As predicted and lamented here on Friday, it was a dry sports weekend in the States. But I lived. A winter thaw, and a late discovery of Flight of the Conchords, helped. Plus, seeing the Pro Bowl out of the corner of my eye at a restaurant made me miss football a little less. If I ever need to convey to anyone how much of a sports fanatic I was as a kid, I just mention the time when I intentionally stayed awake in bed long enough to hear my dad come up the steps, then poked my head out of my bedroom door to ask him who had won the Pro Bowl. I don’t think he had any idea.
The bigger problem with this past weekend, and it may be an ongoing one, is that the Tennis Channel didn’t broadcast any of the sport’s minor tournaments, including Viña del Mar, which always looks cool on the tube. The network did carry the first round of Fed Cup (I missed it), but in general TC is putting more of its eggs in the Grand Slam basket and less in the tours’ weekly rank-and-file events. This coming weekend we’ll get the WTA tournament in Paris, but not the traditional weeklong coverage of the SAP Open in San Jose. Who would have thought I’d miss hearing TC commentator and SAP director Barry MacKay declare each match at his tournament the most electrifying and hair-raising sporting event he had ever seen?
Nevertheless, the tennis season went forward. And back: The sport returned to a former hotbed where it has been missing for more than a decade.
1. Cilic’s 2nd Conquest
His win in Zagreb makes two titles for the 20-year-old in the first month of 2009, and this one came in his home country and over a guy who must have been a hero growing up, fellow Croat Mario Ancic. Cilic’s loss to del Potro in Australia was disappointing, but every young player needs to learn how to win, and it doesn’t matter where you do it.
2. Roid Rage
It isn’t just baseball that’s having doping issues. Andy Murray on the new WADA rules that require athletes to make their whereabouts known for an hour every day:
“I got a visit at 7 a.m one morning at my home right after I had travelled home from Australia. I woke up not really knowing where I was and suffering badly from jet lag. It seemed ridiculous to me as I’d been tested just four days earlier, straight after the match I had lost in the Australian Open.
“The official who came to my home wanted me to produce identification to prove who I was. He insisted on watching me provide a sample, literally with my trousers round my ankles, and then insisted that I wrote down my own address, even though he was at my private home at 7 a.m."??
Rafael Nadal said the new requirements were an “intolerable harassment”:
“To have to send a message or be concerned all day long if there is a last-minute change seems to me be totally excessive.”
Roger Federer disagrees: “It’s a tough system, no doubt. It’s a significant change to what we were used to before, so I think it takes some time getting used to it,” he said at the Australian Open. “But at the same time, I feel like this is how you're going to catch them, right??”You're not going to catch them ringing them up and saying, ‘Look, I would like to test you maybe in two days’ . . . It’s an hour a day. I know it’s a pain, but I would like it to be a clean sport, and that’s why I’m OK with it.”
The humor in Murray’s comments aside, this is something that could become contentious on the new ATP player council, of which Federer and Nadal are now members. Do you think it’s an intolerable harassment? Do other sports’ athletes deal with the same thing? It does seem like too much of a personal invasion to me, in particular the rule that states that three missed tests can get you suspended for two years—Mike Bryan, of all people, already has two strikes against him. One problem: There’s no functioning and fully representative players union in tennis to negotiate this.
3. The Fix is Back In?
Speaking of controversies that won’t die, there was another possible match-fixing episode in Zagreb last week. Betfair again voided bets, this time on a match between Antonio Veic, No. 255 in the world, and Guillermo Cañas, which Veic won in three. Bad enough, but it seems to have gotten even worse afterward, when tournament director Branko Horvat received a death threat by email: “This was your last tournament. I’m bankrupt because of you.”
4. Best movie snubbed by Oscar this year
Let the Right One In. What, you can think of a better way to spend 2 hours and 10 bucks than watching a Swedish vampire movie? I thought so, too, not being a horror fan. But this one got better and better afterward, as I thought about the story.
5. The Flavia Finger
I wish I’d seen some of Italy’s Fed Cup win over France. Of course, the most exciting, if obscene, moment can be found on here, on YouTube. Kids, cover your eyes.
6. Another, Better Sports Guy at ESPN
A nice take on Nadal-Feder in Oz, from someone I've never heard of.
7. Updike Redux
Adam Gopnik eulogizes his colleague John Updike and hits it out of the park. I didn’t just enjoy or agree with this article. It made me feel better.
8. Tennis Returns, Tsonga Triumphs
South Africa was once an important outpost of the sport in its more Anglo days, giving us Cliff Drysdale, the 10-Slam doubles team of Bob Hewitt and Frew McMillan (he with the finest playing hat in the game’s history), and the best player-writer of any sport, Gordon Forbes. Arthur Ashe also made a brave and controversial trip to play a tournament there in 1973. Now the sport is back after 10 years away, and it has a winner from the African continent, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga. Almost as interesting, to me, though, was the player he beat in the final. Jeremy Chardy is getting better. The young Frenchman may even qualify as “someone to watch.” Kind of faint praise, wouldn’t you say? I’d hate to be called “someone not to watch.”
9. Oldies, Goodies
I know it’s one of the fundamental laws of nature that white people like Motown. I’ve tried to fight it, I really have, but while I tuned into the Grammy’s last night to watch a pregnant M.I.A perform (she was due yesterday), it was this one-man Four Tops reunion that left me happy when it was over. With the death of lead singer Levi Stubbs, there’s only one Top, Duke Fakir, still living (he’s at right in the video, looking good), so he was joined by Smokey Robinson, Jamie Foxx, and another younger singer. A great moment, one of the best I can remember from any Grammy ceremony; you can feel the room remember this music, and its optimism, as it's being sung. And I loved hearing Smokey call the other late Tops his “all my beautiful friends.”
10. Winter Thaw
So you step outside on Saturday morning, or maybe even early afternoon, you’re not sure right now. All you know is that you’ve been out late the night before. You’re shocked to life by how crisp this February wind blowing against your coat feels after weeks of nothing but biting cold. The ice and snow has melted in a matter of hours and left a primal mud that’s overflowing onto the sidewalk. You start to walk to the diner, then turn around so you can take the longer, scenic route. You put on your Ipod and listen to some Miles Davis, which matches the atmosphere. Then you switch to some Minneapolis punk that fits your walking rhythm. From the trees to the houses to the bright gray sky to the people you see on the street to the music you hear, it’s all working, because your defenses are down and the day is up. You walk into the overcrowded diner that’s full of color and noise and an almost stifling warmth; the whole neighborhood, after weeks of suffering with cabin fever, has had the same idea—let’s go somewhere. The jumpy Greek host points you to the last two open seats at the counter. He tells the waitress to set up silverware because “two nice people are going to site there.” You sit and wait for your girlfriend. You sip your coffee and take it all in, the voices and clinking plates, the recess-like energy. A flicker of something negative enters at the edge of your mind: You know you won’t feel any better than this for a long time.