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by Pete Bodo
This afternoon, I attended a luncheon given by at the New York headquarters of the international Paul/Weiss law firm, where John P. McEnroe was a partner for over 25 years and today is "of counsel" (I think that means he's retired). The firm hosted a reading and book signing session by Patrick McEnroe, from his newly published book, Hardcourt Confidential: Tales from Twenty Years in the Pro Tennis Trenches. As many of you know, I was Patrick's co-author.
Over the coming days, I'll be cherry-picking portions of the book because of their relevance to Wimbledon - about which Pat has quite a bit to say. Yesterday, Pat taped a segment for the Charlie Roseshow, and next Tuesday he's going to be on theImus show; they're just part of his extensive promotional tour. Many people don't know it, but Patrick worked as a sportscaster for Imus years ago, when he was fresh off the tour. He ended up quitting - on air. He just took off the headphones and up and walked out. I understand Imus, who's not exactly known for his sensitivity, is miffed that in his book, Pat called Imus's wife a "pain in the *ss." So we could have some fireworks in store. Pat will be doing that show from Wimbledon, as he leaves for London on Friday.
Here's a snippet from Pat's chapter on Wimbledon:
!Cover.HardcourtConfidential On the first day of Wimbledon, I always make it a point to get out hours ahead of our broadcast time, just to stroll around, breathe in the atmosphere, and check the lay of the land.
I get there before the nets are up. The lime-green courts look pristine, especially against those green-black backstops and dark, empty seats. No matter how often I’ve done it, I always feel a little bit like I did on my first trip to Yankee stadium – and never moreso than when I walk through that dark little tunnel leading out to Centre Court, toward that gorgeous turf, tennis’s most significant quarter-acre, bathed in the growing sunlight.
Those first mornings I go up to the roof of the broadcast center where I do a lot of my work. The BC is a huge brick building on the perimeter of the club, overlooking Court 18 and other field courts stretching away toward the No. 1 Court stadium. I watch the grounds crew as they fiddle with the various courtside fixtures, the netposts, umpire's chair, and fences and chalk lines.
But mainly, I’m waiting for the guys with the big stick. The one I call the Wimbledon pole.
When they arrive, the men set up the eight or ten foot-tall pole with a tennis ball balanced on top. One of them operates a little triggering mechanism, and the ball drops to the turf. Then they measure the height of the bounce. It’s pretty comical – just another Rube Goldberg feature of Wimbledon. Before the main scoreboard went electronic (and that wasn’t so long ago), they actually had a person running around like a mouse on a narrow passageway inside the scoreboard itself, manually (and frantically, over the first few days) flipping wooden numbers to update the scores for the spectators looking up from the walkway below.
During my playing career, I had a little ritual; I liked to bounce the ball three times before my first serve, and two times before my second. At Wimbledon, I wouldn’t bounce it as much as have to throw it at the ground, just to make it rebound high enough off the spongy surface to reach my hand. In fact, on at least one occasion I decided not to bounce the ball anymore at all. It was a frustrating waste of energy.
These days, though, when the bounce-testers drop the ball off the big stick, it bounces about waist high, even with no force behind it. This change may have saved Wimbledon, which just about fifteen years ago stood in danger of becoming an anachronism – an arcane tennis ritual having no real relation to the contemporary game. Advances in racket technology and a generation of gifted, hard-serving attacking players led by Pete Sampras threatened to turn grass-court tennis into something like farce – a serving contest, with rallies as rare as bluebird skies over chronically drizzly London.
Who can forget matches like the Wimbledon semifinal Stefan Edberg lost to Michael Stich in 1991? There was only one break of serve in the entire match, and it was Stich who was broken; yet he went on to win the match, 4-6,7-6,7-6,7-6. . .
Some thought that the game on grass was passé, but apparently all those guys in the green-and-purple AEC ties never got the memo. Two of the other four majors (the Australian and US Opens) had moved to new venues in response to the increased demand for relevance (as well as seats) in the Open era. Significantly, both had abandoned the private club, and turned away from grass in favor of slower, more common and versatile hard courts. The British wouldn’t dream of leaving Wimbledon, the AEC wouldn’t think of abandoning grass, and on top of all that the players still were obliged to wear predominantly. Serves them right.
But time and again, the AEC has shown an amazing ability to respond to the challenges of the rapidly moving Open era without throwing out the baby of tradition with the bathwater. And what steps the AEC took to tweak their tournament were always examined from all points-of-view, mulled over, analyzed, and thought-out with patience that could easily be mistaken for reluctance. Decision making at Wimbledon, whether it concerned the composition of the courts, the new Millenium building, or the retractable roof, breathed new meaning into the words, due diligence. The one word you’d never, ever associate with the Lords of Wimbledon is “panic.”
So, just as the “grass is dead” movement reached a fevered pitch, the tournament was already considering - and making - the changes that would radically transform Wimbledon’s lawns, and the way tennis is played on them. The club is pretty coy about this, having admitted publicly only to ripping out the mixed strains of grass in favor of 100 per cent perennial rye grass (a hardier, more durable grass) starting in 2001. But Wimbledon veterans, including most players, think the balls are slower as well. And many say that the courts are firmer and harder than ever before.
Hence, the waist-high bounce off the Wimbledon pole.
Over the coming days, we'll be looking ahead to Wimbledon. On Friday, I'll have some thoughts on the men's draw, and Bobby Chintapalli will be picking highlight WTA matches on the women's side.
I see that Kim Clijsters laid a one-and-one pasting on her talented countrywoman, Yanina Wickmayer, today at Eastbourne. I'd say that Justine Henin's oft-affirmed ambition to add at least one Wimbledon title to her collection is a pretty daunting task when you consider that in the past 9 years, one or the other of the Williams sisters, Venus and Serena, has taken the title a whopping seven times. Henin has her work cut out for her. And so does Clijsters.