Okay, the first big results from Rogers Masters is in: Robin Haase has bounced Tomas Berdych. While that's not stop-the-presses-grade news, it's a testament to the strength of the Montreal field. Gee, after LA, Indianapolis and Washington, I'd almost come to believe that the guys in tennis who really matter are Radek Stepanek, Frankie Dancevic, and John Isner. It's not that those guys don't count, but. ..
As I wrote today over at ESPN (just click on the link in the lead story), the US Open Series, despite the best efforts of the USTA, starts today. This underscores one of the important, undeclared developments in the pro game in recent years. With so many of the top players hailing from Europe, South America and Russia, the summer European clay-court events are gaining strength and popularity. And the fact that South American has the players to seed tournaments, but not the economy to host them, only enhances Europe's strength and potential as the new epicenter of international tennis.
Here in the U.S., Indianapolis seems a summer hard-court event of towering importance and relevance; the event has a rich history - written, not co-incidentally, mostly by the American who pretty much ruled the game, with a little help from the Aussies, until very recently. But the reality for less sentimental - or less Ameri-centric - folks may be different.
Indianapolis offered more prize money than Umag (the Croatian Open, played on clay the same week as Indianapolis), $525,000 vs. $487,000, yet if you averaged the ranking of the top 5 seeds at Umag and Indianapolis, you get, respectively, No. 9 (Umag) and No. 24. This trend is unlikely to change, unless a new Sampras-generation emerges in the U.S. overnight, and absolutely nobody is predicting that will happen. For the first time, we are starting to see the real-world effects of the changing geopolitics in tennis. It seems like where the game is played (as well as how the game is played) is actually a liquid thing, shaped (to some degree) by the players themselves. It's something we never thought much about, because the current, crumbling status quo is the original one.
The only tennis institutions that appear safe from the winds of change, or history, are the Grand Slams. But who knows, perhaps one day the word "Umag" will represent tennis at its best and most accomplished, and it will be uttered in the same reverential tone and hushed whispers as Forest Hills, Kooyong, Wimbledon or Flushing Meadow once were. The biggest impediment to that happening is tradition. Nobody thus far has minded a little tinkering with the conventional order, but that's a pretty common strategy employed by those with a stake in that order. But the bottom line is still that there never has been a good, reality-based reason for messing around with the conventional order, although idealists periodically demand a major for Latin America, or Labrador, or Greenland, based on some intellectual notion of "fairness."
All this change is particularly bad news for the USTA, because it undermines all of that institution's well thought-out, cleverly marketed and properly motivated attempts to make the US Open Series an important entity. As a game-transforming entity, the US Open Series may be a day late and a dollar short. The basic idea behind the Series is that it links the summer tournaments to the US Open in a way that automatically enhances the meaning, relevance and prestige of the events, as well as the significance of the grand finale in Flushing Meadow. I believe this to be true, and the idea was brilliant. I believe that the status of Roland Garros has only swelled with the emergence of a de facto, April through May, Roland Garros Series.
But the critical difference seems that most of the world - or at least those inhabitants of the planet who can actually play on clay - flocked to the RG Series. What the top players in the world are doing during the US Open Series is fleeing the other way - at least until it's time to play the two summer Masters events (Canadian Open and Cincinnati), a matter in which they have little choice because the Masters Series events are mandatory, and critical to the rankings race. Remember that treacly poster from the 1960's, What If They Gave a War and Nobody Came ? Tennis has its over version: What if they gave a Grand Slam Series and Nobody Came?
All of this suggests that in tennis we may be witnessing something as potentially paradigm-altering as the separation of the land mass into continents, or global warming. What we may have now is a powerful RG Series and a nascent Post-RG Series. Or, if you prefer, an budding April to August clay-court season, interrupted only by the 800-pound gorilla in tennis, Wimbledon, which don't need no stinkin' Wimbledon Series - or anything else - to enhance its status. It's only a matter of time before the changing geopolitics are reflected in the calendar. Tennis, after all, is a sport more directly driven by free-market sensibilities than any other major one. How else can a perfectly successful event like the Acura Classic be left to die, while the tour moves on to the greener if significantly more carbon-bombarded pastures of China?
That notion is on display today. Instead of expanding in the two years it has been around, the US Open Series seems to be shrinking - diminishing in prestige and importance. It might be different if Rafael Nadal had played, oh, Los Angeles, or Federer had entered Washington, a wonderful tournament in a great facility that, to hard-eyed realists as well as cynics, is all about Andy Roddick. Perhaps a little too much about Andy Roddick. And let's face it: Federer and Nadal mean more to Montreal, or Cincinnati, than Roddick and Blake do to Monte Carlo or Hamburg, for very simple reason: TMF and Jet Boy can win those events, while it's unlikely that Andy or James can do the same. In other words, the Roland Garros Series can live without Roddick a lot more happily than the US Open Series can live without TMF.
In light of all this, it was encouraging to see the emergence of John Isner in Washington last week.That debut was enough to make you think that somebody had inadvertently left a door open, and the ghost of the American tennis past came blowing in. The kid is big (6-10), like Americans are supposed to be (although I understand that the world's tallest men now are the Dutch; what's that about bad news coming in bunches?). He's got that collegiate enthusiasm and exuberance that is utterly lacking in so many of Europe's somber, diligent, cradle-to-grave professionals, and he can serve.
Boy can he serve.
I'll be part of a conference call with this young tree on Wednesday and will blog it for you. But meanwhile, I was gabbing with the ATP Tour's Greg Sharko today and he shared some pretty formidable statistics with me. Isner clubbed 144 aces, which is the most ever (or since the ATP has kept records) in a non-Grand Slam event. In fact, there have been only seven more prolific performances in any level event, starting with Goran Ivanisevic's all-time ace record of 212, established at Wimbledon in 2001.
You want to know the others? Care to guess? I'll post them at midnight.