The Golden Clay

Well, Pete Sampras tagged Petr Korda in his Outback Champions Series  debut last night, and I've had emails from a bunch of reporters who turned up in Boston last night, from Bud Collins to Matt Cronin to Erik Siklos, the radio voice of Hungarian tennis (of all things!). Looks like El Pistolero is making that pop-pop, bang-bang sound again. . .  One-and-two over Korda last night is a pretty solid result, and it reminds me to share something Pete had told me the other day in Boston.

He said he finally took the plunge and went to a slightly larger-headed racquet, going to the Wilson N-Code Six-One 95 (sq. inch).  You'll remember, his former Wilson model probably had the smallest surface area used by a touring pro, and he resisted upgrading his equipment for most of his career. Roger Federer followed in Sampras's footsteps; he uses a [K]Six-One Tour (90 sq. inch), which is a lot like the last racquet Pete used on the main tour.

Two tangential comments: Why would a racquet manufacturer name a sexy thing like a tennis racquet the N-Code Six-One 95, or the [K] Six-One? That sounds more like something you'd read on the label on the bottle of Federer's Part I urine sample from Wimbledon, doesn't it?  What happened to those good old-fashioned names like The Predator, the Dominator, the Butt-Kick Stick? I also think these guys take a little pride in using racquets with small heads; its a little like driving a stick shift instead of an automatic, or being a longboard surfer. The not-so-subtle message is:  I don't need no stinkin' lollipop racquet; it ain't about the equipment, dude!

Anyway, Pete told me that he finally took the plunge and went to a 95 sq. inch racquet, which is all of five square inches larger than the last one he used on tour and the current Federer wand of choice. He felt comfortable  making the switch, he said, because of the new Luxilon strings (which he also uses). "The trouble for me when I was playing on the tour was that I liked gut, and I found I just didn't have enough control when I tried bigger racquets. But I found these Luxilon strings, and when I mix them with gut, I get a great combination of power and control, even with the 95-inch racquet."

In this, Pete was echoing what Andy Roddick had said about the Luxilon strings a few months ago, citing James Blake as a prime example of a player who really benefited from the new strings, which apparently allow you to take big cuts, yet still keep the ball from flying out. In fact, after last night's match, Pete told the press: "I wish I'd had them (the Luxilon strings) when I was trying to win the French. I'm not as quick now, but I'm hitting the ball great."

I mentioned yesterday that Pete won the Italian Open in 1994, and made no bones about why:  the nature of the clay in Italy, combined with a hotter and drier climate than you find in Paris, provide a more level playing field for attacking player in their classic confrontation with grinders and backcourters. In fact, the guy he tooled in that Rome final was another aggressive player, Boris Becker.  As I wrote in my ESPN post yesterday, the Italian Open is the Almost Major - an event with a rich and distinguished history that gets sandwiched into a crowded schedule on which every event is overshadowed by the French Open. Yet it has produced a more satisfying and appealing spectrum of champions than any other event - Major or minor.

The winners in Italy include Rafael Nadal, Andre Agassi, Gustavo Kuerten, Juan Carlos Ferrero, Sampras, Alberto Mancini, Magnus Norman Yannick Noah, Vitas Gerulaitis, Andres Gomez, John Newcombe. . . This tournament may have the most diverse roll of champions of any event, yet almost always by proven champions. There are very few One Almost-Major Wonders (Felix Mantilla does pop to mind). The Italian has been won by players who are not just good, or good on clay, but also more interesting than some of their more successful contemporaries. Maybe this is an accident, but I doubt it. A lot of the usual grinder suspects bite the golden dust of Rome (for the clay at the Italian Open is of a lighter, brighter variety than  the brick-dust you find in Monte Carlo, or Paris). That's okay, the grinders have plenty of other places where they can bore the Rolexes off the smart folks in the courtside boxes.

I haven't been to Rome in some years, and I'm glad to report that Steve Tignor will be there next week, posting his thoughts on the event at his blog. I understand that things have changed - how long could they have gone on playing in the Foro Italico, an ancient, small amphitheater carved into a hill, presided over by enormous, Mussolini-era marble statues of naked athlete-warriors?  But I'm sure it's still warm and sunny in every aspect - as you would expect from an event in Italy, and that the fans are every bit as expressive and enthusiastic - as you would expect from an event in Italy.

I saw some brilliant tennis and some wild and wacky things at the Italian Open, like the time they pelted Jose Higueras with coins and choruses of the chant, Buffone, Buffone, Buffone! His crime? Taking the game to the flamboyant and wildly popular Italian player, Adriano Panatta. But beyond that, Higueras was one of the dominant grinders of his era, and Italians have very little patience for grinders. These are a people to whom style matters.

Roland Garros is the World Championships on Clay, there's no doubt about it. But the Almost Major is in most ways the best and most compelling of the clay-court events. In that sense, it represents both wasted opportunity and reflects some of the critical failings of the early Open era and the Lords of Tennis. Remember, though, that those "Lords" actually were a loose collection of warlords, outlaws, and backstabbing, competitive entrepreneurs, forming and dissolving ever-shifting alliances, chasing the money, working around, and sometimes with, the usual assortment of ITF establishment stiffs who controlled the "official" game and administered it with zero entrepeneurial vision.

The brief against the Lords is simple: They failed to take full advantage of what would  ultimately emerge as the fundamental source of tennis's appeal: the international nature of the game and the diversity of its events. Any "national championship" -  like the Italian Open - is a precious resource. There's just a ring to that title. And let's not forget that the four majors are, in fact, the respective national championships of the most high-powered tennis nations on earth (Australia, France, England, USA).

So it has alway seemed to me that the tour could have fully exploited the resource of the national championships that fall under the umbrella of the ITF by building the tour around those national championships - especially in an era when you didn't have to be of a nation to play its national championship. It would be a better and more understandable tour if the Masters Series consisted of, say, the 10 most important national championships. That approach would also have given, say, the Argentina Open or Swiss Open, a better - and potentially more marketable - seat at the big table.

Of course, the Italian Open is a Masters Series event, but so is Cincinnati, the Rogers Cup, and Key Biscayne. BTW, do you know that the Rogers Cup is actually the Canadian national championships?

In my ideal scenario, the tour would be built around the Grand Slams and a subordinate schedule of national championships that were not just recognized as such, but promoted and fully exploited, in marketing terms, as such. The strength of tennis is its global reach and diversity, yet even as that reach grows longer and it's diversity deeper, there seems to be little attention paid to how best to convey those strengths to the public.