There’s a hilarious scene in the highbrow, art-house flick Clerks 2 where Jay, an aging slacker, announces to his BFF, Silent Bob, “Boredom is the first step on the road to relapse.” Then Jay starts to mimic the dance Buffalo Bill did in Silence of the Lambs.
It’s what downtime does to you, man. It warps the mind and causes you to act in strange ways.
That certainly holds true every fall in tennis when the season hits an excruciating slow pace – to the point that each week, and every tournament, seems pointless. You don’t think the downtime adversely affects the players? Just look at the outbreak of withdrawal-itis. And check out the winners of recent tournaments – they aren’t guys named Roger and Rafa and Roddick, but paragons of inconsistency like Richard Gasquet, Dmitry Tursunov, and Fernando Gonzalez.
Boredom clearly is the road to relapse. For goodness sake, the Williams sisters are playing tennis again.
I confess that even I’ve succumbed to the delirium and started to catch up on reading mindless press releases, which curiously seem to multiply this time of year. One recent email was the announcement of the 2008 International Tennis Hall of Fame nominees: Michael Chang, Sergi Bruguera, and Michael Stich.
My first reaction: These players, in the Hall of Fame? Let’s review.
In his 16-year-career, Chang won a single Grand Slam – the 1989 French Open. He still holds the record as the youngest man to win in Paris, at 17 years, 3 months. Chang also got as high as No. 2 in the world, reached another final at the French Open in 1995 and at the Australian Open in 1996. He won a total of 34 singles titles, which puts him at No. 15 in the Open era.
Stich is another one-Slam wonder, beating Boris Becker in the 1991 Wimbledon final. He reached two other major finals (1994 U.S. Open and 1996 French Open), won 18 singles titles, and, like Chang, had a stint at No. 2.
Sergi Bruguera was no one-Slam wonder – he captured two French Open titles, in 1993 and ’94 – but he was a one-surface wonder. Take the guy off clay and he was about as clueless as Britney Spears in a parenting class. Nonetheless, Bruguera made the most of his performances on clay to reach a career high of No. 3.
These are impressive accomplishments, but all told, these guys aren’t exactly a murderers row.
It’s hard to imagine them getting into the Hall of Fame. That is, if the Hall had strict standards. But you have to look at who’s been allowed into Newport, RI, and, frankly, the bar was set too low back in 2002 when Pam Shriver got in.
Nothing against Shriver – she was one heck of a doubles player – but she never won a Grand Slam singles title and reached only one final. In doubles, her record was stellar, but 20 of her 22 major doubles titles came alongside Martina Navratilova. They used to say the greatest doubles team was John McEnroe and anyone else. Same applied for Navratilova.
And Gabriela Sabatini? She was inducted last year on the strength of, well, one Slam, which in women’s tennis isn’t a major accomplishment. You wouldn’t call, say, Anastasia Myskina and Svetlana Kuznetsova Hall of Famers.
With Shriver and Sabatini in the Hall, how can you justly deny Chang, Stich, or Bruguera?
This isn’t Cooperstown, that’s for sure. Baseball takes its induction process seriously – often too seriously, as fans and media endlessly debate who belongs, and who doesn’t. Granted, baseball has one huge advantage over tennis: it has kept comprehensive statistics for years, which allows the sport to establish benchmarks for induction, such as 300 wins for a pitcher, 3,000 hits, and 500 home runs.
Tennis really didn’t start collecting data until the early 1990s, and even to this day the amount of stats available is paltry compared to other sports. But perhaps the game could still come up with some benchmarks for getting into the Hall of Fame. A good starting point might be requiring players to win more than one Grand Slam or winning a high number of singles titles overall.
Hey, I’ve always liked Stich, if for no other reason than the fact that he was a testy foil to Boris Becker. And Chang had a solid record, no question. But should the Hall of Fame continue to induct players with just one major on their resume? If that’s the case, Thomas Johansson, Thomas Muster, Albert Costa, and Gaston Gaudio should start prepping their acceptance speeches.
And what about two-Slam Bruguera? He was a true clay-court specialist, but really nothing special; Bjorn Borg and Guillermo Vilas, among others, were much better on the dirt.
In the end, Chang is probably a sure shot. He has the best record of the three, and it won’t hurt that he was a popular American player, either. Maybe you can make a case that he deserves the honor on the strength of his overall singles titles. But it would be refreshing to see the Hall of Fame deny at least the other two guys, if not all three. It would send a message that, going forward, getting into Newport will actually mean something.
James Martin is the editor-in-chief of TENNIS magazine.