Hi Kamakshi,
I think you’re building a fan base here—nice posts. Just that tiny bit of Gordon Forbes’ Handful of Summers was enough to remind me of how many terrific, original phrases are packed into its pages: “changing the heartbeats,” for instance. Have you read his other book, Too Soon to Panic? It's on the shelf in my office, but I've yet to pull it down. I'm deep into a Murakami phase that may last a while.
Let's start with instant replay. If you’re asking me to name developments/gimmicks that will help tennis, this is one of them, for two major reasons.
- From the players’ perspective, it lets them forget about a call and move on. I think this will improve, at least slightly, the quality of play overall. Andy Murray has said that one reason to challenge is simply to get it out of your head that a shot of yours might have been in. If this is true, it makes me think that limiting challenges is a good idea—two does seem like a low number per set, but I haven’t seen many instances where players have run out yet. I would say three or even four per set would be reasonable.
One funny, and perhaps predictable, upshot so far is that a few players have begun to focus their anger on the netcord, for which there is no Hawk-Eye yet. While losing to Rafael Nadal, Nicolas Massu continued to argue a let call into the next game, to the point where it affected his play. I guess pointless anger will always come out when a player is losing a tennis match; now it just needs somewhere new to go.
- I know some fans, and writers, yearn for the days when Connors and Nastase strolled around bickering with the umpire and turning the arena into their own little sandbox. Nostalgia aside, those were mostly ugly incidents—“you’re an abortion” anyone? (Yes, that was the beloved Jimbo on his 39th birthday.) McEnroe made the whiny brat part of the sport’s popular image. Athletes looking like divas is never a good thing—golf is going through a similar phase now as its players have begun to demand absolute obedience from the fans who pay to see them. Instant replay should lessen the diva effect in tennis. Should: I saw Johnny Mac make replay challenges in a senior match in London, and half the time he wouldn’t accept the computer’s judgment!
As for the Mathieu incident, my rules man at TENNIS, Tony Lance, felt like he should not have been given a let when Hawk-Eye failed. There was a call on the shot—the linesman said it was good—and that should stand. Here’s a clay-court hypothetical: A player stops a point to question a call. The umpire comes down and can’t find any mark in the area. I can only imagine that the player would lose the point. Right?
The “upgrading” of arenas: Too bad it's gotten so pricey in Toronto, because the stadium looks good on TV. As you say, that's all that counts. I know how you feel: Ashe Stadium is equally disastrous. Tennis will never be as widely popular as the NFL (or soccer outside the U.S.). And that’s a good thing. When the U.S. Open moved from clubby Forest Hills to the public National Tennis Center in 1977, Bud Collins took the opportunity to rename the “tennis boom” the “tennis epidemic.” He saw that the game was leaving behind its intimate settings to compete with the major sports. Now that the epidemic has receded, we know tennis will never have the mass following of a team sport; its individual, international nature means it will always appeal to a certain type of person, but it will never link whole cities or states or regions together in hysteria, like the Boston Red Sox or my Philadelphia Eagles.
Still, even baseball, in its post-Camden Yards phase, has realized that intimacy is the way to go. I thought that when the Tennis Masters Cup was held in Houston, the mid-size arena there was just about right, even for that very important event. There was a sense that everyone in the crowd was connected, and connected to the matches. I’ve always wondered if tennis could take a page from baseball and build a few retro-stadiums that incorporated traditional aspects of the game, such as grass courts, for starters. (It would be one way to make a grass-court season plausible.) It’s a shame to see the sport’s aesthetics and century-long history chucked in favor of the luxury boxes, asphalt courts, and wide swaths of empty seats that rule in Toronto and Flushing Meadows.
Have you been enjoying the matches? I’ve found myself a rejuvenated Federer fan this week (I know posters here will never believe it). He’s played two tight, entertaining matches against terrific shot-makers, and he’s had to show his full arsenal. Including a shot that perhaps only a fellow squash player would recognize: Against Tursunov (I think), Fed turned his back to the net to chase down a lob on his backhand side; he reached out and, rather than send a lob straight up, he flicked his wrist and sent it on a seemingly impossible crosscourt angle. The ball was out, but the shot stunned everyone. Fed played squash as a kid, and this is a common shot in the sport, where the racquet and ball are light enough that you can actually send shots back crosscourt from behind your body.
Who do you have in the semis? I’m looking forward to both, particularly the kids, Murray and Gasquet. This tournament has been a bit of a coming out party for the next generation, and tennis could do worse than have these guys, who are both fun to watch, suddenly become a factor at the top of the game. I’ll take Gasquet—Murray, who always looks weary, is due to get tired eventually.
In the other one, I’ll take Federer over Gonzalez, of course, but I like the new team of Gonzo and Stefanki; the Chilean looks just a bit more positive and focused out there. As you said, he even smiled a few times against Ljubicic. I think he’s a threat to go all the way to the final at Flushing Meadows.
Murray and Gonzo: See what coaching can do for tennis players? A little changing of the heartbeats isn't always a bad thing.
Steve