The London draw, in haiku

Group A

(1) Roger Federer

Twin motives remind
The king, that win, draw, or lose,
Love still waits at home.


(4) Andy Murray

Irked by the sense
Of being discounted, eclipsed
London is his chance.


(5) Juan Martin del Potro

Full of Argie pride
He’s eager to show the world
That he is the best.


(7) Fernando Verdasco

At times dilettante
Next moment focused, in charge.
Which one will show up?


Group B

(2) Rafael Nadal

Uncle Toni frets.
Is it because of Xisca
Or is he fading?


(3) Novak Djokovic

To close out the year
With that final awesome win,
Would be redemptive.


(6) Nikolay Davydenko

His wife’s sweet kisses
Are inspiration enough
To give of his best.


(8) Robin Söderling

Thanks for small mercies
Federer’s not in his draw.
How long can luck hold?


Withdrawn: Andy Roddick

Is it cowardice
That he’d much rather play
With his wife’s mammaries?

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Serena vs. Andre: A tale of dueling memoirs

I’ve mentioned before that I’m not keen on reading Serena’s memoir, which was ghost-written by the prolific Daniel Paisner. My concern was in part based on my perception that Serena does not exactly come across as a self-reflective or introspective individual. A memoir is best written by one gifted in the art of navel-gazing, not navel-baring.

Furthermore, I was concerned that the characteristic Williams’ reticence would win out in the end and that we would not be privy to anything that we don’t already know. And most of the reviews that I have read seem to concur with this prediction.

For instance, one Amazon Vine reviewer notes: “I was hoping for more in-depth knowledge about how Serena thinks, her loves, future hopes...even some juicy stuff. But none of that is in the book. Even when she talks about the events of 9/11 when she and her family were all flying that day, it reads like a dry gulch rather than the tear gusher that it should be. She refers to past loves as ‘so and so’, there’s just not enough details about the private Serena to make this a worthwhile biography. It’s all the stuff about the public Serena and then a few tidbits of stuff thrown in where she calls Venus a nerd. But even that doesn’t seem like sincere banter. OK, very light reading, perhaps read while sitting in an airport terminal somewhere and then leave for the next person to pickup and read.” Ouch.

Let’s be honest, whatever chance Serena had of selling more copies of this book was damaged by her outburst at the US Open. In fact, Serena’s initial attempts to apologize for the outburst were roundly criticized because she seemed to be more focused on plugging her book than on saying that she was sorry. Then came her nude cover on ESPN magazine which seems to have drained away some of the attention from the memoir instead of adding to it as I assume was the intent.

But the death knell seems to have been the publication of Andre Agassi’s “Open”. Andre’s memoir leapt out of the blocks and has been selling like hotcakes. Already we have been privy to a few of its eye-popping and highly controversial revelations.

Like Serena, Andre has been doing the rounds promoting this book. Like Serena he has been hopping from one continent to another, submitting to interviews and fan-filled book signings. Except that unlike Serena, Andre is a thoughtful and self-revelatory interview subject. Here is a report written by Elaine “Lainey” Lui, a Special Correspondent for Canadian TV who interviewed Andre in Toronto yesterday:

“Agassi is very intense and it was early morning so maybe he was more intense than usual, having stayed up the night before for an appearance at a book store with 800 fans. I almost withered under the eye contact. He never breaks. I wouldn’t say he’s super warm, not the friendliest individual, rather guarded in fact, even though he lays it all out in the book. But Agassi is honest and articulate and he is his own person. Did not arrive surrounded by sycophants and an entourage of handlers. He takes care of himself, he doesn’t need to be coddled or protected from the tough questions, and is willingly shouldering his beats – about the meth use, about his hair weave, about his fragile ego, all of it totally Open, his aptly titled autobiography that I powered through this weekend.”

I have not seen a single negative review of “Open”. By all reports it is a stunning book and extremely well-written. Of course I intend to form my own opinions after I read the book. In the meantime, here is Lainey’s assessment of Andre’s memoir:  

“It’s good. Really good. It’s the best sports memoir I’ve ever read and not only because of the scandalous details, but because of who helped him write it. LOVE J.R. Moehringer. “The Tender Bar” is one of my favorite books of all time. And this is what elevates Agassi’s “Open” above the others. The stories are there, sure. But J.R. Moehringer frames them so beautifully, it reads like something entirely different. If you follow tennis, you’ll love the tennis details: the match play, the locker room dynamic, the training, even how he strings his racket – all fascinating. And yes, the gossip too. I’ll never feel the same way about Pete Sampras again. Dude, he’s CHEAP.”

Go here for an excerpt from Andre’s “Open” and here for an excerpt from Serena’s “On the Line”. Each book will probably appeal to an entirely different kind of tennis fan. But at the end of the day, the dueling memoirs are going to be great for tennis.

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The Super-Sebian versus the French Clown

I can’t wait for the Paris Masters finals tomorrow. Djokovic versus Monfils, the former totally expected given the awesome run of form he is currently enjoying, the latter my heart’s delight, but I fully expect Djokovic to crush him.

The upsets started early in Bercy, with Federer going out in the first round to Julien Benneteau. There is nothing like playing in front of your homies to bring out your best. We saw that the week before when Federer once again made it to the finals of the Swiss Davidoff. I felt badly for him that he lost in the finals in front of his home crowd and his mother. That must sting. But Benneteau (which my spellcheck keeps changing to ‘bonehead’ much to my delight), seemed to have been equally inspired.

Of course he came back down to earth in the next round in the match against Monfils. And this is as good a point as any to talk about how much Monfils frustrates me. Monfils is a puzzling character. On the one hand, he wastes a lot of energy clowning around on the tennis court. I wish he could learn how to control and channel his energy into winning points. On the other hand, he has this completely passive, lackadaisical style of playing tennis that absolutely drives me nuts. I find myself wanting to reach through the TV screen and shake him.

Monfils has a horrible habit of dragging out points. In the match against David Guez for example, whom any self-respecting top-20 player would have sent packing 6-0 6-1 (and the breadstick only because you don’t completely humiliate a man in front of his home crowd or his mother), Monfils eventually won 6-4 6-3. Most of the time he seemed to be returning the ball just to return the ball. He wasn’t creating anything, he wasn’t setting up anything, he wasn’t constructing anything. He seemed to have no game plan other than simply out-waiting Guez. And that irritated me. As much as I love him, it is very hard for me to watch Monfils play. He ends up irking the crap out of me.

Monfils’ passive and lame-brained approach to tennis will not work against Djokovic tomorrow. In fact, I did not expect it to work today against Stepanek. I am still stunned that it did. Indeed, after watching Djokovic blow Nadal off the court, I left home and went to play tennis myself, confident that I would come home to the news of a Djokovic vs. Stepanek finals. I have no idea what Monfils did to win that match. I can only imagine how mind-numbing it was, one ball-poker playing another. I guess youth may have been on Monfils’ side.

Well youth won’t make a crap of difference tomorrow. Djokovic is playing divine tennis. Always one of the more intelligent players on the court, Djokovic seems to have found his second wind late in the season. In fact, if he keeps up the form we saw last week in Basle and this week in Bercy, I will go out on a limb and say that he will be the one to beat in London.

I have previously credited Davydenko for playing smarter tennis than Nadal at the 2009 Shanghai Masters. Today Djokovic went at least 15 IQ points higher. He played Nadal’s backhand like a violin. He drove lethal winners into the Nadal forehand. His serve was on point, especially the serve out wide to the sideline. His placement was awesome, his movement spare and breathtaking, his nerves of pure steel, his body language relaxed and confident.

Djokovic not only had a definite plan but he went out and decisively implemented it. Nadal didn’t seem to know what hit him. When was the last time you saw Nadal completely give up on points? He seemed to know that he was being completely outplayed and that he had no answers for Djokovic’s game. Nadal’s words of congratulations at the net seemed sincere.

I don’t think I am over-reaching when I say that Djokovic is currently playing his best tennis ever. The Djokovic who showed up in Basle and Bercy will make mincemeat of Monfils tomorrow. If I were Monfils I would think twice about inviting my mother.

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Can Philippoussis find happiness with a Cougar?

Let me admit straight up that I despise the word “cougar” to refer to older women involved in relationships with younger men. The term invokes the image of a predatory female stalking and feasting on a naïve young lover who is somehow assumed to be incapable of making the choice to date an older women with eyes wide open.

Maybe I’m being a bit defensive. Truth be told, I have never fallen in love with an older man. I’ve dated people my age or younger, but more wrinkled than me? Forget it.

The closest I ever came to dating an older man happened during my internship year. I was in a strange town and did not know anyone there. So of course I took myself to the local gym and tennis courts. At the gym, this older guy kept standing behind me in aerobics class. I ain’t no J lo but I knew that it was the ass that had him hooked. When it turned out that he could not only play tennis but that he was as keen on it as I was, well a friendship was immediately struck up.

For most of that spring, we went everywhere and did a lot of things together. But I was not sexually attracted to him so I kept him at arms length. Of course I asked the standard questions one asks a man who is of the age to have a wife and children. He admitted to having one of the former and two of the latter but insisted that he was legally separated and working on his divorce.

Did I believe him? It didn’t matter. I wasn’t turned on and there was no chance in heck that he was ever getting into my pants. So when a wife mysteriously showed up at the start of the summer, I was neither surprised nor devastated. Turns out the poor woman had only stayed behind while her children finished school. But my would-be lover blamed me. He said that because I seemed frigid, he had no choice but to go back to his wife. Can you believe the boldfacedness of that grizzled-up old fart? I had to laugh. To this day it’s a memory that still cracks me up when I think about it.

But enough about me. This article is supposed to be about the Scud Muffin and his latest betrothal.

When Mark Philippoussis embarrassed himself and all of tennis by appearing on a reality show looking for a woman, I could barely watch for shame. He had the choice of “Cougars” or “Kittens”. Most of the women had that sheen of desperation one comes to expect of women who go on reality shows to find fame, I mean a mate. Mark seemed wooden, lost, vapid. Even Flava Flav with his oversized clocks and horrible gold teeth ended up attracting more lust and created more of a feeding frenzy than poor Mark.

In the end Mark picked a Kitten. I forget her name. He picked her over a middle-aged Cougar. I forget her name too. (I could look it up on wiki but I couldn’t be  bothered.) The show was a disaster, more ludicrous than my memories of being courted by an elderly fart during my internship year. But hopefully at least Mark got himself laid. In the end HIS relationship with the Kitten didn’t last. I don’t believe anyone was surprised.

Now comes word that Philippoussis is again betrothed. He’s been betrothed before, not to the Age of Love contestant but to a previous Kitten. That relationship didn’t work either. Now he has apparently decided to go Cougar. His new beloved is the actress Jennifer Esposito who has starred in nothing that I remember. Her claim to fame is a brief four-month marriage to the actor, Bradley Cooper. Ms. Esposito is 36 to Mark’s 32. Not quite geriatric territory but closer to Cougar than Kitten. I wish them well. I also hope that Ms. Esposito is a generous woman with a huge bank balance because when last I heard Philippoussis was getting the crap sued out of him.

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Who does Oudin mean by “some people”?

The US just lost the Fed Cup title to Italy. The US would more than likely have won the Fed Cup title if either of the Williams sisters had played. The US would definitely have won the Fed Cup title if both of the sisters had played. The US needs the Williams sisters. That is the plain truth.

But said truth is not at all simple. And while I would really prefer to treat with the relationship between Serena Williams and the country she happens to represent in international tournaments, I have no choice but to include her sister in the discourse because in all things tennis, they are treated as part of a package deal, the one punished for the errors of the other, the one booed for the non-performance of the other, the one included in a veiled reference to “some people” even though the other made it completely clear from the start that she was not going to play Fed Cup.

From the beginning something went horrifically wrong in the relationship between the tennis establishment and these two African-American sisters. And it’s not entirely the fault of the tennis establishment. From the start the sisters seemed kind of stand-offish, a bit removed, members of a closed society of family who depended on and supported each other but were open to very few outsiders. Richard’s refusal to allow his daughters to play Junior tennis irked more than a few. His refusal to properly acknowledge the role of coaches like Rick Macci to the development of his daughters’ games remains unpardonable for some.

But Tennis USA also made its share of mistakes. It embraced the blond Sharapova so completely you’d swear she wasn’t Russian and playing against the USA for Fed Cup. Sharapova remained a media and corporate darling even after being fined for cheating and illegal coaching. She remained the “It” girl of tennis even after it was clear that her coach was not her father as listed, but Michael Joyce who only recently had the honor of being properly credited for his years of hard labor.

Despite this, I believe that the Williams legacy will be tremendous in the world of tennis. And I believe that they will be lasting inspirations to girls everywhere, not just girls of a darker shade of pale.

I took part in a new tennis clinic yesterday and one of the participants was a talented blonde junior who was there to beat up on the rest of us. During a break I overheard a white woman asking her who her tennis inspirations were. Without missing a beat she replied, “Venus and Serena. Although I kinda prefer Venus because she is tall like me”.

And so I was disappointed to read Oudin’s interview after the US lost at Fed Cup to Italy. In her post-match interview, Oudin was quoted as saying, “For me, this is what I wanted. I wanted to come here. I wanted to play for my country. I don't know, other people choose different things. Some people, I guess, didn't want to play as badly as I did. But I think that the team that we had here really wanted to be here. I think that was what should have happened. I mean, you don't want people here that don't want to be here. Next year we're gonna have people that want to be here again. That's what you want. You don't want people that don't want to be here or play for their country. Even if you lose, if you give it everything you have, then that's the best you can do.”

The “some people” in that extract could only be the Williams sisters. These are the same sisters that Oudin previously credited for inspiring her as a child. How soon we forget.

Oudin is too young in her career to be making these kinds of comments. I get her disappointment. I get that it sucks that while she should be playing tennis for her country, Serena was busy pushing her book in London and talking again about wanting to have an acting career as an action figure. I also get that Oudin is young and not yet practiced in the skills of politics. I get that she may not be privy to the bigger picture, the darker machinations of people who seem motivated only by the desire to once and for all humble Serena Williams. But I really wish Oudin had not said this.

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