We're almost there. It's been a long, dirty road: Will it end with Federer-Nadal? They've each got very tough opponents to get through. Which is only right, I suppose, though I confess that I'll be seriously let down if they don't make it. (Please, not Ljubicic! Oh...sorry...did I say that out loud?) Meanwhile, I'll give you what I got out of a slow quarterfinal day.
The Battlefield
We all like to watch tennis from the back of the court, right? It’s the training from TV. It also gives you an idea of what the players are seeing and how they’re developing a point. And, as Richard Williams once said when he didn’t show up at one of his daughter’s big matches, “I don’t want to keep moving my head back and forth.” But the side view has its advantages, as I found out while watching the Rafael Nadal-Novak Djokovic match from that perspective today.
As the first point got under way, a thought came to me: Djokovic has no chance. What led me to this startling conclusion? His opponent’s 57 straight wins on clay? Uncle Toni touching his nose and pulling his ear like a third-base coach? Well, those things didn’t hurt. But of more immediate importance was Djokovic’s physical presence, and the “heaviness” of his shots. Together they made it clear that he would have a lot of trouble breaking down Nadal’s defenses on clay, even on a bright, warm, fast-ball day like it was Wednesday in Paris.
Clay is supposed to be hell on big hitters, but it takes a lot of ground-stroke power to win on it. You need what tennis people call a heavy ball—one with a lethal combination of topspin and pace—to push it through the court and get your opponent on the run. When I’ve played on slow clay in recent years, I’ve felt like I was going to throw my arm out trying to hit penetrating shots. An old-fashioned grinder like Lleyton Hewitt has more success on hard courts because his shots don’t kick up and forward with topspin.
Djokovic hits a clean ball, a hard ball, a penetrating ball, but not a heavy one, by pro standards. Facing Nadal across the court, the Serb, who’s 6-foot-2 but weighs just 165, didn’t look like he had any way of hurting him. From the side, a clay-court match can appear to be a long-range war, where one player has to patiently break down the defenses of the other—back him up, bring him forward, snap him from one side to the other. Nadal’s heavy-topspin forehand makes inroads every time he hits it; and from the first game it was clear that he could defend his side with relative ease. To make any inroads himself, Djokovic would have to go all-or-nothing with his shots far too often.
Early in the first set, Djokovic made his one strategic foray. He flicked a short-angle forehand to the corner of the service box, which forced Nadal to hit a backhand while running wide. Nadal made the natural reply, crosscourt, and Djokovic was there to hit a forehand winner up the line. I thought, briefly, that he may have something there. It ended up working twice. The third time Djokovic tried it, Nadal scrambled around, hit a penetrating forehand, and took control of the point.
Djokovic eventually injured his back and had to retire. But the Serb will be back. He doesn’t have the variety of Andy Murray or the explosiveness of Gael Monfils, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. He’s free to play solid, smart, straight-ahead tennis. That just wasn’t ever going to be enough today.
The Shot
When people I know get a chance to play with a tennis legend, they all say the same thing afterward: “He couldn’t move, but he still had the shots.” I felt the same way when I played doubles with Cliff Drysdale. I had seen his famous two-handed backhand (one of the first of the modern era), but to have him return my serve with it was something special. “That’s the backhand, right in front of me!” It was like a living museum piece (no offense, Cliff). I can only imagine how I would have felt, say, returning John McEnroe’s serve or seeing Bjorn Borg in his hunched ready-position, blowing on his fingers (something tells me he doesn’t do that anymore).
A famous tennis stroke also serves as a kind of signature. I was sitting at my desk after the Nadal match and some senior dubs was on the screen in front of me. I couldn’t identify any of the four gray-haired guys on the court. Then one of them, a hefty left-hander, hit a one-handed backhand with almost no knee bend or hip rotation. It was more of a pull around the body than anything else—but it was hit so perfectly and smoothly it had to be a pro’s. Any idea whose it was? Andres Gomez. It was a terrific thing to see again. Do other sports have these types of living memories?
The Pit
As I said, my desk is in the secondary pressroom, under Court Suzanne Lenglen, far from the Wertheim/Bodo/Bricker ruling elite at Chatrier (Pete’s been going above and beyond this week, hasn’t he—even giving the players gifts!). Instead, I’m surrounded by photographers. In the magazine world, photogs are widely considered, well, “a little nuts.” And eavesdropping on their conversations, it’s clear that they have, let’s just say, a hardened view of their profession.
The first day I heard one woman ask her neighbor, “Did you go to that Nadal birthday cake thing? I was just wondering how bad it was.” When a teenage WTA player was seen heading to a locker room, a photographer commented, “She’s probably got to take her masking agent before she gets tested.” And a photographer’s view of the pros is somewhat different from yours and mine. A player is basically “boring” or “not boring,” depending on how expressive he or she is. Photographers love Rafael Nadal and Maria Kirilenko (for a number of reasons), are utterly frustrated by Ivan Ljubicic and David Nalbandian, and have a love/hate relationship with Roger Federer—Fed photos will always sell, but he looks the same every time he hits the ball. (That’s a mark of a good player in my book—not in theirs.) They were in heaven this week with Gael Monfils. One British photographer couldn’t get onto a court for a match of his, and had to watch on a screen near me. When Monfils went into one of his screaming double fist-pumps, the TV cameras played it back in slow motion. The photographer was in misery. “Oh, look at all those bloody pictures,” he moaned.
But give these people a break. They literally fight each other for space at every match. There are only a few spots around a court where you can take a sellable tennis photo (no wonder they call it “the pit"). If you can’t put you and your camera there, you are, as they say, s--- out of luck. That’s enough to make anyone a little nuts.
The Canadian
Another junior spotting: Philip Bester of Canada. I’ve heard the name around, and I know that he lost in three sets to Donald Young at Flushing Meadows last year. I got my first look today, as he moved into the quarterfinals. He certainly looks good in theory—moves well, lots of racquet head speed, presses forward whenever possible. He’s seen his share of a guy named Federer. But he was also shanking quite a few balls while I was watching, and I see that he’s only ranked No. 40 on the ITF list. Anyone know if that’s an accurate representation of his level?
That’s it for now, I’m trying to get out of here before 10 tonight and see a little of the city in the evening. Maybe I’ll get lucky and find a Bud Light somewhere.
Tomorrow, it’s the ladies big day: Who do you have? I’ll take Vaidisova and Kimmy. Somebody’s got to do it.