Does a yellowish tint coat your TV screen during the Fox Sports broadcasts from Key Biscayne, as if the tournament were being played behind a haze of South Florida humidity? For some inexplicable reason, I like it. The lack of a crystal-clear picture makes me feel as if the tournament is for tennis addicts only. It doesn’t have to work too hard to be thrilling, because we’re the only ones watching in the first place. The heat on the players may be high, but the pressure on the sport is low.
I needed to detox a little from tennis after my Indian Wells overdose, but I got in enough DVR time over the weekend, and TennisTV time today, to relate a few first impressions from Miami.
—Andy Murray betrayed a sluggish irritation during the first set of his opening match against Juan Monaco. The Argentine did begin impressively, controlling the points with heavier ground strokes than Murray could muster, particularly with his versatile backhand. But there were two troubles with Murray: (1) His old coach-berating side resurfaced at inopportune moments late in the first set. This was the first time I’ve seen him let his negativity affect his play this year. (2) He was either content to stick with the passive, rope-a-dope game that worked so well for him on the ultra-slow courts in Indian Wells, or he’s just so comfortable taking no risks right now that he can't get into the habit of forcing the action. Either way, it’s a risky way to play a strong and consistent baseliner. Even on the clay courts he'll see over the coming months, Murray will need to be able to take control of points and hit through the court.
—This morning the editor of TENNIS Magazine, James Martin, told me that watching Marat Safin this weekend made him hate tennis. I can see his point; the man is looking more miserable than ever out there—that’s saying something—and that only makes his job seem like inhumane drudgery. In his loss to Gael Monfils in the Knucklehead Bowl, Safin cracked a racquet in the decisive third-set tiebreaker. But having already been warned, he had to play with it or risk losing a point. His return of serve flew out.
—I watch a lot of tennis with the sound muted—the jazz soundtrack of the weekend was The Sermon, by Jimmy Smith—but I did catch some of Justin Gimelstob's commentary. I’ve always thought he was an insightful analyst who knows the game and the players. He also worked with technique guru Robert Lansdorp, which has to help with the finer points. Gimelstob also offered some ATP information I didn’t know—the South American guys want some clay-court events to be switched to hard—and was honest in assessing the embarrassing competitive habits of David Nalbandian. My only trouble is that Gimelstob puts himself and his analysis front and center in the telecast—he's still proving himself, I guess—which can make it hard to relax and sink into the match itself.
—In the best and most-often-replayed point of the Indian Wells final, Rafael Nadal jumped back for a lob from Andy Murray on his backhand side and sliced a high volley crosscourt that Murray scrambled to track down. The Murray get was spectacular, but the Nadal volley had an even higher degree of difficulty. On Monday, against Frederico Gil, Nadal, after struggling for much of the first set, broke serve at 5-5 with another high backhand volley. On this one, he reached back and spiked the ball with stunning force. Gil, who had hit a decent floating lob, was caught off guard and ended up stumbling after the ball.
I once considered Roger Federer’s high backhand volley and backhand overhead the best in the game. Maybe, more than forehands, backhands, or serves, it’s these status shots that make one worthy of being No. 1. Think of them as the top player’s exclamation points, the fancy hood ornaments that let ther world know their status as the sport's luxury vehicles.
—In my last post on the WTA, I lamented the fact that a tour with so many distinct and engaging personalities could produce so few distinct playing styles on the court. It goes against everything we’ve been taught about the expressiveness of tennis.
The current WTA paradigm (I’ve been out of college long enough to be allowed to use that word) mandates flat forehands, pummeled two-handed backhands, and an air of absolute seriousness and shrieking dedication to the destruction of your opponent—plus face-concealing visors, can't forget those. This weekend we caught a glimpse of a rare exception to this universal approach, in the form of 19-year-old Alexa Glatch and her casually athletic SoCal game and demeanor. Unfortunately, the surf-and-skateboard girl—at times, she looked like she was ready to lope off the court and onto the beach—didn’t have a prayer of withstanding the paradigm’s originator, Serena Williams.
Glatch, once a sure-shot young pro (and the pretend loser to Maria Sharapova in her famous “I Feel Pretty” commercial) who broke her wrist and arm in a moped accident, made some tentative steps forward in Indian Wells and Key Biscayne. She’s always had size—she’s over 6-foot-1 and has a Lindsay Davenport-esque aspect to her gait (they also share a coach in Robert Van’t Hof)—and she hits a heavy ball, but I was surprised by the flexibility of Glatch’s technique and the mellow stylishness of her strokes. She can generate big topspin effortlessly, snap off an inside-out forehand like a dude (or a Justine Henin), come over her backhand with two hands or take one hand off and shift easily to a slice. And she has an easy, natural, momentum-building service motion. She’s a jock, not just a product of a zillion balls pounded out at a tennis factory (though I’m sure she’s hit her share).
Glatch's game is more than just utilitarian; it has personality, and it was a breath of fresh air to watch. That’s not going to change any paradigms, but at least it lets us know there’s still life outside it.