Do squirrels make you paranoid? As I kid, I was walking home from a friend’s house one day when a squirrel turned around and began to run straight at me. Seeing all that raw, gnawing, hungry, spastic energy careening in my direction almost gave me a heart attack, so I hopped over to the other side of the street. After a few minutes I looked back and saw—I swear it’s true—that my new friend had crossed to my side of the street and was following me. I ran the next 10 blocks back to my house and peeked back out the door to make sure he wasn’t coming up my front walk.
Then, a couple of years ago, I was visiting a friend in Philadelphia when I looked out his living room window and saw a squirrel staring at me, gnawing away on something. He had a definite look in his eye; he didn’t like me. Was it the squirrel I had given the slip all those years ago? The next morning, when I sat down in the same spot for breakfast, he suddenly appeared again, this time gnawing on a bone. A pretty big bone. Who knows, maybe it was a human bone. I switched seats so he couldn’t see me. I’ve never been back to that house.
So you see, I can relate to Robby Ginepri’s shock at finding a squirrel in his path while he was biking this week. Ginepri was so surprised that he fell off the bike, broke his arm, and will now miss the rest of the season. I’m not joking when I say I feel bad for the guy. Ginepri at various points has served as living evidence of how tough tennis can be when things start going south. The former U.S. Open semifinalist is one of the rare athletes who has admitted publicly to fighting depression, and I could see some of that when I watched him play Lleyton Hewitt two years ago in the opening round at Wimbledon. Ginepri got out to an early lead in the first set and was controlling the points. Then something happened, a double fault maybe, and he was finished. It was midway through the first set, but his slumped shoulders said that it was over, all over. He barely won another game. Ginepri had reached maximum fragility. He began every match waiting for something to go wrong, waiting to see the evidence that he couldn’t win, and then believing it. Get better fast, Robby, you've played too much good tennis in the past not to believe it can be done again.
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Triumph and disaster: Those are the famous words of Wimbledon, and there’s some of both every week in pro tennis. While Ginepri is sidelined from one tour, Caroline Wozniacki looks poised to take over the other. She has advanced to the semis in Tokyo; if she wins there and reaches the quarters next week, she’ll pass an idle Serena Williams for the No. 1 spot for the first time in her young career.
I wrote last week that Wozniacki might want to be careful what she wishes for. If she does get to No. 1, her storyline may change drastically, and unfairly, from cute, plucky up-and-comer to undeserving usurper of the top ranking and symbol of all that is dysfunctional in tennis, especially women’s tennis. The questions about whether she’s the “real No. 1” will be sure to follow, questions that drove Dinara Safina around a bend and contributed to her total loss in confidence last year.
Granted, Wozniacki may not make it there next week, but as she says, “there will be other chances.” But let’s nip this line of thinking in the bud anyway: Yes, she would be the real No. 1, and she would deserve it. She would not be the best player in the world; that’s still Serena, who won two majors this year. Being No. 1 is a different achievement. It might not sound glamorous, but it’s an honor nonetheless: Wozniacki would be recognized as the best in the world at her job. In 2010, she’s put her head down, made it through some rough patches, and seems ready to end the season on the same high note that she reached in the spring. It’s not like she can’t play tennis with Serena, either. Last year in Sydney, in their only full match, Wozniacki took her to a third-set tiebreaker.
Even when she was younger, Serena didn't consider trying to be No. 1, or playing to other people’s ideas of a schedule, essential to her job. She and her sister have always been about the Slams, winning when everyone knows it counts, like their hero Pete Sampras—though Pete was big on being No. 1 as well. Now that Serena’s got 13 majors, she’s playing against history rather than the rest of the tour. It’s a drag for fans and tournament directors around the world, but you don’t think Serena would put any stake in how a computer rated her ability, do you?
Wozniacki, pushed along by the appearance fees she can now command, has played a lot of tennis this year. If she hasn’t shown she can win the big events yet, she has shown the resilience of a future champion. The toughness and intelligence below the nice-girl exterior were displayed for most of the two weeks at Flushing. Part of me hopes that she doesn’t become No. 1, for her own sake—it would mess with her natural career trajectory. But a bigger part of me hopes that she does. Unfairly or not, the pressure will be on Wozniacki to live up to that billing, to make something artificial into something real. I would look forward to seeing how she measured up. She might be tougher than she looks.