!91393084 Mornin'. I'm a little late to the party today, because we had a new podcast to record: subject, Barclays ATP World Tour Finals in London, which for many of you will be the main course of your Thanksgiving meal next week. Just this morning, I had a note from our old Twibe friend, Skip1515, who's going to the attend the event and may send along some of his impressions.
I'm not going to tell you who I picked to win the Tennis Master's Cup in London - you'll have to listen to the podcast (which will go live on the Tennis.com home page tomorrow afternoon) before you start howling in outrage. But here's a hint: the guy has given me a second life as a seer.
Once again, I have to issue the disclaimer: I'm a reporter and analyst, not a fortune-teller given to wearing robes and a conical hat festooned with astrological signs (Little Steven, anyone?. I've seen too many tennis matches - whole tournaments, in fact) run off the rails to feel justified when I make the right call, or ashamed when it's the wrong one. You can put it alongside my profound distaste for bracketology and the endless parsing of draws; everyone has a tough draw (or an easy one) until he doesn't, and if that sounds a little hippy-dippy, so be it. To the players, I say shut-up and just win the thing; to the fans I say shut-up and tip your hat to the guy who won. Tennis is a reality-based game.
Besides, where's the fun in picking Roger Federer, Novak Djokovic, or Rafael Nadal to win?
Well, these opinions certainly aren't shared by one and all; if they were, there would be less to talk about, and we all know that jawing about the draw is as fine a way to vent emotions and opinions as any other. So put on your pundit caps and fire away, but remember that these round-robin setups are tricky, because to some degree all the matches played after day 1 are conditioned by what happened on the previous day, or days, when it comes to the match-ups. One man's "must-win" is often his opponent's "can lose." I do like the basic round-robin approach, and believe that these tournaments produce credible results. But they're a different kind of animal.
The example I always trot out in this discussion is Ilie Nastase. The guy was a basket case at Grand Slam events (he won "only" two of five major finals), given his talent level. But he was hail on wheels at the annual Masters events, winning the year-end championships four times, which leaves him tied with Roger Federer in that department). I put it down to the fact that Nastase knew that he could lose a match and, in some cases, even two matches, and still wind-up in the semi-finals. That took considerable pressure off him, and helped quell some of the anxieties to which he was prone in single-elimination events.
And while we're on the Tennis Masters Cup, how about a hat-tip to "the Poles" (As one ATP Tour headline recently put it, Verdasco and Poles Complete Barclays ATP World Tour Finals Field! - it looks like I'm not the only one who gets irritated by having to tab back-and-forth between my document and the ATP website to make sure I spell correctly the names of Marius Fyrstenberg and Marcin Martkowsi). Still, while the Polish duo (pictured here) did a good job closing the deal on qualification in the last few weeks of the season, I was sad to see that their resounding, berth-clinching win over Mike and Bob Bryan in Paris also knocked out of contention those old warhorses, Wesley Moodie and Dick Norman.
It would have been nice to see Moodie and Norman in the big show, even if they were hobbling in with the aid of walkers.
-- Pete