I knew there was something I was missing by not being at the World Tour Finals in London. Was it the matches? I could still watch them from home, from a better seat, on my TV. Was it the city? It looks cold and damp there right now, and it seems like the tube hasn’t been too reliable around the O2 Arena. Was it the food? Let me see . . . no.
No, there was another British staple that hadn’t been part of my tennis diet this time around: the tabs. More specifically, the tabs and their sober, considered analysis of hometown “hero”—i.e., perpetual whipping boy and pathetic scapegoat—Andy Murray. It’s not the same over here in the States; you really need to be in London, with a stack of papers and their blaring print and out of context photos in front of you, to experience the full hateful glee of it all.
This morning, though, I did feel little calmer when I came across these two thoughtful, restrained headlines on the Sun’s website:
MURRAY FEARS END OF THE WORLD
Andy Murray fears his best year has come to an early, injury-ravaged end
So what did the Sun do when that apocalyptic possibility came true for Murray? It rolled its collective eye at the great Scottish whinger, who had, naturally, blown another golden opportunity:
LAME SET AND MATCH FOR MURRAY
It’s a hammer blow for the world No. 3, who arrived in London with a real chance of landing the title for the first time
What else is the tennis press, in London and beyond, telling us as the men’s season reaches its semi-climactic end? It won't be as fun as the Sun, but I'll do my best.
It’s a big step up, or down, depending on your point of view, from the Sun to the Mail. The paper leads its tennis section with this piece of convoluted and mysterious news:
“LTA boost as hope grows of extending ATP Tour Finals deal thanks to tax rules.”
Confused? It means, from what I can tell, that Britain’s tennis association believes that it can get an exemption for the Top 8 from Britain’s heavy foreign-performer tax rate, thus making it more likely that the tournament will stay in London past its current expiration date of 2013. I'm happy that the players will get even richer, of course, but this is good news for the game as well. After drifting for years, the WTF has found a home at the O2 Arena.
—After that substantive beginning, the Mail moves on to the WTF itself with this headline:
MURRAY’S REPLACEMENT TIPSAREVIC BEATEN BY BERDYCH . . . THEN HOBBLES OFF!
—The paper leaves dull old London behind to give us the scoop on an unlikely scandal brewing in Slovakia, of all places.
WHAT WOULD RORY SAY! WOZNIACKI CAVORTS WITH VETERAN TENNIS STAR LECONTE IN BRATISLAVA
Cavorting? What the . . . ? Oh, I see. When you click on the story, you find a photo of Wozniacki sitting on Henri Leconte’s lap during an exhibition. Innocent fun, you say? The paper doesn’t give up that easily. It pairs that photo with a shot of the oblivious, and very possibly cuckolded, McIlroy, who is, “on the other side of the world playing golf in China.” Wake up, Rory!
—Finally, the Mail fizzles out with a drab story about an LTA presentation for the future. I have to say I admire the British papers for actually covering their national tennis organization. The New York Times, or Tennis.com, could conceivably write about a new piece of USTA news every week. But they don’t. Thankfully.
Of course, the most talked-about, and pilloried, article of the last week was Yannick Noah’s charge in Le Monde that Spanish athletes, to put it plainly, are doping. His evidence is that (a) the country is winning everything, and (b) the Spaniards are bigger and stronger; they make French athletes look like “dwarves.”
Noah has been rightly slammed for these comments, primarily for his total lack of evidence. It should also be noted that there are successful French male tennis players who could hardly be called small, let alone dwarfish. That’s evidence, of course, of nothing; it just follows Noah’s logic.
At the same time, the case of Spanish Tour de France champion Alberto Contador, who tested positive for the banned substance clenbuterol after last year’s Tour, continues today in Switzerland. There the World Anti-Doping Agency is asserting that Contador should serve a suspension. The Spanish Cycling Federation, after initially agreeing and recommending a one-year ban, eventually cleared him of all charges. (Contador maintained that he had eaten tainted meat, but WADA says it has discredited that claim.) Last year the New York Times described the Spanish federation’s case as “challenging and awkward,” since it had “to decide whether Contador, its biggest star, should be sanctioned.” The paper quoted the president of the International Association of Professional Cycling Teams on the federation’s dilemna: “Contador is a huge celebrity in his country, and I’m sure that’s in the backs of their minds. They are scared of what happens to the sport if they convict him, and they’re scared of what happens if they don’t convict him.” It didn’t make it any easier when Spain’s prime minister at the time came out in favor of clearing Contador.
None of this is to say that Noah was right to do what he did. He brings a massive cloud of suspicion, with no proof to back it up, over hundreds of athletes in dozens of sports. And the above story is about cycling, which knows no national boundaries when it comes to doping (none of the players on the Spanish Davis Cup team has ever tested positive for anything). But it is to say that Spain, like the United States and a lot of other nations, has its issues with doping and how to police it.
At SI.com, Jon Wertheim is faced with this question:
“We often hear commentators say that so and so has a 'live arm,' but never any explanation as to what exactly characterizes a live arm. I’d be curious to hear an opinion of what it is to have a live arm.”
Jon answers: “My strong suspiscion is that we can blame/credit Brad Gilbert for visiting this term on us. A “live arm” is basically a strong thrower or server who, unencumbered by age, can simply chuck lasers.”
Yes, “live arm” is a generic term with no medical meaning, and BG is always a safe guess when it comes to the origin of a piece of well-used lingo. But I did once have Andy Roddick’s trainer, Doug Spreen, describe the idea of the live arm to me in a little more detail. He said that Roddick, like most baseball pitchers, has “freakishly strong” shoulder and upper back muscles.
—In the previous week’s Mailbag, Wertheim was confronted with this plea from Denise in San Antonio:
“Just wanted to say that I knew when you made your predictions for the 2011 U.S. Open women’s champion, that you were going to jinx that person.”
Wait, I thought I was the jinx. Is there a tennis pundit out there who isn't one?
Toronto’s Tom Tebbutt is the latest journalist to take up the blogger's keyboard, at Tennis Canada’s Love Means Nothing site. Tom is on the Milos Raonic beat much of the time, right down to his exo appearances. But a good place to start is with this poston a visit Tom made to Roland Garros earlier in the month. The grand old place was a ghost town, of course, but Tom’s photos of the red clay still had me thinking about springtime. It, and the new tennis season, will be here before we know it: I’m booking my flight for Melbourne as we speak.