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Paul Annacone is going to do . . . what, exactly?
Annacone, as you may remember, came to the net on everything; he served and volleyed and he chipped and charged. He also coached one of the last of the great serve-and-volleyers, Pete Sampras. So you might think that he’ll start by getting Roger Federer to move forward more, to end points sooner, to find new ways to be aggressive and use his various skills. And I think he will try that. But it’s not necessarily that easy for someone like Federer, who is fundamentally a baseliner—not a grinder, but a guy who is comfortable winning with his ground strokes—to point his game in a different direction. For example, Federer has never subscribed to the old idea that he should just come in on everything to beat Rafael Nadal. He knows it’s not that easy to suddenly do something different, and any evolution in his approach with Annacone might at first be invisible to the layman’s eye
A few years ago, I talked to Annacone about Federer’s game for a Wimbledon preview article. I was impressed by the detail and authority he brought to his analysis. One thing he mentioned was Federer’s superior ability to create angles from the middle of the court, without taking huge risks; no one else at the time could get his opponent moving like Rog from a neutral position in a rally. I don’t know if that will be something Annacone emphasizes, or even if it’s something that needs to be emphasized, but he will be thinking about it as one of his strengths.
The other question, I suppose, is how well Annacone will fit with the established entourage that surrounds Federer. Jose Higueras had some trouble with this, but if anyone can do it without stepping on any toes, it’s the quietly studious and soft-spoken American.
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Ernest Gulbis is . . . already tired?
I suppose the opposite of the Roddick situation would be true here: A tour with an upbeat, rather than an ironically despairing, Ernests Gulbis would take some serious getting used to. Fortunately, it doesn’t look we’ll have to worry about that any time soon. In L.A., Gulbis received a point penalty (“This referee, his only fun in life is to give warnings") for racquet abuse and looked unready for the American heat (“I got so tired"). In D.C., he retired from a match in the first game of the second set, again due to the heat.
Gulbis is an interesting case to me. You could dismiss him as lazy. You could get frustrated with his underachieving ways. But I don’t want to do either of those things. For some reason, Gulbis makes me question the whole idea of effort in the first place. Why do we care if he’s in shape? Why do we think “giving your best” is better than not caring about whether you win or lose? I know we’re born with an instinct for survival, but is a desire to “win” really the natural tendency of humans? Is the person who tries harder morally superior to the one who doesn’t? Or has it just been drummed into us over the last two centuries by the synchronized ideologies of capitalism and Darwinism?
Just asking. And just thinking out loud. And just wondering why Ernests Gulbis, of all people, brings these sacrilegious ideas to my mind.
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Isner, Querrey, Fish: Is the American renaissance over before it began?
These guys started the summer with a bang, but they all went out early at the Legg Mason this week. It was a valuable reminder that they remain solidly second-tier (not an insult). But when I saw that Querrey had gone out to Tipsarevic, my first reaction was that this was a good loss. Querrey doesn’t like to play three weeks in a row, but he must have felt obligated, whether by appearance fees or some other reason, to support these U.S. events. Isner’s loss to Malisse is a disappointment, but again, when you live by the tiebreaker—Isner had won two of them in his first round—it’s very easy to die by it as well. As for Fish, his loss to Cilic isn’t surprising, but it is the kind of match he’s going to need to win if we’re going to believe that this particular resurgence of his will lead somewhere.
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Why is Melanie Oudin listening so closely?
Oudin mildly complained this week that she gets annoyed when fans shout things like, “Get it together, Melanie,” or “Wake up, Melanie!” I’ve never heard a player make such a specific analysis of crowd noise before. I agree, it would be irritating to hear that, and it obviously comes from the high expectations she engendered at the U.S. Open last year. She must want to say back, “I am awake! You can’t get to the quarters of the U.S. Open and beat Maria Sharapova every week!”
Maybe the best advice we can give would be: “Don’t listen to me, Melanie! Whatever I say, do not listen!
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See you on Sunday
