Unstuck in Time

[Another of the TennisWorld Literary All-Stars has stepped up to write a guest post. Man, this is becoming TW's very own version of a Prose Slam! Here are some thoughts on time travel and Robby Ginepri from world renowned host and author Andrew Friedman]

Though I hadn’t seen him play in the first two rounds, Robby Ginepri was very much on my mind Labor Day Sunday, when the third round of the bottom half of the men’s draw was contested.  When I ducked out of Venus Williams’ super-rout of Anna Ivanovic after the first set, I asked everybody I passed in the corridors, “Do you know if Ginepri is on yet?”

For the most part, this met with quizzical looks, which I guess makes sense.  I mean, who’s following Robby Ginepri these days, anyway?

Fair point, but did you happen to notice the scorelines of his first two matches?  He didn’t give up more than three games in any of six sets.

I was wondering if maybe Ginepri had become, like the hero of Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five, "unstuck in time."  Did Ginepri, too, travel  back to 2005, mentally and in some ways physically -  back to the days when he made a run to the US Open semis?  I’ve long believed that a player returning to the site of past success can conjure a special brand of magic, imbuing himself with a confidence not seen in years.  Is it just the surface and conditions that are responsible for the fact that Andy Murray’s only two titles have come at San Jose, or that Daniela Hantucova’s have come at Indian Wells, five years apart?

I’m paraphrasing here, but when people were clamoring for Pete Sampras’ resignation before the 2002 US Open, he said something to the effect of, “People need to remember what I’ve done on this court.”  Was he just talking about how fast the ball comes off the concrete at Ashe stadium, or the now-it’s-summer-now-it’s-fall weather?  I think not.

Anyway, back to Ginepri.  If he would have won yesterday, he would have beein in the Round of 16 without having won three consecutive matches in the whole of 2007 up to this point. So I was ready to back him as a man out of time - unstuck in time.  Would he be able to bother Rafael Nadal in a late-round meeting?   Probably not.  But then, who would’ve thought he could have taken Agassi to five sets in their semi here just twenty-four months ago?

So, with thoughts of a post-match interview on the subject of Tennis Time Travel firmly in my mind, I found my way over to Armstrong where I joined Robby in the third set and watched him win it to go up two sets to one over Stanislas Wawrinka.  As he clenched his fist in quiet celebration, I thought for sure he’d take the next set, too, and move into the fourth round.

But the funniest thing happened in the forth set: when it mattered most: it was Wawrinka, not Ginepri, who stepped up and took the chances on big points. Poor Robby was seemed content to poke the ball back from behind the baseline -  until Stan crept in to put away a volley-winner.  And, when Robby did venture forward,  his net play was so erratic that I began thinking of successful approaches not as winners, but as unflubbed volleys.

As Wawrinka ratcheted up his level and Ginepri began shrugging more and more forcefully, it occurred to me why he wasn’t tapping into past success after all: you need to have won the title for the magic to apply.

It’s not a nice thing to say, but at the end of the day, Ginepri has as much losing to call on as winning.  I just looked up his career win-loss record, which stood at 130-127 before the Open.  Watching him go down to Wawrinka, I recalled that my most indelible memory of him at the Open isn’t from his run to the semis in 2005, but from last year. I thought then that he might be gearing up for a run, and he lost a fifth-set tie break to Tommy Hass, then lumbered off the court with his towel over his head.

That was in the third round, the same round in which he lost to Wawrinka yesterday—maybe he was unstuck in time, after all, but his time machine keeps dropping him off at the wrong stop.

This got me to thinking about what’s really going on all around us at the US Open, or at any tournament of any consequence:  moments of confirmation and moments of denial.  These moments add up, and I think they add up more quickly than most fans, or even players, realize.  Before you know it, players have found their level in our hearts, but also ins their own as well.

Last week, I watched Marcos Baghdatis drop an utterly winnable match to Max Mirnyi in the first round.  When it came to crunch time, even when he was up, I think, 5-1 in the final tiebreak, Baghdatis did not go for his shots. He became tentative, and The Beast made him pay. It’s great that Baghdatis made it to the Australian Open final in 2006, but at the end of the day, he’s had more moments of denial than confirmation since then.  It’s tempting  - and understandable - to want to think of him as a future Slam winner, but a few more moments of denial and in a few years we could be looking at the next David Nalbandian.

In his first-round match against Safin, Canada’s Frank Dancevic, riding a great summer, dropped serve while trying to close out the second set.  When he had the chance to serve out the third set, I turned to my wife and said, “All right, he got the butterflies out last time; no way he’ll blow this one.”  But he did, and after the ensuing tiebreak, the match belonged to Safin.

I’m not saying these moments are fatal, but a few more like them and Dancevic can permanently convince himself that he’s an also-ran.  At last year’s US Open, Sam Querrey took a first set from Gaston Gaudio before bowing to him in four sets; this year, Sam crashed out in the first round. In contrast, John Isner—just born onto the Tour—made it to the final in DC and won his first two rounds here. Then, for good measure, he took a set off Federer. It came in the context of a loss, but I think it was a moment of confirmation in its own right.

As I began writing this post, I watched Novak Djokovic dismiss Juan Martin Del Potro on my living room television set.  A lot of people have been talking about Del Potro for a while now.  He had Nadal on the ropes in the first set of their match at Roland Garros this year, but Nadal didn’t even allow him that set for his mental scrapbook.  That was a moment of denial for Juan Martin while tonight was yet another confirmation in a year of confirmations for Djokovic.

Djokovic seems to get this: this spring, he lost his first-ever Masters final in Indian Wells.  At the very next event, he exhibited some jitters down the home stretch against Canas in Key Biscayne, then unloaded a cannon-blast of a winner on match point. The shot had more urgency behind it than joy; you could almost feel him thinking, If I blow this, it could mess me up for a long time; if I win it, the sky’s the limit.

As Week 2 gets under way, at least in the men’s draw, I don’t sense a lot of mystery. Andy Roddick is playing Thomas Berdych today.  Berdych was supposed to be stiff competition for James Blake in the Round of Sixteen this time last year, and James took him out in straights.  Ditto this year at Wimbledon, where Rafa easily dismissed Berdych.  In the Slams, when it’s mattered most,  Berdych has known nothing but moments of denial.

I guess he’s supposed to be a tough match for Roddick.  For Berdych’s sake, I hope it is: he turns twenty-two in a few weeks, and desperately needs some confirmation, before the denial column grows insurmountably tall.
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- Andrew Friedman*