It’s funny but a friend just told me on the phone that my buddy and amateur ethicist Matt Cronin tried to take a bite out of my ankle over at his Tennisreporters (Matt: I linked to you. See? Did it kill me?) website.
Matt’s my friend and he’s a good roommate (just watch you don’t get stuck paying his big laundry tab!), and I'm highly amused by the way he’s positioned himself as the world’s foremost expert on conflict-of-interest while simultaneously being the leading example of it.
(Now that ought to get the crew over at Tennis-X cutting–and-pasting, huh? And Matt: I linked again! See, once you get going, it's hard to stop!).
But even before this stuff came up, I had been thinking about a comment posted by Ray When the going gets tough, the tough hold serve Stonada back at the The Godfather of (Tennis) Punk entry. He quoted Matt on Andy Roddick:
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Roddick’s future is troubling. It’s hard to say this about a 24-year-old, but at this point, he’s looking like a one-Slam wonder, and that’s too bad. He’s a fiery, intense competitor who’s an honest, likeable guy despite his tendency to let his mouth run, but it’s very difficult to see just how he’s going to become a top-5 player again. He’s now ranked No. 11. He may never be an elite player again because really, what’s he bringing to the table that’s so special these days? There are at least 25 other guys on tour who can hit a forehand as well as he can. There are at least 100 with a better backhand, and a good 30 with better volleys. His transition game continues to be suspect, and although he tries very hard on defense, he certainly doesn’t turn points around like Federer, Nadal and Hewitt do, much less Murray.
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That quote stayed with me, the mental equivalent of a pebble in my shoe. Something about it bugged me, and this morning while running the rez (the Central Park reservoir) I realized what it was. It entirely undervalues the importance of the heart and head in tennis, which is a good jumping off point for engaging in one of our ritual bloodlettings over our sport’s version of the venerable math-or-art, Yankees-or-Mets, broccoli-or-broccoli NOT! debate.
Are tennis matches won mostly with the technique and physical gifts, or determination and intangible virtues? Which are more important, the external appendages or the internal organs?
I usually come down on behalf of the latter, and Matt’s comments once again made me feel secure in that position. Here are a few reasons why:
1 – If so many guys are as or more gifted than Andy, how did he end up winning the U.S. Open? In Matt’s analysis, Andy winning the Open was like a Volkswagen Beetle (the one with the dashboard vase) winning the Indianapolis 500. That can only happen if everyone else crashes, right? Well, I was at the Open when Andy won and so was Matt. Nobody crashed.
2 – There is a terrible “all trees, no forest” dimension to comparing players’ strokes the way Matt does. It’s rare for the very top players to be the ones who would score the highest on some kind of composite, graded test of attributes, which is why people go around saying Ilie Nastase was the most talented player they ever saw.
Roger Federer may grade out tops, or come close (feel free to speculate on that suggestion), but when do the players with the “best” strokes ever dominate? How would Jim Courier, John McEnroe, Stefan Edberg, Boris Becker, Mats Wilander and others score out on some test predicated on stroke production?
3 – What do we make of the fact that so many among those 25 who have comparable forehands and 100 who have better backhands – many of whom qualify for both groups - never won jack?
4 - Assume that John McEnroe was a solid Top 10 player, but won only one major. Couldn’t you spin out a very cold, analytical, sensible calculation in which the combination of his lack of power, so-so eastern-grip forehand, penchant for slice, and small body type added up to a fine little player with great touch and a tricky serve who just didn’t have enough of a "ground game" (think Ohio State football, not Rafael Nadal for a moment) to win big, regularly?
In fact, try that exercise with any number of great players. I can think of 10 good reasons for why Mats Wilander could have been Joachim Nystrom, or Stefan Edberg a Goran Ivanisevic. We construct our models to fit the present reality, not predict a future one. And when we do predict the future, we’re often dead wrong.
Beyond that, Matt’s calculation is an outstanding good example of why players (substitute boxers, writers, movie makers) loathe critics (of which I am one, although Matt is a really nice guy and I’m wicked by nature) . It’s got to do with our arrogance. We make sweeping judgments in a blasé manner, and in the end, who ever calls us on them, the way players get called on their stuff every blessed day?
We all know that famous line about cynics knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing. Matt isn’t a cynic, but a comparably breathtaking lack of feeling for the Big Picture is at work when he – or anyone else – comes up with these kinds of comparisons.
A comparison of Roger Federer and Andy Roddick is not an apples-and-oranges comparison, but an Andy Roddick and, oh, Fernando Gonzalez comparison is – the rankings and results over the past five years demonstrate that. And that’s because tennis is first and foremost about the head and heart, not the backhand and “transition game” (my how good that phrase sounds, rolling off the tongue - it’s pure pundit candy!)
Ultimately, and this is the wild card in the argument,the head and heart are, quite simply, more volatile and changeable than anything in the stroke production department or repertoire. The seeds of greatness germinate in the head and heart, and technique and talent are their light and water, not their soil.
Juan Carlos Ferrero, can you hear me?