It’s one of the busier weeks of the tennis season, and I’ve been derelict in my blogging duties—my apologies. The players in Madrid have been running and swinging in a little red square in the corner of my computer screen, but I’ve had a hard time focusing on them or getting my head around their matches long enough to ascertain exactly how they’re doing. As you know if you’ve been over to Pete’s blog and seen our fabulous mock Tennis Magazine cover, our editor and friend James Martin is leaving to cover soccer at ESPN.com, at the same time that we’ve been wrapping up an issue of the magazine. In short, it’s been chaotic. It’s also been tough for me to lose a co-worker with whom I’ve spent 40 hours a week for the last 12 years. I’m not exactly sure what I’ll do here when I can’t walk away from this keyboard and talk to James about the glorious histrionics of Novak Djokovic or the relative merits of the New Pornographers’ discography. I do know there will be, as there always is when you cease to see any friend as often you once did, expressions, phrases, jokes, ways of talking that I’ve used with James over the years that I won’t use again any time soon. Your personality is never entirely your own; different parts of it rise to the surface with different people, as if drawn to the light in their faces, and then descend back to the depths when they’re not around. At our going-away party for James, a former fact-checker for the magazine showed up. I hadn’t seen him for five years, but somehow, within a few minutes, I found myself making a joke in a certain way, with a certain tone in my voice, that I knew only he would find funny in the particular way I meant it to be funny. When he did, it was like we’d been talking every day. It will be like that, I’m sure, when I see James again, but until then, I’ll have to leave 12 years of elaborately honed inside jokes—the kind of jokes that can get you through 40 hours a week at a keyboard—behind.
So, anyway, along with all of that there has been a tennis tournament happening. Since, as I said, my attention has been at more of a remove than normal, I won’t attempt a sweeping summation of the event, or even try to tease out one specific idea into a lengthy treatise. It’s time for the sportswriter’s life raft of choice, the notebook.
—As I write this, Roger Federer has just yelled and scratched and clawed and fist-pumped and finessed his way to three-set win over Ernests Gulbis. Federer said after their last match, the Roman Ruin, that he might have to win “ugly” if he wanted to scrape his way back into form over the clay season. While this hasn’t been an ugly match by any means, Federer has been up and down, alternating between well-constructed first-strike rallies, deceptive touch shots, and wild forehand misses. For much of it, both guys went toe-to-toe and accepted the errors that came with the big swings. This was a game that worked to Gulbis' advantage, but over the last two sets Federer maneuvered him away from it and was able to employ a wider variety of weapons.
From Federer’s perspective the match reminded me of those that Nadal played in Doha at the start of the year. Like Federer, Nadal was mired in a fairly sustained slump at that point, and he had obviously decided that the only way out was to fight his way out—pretty, ugly, A-game, C-game, down a set and a break, it didn’t matter. For both guys, it was time to do some winning. Nadal didn’t go all the way in Doha, but he did set the stage for a return to form a couple of months later. And like Federer, he showed that the price of excellence, aside from the world-class talent and genetics and thick calves and all of that, is both eternal vigilance and a sense of when to make your stand. Wouldn’t it be nice if their co-returns to form led them to a final-round showdown on Sunday?
—I attended this tournament last year, but with the multiple feeds on TennisTV I feel almost as connected to it from my desk as I did when I was inside the Magic Box. I know that sounds like a shamelessly disguised plug for the site, but it isn’t; I really mean it—and besides, it's not necessarily a good thing. The second and third courts are just as sterile and depressingly echoey on TV as they are in person. It’s too early to say whether this venue’s design—or overdesign—was a success or not, and the center court has the blend of spaciousness and intimacy that you only get on secondary courts, like Suzanne Lenglen or the Grandstand, at the majors. But thus far I’d say the emphasis is on the "Box" rather than the "Magic." Three retractable roofs sounds great in theory, but to do that it was necessary, or the designer felt that it was necessary, to seal each court off from the world behind high walls and half-coverings. Unlike most tournament sites, when you walk around the Box, you can’t hear anything that’s happening on these two courts. The upshot is that, what should be a sun-filled outdoor spring event has been filled with some of the airless gloom that permeates most indoor tournaments. It’s interesting that, of the three clay Masters, the one that with the most atmosphere and fan appeal, at least from a television viewer’s perspective, is the one that has changed the least, Monte Carlo.
—Just who is this guy named Nicolas Almagro that we’ve been watching this week? Who is this guy laying it on the line, playing forcefully, reaching his first Masters semifinal (without losing a set), and celebrating with the kind of uncorked passion that we usually see only from Nadal? What did he do with the Almagro who swings for winners when winners aren’t there, who loves his strokes too much to temper them? Whoever he is, I’ve been waiting to see him for six years. Now the question is: Can this Nicolas Almagro remain as passionate against his fellow Spaniard and friend Nadal? Or will Rafa stick a cork in him?
—Speaking of Nadal, let me isolate one moment, what I would say was the most telling moment, from his match against Monfils on Friday. Nadal was up 2-1 in the first; the early points and games had been long, but on the previous two rallies Nadal had missed badly, and Monfils led 40-15. Nadal reached 30-40, and then watched as Monfils floated a routine ground stroke long. As it landed, Nadal did a little jump and fist-pump combination. This is the kind of reaction most players save for when they’ve broken. Most of us don’t want to get ahead of ourselves, or even jinx ourselves, by celebrating the chance merely to get to deuce on our opponent’s serve. But Nadal wasn’t celebrating; he was generating emotional momentum. It worked: He broke and won the next three games for the set.
—Is the drop shot evolving? We see it on clay more than any other surface, but what’s struck me most this spring is not how often the players are using it but how well they’re hitting it. They seem to have gotten better as a whole just over the past month, to the point where the men rarely seem to miss it (of course, maybe I think this because Djokovic, who misses his share of ill-conceived drops, hasn’t been in Madrid). They hit them with freedom and nonchalance, from either wing, from anywhere and to anywhere. In this sense, the clay game is the most three-dimensional of any surface right now. But the most remarkable drop shot is owned by a woman, Maria Jose Martinez Sanchez. Her abbreviated downward slash makes it look so easy I almost believe I can do it myself. There are limits, though, to what we can learn from the pros. It will be a while before the drop shot evolves for the rest of us.
—Hernan Gumy: the most intriguing new—or, at least new to the limelight—figure in tennis? What is he thinking?
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Have a good weekend.