I was walking down the hall near the locker rooms at the Sony Ericsson Open on Friday afternoon when Ducote, whom I had never met, came strolling from the other end. A lithe, trim, guy who looks like he can't be over 30, he walked up and introduced himself. He told me that he's a reader of TennisWorld, and that while I often infuriate him, he enjoys the blog and "understands" my point of view. He asked if I wanted to hear the entire story of Canas suspension and its aftermath, from the Canas camp's point of view, and I said, "Of course." We agreed to meet the following day, and then it never happened.
I liked the way Ducote approached me; he was direct and friendly. When I saw him the following day, after Canas's semifinal win, I went out of my way to shake his hand and tell him, "well done." I'll get that story, at some point, but I'm going into it with a certain sense of futility, because I know enough about the ambiguous case (it raises as many questions as it answers) to think it's still going to boil down to a "he said, she said" end. And the tough thing about that for someone like me is that, without certitude (because I doubt we'll ever get that in this case), I'm going to have to make a call. Either Canas is lying, or he's a victim. The only unambiguous facts are that he was caught with a banned substance in his system; from there on, it's all a matter of how credible you find Canas's story and arguments.
If you read the book The Kite Runner, you may remember that at one point the narrator's father explains that the only real sin is theft. Every other sin is just a form of theft (adultery is stealing another man or woman's spouse; murder is stealing someone's life). Doping players steal results (they win matches that, if they were clean, they would lose; so they are stealing from their opponents), but doping cases very often steal certitude. Sesil Karatencheva said she wasn't doping, and claimed that her positive result had to do with an abortion. Contested cases almost always come down to credibility, and if you think it's pleasurable or fun to call someone a liar (because that really is what you're doing) you're different from me. If I call someone a 'liar" I'm prepared to have to fight him over it. It's this thing called "honor".
BTW, if you haven't seen it, Bonnie DeSimone did a finereporting job on the Canas case over at ESPN. The spectre haunting that piece, though, seems pretty clear. if civil courts trespass on the turf of organizations like the ATP or International Olympic Committee (let's leave out for now whether they need to or not), and demand that they operate by less authoratarian or unilateral means, it may signal the effective end of dope policing. As commentors here have observed, "the perfect is the enemy of the good." Should a periodic injustice, such as the one Canas claims he suffered, be tolerated, or do we dismantle or lethally cripple the anti-doping establshment - which would not only leave the world safe for dopers, but force athletes who would otherwise refrain from doping with no choice but to use performance enhancing drugs? That's the 800-pound gorilla in this room.
On another front involving credibility, the word among some tennis insiders was that one reason Andy Murray played such a lousy match against Novak Djokovic in the Miami semfinals was that he took a tumble in practice the previous day and strained either a groin muscle or a hamstring.
The theory is that, given Murray's extensive injury history,and after what happened at Indian Wells (Murray rolled his ankle, received extensive attention and treatment, and then went on to beat Tommy Haas in a quartefinal anyway), Murray understood how awful it would look if the question of injury somehow were yet again injected into a discussion of his loss to the eventual Miami champ, Djokovic.
This is, at its most basic level, a Cry Wolf scenario; Murray has come dangerously close to being one of those guys who's credibility is at risk because somehow injuries always seem to play a role in his results. It's not that he's an excuse-maker or crybaby; There's no question that Murray is surprisingly susceptible to injury, but that's just a road he can't afford to go down. If he was hurt, he did the right thing keeping his mouth shut about it. The old-school Aussies had it right: if you're fit enough to go out and play, you have no injury issue to discuss. If you're not fit enough, give the walkover.
One afternoon, walking along the press verdanda I looked up and saw a dark-haired women toting a racquet bag. She smiled and said "Hi", and for a moment I didn't recognize her. It turned out to be Arantxa Sanchez-Vicario, looking far more fetching than she did during her career as the WTA Energizer Bunny.
While talking to Martin Blackman about his Junior Champion's Tennis Center (see my recent Youre Invited post) , I mentioned that I had just been talking with Pete Sampras the previous day. He told me a funny story. Blackman played the Easter Bowl consolation final against Sampras one year; Martin was in the 18s, and Pete was playing up (he was just 14 or 15). Martin won the match, and remembered how good Pete was, and how cool he seemed to be when he lost. "He came bounding up to the net, it looked like he'd just had the time of his life. Losing didn't seem to bother him one bit".
About a year later, Blackman and Sampras met yet again in a junior Davis Cup camp trials match. Again, Martin prevailed, and Pete came loping up to the net like a puppy. Blackman says, "He was grinning from ear-to-ear, just like the first time. I couldn't forget that, it was so unusual to see that in junior tennis. So I got to thinking about that previous match and I realized something. Since i last played him, Pete had abandoned the two-handed backhand. This second time we met he was using the one-hander. A totally different backhand. But if that had any affect on his enthusiasm or self-confidence, you never would have known.
"That, I think, is a pretty good clue to understanding how Sampras became who he is - and I'm not talking about the one or two-handed backhand issue, either."
