In the last post, Q.U.I.T.S, old friend and frequent poster Ruth added an interesting comment, a significant part of which I'm quoting below, with comments of my own following. But first, let's review a related comment by The Tribe's very own human smiley face-icon, Creig. He wrote:
Pete:
How about a blog detailing your perspective on the many, many, many, many fictions of tennis, fictions often create/inflated by the media?
You mentioned one: the so-called schedule-related injuries.How about height as advantage? How about racquet technology? How about service stance? Let's blow all of these old-wives tales and half-truths and cliches and sheer myths to smithereens, just once (but not for all).
Now, it did occur to me that Creig was being sarcastic, but I'm going to take his comment literally and go down his list, leaving the injury issue for a final, longer meditation. Meanwhile, I'd like you all to weigh-in on these subjects. Can anyone think of other "myths" we ought to address?
The advantage of height - Roger Federer isn't exactly a midget, but he certainly doesn't suffer any more from lacking Marat Safin's height than he does from not having Marat's brain - replicas of which are currently selling briskly at Whole Foods supermarkets (just look for the sign, "cauliflower").
In tennis, size doesn't matter - until it does. If Federer and Safin were comparable to identical in every way but size, height might be an advantage. But it takes too many parts to make a fine tennis game for something as basic as height to have a disproportionate influence. If you really want to understand the irrelevance of size, start by comparing the results and games of Justine Henin-Hardenne (a borderline midge) and Lindsay Davenport.
The biggest advantage to height is manifested in the serve; the most glaring handicap of height is having that much more bulk to get out of your own way, especially on shots that call for sudden directional change or deep bending.
Racquet technology - You never hear NASCAR (don't all faint at once now!) commentators proclaim that the new radial tire technology has suddenly turned every driver into a regular Richard Petty, or that it has destroyed oval-track racing. Sure racquet technology has made a difference, but it offers everyone comparable benefits. You say the dearth of serve-and-volley tennis is a result of everyone returning and passing better thanks to the new racquets, I say that it has more to do with the fact that the breed has gone extinct. Pat Rafter did fine playing serve-and-volley in the big-head/exotic material era, no?
One guy who has an interesting story in all this is Jimmy Arias, one of the first products of Nick Bollettieri - think Tommy Haas, without the slick bits. Arias had an awesome forehand that he hit with fury almost unheard of back when everyone was still using standard-sized wood or even composite racquets. Overnight, he believes, the other players caught up and robbed him of his advantage because of the high-tech revolution in equipment. I never really made up my mind about the legitimacy of his claim; there's no doubt he played in a era of rapid and unexpected change.
But for the purposes of this discussion, the main thing is that when everyone is using the same gear, the playing field is level - no matter what that gear is. And if today's racquets help serve returners, why wouldn't they also help volleyers? Tennis racquets are pretty simple things; it's hard to imagine (as much as racquet makers want you to think so) that they have so many built-in, subtle qualities that they would, say, help with two-handed backhands, but fail to help with the serve for the same reason - larger sweet spot, greater flex, etc. etc.
You want to know what the problem with serve-and-volley tennis is? Mario Ancic is identified by some as a serve-and-volley player.
Service Stance - Creig, old buddy, you got me. Anyone have any ideas?
Now, let's get to the topic de jour, the frequency of injury on today's tour. Here's what Ruth wrote:
*. . .As for the injury problem, I am very aware that these players are not playing my grandmother's tennis or even my tennis (I am old enough to be a grandmother), and I'm not at all surprised by the vast number of injuries among the modern men and women players. The days when the men, for example, could play a week-long 5-setter tournament with their wood rackets, drink and party all night, then drive to the next tournament and play well -- those days and that tennis are long gone, people!
Also, I'll never forget seeing, several years ago, one of those in-depth TV pieces in which the different styles of serving among modern vs "ancient" women players were illustrated; the effects of the differences on the knees, hips, and shoulders of the modern players were explained in detail. The narrator remarked that the tennis tour alone would be keeping an army of orthopedists in yachts etc for years to come. :)
So, I'll let all of you critics -- whether you're recreational tennis players or couch potatoes or writers! -- wax cynical about the injuries among the players or the reasons why they shouldn't/couldn't be exhausted by the schedules they play, I'll never be apart of that game!*
Ruthie - as someone once said, "puh-leeeze!"
Let's start with this: let' s everyone look at the WTA and ATP commitment requirements (the rule books are available at the WTA and ATP tour websites, but be warned: they're very large PDF files that could knock out less-than-zippy computers). Add the Grand Slams and tally up the number of weeks the players are obliged to play, then look me in the eye and tell me it's too much.
Is it the "official" game's fault, or the fan's fault (because it's the fans who get punished by unexpected withdrawals), that the top players are fleshing out their schedules by chasing big appearance fees in places like Dubai, or that they're entering meaningless events simply because their management firms have ownership and/or management positions at those events?
Now about those injuries. Playing hurt is a part of sports. Rafael Nadal had a bad ankle in New York during the U.S. Open? BFD. How about Bryce Fisher, the Seattle Seahawks defensive end, playing most of a season with a broken hand? Sure there are legitimate injuries that force players to bypass tournaments or take time off. So what? It's funny, every NFL game is the equivalent of a human train wreck and how many people are calling for reducing the football season to four games?
How about this idea: If you're really hurting, sit down a few weeks, let everyone else take advantage of the boatload of opportunities, then return and pick up where you left off. Everybody wins.
The players have taken this "injury+long season=the trouble with tennis" motif and run long and hard with it. They've bamboozled a lot of fans into thinking that injury is some bizarre unnatural phenomenon that somehow proves that tennis is a badly run game. Well it is, but not in terms of the official commitment it asks of the players; it's more a matter of offering them too many additional opportunities. Imagine a poor freelance writer complaining about contracting Carpel Tunnel Syndrome because he's taken on too many lucrative writing assignments. Some problem!.
Injury, and the use of injury as an excuse for poor performance (as well as for simply not showing up), has always loomed as a kind of final taboo. There was, simply, a code of honor that kept players from using that crutch. Now, an increasingly coddled, catered to and self-absorbed generation of players seems to be exploiting and manipulating the injury option. You doubt players would do that? This is an outfit that, in just a few short months, has made the momentum breaking "toilet break" the latest addition to tennis's glorious list of traditions.
In all this, the players are fooling nobody more comprehensively than themselves. By convincing each other of how tough they have it and how bad a deal they've got, they slowly but surely drag down the standards in the sport - standards in everything from ethical conduct to achievement, the latter being the aspect in which we are most interested.
I learned never, ever to trust the players on any vital subject some years ago, while working on a piece for Tennis about Pete Sampras's chances of breaking Roy Emerson's Grand Slam singles title record. At the time, Sampras had, oh, something like six or seven majors, and he was going pretty strong. Everywhere I turned, I kept getting the same answer: Now way he can do it. Not in today's game! The players today are so much better. This isn't the wooden racquet era, anymore, bub! Not in today's game! The four surfaces are all different now. The travel is too much. Not in today's game! He makes too much money. The stress factor is high. Not in today's game! Too much risk of injury. Not in today' game!
Well, we all know Pete Sampras did it. He did it because he decided to try to do it, instead of buying into all the theories why nobody could ever do it again. BTW, I feel the same way about Roger Federer's chance to complete a Grand Slam. One thing I know for sure, he'll never do it if he thinks he has to play too many tournaments, that the risk of injury is too high, that the French is too close to Wimbledon, that the racquet technologies have leveled the playing field and increased his risk of injury.
That's the real shame about all the whining the players are doing today. It justifies them for the moment and it may even sound good to some fans; it certainly seems to give them every excuse to give less than their best, to quit, to mope around about how tough it is to be a top tennis pro. But in the long run, all it does is reduce them and rob them of potential glory. And in their blindness, they also diminish the game, and insult their fans. Not that that hasn't been done before. It's an even older tradition than the toilet break.