by Pete Bodo
We're heading for the weekend, and then the proper kick-off of the European clay-court circuit. So let's take a quick look around to digest and comment on some of the news we might have been too busy to deal with during the recent Sony Ericsson Open, or that has come our way since.
(Wo)manning Up
I wrote a post for ESPN today on how the women, particularly Caroline Wozniacki, Sam Stosur, and Victoria Azarenka have pleasantly surprised many of us by going right from the just completed combined event in Miami to tournaments in nearby Charleston, S.C. and not so close Marbella Spain. I'm not going to repeat myself here, but leaving zero time for a transition from three months of mostly hard court tennis to clay, red or green, may not be the wisest idea at any number of levels, but kudos to the women who took on the challenge, especially Wozniacki and the others who went deep at either Indian Wells or Miami (or both).
I don't see Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic (see below) or many of the other top men running around getting their socks red in Casablanca or Houston. Sure it's self-serving (ranking points-wise) of the women to press on, and I imagine Azarenka didn't hop on a jet for Marbella hoping to earn, at most, the $37,000 winner's purse (as opposed to the $700,000 she earned for winning Miami).
But remember these weeks when the players next start to complain about their loaded schedules. I stand by my current default position: The calendar isn't overloaded; it's just that the players are "over-opportunitied" and those who have the most to gain, and/or a good attitude, will benefit from it.
Down on the Plantation
The Orange Bowl is an interesting creation that achieved something the promoters of Indian Wells, Miami, or Madrid (among others) have only hoped to accomplish. It became the de facto "fifth Grand Slam," but being a junior event it can't really be compared to the ATP events above. Actually, at times the Orange Bowl has seemed an even bigger event than the junior Slams, partly because it isn't appended to, and thus utterly overshadowed by, the main, open event.
The late December date has also helped the Orange Bowl position itself as something like the junior Super Slam, the final, year-end gathering - and graduation ceremony - for many junior players in the 18-and-under and sometimes even lower divisions (by the time some girls finish with the 16s, they leap right to the pro tour). It hasn't hurt at all that the Orange Bowl has been played for a long time now on hard courts at the home of the Sony Ericsson Open, Crandon Park on Key Biscayne.
Now comes word that the USTA is moving the Orange Bowl event - lock, stick and barrel - up to the town of Plantation (birthplace of comic novelist Carl Hiassen [not my taste] and currently home to Chad Ochocinco), about an hour northwest of Key Biscayne but still in the Miami/Fort Lauderdale media market. The new site will be the Frank Veltri Tennis Center, which features over two dozen Har-Tru (green clay) courts. Pat McEnroe, the USTA's head of player development, believes that playing on clay at a young age (the way the McEnroe brood did at the Port Washington Tennis Academy on Long Island, N.Y.) improves a youngster's chances of becoming an upper-echelon competitive player.
Of course, the surface at the Orange Bowl doesn't matter much if a child has spent his or her early years developing a game on hard courts, so we'll see how this all shakes out for American kids now in the pipeline. One thing to keep in mind is that McEnroe's top lieutenant is the former ATP top 10 pro Jose Higueras, who knows a thing or two about clay-court tennis. So this development is just another step toward redressing the lack of clay-court training that is thought, by some, to be partly responsible for the demise of U.S. tennis.
Baggy Pants, Loses Again
Marcos Baghdatis is struggling once again, it seems. The news reports say that he was beaten out of a "quarterfinal" berth at Casablanca by Russian qualifier Andrey Kuznetsov, but the starker, less-polite reality is that the match was the first one of the tournament for the no. 2 seed, and it represents the fourth tournament in a row at which Baghdatis has lost the first match he's played.
Baghdatis, an Australian Open finalist in 2006 and once ranked as high as no. 8, is presently ranked no. 26 and once again spinning his wheels. Wasn't it just a year ago that he was allegedly in great shape physically, and ready to get back in the Top 10? He made the finals in Washington and the semis in Cincinnati, postioning himself for a potential run at the US Open on hard courts friendly to his game. But he lost a bitterly fought five-setter in the first-round, to 32-year old, no. 68 Arnaud Clement.
Sure you have to feel for Baghdatis, if he's doing the hard work but getting no results. But is that's what's going on here? Interestingly, the guy who beat him for the title in Washington last year was the master of the mail-it-in loss, David Nalbandian. So the big question is, who's a greater disappointment to his fans, Baghdatis or that master of the letdown, Nalbandian?
This Just in: No Rolex for Novak
You probably already know that Novak Djokovic has withdrawn from the Monte Carlo Rolex Masters, where Rafael Nadal happens to be the six-time defending champion with a 34-1 record - that lone loss in 2003, when Rafa was 11 years old. Okay, so Nadal was 16 at the time. Still. . .
Djokovic cited a knee injury, which I presume he must have sustained when he banged his leg against the tray in the first-class cabin of the Air France or Lufthansa jetliner he took to Europe following his big win over Nadal in Miami. Conversely, if he hurt his knee before or during the match with Nadal, it tends to explain why he had so much trouble with the feisty Spanish boy, right?
Okay, enough funnin'. I'm not sure it was altogether pleasant for Djokovic to wake up on the day after one of the greatest wins of his career to realize that odds are good that he'd have to play the same man again in under two weeks time, and on the court Nadal has absolutely owned. And Djokovic certainly deserves a break of more than a week after the amazing start he's had in 2011. But this news of a knee injury is apt to set the gossip wires ablaze.
I sense echoes here of the double withdrawal Nadal and Federer engineered after that terrific five-sets-plus-a-tiebreaker Italian Open final they played in 2006. Both men felt they had given so much in that match that they couldn't face the prospect of playing - and perhaps meeting in the final - at Hamburg the following week.What I liked about that joint action was the transparency. The honesty. And I don't think anyone but the promoters of Hamburg had a beef with the two stars.
Of course, Nadal isn't eager to reprise his actions of 2006. I rather think he'd been licking his chops since Monday, anticipating the start of Monte Carlo. As for Djokovic, all I can say is that I imagine that at times a knee injury, like discretion, can be the better part of valor.
!Julia Frenemy Mine
it appears that playing doubles with Liezel Huber is a two-part proposition: first you win a lot of matches and tournaments, maybe even a major or two, then you inevitably have a falling out and move on to new partners.
Huber, the dervish from Durban, won four Grand Slam titles with Cara Black. But the partnership ended contentiously last year. Huber has been playing with Nadia Petrova (when schedules allow) this year, and the two have played very well, although they were unable to bag a title in two tries (most recently in Miami).
Petrova is suffering from persistent vertigo; it caused her to retire from her singles match with Sabine Lisicki in Miami. And for some reason, Petrova seems determined to play on despite feeling "light dizziness" and "fatigue" pretty much all day, every day. But apparently, Petrova's condition was not the cause of the sudden split with Huber, or if so it wasn't because of the condition and how it affects Petrova's play per se. "It's a bit personal," Petrova told reporters in Charleston. "I don't really want to talk about it."
The odd thing? Petrova and Huber have basically switched partners with another squad - Huber is taking up with Lisa Raymond, whose commitment with Germany's Julia Goerges expired in Miami. And Petrova has retaliated by scooping up Goerges. It appears to be a war of attrition, though, as both newly formed teams are already out of Charleston, with no. 2 seeds Huber and Raymond upset in the first round and Petrova and Goerges winning just one match. Maybe they should let bygones be bygones and consider switching back?