A few posts back, regular comment poster and feisty young pup Momofan wrote:
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I'm a huge JB fan too but I too get pi**ed when he claps for his opponent's good shots. I've never seen Federer or Nadal do that. You just brush it off and continue to the next point. It's not about sincerity, it's about the. . . attitude you need to win matches. I don't see that in Blake just yet. I'm not saying he has to go J-Mac on us but it can take away from your focus when you're busy clapping for each winner from your opponent across the net, amazing though they may be.
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I quote this because it reminds me of the mixed reaction guys like Vijay Armitraj and Wojtek Fibak got for doing the same thing. It turns out that a lot of their opponents didn’t cotton to having their great shots so obviously acknowledged – they considered it somewhat patronizing, and at times a form of reverse gamesmanship.
This was their reasoning: If you hit a great shot and your opponent’s reaction is to lead a chorus of cheers, you’re stealing some of the attention he should be getting. Gee, look at that James Blake, what a great sport to clap and grin from ear to ear when he just got beat cold by a cross-court topspin backhand lob! What a guy, I want my kid to be just like him!
I do think Vijay hammed it up and pushed the showboaty sportsmanship too far. But the complaints about the reaction usually are a bit of an over-reaction. One of the moments I like best in tennis is when, after a great point, a player gives the barest of nods, hand gestures, or some other form of “good shot” acknowledgement to his or her opponent.
It’s the equivalent of a wink at the right moment, a form of shared intimacy between the only two people who really need to be aware of it, in a situation where making a spectacle of it robs some of the meaning of the gesture – kind of like bragging about how much money you give to charity.
So here we are, with our American man, James Blake. I think his performance in Indy last Sunday was an important one, in that he’s coming off two disappointing Grand Slams that once again have pundits questioning his real mettle as potential contender at big events. Yeah, the cave-in in Paris (I blogged it, so just go to the search box) was both disappointing and telling, and the miserable collapse at Wimbledon, which truly launched the “Why can’t Blake win the 5 setters?” narrative, were disappointing.
My feeling is that James is aware of these issues, as well as the real shortcomings at the bottom of them. Remember, this guy is a student of the game, a somewhat slow but very good learner. Slow progress has been the theme of his career, all the way back to the juniors.
So I think James is going to be looking for a little payback and consolidation this summer. He’s in a pretty good position, when you think about it. Since his great run at the U.S. Open a year ago, he’s tightened up his day-to-day game, leaped to the top of the U .S. rankings, and gained ground in the world rankings. So he’s going into the summer with a lot of points to defend, but not that much to lose. That is, he’s going into the toughest battle (for Grand Slam contender status) on his own turf, by the terms that he’s most comfortable with. That’s pretty good planning, I’d say.
Now let’s segue to a related topic, the letter recently written by Mike DePalmer Jr. as a response to the USTA’s recently unveiled plan to go into partnership with The Evert Academy, in order to establish a sort of High Performance academy for developing American talent. He wrote: