!Doubs by Pete Bodo
Howdy, everyone. I'm just coming to the desk after a pleasant half-hour spent with Patrick Hinton, aka Master Ace, who lives thirty minutes west of here. We perched on a wall outside the Birmingham-Jefferson Civic Center in the bright sunshine on a cool morning. Beyond us, the cherry trees were blooming and twittering birds hopped among their branches; below us, the band and color guard were practicing for the opening ceremony of this, the final day of the USA vs. Switzerland Davis Cup tie.
If you set out to create the "perfect tennis fan," a guy or woman who loves the game and all its players above any of its players, MA is your man. Did we make a great choice for our Posters of the Year or what? It was a pleasure to finally meet him in person.
Of course, we talked Davis Cup, and both of us agreed that yesterday was not a great day to be Yves Allegro. That raises an interesting point about doubles. We always hear players - especially top singles players for whom doubles is a pleasant novelty - say what a welcome change it is to to have a teammate, someone with whom to engage, work, and communicate with on the court. It takes the edge off the intensity of singles, partly because that intensity is insanely concentrated in a single individual, a flesh puppet buffeted by the winds of competition, living with the crushing weight of pressure on shoulders not all that well designed to bear it.
Still. . . Can there be anything worse than conspicuously being the weakest of four players on a tennis court? You feel responsible for the waste of your teammate's best efforts, and when you look across the net you see a double-dose of a modulated, veiled, but very real predatory lust. In singles, you play lousy and at least you have your own space, a fairly large amount of it, on either side of the net. In doubles, the court must look awfully crowded, with your dispirited partner on one side and two opponents on the other.
Space, you don't know how valuable it is until it's gone; you don't know how much it ties in with your sense of comfort and freedom until it's occupied by symbols of your responsibility - in this case, a potent combination of ciphers for your failure to meet your obligations as your endangerment.
There's nowhere to hide. And don't tell me that having a teammate in those terrible moments is an emotional crutch; it's an emotional burden, unlike any known by the singles player. And it's part of the secret glory of doubles, a game that rarely invokes the noun. Fun? Sure. Fast? Sure. Exciting? Sure. But how often do people describe doubles as "glorious"? So never forget that as comforting as it is to have a comrade, throwing in with one also implies a certain amount of responsibility. Great doubles players are the ones who consistently triumph over this demand, and even under the most trying circumstances find a way not to be emotionally and mentally obliterated by it when things aren't going so well.
At the start yesterday, Allegro was clearly struggling with his nerves. His uncertain serve and erratic general play buried the Swiss squad (meaning, Stan Wawrinka) in a deep, two-sets-to-none hole. Slowly, though, and with considerable help from Wawrinka (perhaps best non-doubles playing doubles player on the tour), Allegro loosened up his arm and tightened up his game. Like a gym rat trying to bench press 20-pounds better than his previous personal best, he struggled to push up the bar, to get that oppressive weight as far away from his throat and chest as he could.
And he almost got there. He got just inches from there.
The Swiss team finally had a lead - not break points, not a break - on an American service game for the first time in the match in the eighth game of set three, when they went up 30-15 on Mike Bryan's serve. They made good on the lead, too, earning a break that would hold up and secure the set.
But in doubles as in singles, there's always a cost in tightening up a loose game. You withdraw some, physically and emotionally, to find equilibrium. And that means that while you may cut down on the unforced errors and improve your service percentage, you're still more concerned with avoid destruction than wreaking havoc. Your consistency often comes at the expense of placement, depth or power. In Allegro's case, this was manifest in, among other things, his serve. He sacrificed a degree of speed but, more importantly, service penetration. The lines had not been very good to him, so he stayed away from them. And everyone on court was aware of it.
Fair enough. You need time to work your way back into form, and you hope you can get the job done in time to start playing not just solid or consistent or error-free tennis, but aggressive, confident, stinging tennis. It's a race against the clock. But often - and certainly when you've lost the first two sets in a five-setter - the clock is a pretty formidable enemy, and often the clock wins.
That's how it looked to me yesterday, in the fourth-set tiebreaker. Had the Swiss won it, the match might have become a fierce struggle, with Mike and Bob Bryan fighting that awful feeling that they had let it slip away and Allegro, feeling some wind at his back, dialing his game to its best level. With the fourth set at 6-5 for the USA, Allegro served, and everybody in the arena had to know that this was crunch time. If Allegro could rise to the occasion and take one more critical step toward rehabilitation, the Swiss were in with an excellent chance in the tiebreaker.
There were some tense moments in that game, including one deuce. But Allegro held, and the Swiss team - and bench - must have breathed a collective sigh of relief. And there the match was decided. It was so important a hold game that the Swiss team probably relaxed a bit - not a lot, but enough to make the critical difference. For in the ensuing tiebreaker, Bob Bryan held the first point but then the rock of the Swiss squad, Wawrinka, perhaps still distracted by percolating hope and relief, lost both of his service points. With the pressure momentarily alleviated, the Swiss took their proverbial eye off the ball.
If you wanted to get all philosophical about it, you could even say that the most costly game for the Swiss team was the one Allegro won to send the match into a tiebreaker.
Now, in all fairness, I must say that the Swiss did not really agree with this analysis. I asked Wawrinka if the team didn't experience a flickering letdown after that critical hold, and he said: "No, we try to be focused on the tiebreaker and go for it."
But that's my story - and I'm sticking to it.
Enjoy the final day of another Davis Cup weeks, folks. I'll be back with y'all on Monday.