!85171496 by Pete Bodo
Howdy, everyone. Easy Ed McGrogan has been crunching some numbers and reviewing results with and eye on the Elite Eight who will qualify for London. So far, five have made the cut - the winners of the 2008 Grand Slam events, plus Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray. Among those still in the race, Andy Roddick enjoys an enormous edge over the likes of Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, Nikolay Davydenko and Gilles Simon, mainly because he's got a significant points lead but also is defending far fewer points than even his closest rival (Tsonga).
I've always liked the idea of a year-end tour championships, even though the concept grates and grinds as it bumps up against the bulletproof idea that tennis is all about the Grand Slams. Of course, I go back to what I think of as the glory days of the YEC - the Masters event promoted at various times by corporate bigs like Nabisco and Volvo. Those were heady days indeed at Madison Square Garden, then and perhaps still the epicenter for world media. It was a real setback for tennis when the Masters slinked out of the Garden, although the good burghers in Frankfurt, Hannover, or Lisbon might disagree.
The YEC was held in New York for a dozen years, ending in 1989, and it produced a trove of unforgettable matches - and controversies. Remember that famous Ivan Lendl tanking brouhaha of 1980? It appeared at the time that after losing a tight first set to Jimmy Connors, 7-6, Lendl threw in the towel and took the second set write off, 1-6. This assured Lendl of meeting outlier Gene Mayer rather than Bjorn Borg in the semifinals. All went according to the alleged plan; Lendl crushed Mayer in the semis. But it was all for naught anyway (except financially), as Borg then won the final in straight sets, tossing Lendl just eight games (it was a best-of-five match, played on fast indoor carpet).
How about the time Brad Gilbert upset John McEnroe (first round of 1985, when the 16-player field played single elimination), and New York's finest went on an extended tirade roughly translating to: Do you know who I am? How dare you, you schmuck!?
Back then, the Masters was a year-end championships that wasn't even played in the same year whose champion it was intended to crown. Those were the days when the Australian Open had fallen upon hard times. TennisAustralia wasn't sure if it wanted the event to be the first major of the year or the last. It was played at times in December, and at times in January. That didn't make much difference, because very few top players bothered to enter anyway. Thus, the January post-holiday time slot (almost exactly the same niche occupied by today's grown-up Australian Open) was ideal for presenting a tennis tournament in a northeastern North American city. It reminded people of summer, and Wimbledon. It pointed forward toward the new year. It was an enormous success.
In some ways, the YEC had more credibility then. Instead of featuring exhausted, cranky, injured players struggling to the finish line of one year, it was the first big tournament of the new year, with all the competitors well-rested and eager to get rolling, and the fans itching to get a taste of the game after consuming too much egg nog and fruitcake, and spending too much time indoors. In effect, the YEC was the first major (if you want to use the word loosely) of the year in response to the vacuum created when the foot-dragging Aussies failed to keep up with the pace of a growing game.
By contast, today's YEC seems to be a competitor with the Grand Slam events, or a junior partner working overtime to be accepted by them. And it consistently fails to get the traction i that effort. You can argue head-to-heads, or the degree-of-difficulty built into round robin events, until you're blue in the face. The bottom line is that the YEC feels like a slightly redundant event. Who needs it? Let's get it over with - we've already had the Grand Slam events, the questions have been answered, the players clearly don't target this event the way they do the majors. So can we move on, please? Bring on the Aussie Open.
Perhaps it will be different, now that the ATP Tour has seen the light and returned to London: As much as we love the global nature of the game, and ought to take care of all the stakeholders, the YEC must be played in a place where tennis is high on the radar and has enormous drawing power - where there's no shortage of fans willing and able to pay good money, their own money, to buy tickets and fill a stadium. Where a strong media presence is guaranteed.
Awarding the championships to an emerging market, like China, makes me think of the current Nobel Peace prize controversy. Do you drop such a big plum on someone because you hope it will move your interests forward, or do you award it on the basis of merit, leavened with a good dose of common sense rather than wishful thinking? And let's not forget that one of the main reasons the YEC has bounced around and landed in some unlikely places is money, which is only a good reason when all other things are equal.
All this week and part of next, I'll be taking a look at the YECs of the past as we gradually ramp up to London. Feel free to use this as a Your Call post.