by Pete Bodo
I had to smile when I checked the Madrid draw today and saw that Mardy Fish had been drawn to play John Isner in the first round. Both guys, I knew, could really use match play on European red clay (not having set foot on it for so long) and one was going to get very little of it this week. The good news was that this was a winnable match for both players, and the even better news was that the match-up guaranteed that an American player would make the second round. I thought, One Yankee sluggers is going to get a "W" out of this. In Madrid. On red clay. Holy cow!
Well, we can have a little fun at the expense of our hapless American countrymen at this time of year, because the way things have evolved, it's hard to imagine any of the U.S. players feeling defensive about their ineptness on clay. Back in the day, top American players tended to show up. Jim Courier, who had his best results on clay, played Barcelona, Nice, Monte Carlo, Rome and Roland Garros in 1994, and let's remember there was no Madrid clay event in those days. In 1997, Pete Sampras played Monte Carlo, Rome, World Team Cup and Roland Garros.
Andre Agassi, it may come as a surprise, often was a bit of a Euroclay slacker. In some of his best years, Agassi tuned up for the red clay on Har-Tru in Atlanta, then he played Rome. That was it, although if he lost early in Rome, he might sneak in another event. Agassi set a trend for the American players who would follow. Clay-court season begins at the conclusion of the hard-court Miami Masters, and ends when they crown a champion in. . . Houston. After that, school's out.
Today's players from the U.S. are disinclined to show up for anything red until Madrid, and that may be less because they want clay-court experience for Roland Garros than because the Johnny-come-lately Masters was shoe-horned into the calendar and the players now have a gun to their heads. They can't afford not to play Madrid and Rome, when it comes to their annual ATP committment, and the only thing worse than having to stay in Europe for a five weeks, to some of them, would be going for three, jetting home, and returning a few days later for a Grand Slam.
Only one American player saw fit to go to Europe before the beginning of the Madrid event, and that was Isner, who was lured back to Belgrade by the remembered scent of success. Did he really lose to Sam Querrey in the Belgrade final in 2010? And would that be same Querrey who's 6-9 (counting today's loss in Madrid) in 2011? It turns out that the 2010 Battle of Belgrade was just a tease, but I can see a good little trivia question coming out of it: When was the last time two Americans with gigantic serves contested an ATP final on red clay?
Well, it was nice while it lasted. . .
If you think about it, though, the approach taken these days by Andy Roddick (he didn't even bother to play Houston—a clay-court tournament he's won—this year), Fish (who won one match in Houston then lost to Kei Nishikori), Isner (quarterfinalist at Houston, lost in the first-round at Belgrade to Ricardo Mello), Querrey (has not won a match on clay this year; he lost to Michael Llodra today) and other players who lean on aggressive, service-based hard-court games makes a certain amount sense. And it reflects the conventional wisdom that dominates on tour today.
Rafael Nadal, who has a much better chance of winning a hard-court major in any given year than a U.S. player has of winning the French Open, warms up for the U.S. Open with just two events, the hard-court equivalents of Madrid and Rome—Toronto/Montreal and Cincinnati. Ditto Roger Federer.
This formula (a distinct segment = two Masters plus a Grand Slam) is ideal, and the fact that it's only used twice a year is purely a matter of logistics. There isn't enough room on the calendar between the French Open and Wimbledon to jam in two Masters events. And in the first segment of the year, somebody goofed and put the two Masters events at the end of the segment and the major at the beginning. Nothing to be done about that now.
Given how all this developed, you have to admire any North American players who make an effort to play in Europe before the Masters gun is put to his head. That would be Isner, who has played Belgrade for two years in a row (Querrey didn't bother to return to defend). I'm glad he won today, because his trip to Serbia was a disappointment. But these issues also make me think of Milos Raonic, who's not officially American but pretty danged close when it comes to his background (he's from Canada) and, more important, his power game.
Raonic, who's 20, has followed the trail cut by most great players, even those whose surface of choice is not red clay. And that trail is not as clear as it once was. At the age of 20 in 1992, Sampras played five clay-court events before Roland Garros. That same year, 22-year old Agassi played four. Courier played only two, but keep in mind that the two-time Roland Garros champ didn't need a lot of prep work for red clay, and the guarantees offered on the small hard-court swing in the Far East were very attractive (Sampras would ultimately partake of them as well).
Raonic is tapping into this old-school sensibility. He played three clay events before Madrid, and he's good to go through the end of Rome. He's gotten roughed up and pushed around some, but he's won at least two matches at every one of those events (Monte Carlo, Barcelona, Estoril) and that's extremely impressive, given the extent to which he relies on his serve and a big, bold game predicated on ending points quickly. These days, that comes about as close as you can get to defining the term, "attacker." Conceptually, Raonic plays the same type of game as Roddick, Fish and the rest of those American to whom playing on clay seems about as appealing as having a root canal. But unlike them, he's making it work. He's winning matches.
The big difference, of course, is that Raonic seems to think he can win with that game (let's leave the question of comparative talent out of it for now), and he's not reluctant to try. Maybe he understands that the best way for a North American to get over his red-clay jitters is to play lots and lots of matches on the surface. Raonic has been winning enough matches to feel good about his game and more or less comfortable on clay. Believing that you can hold your own is the first step to surprising yourself in a pleasant way.
You could question the wisdom of Raonic's scheduling. The kid has played a load of tennis in this, his breakout year, and it's carried him from a ranking outside the Top 150 all the way to No. 25. He had to quit after losing the first set to Fernando Verdasco in the Estoril semis last week (back trouble), but that doesn't necessarily mean he's made a mistake playing so much. He's just doing what so many of the best players have done, and what comes naturally to a youngster who's a potential champion. He's gorging on Ws, and he can't get enough of the game. He doesn't seem to know that with the game he has, he's not supposed to win on clay.
It's too late for most of the current crop of U.S. players to follow a similar regimen and there's no point in being a copy-cat anyway. Roddick and Fish are old warhorses by now. And the younger guys are, well, following their own lights. But the way Raonic has gone about building his career is also a comment on how the two U.S. players have handled theirs, and on the differences between the three young men. Winning begets winning, and I don't doubt that a few wins on clay would improved the disposition of any player. Hats off to Raonic for putting himself out there to allow winning to happen to him. I hope something similar happens to Isner, because it's not too late, and he did show up.