The Entitled Generation

The other day, the International Herald Tribune's Chris Clarey wrote a nice piece declaring the current French Open a vehicle for the celebration of Old World success. I would refine that even further, and suggest that thus far - as TennisWorld awaits another Roger Federer-Rafael Nadal championship showdown - the tournament also belongs to the women players. So later today, I'll be checking out Jelena Jankovic's quarterfinal opponent, Carla Suarez Navarro, a fresh face smiling out of the quarterfinal bracket.

Hello, world!

I get the feeling that the women's game is catching fire, and not like it caught fire last time, which was more of an example of marketing pyromania than an authentic blaze ignited by natural causes - a lightning strike, a carelessly discarded cigarette, a bad case of tennis fever gripping families, and young girls, all across the global chessboard, taking up rackets for armaments.

I sometimes think of the current, ruling generation of multiple Grand Slam champions - Justine Henin, Kim Clijsters (remember her?), the Williams sisters, Maria Sharapova, perhaps even Svetlana Kuznetsova -  as the entitled generation. All of them worked very hard to get where they are (or, in the case of Henin and Clijsters, were), all of them won at least one major and proved her mettle. The statistics don't lie.

This is how women's tennis has always worked: just substitute the generations and names (granted, there's always some overlap) with those of Chris Evert, Martina Navratilova, Tracy Austin, Evonne Goolgong, Virginia Wade, Billie Jean King, and Margaret Court. But the critical difference is that the entitled generation has abandoned the subtle, unspoken but real alliances the top women traditionally made to keep a lid on the game.

The entitled generation carved the WTA Tour up a group of autonomous fiefdoms. Each woman had her kingdom, and ran it as she saw fit. Henin, of course, ran Clijsters off and took over her turf, but that's a different story. In any event, retirement, boredom with the rewards of tennis, injury, easy money - all of them, along with other factors, has over time played a part in weakening each of the fiefdoms,  paving the way for insurgencies that now threaten the order. And the entitled generation is scattered, isolated, and unprepared to defend its collective turf.

The aura of invincibility that once surrounded the Williams sisters has dissappated, and it may have finally vanished here at the French Open. Oh, Venus or Serena are on top of the list of favorites for Wimbledon - no doubt about it. But the natives living under their thumbs are restless, the long knives are out. The question is no longer, Can anyone beat Serena or Venus? It's more like, Venus or Serena should win, but can they?

It's a different world.

Henin and Clijsters won't have to worry about fending off upstarts; they're long gone. Sharapova's case is interesting; her dedication and work-ethic are unquestioned, but she doesn't play her A game consistently enough to dominate, and may not be able to, even if she did. Kuznetsova? Who the hail knows? She's in the Roland Garros quarters; she could win the event or lose to her next opponent (Kaia Kanepi), two-and-oh, and start bawling in the press room.

Meanwhile, Ana Ivanovic and Jelena Jankovic are leading a rebellion that threatens to spread and take down all the feifdoms. I might be wrong, but I just sense that a literal pile of women - players like Vera Zvonareva, Dinara Safina, Victoria Azarenka, Agnes Savay -  are raising the median level of play on the women's tour to unprecedented heights - heights that might not only destroy the crumbling order faster than we anticipate, but prevent a new ruling generation from continuing the tradition of flat-out domination. I see a lot of gifted women players in the upper reaches of the rankings - I seen nobody who seems capable of dominating.

In fact, the last players who seemed as if they might dominate the game were the Williams sisters, and one or the other of them has been playing Grand Slam events since 1997. That's a long time ago. Henin made a heroic effort, transforming herself into a dominant,  Hall-of-Fame champion, and Sharapova took her own game to the max, to advance the generational tradition.  But the long-awaited era of depth in the women's game - not just depth at the top (which the entitled generation not only had, but at times seemed to cultivate, as it divvied up the turf), but depth throughout the Top 15 or 20, may be upon us.

This, in a way, would be a just result. The other day, I had one of those eye-opening conversations that made me challenge one of my own long-held assumptions about the game. I had always bought into the received wisdom regarding the young age (relative to the men) at which women are capable of competing for major titles (think Tracy Austin, Monica Seles, Jennifer Capriati et al). Let's call it 16. It was, the argument went, because women matured faster, physiologically. That means they're able to compete sooner against older women, because the difference in strength, power and stamina is less pronounced than among men. I still believe that's true - not as a matter of opinion, but fact. Yet on a shared ride with Louise Pleming, the Aussie former player and Jr. Fed Cup honchette, she made a point that I hadn't even considered.

"The average 14 or 15 year-old girl is much more inclined to work hard and have herself organized than a boy of the same age," Louise said. "It's hard to get the boys to focus, sometimes, on all the details and the daily effort."

This may not have been an earth-shattering revelation, but it expressed simply and clearly something that has largely been ignored in the  discussion of female prodigy, or overshadowed by the more popular (and still valid) explanation. As soon as Louise said it, the needle on my inner truth detector leaped into the red zone. Now why hadn't I thought of that?

When you add the female capacity for disciplined, targeted effort to the equation, it's hard to see how the tour could not be heading for a promised land of parity, and perhaps even greater depth than the men have because of the limitations of female power. Of course, a unique champion will still be able to dominate; it's just that a select clique no longer will, as it has in the past.

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Beyond that, while trolling through the Comments on my most recent post, I got to thinking about race (and this is not really the time to have a broad discussion on that subject, so keep any Comments relevant to my point), and it seemed to me that the greatest manifestation of our impulse to stereotype is the way Maria Sharapova and Venus/Serena Williams are so often set in apposition to each other - either overtly, or, if not exactly unconsciously, then implicitly. This is done by voices on both sides of the racial divide - if that's the right word.

When you think about it, Maria and Venus and Serena are a lot more alike than they are different - not as personalties (hail, even Venus and Serena aren't alike by that standard) - but as young women shaped by - and shaping - their environment. They have enormous amounts in common, from the challenges of dealing with their respective desires to dominate, the unconventional role played by their parents, the perils of celebrity, the difficulties each of them has with the media, the toll taken by prodigy, their extra-tennis activities. . .

To me, Venus, Serena and Maria are - if anything - to be considered as equals, different manifestations of the same "type", which is prodigy, champion, personage. All of them have been poor sports at times, paragons at others. All of them have much to admire, some to question or criticize. Setting them apart is a kind of lie, a habitual lie, accommodating our desire to stereotype or even satisfy our least admirable, blind urges.

It always seems that Sharapova and the Williamses are perceived less than Yin and Yang than devil and angel (the roles are interchangeable, to suit anyone's prejudices). When we're talking about Maria, why would Venus and Serena be the reflexive point of contrast - and vica versa? Yet it works that way, time and again, and I can't stand it.

Back later - unless the skies once again open up. . .