year—the early hard-court segment. Madrid, by contrast, seems stuffed into the schedule (as would any event, including Rome, in Madrid's place). No wonder the players seem mostly to just want to get through it.
One of Tiriac's fundamental beliefs is that there's no law mandating that the world can only have four Grand Slam tennis events, now and forever. He's been very up front about that, and merely shrugs when asked if he wants to create a "fifth major," or a competitor to the existing majors. I think he's hoped all along that the right date and venue, combined with his proven talent for promotion, would enable him to create an event that would naturally become something like that notional fifth major. I think he hoped that would happen in Madrid.
Over the years, Tiriac has maneuvered himself closer and closer to the boiler room of the game in various ways. But even with this new date offering more breathing room between Madrid and Paris, something still seems lacking. It's a perfectly fine tune-up tournament for the French Open, which means that Tiriac needs to find a little more magic in the box to realize his ambitions.