Jesse Levine, newly turned professional and in the US Open on a wild card, played his first professional match at the US Open today. The good news is that he had the honor of playing on a show court, The Grandstand. The bad news is that Levine had to play Nikolay Davydenko - known around these parts as Kolya-the-No-Longer-Obscure. So it was like tossing puppy into a shark tank, and if you were a betting man you wouldn't go near it with a 10-foot Pole from Sopot.
A native of Ottawa, Canada, Levine moved to Boca Raton, Fla., at 13; he played at the University of Florida but decided not to return for his senior year. Jesse-love was in full flower on this ideal morning for tennis, and the grandstand had plenty of room for it. Nick Bollettieri came out to watch his sometime protege, and the player guest box behind and to the left of the umpire was populated by a fair number of older men with silver hair in old-school blue-and-yellow pastel tennis clothes, looking very Boca (Raton, not the Boca del Vista of Seinfeld fame, although it's pretty close to the same thing). I couldn't quite make out the writing on one of the elderly gents' trucker caps, but I think said "Zocor."
A few friends had a "Go Jesse" sign, and at times, a comely dark-haired girl led a chant of "We love you, Jesse!" Pressed on the matter later, Jesse sheepishly admitted, "That was my girlfriend and her friend." During the match, he said, he would periodically hear a comment from the stands, covertly glance over, and realize it was somebody he knew. Four UF teammates had flown up just this morning (they couldn't get a flight the previous night) to support him. It was a tough ask.
Levine, you may remember, was the kid who got that "I must be dreaming" phone call a few weeks ago, inviting him to visit Dubai and practice for two weeks with Roger Federer. In fact, when Levine got that call, he thought it was a prank, played by a teammate. He recalled it yesterday, after losing to Davydenko 4-0-1.
"It was like, 'Roger is looking for guy to practice with, in Dubai.'"
"I was like, 'Very funny. Okay, who is this?'"
"He said, 'Oliver (van Lindonk, an IMG agent, who helps manage Federer)'"
"Oh, sorry!"
Levine quickly decided he didn't really need to play Indianapolis and Vancouver, and flew to Dubai along with one of his coaches from UF, Jeremy Bayon. Roger put him up in a five-star hotel, although in Dubai, home of the seven-star Burj al-Arab hotel, that's the equivalent of a dreary hostel, loaded with stringy-haired German druggies looking to steal your backpack. Thankfully, the place had firm mattresses, because each evening Levine dragged himself back from three and four hour hitting sessions with Roger and promptly fell into bed, unable - and unwilling - to move. "It would have been nice to go sightseeing," he said. "But I was too tired."
When I heard about Federer hiring the lefty Levine, I assumed, like most everyone else, that this was a statement that he was taking Rafael Nadal's threat to his supremacy seriously enough to hire a Rafa doppelganger to beat up on, just to stay dialed in on leftys and maybe for a few perverse cheap thrills. Oddly, though, Levine plays nothing like Nadal, apart from using a two-handed backhand. In fact, Levine, who is more quick than muscular, likes to attack and end points up at the net. Still. . .
"Sometimes, if I went for a big forehand and my follow through carried the racket all the way up and around, Roger would say, "Hey, that looks just like Rafa!'" I found the visual on this highly amusing. Maybe we shouldn't make this rivalry out to be such a desperate, psychically monstrous pas de deux. Hail, maybe Roger got Levine over to Dubai because he misses Rafa, and that, crazy bolo-throwing Mallorcan cowboy forehand follow-through. Stranger things have happened.
Still, low-key as it was, The Mighty Fed, Levine told us, did prefer to start practice with a rally drill, Levine forehand to Federer backhands. Levine was most impressed with TMF's work ethic - it seems Federer brought a whole bunch of guys in to serve as his punching bags. Because of the heat, practice didn't even start until around 5 PM, and Levine quickly learned to bring two pairs of shoes. "After the second hour of practice, I could actually hear my shoes going squish-squish when I walked."
Federer was actually running a four-man training camp: the other, beside Levine, were Yves Allegro, TMF's frequent doubles partner, and another journeyman pro. "I think he brought a lot of guys because one time, he brought his one guy out and he was just dying, so he decided to have a whole crew because he practices for so long, and it's so rough out there."
Hmmm. . . I'm somewhat surprised by this, because I always had a hard time imagining Federer grunting and grinding his way through a practice; his game seems so. . . easy, and light, in the way that someone with flawless technique (in anything) and an extra-gear appears light. But there it is - TMF is a practice animal, chewing up journeymen by the four-pack and leaving nothing but little bits of bone and gristle in a big pool of sweat. Levine has played and practiced in Florida in August; he still says, "I never sweated as much as I did over there."
Levine is a personable kid, who might have been lifted right out of a 1950s family sitcom, a la Leave it to Beaver. He's slightly built, and wears his hear in a big wave across his temple, and his ears stick out a little. He's got an easy laugh and a twinkle in his eye. Somebody asked Levine if TMF made him wear those Nadal signature Man-pris (variation on Capris). He said no, but he had asked Federer why he wasn't sporting those Nike Capris, and TMF told him, "I wore them once and got made fun of, so I'm never wearing them again."
Levine had lunch with TMF twice during his sojourn in Dubai, and he was surprised by the champion's modesty and consideration, on and off the court. They talked hockey a bit, and TMF gave Levine tips on his game; at the end of a practice point, Federer would tell Levine he should have played this shot instead of that, or gone here rather than there with a certain ball. "I wasn't expecting that at all," Levine confessed. "I thought I was there to do whatever he wanted and to focus totally on his game."
The men played just two sets in the two-week period, each of them won by TMF 6-4. The thing that most impressed Levine was Federer's basic level of play: "We'd set off rallying and I felt like anytime he could step it up to another level, like he was holding it back. We'd be in a rally and all of a sudden he would just pull the trigger, just like that, any time he wanted."
