Sorry about the prolonged silence, fowks (no emails please, I’m channeling Mici, who I believe has been cast into Sesame Street hell by Ruth, Daylily, Lydia and the other teachers/Elders who belong to the TW tribe). It’s just that all the travel, missed planning meetings, and side-trip assignments on behalf of the dead-tree product, Tennis have got me stretched every which this week.
I did come across an interesting bit of intel on coaching, since that seems to be a big theme lately; Kamakshi at Court Coverage originally linked to a long piece by Paul Newman in London’s The Independent, on the new Brad Gilbert/Andy Murray partnership. Unfortunately, although Kamakshi links to it, the story appears to be a pay-to-read piece and I can’t bust into it. Where’s Steggy the Hillbilly Princess when I really need her? Radio silence prevails. I suspect pedicure, or she’s at the arcade in the mall, pumping quarters into the game,Whack a Troll again.
Anyway, it sounds like an interesting piece, and this bootleg excerpt that Kamakshi posted caught my eye:
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It was said that one of the major areas of disagreement Murray had with Petchey was the coach's desire for him to be less of a counter-puncher in the Lleyton Hewitt mould and to play more of an attacking game. Gilbert, however, likes the comparison with Hewitt and appreciates the way that Murray, like the Australian, can play so many winning shots when pulled wide into the tramlines. Murray thinks he has his best chances on hard courts, while Gilbert believes grass could be his best surface.
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Okay, the geeky Inside Tennis angle of this is nifty; why be a counterpuncher when you can really go for the gusto; that is, why settle for being grinder Lleyton Hewitt when you can be rock-star Marcos Baghdatis?
What I really like about this quote though, and you’ll have to forgive this godawful pun, is that it plants a seed. The seed being planted is that Andy Murray can win Wimbledon. And I know Brad Gilbert well enough to say that if next week they changed the surface at Wimbledon to calcified Roger Federer “Feel the Touch” hand crème, Brad would say Murray’s best surface could be "hard lotion".
This plays into a theme I’ve addressed in past rants and ruminations, which is that contemplating the payoff for the next British player who wins Wimbledon pretty much defines the word “unimaginable.” Wait, you cry. Andy's Scot! Wrong. Just read the British newspapers!
Should Murray win Wimbledon, he and Gilbert are entire made-in-the-shade men, instant icons, just add water (no shortage of that during Wimbledon!).Given the stakes, what would you say? Oh, Andy could do okay on grass, but he’s got his best shot at hard, you watch him tear it up at the L'egg Mason next year!”
One comment poster in the previous entry noted how Brad’s first big move with Andy Roddick was to make him trade in that goofy visor (endorsed for weekend ladies 65-and over doubles!) for a gimme cap. This is a more subtle and on-topic version of that same move (even Brad's game gets better with age). Just wait until Andy reads it and thinks, “Gee, maybe Brad’s got something there!”
Thinking about this put me in mind of the worst coaching gaffe I’ve ever witnessed, and it was the epitome of the anti-Brad approach to coaching. In 1979, Bjorn Borg was once again threatening to produce a breakthrough win at a tournament that gave him the heebee jeebees, the U.S. Open. After he won his Fourth Round match, a group of us sought out his coach, Lennart Bergelin – a fine fellow who, back in his playing days, was said to have run off with someone’s wife while in Australia. They did a tour of the island continent on motorcycle and months later Lennart deposited her back on her doorstep and got back on a boat to go play Wimbledon.
Where was I?
Oh. Well, Lennart had been with Bjorn from almost Day One, and nobody ever accused him of being a master of the X’s and O’s. Nor did anyone ever accuse Borg of actually listening to anyone (except guys in fancy suits he met in discos in Monte Carlo). He was a stubborn cuss. So you never talked with Lennart expecting to get pearls of coaching wisdom. I liked talking with him because he was a quiet, decent, reticent guy in waaaaay over his head.
Still. . . we all knew that evening that the USTA was going to put Borg’s next match, against hard-serving Tennessean Roscoe Tanner, under the lights. There were three reasons for this: Tanner’s serve was much harder to pick up at night; Borg hated playing under the lights; Tanner was an American, and the USTA Bigs had no compunctions about doing everything short of taking a crow bar to a foreign player’s knees in order to provide native contenders with an advantage (care to weigh-in, Papa Mac?). Besides, it really did make sense to put that match on at night.
Anyway, we hunted Lennart down the moment the official schedule came out. There happened to be lots more reporters around than usual. Lennart then proceed to unload the most defeatist, negative, woe-is-me monologue I ever heard fall from the mouth of a tennis coach. Imagine, with a Swedish accent: Ja, Bjorn he don’t like the lights. This is terrible, Ja? He can’t play under the lights. I don’t understand! Ja? You can’t see Tanner’s serve under the lights. Oh my God, Bjorn has to play Tanner at night. Ja! What a catastrophe!
I’m serious. It was so bad that it kind of bummed me out and I contemplated jumping off the Triboro Bridge on the way home, out of feelings of solidarity with Bergalin (not Borg, he didn’t especially need or deserve it). Poor guy. To this day, I could see him – that stricken look on his face, the panic and confusion in poor Lennart’s eyes. All I could think was, man, I hope Connors never gets this guy into a poker game!
And, of course, it all played out that way. Tanner served Borg off the court. End of story.
PS – Hat tips to a few Elders who posted comments in the previous entry: Skip noted that Jimmy Connors forehand, while dodgy, was a potent, terrific weapon when he was returning serve (probably because it was a pure reaction shot). Connor was the original “great returner” (Wilson T-2000, anyone?) of the Open era.
Skip also wrote this gem of a graph:
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So what can Roddick gain from Mr. Jimmy? How about never backing up (especially after banging a 147 mph first serve), better court positioning in general, a willingness to flatten out the ball while at the same time maintaining the calmness to make the other b**tard run to yet one more corner, and a love of the forecourt because it gets you close to the victim when you make the kill.
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Then, Todd and in Charge wrote nicely about how difficult it might be for Roddick to, well, follow in Jimmy’s footsteps in this regard.
And Nancy wrote:
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By the way Pete, you left out something sweet about Jimmy. Didn't he partly quit the "seniors" tour to go home and nurse his wife Patty through (thyroid?) cancer???????!!!! Jimmy has a loyal side. Its not all about him. He displayed that in his relationship with Patti.
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This was one of the “psychic dots” that I didn’t want to print because I wasn’t sure how much of Patti’s struggle was public. I was going to ask Karen Happer if I could print it, but there it is.
And lastly, John McEnroe (Elder/Senior) was correct in pointing out that Jimmy was not eligible to take part in the Centenary celebration, and therefore was not invited. However, there was a huge outcry and endless round of stories about this incident in the British press, all of which had Connors snubbing the celebration. This has my curiosity piqued, so I'm going to try to get the entire story.