Indian Wells is a dual-gender event, in case you haven’t noticed. But you can be forgiven for not having noticed this year. With names like Mauresmo, Henin, Clijsters, and Williams nowhere to be found, all the action has been on the men’s side. I think I wrote about 1500 words yesterday, not one of them on the WTA. As I drove to the site this morning (in the monster white pick-up the rental company hooked me up, er, saddled me with), I vowed to find some kind of women’s tennis to write up. So I got to the press room at 10:00 (things happen early in the desert), saw the day’s schedule, and made a beeline to Court 4—for a match between two men that only hardcore tennis fans could possibly care about.
Court 4: Evgeny Korolev vs. Novak Djokovic
Isn’t it a drag when two players wear the same outfit? This usually happens with European players sponsored by Adidas, a company not known for its variety of tennis lines at any given time. Such is the case with Korolev and Djoko, who are both in utterly unmemorable blue shirts and white caps. They’re even sporting the same model of sneaker. This makes the match about 10 times less dramatic than it could be, and keeps any curious newcomers to the sport from getting an kind of idea of these guys’ individual personalities. Opposing teams should not be in the same uniforms!
Of course, it doesn’t help Korolev and Djokovic play very similar power-baseline, two-handed-backhand, never-get-a-sniff-of-the-net tennis. At times their match—ground strokes fired from corner to corner with no let-up or variety—takes on the appearance of a video game.
Last year, watching Marcos Baghdatis play Nikolay Davydenko in Key Biscayne inspired me to write a post about slow-court tennis. I thought of those two guys—both of whom have medium-paced serves, strong forehands and two-handed backhands, and the ability to scramble—as the models for the modern slow-court game. Spectacular shotmaking is out, all-around efficiency is in. Today, on the ultra-slow courts at Indian Wells, Djokovic and Korolev look like this year’s examples of the phenomenon. They both attack and defend all parts of the baseline well, but offer little to distinguish themselves from each other.
Despite their similarities, Djokovic wins with surprising ease. He’s able to keep Korolev on his heels just enough so that he can’t control the rallies. On most points, Korolev is eventually provoked into going for too much. He has no plan B: On his one trip to the net in the second set, he drives an overhead into the court on his side of the net.
Stadium Court: David Nalbandian vs. Paul Henri-Mathieu
More men. Kamakshi and I watch Nalbandian from the pressroom and wonder: Why does he play so many long, torturous matches? What is it about the guy’s game? (Yes, these are the kinds of things the two current members of the Tennis.com Book Club mull over in our spare time.) Glutton for punishment that I am, I sit down to find out.
The first thing I notice is that Nalbandian is a card-carrying member of the slow-court union. The effective-but-not-overpowering serve, the two-hander used as a weapon, the blend of offense and defense—Nalbo is yet another of Andre Agassi's many children.
The next thing I notice is that Nalbandian breaks at 5-5, and is broken back at 6-5. This may be a clue to why he has become The Torturer: He can’t end points with his serve or with a big ground stroke, but he’s always a threat to break with his excellent returns. And for a baseline grinder, he throws in his fair share of cheap errors; he’s a grinder who grinds himself down at the same time. The product is stasis—in other words, a lot of long games and close matches.
Stadium 3: Nicole Vaidisova vs. Asha Rolle
With the Nalbandian dilemma temporarily solved, the next question for Kamakshi and I is: Which WTA up-and-comer will be better, Nicole Vaidisova or Ana Ivanovic? This, at last, gives me an opening to write about the women, so I trek to Stadium 3 to see the Czech teen, Vaidisova.
It’s sort of unfortunate, but she looks good. She returns aggressively, cutting off the angle on the wide serve beautifully; she maintains her composure even after misses, something she hasn’t always done; and for today at least she’s found that Holy Grail of the baseliner: controlled aggression.
The reason I say it’s sort of unfortunate that Vaidisova is playing well and improving is that (1) her game is hard to watch; and (2) she has a very pre-packaged personality off the court. I like the motion and extension on her serve, but while that closed-face forehand is a weapon, it’s not an aesthetically pleasing one. Vaidisova has a lot of natural power, and she’ll keep getting better, but one thing that can’t be improved is style.
Stadium 2: Andy Murray vs. Nicolas Mahut
My Vaidisova notes in hand, I head out to see the next installment of the Andy Murray saga—like Nicole, he’s been getting better by the month recently. And he’s looking about as sharp as I’ve seen him against Mahut. Rather than sulking and hobbling after missed shots, he’s keeping the hammer down even at 4-0 in the first.
Murray is an antidote to the safe, jocky, one-note efficiency of the Slow-Court Game. Here’s what he does to hold for 4-2 in the second set:
—Flat service winner: 15-0
—Kick serve wide, comes in behind it, and knocks off a backhand slice crosscourt overhead (how many times have you seen one of those?): 30-0
—Flat service winner: 40-15
—Low, dying mid-court slice that elicits a forehand error into the net
On the other side of the net, we have the severely coiffed and small-footed Mahut, another one of France’s world-champion juniors who hasn’t quite conquered the pro game. He has the qualities of a mime. When he needs a towel, he signals for it with a dramatic flourish of his racquet, rather than the pedestrian mock face wipe. More than anything, he enjoys making the ball kids guess his wishes. At one point, Mahut stands at the service line and stares at a ball girl who holds up two empty hands—she’s got nothin’ for him. But he keeps staring at her. Keeping her eyes on him, she walks toward his towel, which is a few feet away, bends down to pick it up, and tentatively begins to bring it to him, even though it’s clear he doesn’t want it. Mahut waits until she’s begun to run toward him before flashing a nasty smile and immediately turning his back on her. He gets the balls from the other ball kid, who had them all along.
Stadium: Ana Ivanovic vs. Alicia Molik
I only catch a couple games of this. Molik looks slow and makes bad errors, while Ivanovic has her gloriously smooth forehand cooking.
Who will be better, Vaidisov or Ivanovic? I prefer Ana’s game, and think she would make a more stylish top player, but I’ll talke Vaidisova’s size, power, serve, and all-around consistency. I think Ivanovic will have great days, but also more bad ones than Vaidisova.
Stadium: Andy Roddick vs. Olivier Rochus
So maybe practice does matter. Roddick has been working that forehand this week in practice, and it pays off in a lot of penetrating, point-controlling shots today. He runs around to hit it whenever he can, and his one-two baseline combinations are clicking.
Stadium: James Blake vs. Julian Benneteau
Nothing is clicking for James Blake. He comes out flat as a board and only survives into a second-set tiebreaker because of the kindness of Benneteau. The problem for Blake, as always, is that his shots are built low-risk—if he’s just a half-step off, it gets ugly fast.
Afterward, though, Blake doesn’t seem crushed. Though his 2007 has had more downs than ups so far, and he’s now lost same major ranking points (he reached the final here last year), he says this loss should be out of his head by week’s end. Blake knows, like all of these guys, that the season, even though it’s in just its third month, has only begun.