Ed. Note - Miguel "I play like Federer, except I have forehand drop shot, too" Seabra, TennisWorld's Spiritual Advisor, is back in the mix with a report from the Tour of Champions event in the lovely precincts of the Valley of the Wolf, Vale do Lobo, Portugal. Seems to me we may have a senior tour KAD on our hands! Now get back to your wife and lovely daughters, Mikey, before you get beaned with that frying pan. But I'm expecting some juicy Rios anecdotes soon!
- Pete
Greetings, TennisWorlders. Looks like a lot has been going on in here during Big Pedro’s vacations – and while TW’s ‘Elders’ have been proudly posting, and The Mighty Fed amassing yet another Masters Series title, I’ve been trying to get the right balance between pleasure and business for the past week or so.
Right now, I’m about to head back to the beaches of the south to join my family and continue my holidays after five days up north following the decisive stages of the cycling Tour of Portugal. Before that, I attended the regular ATP Tour of Champions stop at the Vale do Lobo resort here in Portugal; as usual, it was inspiring to see glimpses of greatness from a handful of former tennis icons, and I have plenty of hilarious anecdotes and funny quotes to share later.
But the lighter side of the event and the insightful opinions of the legends on contemporary matters (Fed & Rafa, Agassi’s adieu, the serve-and-volley game) will have to wait until the next post, because the state of the senior tour has to be analysed – in fact, the senior tour has to reinvent itself in order not to lose credibility and take the most out of its bright stars.
Actually, what is now called the Merrill Lynch ATP Tour of Champions is pretty popular and some events are way more successful than many ATP tour stops. Most of the fans still relate better to the champions of yesteryear than the young studs who are trying to build a name for themselves in the pro scene: as exciting as his flashy tennis can be, a Richard Gasquet won’t draw as much attention as a John McEnroe.
Besides that, the Tour of Champions is still competitive enough to be taken seriously, although the generation gap is becoming increasingly unfair to the older legends. I mean, the final of the Vale Do Lobo Grand Champions was played between Marcelo Rios, 30, and John McEnroe, 47!
Even though the math is the same, the tennis gap between 30 and 47 is bigger than the huge difference between a 20 and a 37 year-old. “In the first set it looked like there was a 38 year gap, not 17”, said Mac afterwards.
Earlier this year, at the Australian Open, I asked Mats Wilander if he would be back in Vale do Lobo as usual; he said he felt it was becoming more and more difficult for him to play against the youngsters. He hasn’t been that competitive, because his apparent good physical shape isn’t enough to make up for his lack of power versus the bigger and younger hitters.
So the tournament director, Pedro Frazão, didn’t invite him back this time. Of course, John McEnroe does not have a power game by today’s standards, but he’s still incredibly fit and the unbearable lightness of his peculiar game actually does pose a threat to opponents; in fact, McEnroe has been tennis’ Peter Pan for the past decade.
But even he can’t challenge time forever. Though he’s still winning matches, the intensity level is not quite the same, and it’s getting more and more difficult for him to recover from the efforts made the previous day – never mind four days in a row (each tournament is played on a round-robin format).
So, the final at Vale do Lobo showed two temperamental foes playing in two different dimensions: Rios in the zone, Mac in the twilight zone. The Chilean, invincible this year after winning Qatar and Hong Kong (he didn’t play on clay in Barcelona and Rome), had been trash-talking McEnroe, stating he would kick the American’s derrière: “The more he gets mad, the more I’ll want to kick his ass”, he said.
After a highly motivated Rios cruised past Austria’s Thomas Muster, Portugal’s Nuno Marques and Holland’s Paul Haarhuis, I thought there was the real possibility of him beating Mac love and love. He didn’t, precisely because it is difficult for a sort of contemporary player to face such a bizarre opponent from a different era. McEnroe fought with panache, but he knew he was playing on the edge against a faster opponent, and he committed a lot of uncharacteristic errors – still, he "only" lost 6-2, 6-4. And at the end there were signs of respect between the two.
The beginning of the match was a bit tight, and Rios was more nervous than I expected. But he told himself juega tranquilo (play serene) and got the liberating break; from 3-1 in the first set on, the South-American never looked back: he took a bit of the pace off the ball and opted to make Mac run from side to side as if he were a windscreen wiper – while relying on his own speed and feline anticipation to deal with the different riddles his veteran opponent was trying to throw at him. At 5-1 to Rios, someone in the crowd shouted: John, you can still win... and everybody laughed.
Right there, I felt the laughter summed up the ridiculousness of the age gap in a tour that should set an age limit.
“He’s 30, he’s so young it’s ridiculous”, John had said two days before. “If it were me making decisions, I wouldn’t allow it. Something must be done; the tour doesn’t have credibility, so we don’t have nothing to lose”.
Maybe McEnroe was being too harsh about the credibility issue, because the Tour of Champions actually is competitive. He proved it by playing better in the second set, especially after one of his trademark outbursts.
It all started with an overrule on the near sideline that made Mac go ballistic. and things got pretty nasty. He told the chair umpire to “Go sit on a big %&$#” - and got away with the abuse because the umpire didn’t understand what he meant. Then Mac went on to win the next point – it is incredible to see him win most of the first points and even most of the second points after throwing a tantrum. Against Rios, he won four out of the next four points and six out of seven!
Mac’s game is truly awesome: he plays the forehand as if he’s actually hitting the ball with his bare forehand, his backhand as if he were hitting with the back of his hand; on his volleys, the racket seems a perfect extension of his own left arm. Rios is also stunning, the way he takes the ball so early; his forehand is just effortless and soooooh smooth. They both play like they’re making love to the ball – whereas Muster seems to hate the fuzzy yellow thing so much he has to spank it over and over again.
But, besides the age and style of play, there was a major difference I noticed between the two left-handed finalists: it was clear that one had learnt how to play tennis with a small-sized wooden racquet, while the other learnt how to play it with a composite oversized racquet and ripped all the benefits out of it.
John McEnroe and Pat Cash both learnt to play with wooden racquets; they're pretty much the veterans on the Tour of Champions these days; they are doing a great job facing stronger opposition, but it’s getting more and more difficult for them.
The new generation plays at a faster pace; the problem is that most of the 30-something champions (Richard Krajicek, Michael Stich, Sergi Bruguera, Michael Chang, Petr Korda, Todd Martin, even Rios and Muster) simply do not have the same charisma as McEnroe or the only other star of Mac’s calibre, Boris Becker. Alternately, the problem with Becker is that he's unreliable and uncommitted. Sure, Goran Ivanisevic is a big draw, and Jim Courier is spirited and has been doing a great job with is own senior tour in the states. But they’re not quite at the same level.
With Jimmy Connors and Bjorn Borg long gone, McEnroe remains the biggest star on the senior tour constellation and he deserves his wages – because whenever he plays there’s a crowded house.
In a Champions Tour that does not have official prize-money and relies on pre-established guarantees set by the tournament directors (plus performance bonuses), Mac’s the most expensive to get. I would say his fee would be around $150,000 USD; Becker, Courier and Ivanisevic are on a second level – Boris doesn’t have the same price tag as Mac because he lost his credibility following several late withdrawals. The word on the Tour of Champions is the German Diva doesn’t practice enough to play a couple of days in a row without getting injured, so he’s only going for one-day exhibitions.
Mac says the prospect of being 50 is “scary”. And with him sort of inevitably fading away, the Tour of Champions is at a crossroads waiting for Pat Rafter and – yes, I’m also counting on them later on – Pete Sampras and Andre Agassi.
A first urgent measure to build greater competitive credibility would be creating two different age brackets (just like it used to be before), so that Mac could go on competing with Wilander, Cash, Henri Leconte, Emilio Sanchez, Anders Jarryd, even Noah or Edberg (where the heck is he?) on the over 40’s or 45s, with the 30-somethings in an entirely different division.
Unfortunately, having two finals at the end of the event would make one of them anti-climatic. Another step would be joining forces with the mini-senior tour Jim Courier created in the States, because having two different tours and respective rankings is just way too confusing.
This is a subject I find really important for tennis in the big picture, because I think a strong senior tour that compliments the regular pro game would be good for everyone. All those former champions still have a lot to give back to the game: interacting with older spectators who saw them play in their salad years, as well as younger ones who discover through them how cool tennis can be. And the legends are the first ones to say they feel more relaxed and able to interact and open their bag of tricks on - and off - the court. That’s one of the reasons why The Vale do Lobo Grand Champions event is a success.
This week, the Tour of Champions is in Graz, Austria – featuring McEnroe, Rios, Muster and Carl-Uwe Steeb again, plus Ivanisevic, Leconte, Magnus Larsson and local Alex Antonitsch.
So, with Agassi about to retire and Sampras showing signs of wanting to play some competitive tennis again, I’ve got a couple of questions for you. To the older fans, what do you suggest regarding the format of the senior tour and the best way for the former champions to help the sport that gave them fame and fortune? To the younger ones, what is your take on the subject?
- Miguel Seabra at Vale do Lobo, Portugal