Here's my lastest No Mas column. I'm heading to Rome tomorrow for the men's Masters event, so in honor of that, I'm talking Italian tennis. Enjoy the tournamant, I hope to post something at least once a day from the Foro Italico starting Sunday.
Next week the men’s tour makes its annual stop in the Eternal City, for what used to be called the Italian Open. Years ago this was considered the “fifth Grand Slam,” but the tournament’s star has dimmed a bit over the decades. It’s now known, as far as I can tell, as Masters Series-Roma. Doesn’t have quite the same ring of prestige as the old name, does it?
One of the beauties of tennis' international scope is that even countries that are near each other have developed their own specific styles of play, right down to the technique they use on their ground strokes. Russian men tend to hit a similar two-handed backhand, Dutch guys exaggerate the extension on their one-handers, the Spanish base their games on whipped topspin forehands. In the amateur days of the 1950s and 60s, Italians were famous for being clay-court backboards with loosely strung racquets, terrific tough and placement, but little power. They were specialists on the surface and developed careful, consistent baseline games that drove net-rushing Americans and Australians nuts on dirt.
With the advent of power-baseline tennis, the Italians are no longer the world’s clay specialists; that designation now belongs to the bigger-hitting Spaniards. The gentle, careful Italian style survives in its active players, though. Veteran Davide Sanguinetti uses an abbreviated backswing on both sides and caresses the ball around the court; on the women’ side, Mara Santangelo does an even more extreme version of the same thing. Journeyman Daniele Bracciali is sort of the updated edition of classic Italian for the power era: He takes virtually no backswing whatsoever, but he snaps through the hitting zone so quickly he can rocket the ball as hard as anyone if he times it right. I think the hardest-hit ball I’ve ever seen was a return of serve Bracciali cracked off an Andy Roddick first serve at Wimbledon two years ago. He basically hit it down the middle of the court, but Roddick still had absolutely no shot at the ball; he’d barely finished his serving motion by the time it passed him.
Italy’s fans have also made their imprint on the sport over the years. They were at their best and worst in the wild 1970s, when the Italian Open had a soccer-style hooligan element. The site of the event is the Foro Italico, a sporting complex built by Mussolini (its original name, I believe, was Foro Mussolini) and used for the 1960 Olympics. By the late 70s it may have been the tennis world’s most notorious arena. I can remember watching and being scared for anyone who played an Italian; the wild-haired fans who were throwing things on the court meant business. At least one player and umpire walked off and refused to ever come back to Rome.
Now, of course, we look back on those as the good old days, when the sport was exciting and people weren’t so damn polite. (Will we eventually chuckle over the Pacers-Pistons brawl from last year? Probably). With the disappearance of Italian players from the top of the sport, the crowds have calmed down at the Foro Italico. But the tournament itself is enjoying a renaissance with the rise of Rafael Nadal, who won two epic five-set, five-hour finals there in 2005 and 2006. Here are a few other highlights from the last 30 years of tennis in Rome.
1976 Davis Cup
Aussie legend John Newcombe’s final Davis Cup tie came at the Foro Italico against Italian hero Adriano Panatta (pictured above). It’s part of the lore of the Cup now. This is how Newk described the scene in his memoir. Panatta has just leveled the match at one-set each.
"Few tennis crowds overdo it like the Italians. In terms of noise, style, enjoyment and wildly partisan behavior they have few equals. When they are the home crowd at a Davis Cup match, they have no equals.
In 1976 I had to play the deciding match in Rome against Adriano Panatta. It was my last appearance on Davis Cup tennis... “Adri-aaano,” sang 20 tournament voices. “Adri-aaano.” The noise swelled and faded all round the great bowl of the stadium. Down at the bottom of the bowl I waited helplessly to continue the match. The chanting of 'Adri-aaano' was succeeded by a shorter, sharper war cry: 'Pa-na-tta! Pa-na-tta! Pa-na-tta!'... Unable to resume play, I began to see the humour in the situation. There were all these Italians having the time of their lives just because their man had managed to level the score at 1-1...
I waited until the umpire at last had brought the crowd under control. Now their eyes turned to me as I prepared to serve. I gave them a few moments longer, then, as absolute silence took over in the stadium, I threw down my racquet and glared up at the crowd. ‘Eh!’ I shouted, ‘what about me?’ I gave them an operatic Italian shrug. ‘What about me, then? Don’t I play pretty good?’
They loved it. There was an immediate roar of recognition from the massed ranks of drama-loving Romans. One opera singer was on his feet, competing with a new tribal chant: ‘New-combe! New-combe!’ It was a full minute before the poor beleaguered umpire at last took charge again and was able to order the third set to begin.
Later in the afternoon I did something – quite unintentionally – that endeared me still more to the Italian crowd. In fact, I became instantly popular through the whole of Italy. I lost the match."
1978
This Italian Open was the high—or low—point of the country’s tennis insanity, depending on your point of view. Panatta was at it again, pulling off one of his famous comebacks after going down 0-6, 1-5 to Jose Higueras in the semifinals. The crowd was busy booing the Spaniard and trying to distract him at all times. Higueras finally gestured angrily at them. Which, naturally, made everything 10 times worse. Coins and cans rained down on the court. The chair umpire, an Englishman, tried to award Higueras a let because of the distractions, but he was overruled by the Italian tournament referee. Appalled, the umpire walked off the court, as did Higueras after losing the set. They both vowed never to return.
In the final, Bjorn Borg got the same treatment—coins, distractions, the works; it didn’t matter that he was the reigning God of tennis. It was so bad that Borg actually stopped to complain three times! Of course, Borg being Borg, he still beat Panatta in a fifth set. It may have been his most underrated achievement.
1994
These were calmer times in Rome. So calm that the quiet American, Pete Sampras, could claim his biggest clay-court title. With former Italian champ Vitas Gerulaitis schooling him on how to balance offense and defense on clay, Sampras routed Boris Becker in the final 6-1, 6-2, 6-2.
2005
First, Andre Agassi made his farewell run to the semifinals in Rome. He had won the tournament once, a few years before (in keeping with his general style of winning everything one time). This time the fans embraced him, as he played some inspired tennis through the week. Agassi later said that the send-off he received as he walked off the court for the last time was one of the most memorable moments of his career (the Italians really have mellowed!)
In the final that year, Nadal beat Guillermo Coria in a titanic match that lasted five hours and ended in a fifth-set tiebreaker. It was clay-court tennis at its absolute finest—to win a point, each of them seemed to have to cover every last inch of the court, from the net to the backstop.
2006
Nadal somehow managed to top his 2005 win by beating Roger Federer in another fifth-set tiebreaker. Their rivalry was the story of the season, but this was the only time it reached the mountaintop. The match was close and well-played throughout. In the fourth and fifth sets, Federer threw caution to the wind and blew by Nadal. Down 1-4 in the fifth, the Spaniard won a point and pumped his fist. Somehow that was enough for him to regroup. He held off two match points and won 7-5 in the tiebreaker. Like the Rome final the year before, it was the best match of the year, and it helped reestablish the Foro Italico as a major pro-tennis destination. Thankfully, now the insanity is all on the court.
What will happen this year?Something crazy, I hope.