Good mornin', from your faithful non-person; I'm here once again to bring you the news of the day.
—If you want to know just how tough it is to make the field of the U.S. Open, consider this: The USTA held a nationwide playoff for the ultimate payoff of one, single, solitary, measly wild card into U.S. Open qualifying. The only card I can think of that might have equal value at an auction would be one of the actual aces or eights Wild Bill Hickok held in his famous "dead man's hand" that fateful day at the No. 10 saloon in Deadwood.
And if you thought some local teaching pro or former junior college star would earn that wild card, forget about it. The women who slashed their way through a starting field of almost 400 players to the final were world No. 408 Alina Jidkova, and three-time USTA Pro Circuit winner Alexandra Mueller.
I imagine there was a lot of grousing about Jidkova, the No. 1 seed, being in the field in the first place. She resides in Boca Raton, but lists her nationality as Russian. Mueller is a homegrown 22-year old from Abington, Pa. with a passion for snowboarding. A seasoned main-tour veteran of 33, Jikdova has been ranked as high as No. 51. She only entered the event after she heard about it from a friend on the day before the entry deadline—at which point the lightbulb went on over her head and she sniffed out a potential shortcut to Flushing Meadows. Ten opponents later, she found herself opposite Mueller.
But this wasn't Mueller's first county fair, either—she's presently ranked just a few rungs lower than Jidkova, and scored a wild card into the U.S. Open doubles in 2007 as well as a previous wild card into U.S. Open singles qualifying.
Mueller caught fire during the final round of the playoffs (held at Stanford), and crushed Jidkova in the final, 6-0, 6-3 (that's some radical shredding, dudette!). So Alina goes back to Boca, or Moscow, to hatch a different plan. Oh well, it was a good idea at the time. . .
!91531666 —I got a kick out of the headline on the ATP Champion's Tour press release, proclaiming: Ivan Lendl Joins Champions Tour at Last. The only thing missing is a couple of exclamation points and some sort of emoticon, but then you know Lendl doesn't do emoticons.
In fact, Ivan the Formerly Terrible habitually reserved his biggest, sunniest smiles for when he'd just said something witheringly mean or cruel. But that was the old Ivan; he's mellowed, and been a lot more cordial since he left the main tour 16 years ago. I guess we'll see how fundamental the change has been when John McEnroe tries to drill him with an overhead. Those two guys put in a lot of target practice on each other back in the day.
The rivals could get reacquainted in the first of Lend's CT events, the Jean Luc LaGardere Trophy, scheduled for the first week in October in Paris. Lendl is the last holdout from among the great champions of the past 30 years; persuading him to play is less a coup than a wonderful, symbolic testament to the fact that as much as they scream, moan, and swear they wouldn't be caught dead hobbling around on any kind of senior tour, all the marquee players eventually return to the fold. And with the exception of Lendl, they hustle back to the corral sooner rather than later. Which is as it should be, right? It's not like having spent your youth winning Grand Slam tournaments is the most hateful of experiences.
Contemplating this news, McEnroe observed: “Oh boy, l’m looking forward to it. . .We had some great matches together but it’s been a long time and he hasn’t played for more than 15 years so I think we need to discuss a few things, both on and off the court!"
Consider that the first show fired across the bow—or a gentle tweak suggesting that McEnroe, the dean of the senior circuit (does that sound as funny to you as it does to me?), is going to sit the senior rookie Lendl down and advise him to take it easy on those serves, avoid those sudden lunges in either direction, watch out for those courtside flower pots and guard rails, lest those creaky bones and stiff muscles betray you as you try to show that you've still. . . got it.
—James Blake lost to qualifier Ryan Sweeting (No. 119) at the Legg Mason Tennis Classic (Washington) last night and the surprising—and sad—thing about it is that you can hardly call that a major upset, not when you look at Blake's own ranking, which is down to No. 105.
Now you see the wisdom of the wild-card system and the help it can give veterans like Blake, who have a distinguished history of service even if they no can no longer hold service with any regularity. Of course, if you want to play devil's advocate, you can counter by asking, Why prolong the agony?
Blake has lost his first-round match in six of his last 12 events, and if there's any good news to be had there it's in the fact that the seven losses he's suffered in his last nine best-of-three matches have been three-setters, evenly split between close and blow-out third sets. That 10-8 in-the-fifth loss to Juan Martin del Potro in the second round of the Australian Open now sticks out as a negative turning point. But perhaps Blake can find the guts, skill and will to come up with a positive performance at the pending U.S. Open. If he doesn't, the pundits will be writing Blake's obituary as a competitor by the end of August.
!103192364 —Y'all know that Victoria Azarenka has pulled out of the Mercury Insurance Open (San Deigo). citing a shoulder injury that seemed to have no impact on the proceedings during her outstanding run at the Bank of the West Classic (Stanford), where she took the title over Maria Sharapova.
It's an unpleasant business second-guessing players when they pull out of events with an injury, but this one looks a little suspect to me (as a colleague and Azarenka-watcher here at TENNISremarked, "What, she actually bothered to come up with an excuse?"). And it sure doesn't look like Vika is having any trouble holding up the crystal spitoon in the photo to the right).
Azarenka crushed the field at Stanford. Only one of her sets (vs. Marion Bartoli) went three sets. Nobody, including Sharapova, got more than three games off Azarenka in the second set of any of those straight sets curtain-droppers. It's not like Azarenka had a death march to the trophy podium, against top quality competition. Altogether, it seemed a fairly easy and remunerative week at the office.
Why do I get the feeling that one presumed perk of winning a tournament these days is the right to pull the plug on your next one? What makes this particularly interesting is that she was clearly on fire at Stanford. If she could have continued on a roll in San Diego, the back-to-back wins (or finals) might be good enough to put her atop the U.S. Open Series standings for good. Which means that she could be going into the U.S. Open looking at a good chance, given her form, of doubling her potential singles title payoff (to an eye-opening $3.4 million).
Of course, Azarenka must be aware of that opportunity, so consider that a very powerful argument for the legitimacy of that shoulder injury. If she's not hurt, she certainly ought to get her head examined. It would at least establish what, if anything, is inside there.
And that, folks, is your news of the day.