I feel badly for the promoters of the Thailand Open, who once again got whacked with a flurry of withdrawals by top players: Andy Roddick yesterday joined Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic on the sidelines, after reportedly injuring his left foot in practice on Tuesday; he pulled out on Wednesday just an hour before he was to meet Yeu-Tzuoo Wang.
Well, what did you expect? It's the Twilight Zone season - fall. Everyone is either injured or, it sometimes seems, running around hoping to snap a hamstring, smash an elbow, trip over a guy-wire - anything to justify getting back home, ASAP. It's a useless enterprise, trying to determine who is legitimately injured and who has succumbed to the most common fall injury of them all, Dislocated Motivation.
I have very little interest in the official tournaments that take place this time of year. They offer second and third-tier players (and even lesser lights) good opportunities to pad their rankings, or to make a frantic, last-ditch effort to overcome stinko performances between the start of the first Grand Slam and the end of the last. That's okay, I'm the kind of guy who can't resist grabbing a pair of, oh, trestle legs or hunk of plywood off the street and barging into the house with it - to my wife's eternal dismay. But the scavenger aspect of the fall results is always suspect, and the deeper you go into the fall the worse it gets. Who knows what horrors the Paris Indoors Masters has in store this year?
The remarks Roddick made a few days ago about building the rest of his year around the Davis Cup final (in case you don't get Radio Snoo, the tie will be played in Portland, Ore.) really underscored my feelings about the fall. I like that that Roddick has chosen to put into context the meaning of the fall indoor tour (wink-wink) with such a direct and otherwise praiseworthy confession. Let's face it, the players at or near the top of the game couldn't care less about the post-US Open runout of the year, or if they do it's because they see it as a last-ditch effort to salvage an otherwise disappointing year.
More and more, the fall season reminds me of those football games in which a team, say, the Rafa University Bulldogs, or Federer State Metros, builds a 64-3 halftime lead, then freely substitutes for the next two quarters, enabling the Kolya University Chokemonkeys to end up losing by just 64-38. There is entertainment value in this, of course, but it skews the season-ending stats on points scored and yielded. The fall season is a giant marrow bone tossed into a kennel full of hungry dogs.
The Roddick solution simply gleams with good sense and correct priorities, at least it does for those, like me, who hold Davis Cup in high regard. You play your Slams and Masters, and then focus on winning the Davis Cup. The only problem with the scenario is that neither Nadal, Federer, nor Djokovic gets to do it Andy's way, even if they're so inclined. Think about it: you will never have these four players around in Davis Cup at this time of year. In fact, there's no way more than two of them could ever be alive and kicking in Davis Cup after the semifinal round. I bring his up because it is one of the better arguments for playing the entire Davis Cup in Olympic Games fashion - over a three or even four week period, perhaps in a single location or region.
I say this through clenched teeth, because I'm a big fan of Davis Cup the way it is. But the logic is defensible. Imagine this as the Davis Cup scenario:
After the US Open, the players take a break until the last week in September - a break during which those who choose to can play in a variety of official tournaments or special events. Then October is Davis Cup month, and the World Group convenes in a pre-determined place where you have two or three courts representing every major surface, and the teams battle it out, preserving the choice of ground tradition (if not the host nation protocol).
You don't need many courts for Davis Cup, and playing four singles matches over two weeks (okay, six matches for those singles players who also play doubs) to get you down to the semifinals doesn't seem too much of a burden. The singles players in the DC finals would play, at most, eight five-set singles matches (plus four doubles, if applicable) with ample rest intervals over four weeks - but usually less (substitutions and mail-it-in dead rubbers always are a factor). The biggest feature of the current DC that you lose is the home-court, home-crowd advantage and color. And I'll be the first to admit that the hit would be significant one.
At the end of Davis Cup, you could hold the two fall Masters, although only of them (Madrid Masters) seems to produce high-quality play from all the top players these days. Then it's on to Shanghai. This schedule could be tough on the players who make the final round of DC, but that may not include any of the the Top Five (Roddick and Davydenko are the only T5 payer in the upcoming final), and it's not very stressful for the rest of the pack.
It's all speculation though, because if you polled the Davis Cup nations and players, the overwhelming (and to me, viable) answer would be: If it ain't broke, don't fix it. And Davis Cup ain't broke. . .
BTW, did y'all see the World Group draw for 2008? It's a bummer for the Russians, and it may have an influence on this year's final. Should the Russians win this year, they will have to defend in early February against Team Djokovic in the most compelling pairing of the first round. Russia would have choice of ground.
The USA will have to travel to Austria that same week, no doubt to play on slow clay, with a probable second-rounder against France, and semifinal against Spain. This is a pretty tall order, while top-seeded Russia, after getting through Serbia, would get the Czech Republic followed by Argentina. You can see the entire draw (as well as the zonal qualifying draws) here.