Nasdaq-100
Saturday, March 25
It was a sunny and not-at-all-sweltering Saturday in Key Biscayne. Here's one account of it, bit by bit, from morning to night.
9:30 A.M.: Doubletree Coconut Grove breakfast room
For a second straight day, the first person I see at the hotel is Paul Goldstein. Yesterday he was smiling; today he's got his unkempt head in his hands as reads the paper over his waffles. I'm surprised he's even up: Goldie lost a heartbreaker last night to David Nalbandian 7-6 in the third after squandering two match points. I'm also surprised at the article he's reading: “Bush, Fox discuss immigration issues”
10:30 A.M.: Court 2, Vania King vs. Maria Kirilenko
King is a 17-year-old Californian making the transition from juniors to pros. She's also the closest thing the U.S. has to a woman prospect right now. She's had some success this year, but it's a hard road because she's tiny. Even Kirilenko, underpowered most of the time, has more guns. King's gritty, naturally, but she loses in straights.
11:30 A.M.: Stadium, Lleyton Hewitt vs. Tim Henman
The replay-challenge system has gotten off to a promising start. It's efficient and dramatic-a challenge is made and a Hawk-Eye-style computer simulation pops up on the stadium's big screen, with the decision already made for the umpire. But in his match with Henman, Hewitt clings to the traditional ways—i.e., he argues pointlessly with the umpire. The Aussie doesn't make any challenges (Henman is 0 for 3 on his). On a close call at the end of the first set, when he has nothing to lose by challenging, Hewitt simply walks up from the baseline and gives the guy an earful.
12:00 P.M. Press Room
I'm reading a story about a 13-year-old Australian kid, Bernard Tomic, who has signed a contract to be represented by industry giant IMG. It seems like only yesterday that I was reading about young kids and IMG. It was exactly yesterday, in fact, as a storm of media criticism descended on IMG's last prodigy, Donald Young, after he was beaten 6-0, 6-0 by an Argentine no-name, who was then beaten by James Blake by the same scores. (Imagine how bad it would have been if Blake and Young had played!)
At 16, Young has already been turned into a cautionary tale. The consensus is that he's taken too many wild cards into big tournaments and absorbed too many beatings. This is true but not crucial. Yes, losing hurts your confidence, and Young may be having a crisis right now about playing the pros. But at 16 the issue is, How effective is his training? I visited the Youngs in Atlanta last year, where Donald practices with his teaching-pro parents. The competition at his father's club was good but not world class, and I got the feeling that DY would need to be pushed harder very soon. He also said that he didn't do any fitness work, something that also should change if this very normal-sized kid is ever going to hold his own against the very abnormally sized men who await him at the next level.
3:00 P.M. Intercontinental Hotel, Miami
Two scruffy journalists and a well-dressed and -coiffed agent sit in a spacious hotel lobby and wait for a 19-year-old to come down from his room. We talk a bit, the conversation dies, and the agent looks at his Blackberry. He tells us that the 19-year-old, his client Rafael Nadal, has a girlfriend in Mallorca, who “he had to fight to get, like any other school kid.” The other journalist, Sebastian Fest, who's based in Madrid, is there to talk about a series of articles Nadal is going to write for his agency about the upcoming World Cup. I'm there for TENNIS Magazine.
3:30 P.M. Intercontinental Hotel, Miami
After 45 minutes, we see a big guy in denim running out of the corner of the lobby grinning and holding a blue folder in front of him. It's Nadal, and he's got something for his agent. He's full of energy, and it's a serious effort to get him to stop, shake hands with us, and sit down.
Fest gets his brief interview and Nadal is off again. This time he runs toward the glass front doors. There are four or five stairs in front of the doors. Rather than wasting time and stepping down them, Nadal jumps them all and almost crashes into the glass. Eventually, after many photos and autographs, we get Nadal into the back seat of a car. But he can't find his passport. He jumps out and runs back to another car, where his friend is sitting with his luggage. No luck. A few seconds later, out of the corner of my eye I see Nadal running past the car in the other direction, back into the hotel.
Five minutes and many frantic searches later-they're running late for a flight-I hear Nadal's agent say from the front seat, “Here he comes.” Rafa tears up to the car on the same side that I'm sitting, opens the door, and nearly sits on me before I can scramble away. He sits down, breathing hard, beat up passport in hand, and, pulls his baseball hat sideways onto his head with a smile.
We try to pull away from the curb and Nadal's rep and the driver have a few choice words in Spanish for the people in the car ahead of us, which isn't moving. I turn toward Nadal and see he's looking at me with a huge, “can you believe they're saying that!” grin that goes from ear to ear.
Nadal calms down completely when we start to talk, becoming a little guarded and halting in English. But he's forceful, too. At one point he bursts out with sudden, absolute conviction, “I want to play well at Wimbledon FOR SURE!” You can't do anything but believe that he will.
6:00 P.M.: Press Room
I'm finally back from the Nadal adventure and have been informed that Kim Clijsters has lost. It's officially upset city at the Nasdaq, and there aren't many good matches out on the grounds tonight. So that's it for me today, but I'll be here Sunday, hopefully with more time to see some tennis.