All in all, it was a pretty good week for American (Whoops, sorry! No offense! Make that “Gringo”) tennis, and I want to use this space for taking care of a little business right here in our own backyard. For starters, Tom Perrotta, proud tennis geek and the guy who’s looking to have a throwdown with TennisWorld Spiritual Advisor Miguel “I play like Federer, except unlike him I do have a forehand dropshot” Seabra, has written a terrific piece on the state of Gringo tennis in The Sun. In what seems like barely a year, Tom has vaulted right to the forefront of American tennis journalists, and this piece shows why.
So we had regular dogfight in Indianapolis between the two top American male players, Andy Roddick and James Blake, with Blake winning the title, and we had Serena sashaying into the semifinals of a decaffeinated tournament where she did her best firefighter imitation, spraying balls all over, before succumbing to Vera Zvonareva.
I wholeheartedly agree with those who suggested that a loss to Zvonareva could be the best thing to happen to Serena, in terms of giving her motivation to work harder (and with a more long-term plan, which is probably the real key here). It wasn't an entirely bad thing for the WTA audience either, for this deadened the message that many feared a Serena title run in Cincinnati would send:I’m back and it’s just like ever - none of these other chicks can play worth a lick!
Still, this comment from Zvonareva seemed somewhat strange – and very telling:
*
I know Serena's a good player, and I knew I had to really focus and not give her an opportunity to take over from the beginning of the match. I think she wasn't 100 percent ready to play her best today.
*
Talk about things that make you go, Hmmmmm . . .
This remark could be taken as obsequious or flat-out self-effacingly gracious, but there’s an important kernel of truth buried in it. Players near the end of long, illustrious careers will often tell you that they’re still capable of playing their best on any given day, but that over time it becomes more and more difficult to play their best tennis for, say, seven matches in a row - which, surprise,surprise, is what it takes to win a Grand Slam title.
Players who are burned out or suffering from a lack of motivation – at any age, or experience level – have a similar problem. They don’t just want to play, like a fully functional contenders (can’t you just see Rafael Nadal, lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, waiting for it to get light so he can go out and wax someone/anyone, two-and-one?). They want to want to play, which is a little bit like wanting to love somebody instead of just loving him or her. You can do it, but it’s never quite as natural as the real thing.
I’ve been pretty tough on Serena in the past few years, but it’s never been because she was bored, unmotivated, or in need of a break from the game (I know avid recreational players who go through crises of motivation, for gosh sakes). It’s been from refusing to recognize or admit that she was any or all of those things, for being seemingly insincere and unforthcoming, and for stringing along fans and spectators – often in ways that made it seem that she was ashamed of being “just” a tennis player, while remaining enough of a Diva to demand undiminished status.
But for all her pronouncements about “other interests” (BTW, anybody else notice how that once allegedly keen and certainly well-broadcast appetite for, oh, particle physics, ethology or Finno-Ugric languages – it depended on the week you asked - has pretty much morphed into the simple urge to hang with Beyonce?), it’s now pretty clear that Serena was drifting away from the game, probably for a host of reasons, many of which were personal and undoubtedly painful. Yet others – Steffi Graf comes to mind – would not let such reasons interfere with the day job. But that’s precisely what I mean by the difference between a player who wants to play and one who wants to want to play.
Serena now appears to have become a player who wants to want to play. I think she’s going to take us for a long roller-coaster ride this summer, and that it won't be because she won't be fit or focused or good enough. Those will remain possibilities, I suppose, in the worst case scenario. But I think there's a deeper, underlying reason.
Serena is good enough to flat-out destroy all comers, but she is not, first and foremost a warrior – it seems to me she’s first and foremost a kid sister, and that only makes her more appealing in some ways, but more perilous a choice as the one you send out to wage your psychic battles for you. Her most dangerous opponent this summer will be the threat of disinterest - the kind of flatness she showed against Zvonareva.
There is really one one solution to this dilemma, it seems to me, and it could lead to Serena' career renaissance. She could take a journey exactly like the one Andre Agassi undertook, back around the time his career went down the toilet and he found himself having to play the qualifier for an event in his own home town of Las Vegas. Serena needs to look in the mirror and feel very content and proud to say, “I’m Serena Williams and I am a tennis player. It is what I do, it is who I am.”
It will take some work for Serena to get to that point. I think we’re talking about a few months of discipline, and a lot of practice at shutting out all the rebellious instincts that will work to pull her away from the drudgery of daily practice and regular, week-in, week-out routine of a professsional competitor. It will take learning to love the process, which includes the drudgery, and it will take learning to feel good about herself and what she does for a living, and perceiving the enormous advantages that a little self-love and pride will yield, not just on the court, but off of it, too.
Nobody can blame Serena if she doesn’t want to go there; everyone, after all, isn’t cut out to be an Agassi-esque public icon. It takes the heart of a ham actor and the skills of, well, Agassi, to do something like that. But Serena ought to know that there is a way – a way to convert the wanting to want to play to wanting to play again.
Therein lies the secret.
PS – I was originally going to write a more comprehensive post about the U.S. game, but I think I’ll leave the rest for later (I’m on deadline for the story on tennis in Baghdad’s Green Zone) and make this America Week at TW. I’ll write a little about James Blake and also post a very interesting “open letter” to the USTA from my long-time pal, trout-fishing nut and former pro and coach of Boris Becker, Mike DePalmer, Jr.