TT2: The Romanian B-Boy

We don't need to beat the theme to death, but I have a few more thoughts on the heels of yesterday's intriguing discussion about one-handed vs. two-handed backhands. I went back and checked the rankings and found that in the first year that the ATP computer issued "official" rankings (1978), only four of the Top 10 (but two of those were Jimmy Connors and Bjorn Borg) were two-handed backhanders. On the women's side, in 1976 (second year of official rankings) Chris Evert was the only two-handed player.

So much for the theory that the "little ladies" need the extra power generated by the two-hander; if anything, the men flocked to it first. Of course, you could argue that Evert dominated partly because the two-hander had not yet leveled the playing field among women (or leveled the upper echelon of the playing field), but that's up to you.

In reading through yesterday and today's comments at Terra Tennista, Ray Stonada weighed in with this gem:

I'm glad that Ray qualified his admiration for the one-handed, topspin backhand, although watching Ilie Nastase hit it was indeed a sight to behold: great shoulder turn, compact take-back, fairly tight, close swing - it was very different from the "long" stroke so popular today (think Kuerten, Gasquet, or - if you're old school - Vilas or Teltscher, both backhand masters). The thing about Nastase (since someone asked), is that nobody - not even The Mighty Fed, in my book - ever swung a racquet so naturally, as if really were just a part of his arm. I think of TMF as smooth- as smooth as Nastase. But the Romanian B-boy had a feline, liquid quality that no player I've ever watched can match.

Nastase was the tennis equivalent of a Brazilian soccer star; he moved beautifully and deceptively, he had elastic limbs and a marvelous "touch". He had ever shot in the book, and the temerity to go for any of them, at any time. His two signature shots, to me, were the backhand drop volley and the backhand topspin lob hit on the run (in other words, instead of a down-the-line or crosscourt passing shot). Nastase, by the way, was a French Open champion, and if you think Goran Ivanisevic and Marat Safin are nutty (but in a good way), Nastase was such a flake that his mentor and doubles partner Ion Tiriac once said, "Nastase does not have a brain, he has a little bird flying around in his head."

Nasty offended scores of people with his meltdowns - a cross between McEnroe and Connors-esque vulgarity and bizarre, neurotic lapses into paranoia and/or delusions of persecution. At the same time, at a moment's notice he would shrug and mutter, giving up the battle, with a facial expression as simple and touching as you might find on the face of a confused or chastised child.

I loved the guy, partly because he didn't have a pretentious or presumptuous bone in his body. If he saw you in a hotel lobby or in the streets of New York (which happened quite often as we once lived in the same neighborhood), he would get all excited: "Bodo, Bodo, what you doing here (as if you were supposed to be in Kuala Lampur), what do you think about [insert name of top player]? I heard he left his wife etc. etc. . ." The guy simply made anyone who knew him feel like an equal, and you couldn't help but feel a little giddy and ready for anything in his company. And if you looked him in the eye (I made a practice out of doing this, just for the hail of it) and said something like, "Nasty, you are the greatest tennis player God ever put on this earth!" he would get all discombobulated (always fun!) and shy, then shrug and start issuing disclaimers. Happened every time.

But anyway. . . as much as Nasty and TMF's one-handed backhand were things of beauty, I have more recently been drawn to the two-hander as a stroke to appreciate, even on aesthetic grounds. Somehow, the one-hander, even in the best of hands, leaves that other limb dangling and a little too removed from the action. There's something about the nicely struck two-handed backhand - think Safin on his best day - that is really integrated and lovely in a minimalist sort of way. It's like the hammer-throw in track, or the well-executed swing of a baseball bat. It looks more "whole" to me than the one-handed backhand, and especially moreso than one of those big wind-up, sweeping low-to-high, long backswing backhands that looks like a the player is smacking someone on the lips with the back of his hand.

I suppose it's all a matter of taste - and that's mine.