[Mornin, folks. Most of you are already familiar with the work of my compadre and frequent flat-mate, Doug Robson. He's the chief tennis correspondent for USA Today, a frequent contributor to Tennis , and - of late - a blogger at his eponymous site. Doug is in Dubai this week, and he will be filing three posts for TennisWorld. This is his first entry - Enjoy! Pete]
By Douglas Robson, TW Guest Contributing Writer
Bleary eyed or not, you know you’re in Dubai when real estate companies offer free “jets” or, better yet, “your own private island,” in advertisements lining the walkway from the gate to passport control. This was among the first indications that I had landed in the eye-popping center of the new Arab world as I trudged down the long corridor after a 22-hour journey (door to door) from San Francisco to the United Arab Emirates.
As I walked/stumbled toward the immigration hall, I caught a glimpse of the massive Dubai Duty Free store in the departures area. Dubai Duty Free is like McDonald’s in the U.S. – ubiquitous, powerful, and somewhere between annoying and disturbing. Suffice to say it’s like tax-free on steroids. Contrary to urban legend, one cannot purchase a car at the airport, at least according to Dubai native Faisal, a representative of the Barclay’s Dubai Tennis Championships “welcome desk” staff who helped guide me to my hotel.
Although it was 1 a.m. on a Sunday morning, the airport was like JFK on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. The crisscross of languages, faces, and activity spun my head around. The buzz nearly knocked me out of my haze. Thankfully, my hotel was a short 5-minute ride from the airport. Various types of construction barriers predictably, surrounded it and a tower of some kind is going up next door. They wryly say in Dubai that you go to sleep alone and awake the following day with a skyscraper beside you.
I thought I would sleep 24 hours, but jetlag got the best of me and I popped up at 7 a.m. Nothing to do but start the day, so I rode over to the tennis facility from the hotel with Paul Newman of London’s Independent newspaper, a friendly chap who has covered tennis for the last 2-3 of years. Traffic is reportedly a nightmare here, but my initial trip to the tennis facility was jam-free. Paul told me that this was his third trip to Dubai and that he couldn’t decide if he liked it or hated it. I imagine that’s an ambivalence many share. With its glitz, beaches, nightlife and incessant development juxtaposed with choked roadways, exploited foreign workers and questionable women’s rights, there is a lot here to bend the mind one way or the other.
The tennis facility sits in Deira, the older part of the city, in a section called Al Garhoud, just a few miles from the airport. The seven-court facility is part of an aviation club and lies adjacent to a giant complex where Emirates Airlines trains its crews. I’ve rarely spent time in a press room that couldn’t double as a meat locker, and it was no different here. Apparently, most of the money for media services is being burned to keep the place frigid. Considering the $3 million in prize money for the combined men’s and women’s events, the media facilities are on the primitive side. A few seats look out on the 5,000-plus-seat stadium court, but it’s basically a small room with long desks and chairs and a printer or two. The press conference room is a virtual cubbyhole.
As I thought about this gap, it reminded me that developing infrastructure is akin to cultivating democracy. You can’t fast forward into it overnight, no matter how much money you throw at it. Despite its many cloud-hugging hotels, man-made islands and astonishing malls, I can already sense that Dubai hasn’t entirely shaken its Third-World roots – even if it has leapfrogged into the 21st Century like practically no other place on earth. Not everyone, or everything, has caught up to the image being promoted around the world. What’s more, my sense from just a few hours here is that this is a city that isn’t sure what it wants to wants to be, or what it will become.
But back to the tennis. I enjoy the pre-tournament atmosphere. It’s like Broadway before the big show opens. Workers are bustling around, staging food and beverages, posting signs and cleaning seats. Officials zip around. Rock music (Pink Floyd, in this case) blares from stadium loudspeakers as sound checks take place. Players practice. On the main show court this afternoon, I’ve watched the tandems of Svetlana Kuznetsova and Nadia Petrova, Patty Schnyder and Sania Mirza, and Amelie Mauresmo and Maria Kirilenko go through their final tournament preparations. I even witnessed two men welding a metal stairway, and a worker literally vacuumed around my feet as I sat in the press room writing. One can’t help also noticing that most of the laborers are from the Subcontinent – Indians, Pakistanis, etc. - who apparently make up about 70-80% of the local population.
I decided to wander over to the three main non-stadium courts to catch some of American Julie Ditty’s final qualifying match against Vera Dushevina of Russia. On an adjacent court, Ayumi Morita and Akiko Morigama were engaged in a punishing all-Japanese contest. I looked around the nearly empty stands and reminded myself that, for the most part, players labor in obscurity.
If the sweat drops and nobody sees it, does it make a sound?
Meanwhile, Ditty had come back from a 1-4 first set deficit against Dushevina, only to fold in the final two sets, losing 5-7, 6-4, 6-4. A 2002 graduate of Vanderbilt University where she was a three-time All-American, Ditty, 29, is a neat story. The 5-6 southpaw ground her way into the WTA’s main events after wracking up 30 titles (8 singles, 22 doubles) on the lower-tier pro level – a record she shares with Nana Miyagi. She broke into the top 100 for the first time last fall and received her first direct entry into a major at last month’s Australian Open (she lost in the first round).
Ditty has been a true road warrior in a sport made of them, playing in eight consecutive weeks, according to her coach, Mark Hanson, whom I caught up with in the stands. “We’re doing it to get matches under her belt,” said Hanson, a teaching pro based in Tacoma, Wash. While all the matches have paid off – Ditty beat 22nd-ranked Alona Bondarenko in Antwerp two weeks ago for perhaps her best win as a pro – it’s also taken a toll. “It’s a mistake we made,” said Hanson of their over-ambitious schedule. “I’m surprised she’s played as well as she has.”
Ditty is small but moves the ball around deftly with off-pace shots and has nice touch both from the backcourt and at the net. On Sunday, the mental, physical and emotional exhaustion Hanson mentioned might have caught up to her against 21-year-old Dushevina, who has been injured and is playing her first event of 2008.
Her loss meant that the women’s portion of Dubai will commence with no Americans, since she was the only U.S. female in qualifying. The sole American in the main draw, Serena Williams, withdrew on Friday due to oral surgery (when you run out of explanations you have to get creative, right?). How thin are the U.S. ranks these days? There were more British women (2) in the qualifying!
Having just spent the last few days at the ATP Tour’s indoor event in San Jose, I realized that there’s an informality at outdoor tournaments that harder to conjure inside. Players are more relaxed. They catch some rays. They stretch, they work out, they warm up around the grounds. The bowels of an indoor venue (such as HP Pavilion in San Jose, where the NHL’s Sharks play) are far less conducive to mingling.
After talking to Hanson, I was surprised to see Russian matriarch Elena Likhvotseva also watching from up in the stands. It turns out Likhvotseva, one of the friendliest and best liked of competitors, is playing doubles here with Dushevina in the hopes of making the Russian Olympic team. Now 32, the Muscovite told me she had seriously considered retiring last year and hadn’t played an event since the Kremlin Cup last fall. She spent three months idle in Moscow, and while it felt fantastic not spending her days in planes and hotels (“It’s almost the same every week,” she said) she also got antsy both to travel and train. “You long to go somewhere,” said the 2004 French Open semifinalist, “just to change places.” She laughed at being one of the oldest women still around, joking that only Rennae Stubbs and Ai Sugiyama are longer in the tooth.
