Published Apr 17, 2012
© AP
It’s mailbag time again. I want to start by potentially apologizing to many of you who have emailed me over the years. If you clicked on "Contact" above and sent it from there, there’s a decent chance that I emailed you back and it never got to you. Apparently hitting “Reply” sent my return email flying into Typepad orbit half the time.
Of course, there’s also a chance I didn’t email you back. But try again, please, if you like.
Steve, by citing what I wrote you got at something I've noticed about tennis for a long, long time: The relationship people have to players -- that is, the affinity -- is an incredibly individual, one-on-one kind of engagement. This is different from team sports, where as individuals we relate to organizations. Even if one loved Michael Jordan, to love him still had to be filtered around-through the prism of the Bulls.
But in tennis, it's so one-on-one that the values one projects on to player are so often those one values in oneself. Or the counterpart: The player is an alter ego, existing in opposition to one's own makeup. John McPhee noted in Levels of the Game that the player's game is an extension of his personality. But let's turn this on its head. I've played tennis since I was 12. Maybe it's so twisted me that my personality is an extension of the game.
And you're right about that notion of unconscious articulation. It took me more than 20 years to bring my Connors book to life. For all I learned about him and the tennis, in bigger ways I was scraping at the barnacle of myself. And then, from a technical standpoint, it was my study of Connors' game that brought me to understand Rosewall. For if Connors is tennis' electric Dylan, then his Woody Guthrie ancestor is Rosewall. It is staggering how similarly these two play -- the footwork, the backhand, the return, the lesser serve, the lob, the court sense, the opportunism. And finally, the longevity. **
So yes, there is something to be said about how we reveal ourselves through what we like about these players. This is one reason why Federer incurs such a swoon. He is tennis' Sun King -- a man for all seasons, for glamour and elegance, for consummate grace, for all that the world could well seem to be. And while I admire too, the grubber in me prefers Nadal.—Joel Drucker
This is Joel’s comment on the “Debating the Debate” post, about Goat lists, from last week. First, that’s an interesting comparison he brings up between Connors and Rosewall; I had never thought of that. If tennis books grew on trees, someone could do one based around the 1974 U.S. Open final between those two players, when Jimmy crushed the aging Muscles. Sort of like Dylan drowning out old Pete Seeger at Newport in ’65.
As far as players who represent “what tennis is all about,” Federer makes a good modern choice. But I always like to bring Connors into that discussion. He embodies the other, uglier, but just as real and eternal side of the sport. One thing that makes tennis especially meaningful for fans is that its players, as individuals, can represent philosophies about life and how to approach it. It seems like in your case, Joel, that you didn’t initially gravitate to Connors because you consciously related to him; it was being a fan of Connors that led you to know yourself better. Fans of Federer and Nadal and others say the same thing today, that they learn how to approach life as an individual from watching them. This often comes down to learning how to react to and accept failure. Hence, perhaps, the irrational mass of comments on Tennis.com about whether a player is "making an excuse" or not after a defeat.
Can, say, the Philadelphia Eagles do that for their fans? (Don't answer.)
And you know how you know you're a true Jimbo fan? Like Joel above, you refer to "tennis" the way Connors did, as "the tennis," something special, apart from everything else.
Could it be that most of the [Greatest of All Time] lists being created by men is why a woman is never at the top, or is there something about the women playing best of 3 that always relegates them to second status, thus diminishing the weight of their title count?—Michele
This is the core difficulty of putting men and women together, and there’s no way around the subjectivity of it. If you’re going to go by Slam count and title count, you have to put Court and Graf and Navratilova and Evert at the top—they have the most. Martina and Court muddy the waters even more with their doubles results. In my opinion, you either go all-in with doubles or all-out; they can't be a side stat that kind of counts, the way they often are. Most of the best male players of the last 30 years have virtually no record playing dubs, and you can’t penalize them for that.
The question between, say, Graf’s 22 majors and Federer’s 16 is the context. To me, coupled with his career Slam and his period of domination from 2004 to 2007, Federer’s seems like the greater—more unprecedented—achievement in the context of the modern men’s game, where domination has historically been more difficult (that may be changing, so the debate could someday change with it).
Is this just a contorted way of justifying having a man at No. 1? Maybe. Partially. Probably. But whatever the records, my pick of Federer for the top spot is still undeniable in my mind, which is my real and only justification. I would accept another person’s well-articulated campaign for other players, from Graf to Rosewall back to Helen Wills and beyond, but I don’t think I would waver on Federer.
Lenglen was said to be able to place the ball anywhere on the court within a foot or two. Wills had good placement (not as good) but hit the ball harder on average. Contemporaries describe Wills shots as heavy and cannons and artillery. Suzanne was light on her feet and an excellent mover, Wills not so much, but was described as deceptively quick if not as mobile as Lenglen. Both were extremely mentally tough and known for comebacks from the brink (although they were rarely pushed there)—Charles
Apparently Lenglen’s father instructed her never to hit the ball into the net. Their philosophy was that even if you hit a ball that seemed to be going long, something unexpected might happen—a gust of wind could bring it in, or your opponent might mistakenly take it out of the air. But nothing unexpected could happen if you put it in the net. Fair enough. After matches, Lenglen wouldn’t remember her error count, necessarily, but she would be able to tell you how many times she hit the ball in the net. Which would be, like, twice.
There's a happy medium between the no coverage in the past (bad) and too much coverage (also bad). There's too much of everything on the internet and that includes tennis. It just breeds obsessive fans and overkill and getting what is, after all, just a sport, way out of proportion.—Corrie
Sometimes it's so delicious, almost too wonderful, all the availability. But it's also consuming, and with the blogs and comments, it's becoming all-consuming, like the Oroborus (is that the snake that eats its own tail?).
Sometimes it's nice to sit back with a drink, not keep up with comments, and just watch. But then you feel like you might have missed something, and you start to read the comments and the commentary and then someone asks you what you've been up to and there's a big blank.—Kristy
These two comments were made on my “Here and There” post, about being a tennis fan in the age of new-media immersion—Tennis Channel, TennisTV, Tennis.com, Twitter, and whatever comes next. I painted a mostly rosy picture of this world, how the access and the community of the Internet made me more addicted to the sport than ever. But there are, as these two comments suggest, downsides, and I immediately regretted not including more of them in the post (it was already 1300 words long). So here are a few that I've experienced:
Reading Tweets and blog comments from people you don’t agree with can rile the blood unnecessarily, until you feel like you’re playing a tennis match yourself. Too many opinions can make you notice and think things about the players that you don’t really think, or want to think; your own level-headed opinion can get lost in the collective overexcitement of everyone else's. And too much snark is too much snark—TMS, the disease of the Internet. Sometimes, as hard as it may be to believe, I don't need to hear a witty putdown of a player's haircut.
But Twitter does allow you to control this and choose your company by hitting the unfollow button. During a match, I like being (virtually) with journalists and bloggers I know in real life, as well as smart fans who bring a fresh perspective and don’t bombard me.
Still, it’s true, as Kristy suggests, sometimes you don’t want to read or talk to anyone. You just want to watch. I can still do this, still ignore Twitter and Tennis.com and concentrate on the match and the Martini and notice whatever I want to notice about the players. Now I appreciate those moments even more.
Let’s do best nicknames of all time:
10. Boom Boom ?9. Muscles? 8. The Kid? 7. Fräulein Forehand ?6. Ice Maiden? 5. Ice Man ?4. "Big" Bill Tilden ?3. "Little" Mo 2. Federinka ?1. Fat Dave—Norrin Rad
Tennis, thanks mainly to Bud Collins, has been blessed with great nicknames, though a few of his, like “The Jennerator” for Jennifer Capriati, or “The Great Whomping Crane” for Pam Shriver, are probably best forgotten.
Off the top of my head, I like Fraulein Forehand, Angelic Assassin, Little Hatchet Woman (another Collins moniker for Chrissie), Maurice “California Comet” McLoughlin, the ironic “Muscles” for Rosewall and “Rocket” for Laver (Harry Hopman gave it to him—“Rockhampton Rocket”—when he was young and not so fast).
“Nasty” for Nastase would be too easy if wasn’t also too perfect; ditto for “Bucharest Buffoon.” “Little Soldier” for Corrado Barrazzutti captured his plodding style. Both “Slug” and “Pasta Kid” captured his fellow Italian Paola Bertolucci’s even more plodding style. “Junkball Julie” for Julie Heldman works because “junkball” is one of the great words in tennis.
Are there good nicknames today—aside, of course, from Fat Dave (which I am duty-bound to disapprove of)? And don’t give me Wozzilroy…
Here's a list of Bud's oeuvre: http://tinyurl.com/83f4ran
That was Ljuby, and he was amazing. I've always loved his seriousness, that face, the deadpan expression with just a flair of melancholia, as if he really hated to be on court and was somehow forced to go for it. A wonderful player with grace and a poetic quality you seldom find among the very top guys.—Bruno
This is also one of the nice things about tennis fandom: One man’s fairly dull-looking player is another’s “deadpan expression with just a flair of melancholia,” and a “wonderful player with grace and a poetic quality.”
I didn't see all of that myself when Ljubicic played, but now I can. Thanks, Bruno.
The Tignor also picked Nole in AO & Miami but still, Nole won. The Tignor curse is only a myth.—Alejandro
Hmm, you may be correct, but I'm going to give it a little more time. You saw I picked Verdasco to make the semis in Monte Carlo, right?