Your Call: Welcome, Parks!

Mornin'. This being spring, and clay-court season, and thus a time for renewal or new birth, I want to share news of the newest member of the TWibe, pictured here. I met his daddy, Cal Powell, a regular reader of Tennisworld a few weeks ago at the Birmingham, Ala., Davis Cup tie. A few days ago, I received an email from him, part of which read: Little Parks Calvin Powell was born last Tuesday, March 31, at 2:21 p.m. He weighed 6 pounds, 13 ounces. I went out Saturday and won my first match as a father. It's been a great week.

Congratulations, Mr. new 1-0 dad! The bad news is that you'll probably be hearing from Tennis magazine's lawyers any moment now. . .

On to a little housekeeping. I'm off tomorrow, spending a three-day Easter weekend at the farm in game-rich Andes. But I'll be around, and you'll have daily Your Call posts. I hope to do a WTA clay-court preview, just to get Jewell to stop batting this eyelashes. . .

News is moving pretty quickly, what with Roger Federer asking for a wild card for Monte Carlo. I think this was a wise move. Why sulk like Achilles in his tent? We've already seen that the approach does more harm than good. I just say, though, that I'm picking up mixed signals here. If Federer's back is indeed in bad repair, why would he add another tournament to the two clay events he had scheduled? Okay, clay is a softer surface than hard, cushioned or otherwise. The shock factor is neutralized. But the matches are longer, and the amount of torque and stress on the back is no less and maybe more significant.

Btw, there was an interesting moment that went unreported as far as I could tell during Roger's final post-match presser in Miami. Discussing his schedule, he said he was entered in two clay tournaments and then mumbled words to the effect . . . But we'll see about that. I wasn't the only one to catch that. My immediate reaction was to wonder if he wasn't going to pull the plug on either or both of those events, and if his back were an issue it might have been a reasonable option, certainly better than blowing off grass or hard-court events, at least in terms of diminishing his chances to win a title and earn ranking points. I thought of that moment as soon as I heard TMF had entered Monte Carlo, because it suggested that at the end of Miami, he might already have been thinking he may want more rather than less clay-court tennis.

What this unexpected turn tells me, most of all, is that The Mighty Fed actually isn't (or wasn't)  certain what he should - or shouldn't - be doing. It's a Should I Stay or Should I Go? career moment.  My feeling is that at face value entering Monte Carlo is a good move - if he hasn't really had a Plan B for this time of year (which might be rehab, rest, hard training [or some combination thereof] instead of match play). This plays into what I wrote in my last post about the wonderful opportunity clay affords a player to "find" his game if it's gone awry; there's a Zen-like aspect to tennis on clay, but instead of sitting in the lotus position and chanting  Ommmm you're sliding into one forehand after another and (at the best of times) feeling deeply the satisfaction of meeting the ball and driving it just where you want, time and again. You kind of get lost in it. Most of you serious players will know what I mean.

Beyond that, it's too complex a discussion to have now, but in terms of the depth in clay-court tennis (and objections to my statement that it's greater than in the Bjorn Borg era), I can only offer my first-hand, anecdotal evidence. I sat there, on many occasions, watching Borg take on a Jose Higueras, a Guillermo Vilas, a Corrado Barrazzuti, or an Eddie Dibbs, and my most significant lasting impression is that those guys had nothing - absolutely nothing - with which to hurt him (go back and check out the scores Borg pasted up in those rampages at Roland Garros). HIgueras is a great example. I love the guy, but he was slow, and he took great big cuts at the ball (fans of the topspin one-handed backhand would swoon over him, though). Borg just sliced him up, with his signature combination of foot speed, penetetration, and consistency. Sound familiar?

Today, I think there are lots of guys who have stuff with which to hurt Nadal; they can hurt anyone else, including Federer, with their tools. But Nadal is flat-out better - not merely because the others have less, but because he has so much more. Borg vs. Nadal at Roland Garros. It's still the match I would be most curious to see.

-- Pete