Oh, and I forgot to mention: generate more ooohs-and-aaaahs in a typical four-game stretch than any of the singles competitors are likely to tease out of the crowd.
No wonder nobody bothers writing about doubles - it's got so danged much. . . integrity!
So set aside that Excel spreadsheet with those cute little drawings of Roger Federer, Andy Murray and Radek Stepanek, put your feet up, break out the high-calorie beer and pop (along with you favorite trans-fat laden orange food) and do something new - just enjoy the tennis, in the form of Tennis Masters Cup doubles. It's fast, furious fun. Doesn't that beat agonizing over the state of The Mighty Fed's intestinal tract, or trying yet again to figure out exactly what Nikolay Davydenko means by "fast tennis"?
I've got to admit, going into the TMC, I was a hoping for a win by Mike and Bob Bryan. I like what those boys have done for doubles (and what doubles has done for them), especially the way their activism was a key factor in saving doubles from the dust bin of history. Lest I be accused of shifting whichever way the wind blows, I'll engage in full disclosure here: Doubles has a big problem. . . a huge problem. . . and it happens to be called singles tennis.
We don't need to get all anal about this, but let's face it - there's just one form of soccer (at least at the highest level), which is eleven per side, ninety-minute soccer. You don't have doubles Formula One racing, with two guys changing positions in the front seat at 150 MPH-plus in order to share the driving (like you probably did with you college buddy by the time you hit Kansas on that ill-fated cross-country trip back in the 1980s). And the Pittsburgh Steelers don't send out five of their special teams guys to play a game of flag football for fans who are willing to stick around after a typical Sunday afternoon clash with the Oakland Raiders.
Singles isn't necessarily a better game than doubles, and a lousy singles match is much less interesting than even a stinky doubles encounter. But while doubles is good sports, singles at its best is great theater, and the dominant players are larger than life touchstones for the passions, prejudices, jealousies and vicarious longings of the spectators. I often compare singles and doubles with an analogy that rubs some doubles aficionados the wrong way, but which I think is nevertheless true. When people go to the zoo, they have a delightful time at the monkey cage, or during feeding time for the seals; but they buy their tickets because they want to have a peek at a real lion, or polar bear. The repeated, dismal failure of all-doubles events is a fact that simply can't be ignored.
Nevertheless, I'm feeling pretty stoked about the Shanghai doubles. I mean, it's all about the tennis, and not a single player out there is whining about the length of the season, or discreetly informing the tournament director that he'd better get on the horn with the guys from IMG or Advantage, because come dawn he's probably going to pull up his stakes and get out of Dodge. The doubles players in Shanghai all appear, well, happy to be there. . . They made the cut, and they're chomping at the bit to show what they can do. It's a beautiful thing, isn't it?
So I like the Bryan brothers, but a part of me is also drawn to the team of Daniel Nestor and Nenad Zimonjic. I like Nestor because he's a lonely Canadian (where playing tennis appears to be a crime second only to being a New Jersey Devils fan); besides, he gives Tom Tebbutt of the Globe and Mail a reason to exist. And I like Zimonjic because he's a really funny, open, friendly guy with a refreshing degree of enthusiasm for his occupation. But if you're looking for a someone else to back in this one, try Luis Horna and Pablo Cuevas; yesterday, this relatively new team joined the Bryan Brothers as red-group qualifiers for the semifinals. They took the hard route, too, beating the former World No. 1 doubles team of Mahesh Bhupathi and Mark Knowles.
You know a little bit about Horna from his frequent appearance in the main draw of top ATP events (he's been ranked as high as no. 33). Cuevas, who's from Montevideo, Uraguay, has never won a singles title (not even a Challenger), and his career-high singles ranking is 88. He's 22, and his career-total prize money thus far is a little over $600,000.
I imagine the two guys were a pick-up doubles team, because they've played just four tournaments together. I found this hard to believe, but Cuevas and Horna are the first South American doubles team to win a Grand Slam title in the Open era - and they did it the very first time they teamed up. After Roland Garros, they lost in the first round of Washington and the second round of the US Open, but the Roland Garros title had sufficient heft to get them into the TMC.
Cuevas and Horna embody a classic doubles story: two down-and-out journeymen find themselves thrown together by fate on a doubles court and something clicks - they quickly discover that their talents and personalities create a whole that adds up to something more than a sum of the parts. And here they are, competing in an event free of the ambiguities that surround or qualify the importance of the singles competition at the same venue.
Make mine Cheetos!
