by Pete Bodo
Howdy. Ready for another edition of our weekly news feature? These are still fairly slow times on the major tennis tours, so most of our items will focus on off-court events, so let's get right at it.
Now Sharapova, That's a Different Story!
Anna Chakvetadze has been named as a candidate for the Duma (the representative assembly of Russia) by the Right Cause political party. Chakvetadze has been through a great deal since she was the victim of a gruesome home invasion in 2007 (Chakvetadze was bound and gagged and her father Djambuli was beaten; the crooks escaped with over $300,000 USD worth of goods and cash).
Right off the bat, Anna's career nosedived. A career-high No. 5 in September 2007—she hit that number shortly before her home was invaded—she was ranked No. 70 by the end of 2009. But she regained some ground, only to collapse earlier this year due to a gastro-intestinal illness. When she returned to the tour, she began to suffer mysterious fainting spells. Anna lost in the first round of Wimbledon to Maria Sharapova and hasn't played a competitive match since; when she withdrew from the U.S. Open she cited a bad ankle as the cause. But the fainting spells have persisted, we understand.
Right Cause is a pro-business party led until recently by billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov, and is said to enjoy the support of just two percent of the population. It would seem that Chakvetadze's oddly shaped career and personal travails would raise some red flags among voters. And you have to wonder if the Moscow Times reporters didn't have some difficulties getting face-time with Anna in the past, given the paper's caustic comment on Chakvetadze's candidacy: "Right Cause will pose no threat to the Kremlin after it decided to trade President Dmitry Medvedev for a second-tier female tennis star on its party list for the elections."
Ouch!
Headlines We Love. . .
Jelena Dokic's Father Damir Still Banned From WTA.
This one reminded us of that long-running gag on Saturday NIght Live, the one that produced the repetitive "this just in" breaking news alerts: Generalissimo Franco Still Dead. However, the tennis version of that headline does raise some interesting issues, given that Jelena Dokic has been working out again under the supervision of her disgraced dad Damir.
Dokic is training with Damir in Serbia, but is still in an "on" phase of her on-again/off-again relationship with her adopted continent/nation of Australia. Hence, this release on the sensitive subject of Damir Dokic from Tennis Australia. Jelena's explanation of her situation is downright touching.
"I would like to confirm media reports that I have reconciled with my father. My partner Tin Bikic and I have visited my father at his home to finally put an end to our disagreement. I initiated the meeting as I want to reunite my family and allow us all to get on with our lives and be happy. This has gone on too long. I am in a very positive and confident frame of mind in my life and I really wanted to do this because I believe it is the right thing to do both for me and for all of my family. My father was very receptive and I believe he has changed greatly. He understands that I am my own person who makes my own decisions."
Okay, but—what's the WTA going to do if and when it comes to this little matter of on-court coaching?
Are You Doing This Just to Make Us Look Bad?
All-England Club chairman Philip Brook has told the Lawn Tennis Writer's Association that Wimbledon officials are contemplating building a roof over Court No. 1, which would give the venerable Grand Slam site two covered courts in case of rain. The Australian Open also has two courts with retractable roofs (Rod Laver and Hisense Arenas), and one is in the works for the re-design of Roland Garros. The U.S. Open still has no roofed stadium.
Furthermore, Wimbledon showed signature foresight when it built Court No. 1 as part of the Millenium renovation in 1997, designing the stadium (the capacity is over 7,300, with not a bad seat in the house) so that a retractable roof could be added to the structure later. We notice that the USTA built Ashe the same year—without comparable planning, much to the outfit's present chagrin.
This will undoubtedly put the USTA under even more pressure to find a solution to a problem that's looking more and more like it belongs to a different century (unfortunately, an earlier one). But that won't be easy. The engineering problems and costs of retro-fitting relatively new Arthur Ashe stadium with a roof are prohibitive. That's partly because of Ashe's epic scale: with a capacity of over 23,000, it's the largest tennis stadium in the world.
Of course, it almost never rains at Wimbledon any more, now that the Centre Court as a retractable roof. So I'm proposing that the USTA get some parachute cloth and a few miles of bungee cord and rig up some kind of flimsy cover for Ashe, which would pretty much guarantee that the rain that has forced a Monday final the last four years will never happen again.
But seriously. I don't know what the solution is, but I think the way to approach the problem is to decide that, whatever is done, the show must go on. Rain cannot be allowed to bring the entire tournament to a grinding halt. Simple as that, for a starting point. If that means rebuilding one of the smaller venues or a block of outside courts to create a modest covered stadium, do it. If that means stationing ball boys and girls all around the courts holding giant umbrellas to keep the rain off, do it. If it means exploding a medium-sized nuclear warhead high up in the atmosphere to disperse. . . well, let's not go quite that far.
But it's a pretty easy rule to understand, embrace, and prioritize, even if it's still being ignored at Flushing Meadows: The show must go on.
