Well, it was an eventful weekend in Charleroi, with the Italian women scoring their first Fed Cup final triumph over the theoretical "Dream Team" of Belgium - surely the most under-performing Fed Cup squads (after the U.S. in recent years?) in action this year. Oh, I know this is all about "injuries" and a part of me wants to accept that and weep tears of compassion for Kim Clijsters and Justine Henin-Hardenne. But another part of me remains deeply skeptical, just as much at the gut level as in my rational mind. Let's fact it, Belgium isTeam Hypochondria.
Yeah, I know, I know. . . what do I know about the tremendous sacrifice of these girls in their quest for global tennis supremacy? As regular poster Samantha has so often said, in defense of her Justine H-2, "how do you/we know what Justine is feeling inside?" Exactamundo. But that fact that I don't know what's happening in the dark, volcanic recesses of H-2's large intestine also means that nobody else does, either. How convenient!
Well, that's precisely the problem with injury-related controversies; in most cases, it's the injured party's word against the skeptic's suspicion, but have ever noticed that in some of these cases, the "boy who cried wolf" factor kicks in? The thing is, nobody says this for mere pleasure. When you feel skeptical, you feel skeptical. No amount of wishing it to be otherwise is going to change that. Justine's injury may be life-threatening for all I know. That makes twice in one year, so she's got more lives than a cat, despite having given, as she keeps reminding us, her oxymoronic 200 per cent. Even Fox Sports was sufficiently mesmerized to proclaim that H-2 prevailed in her two matches "Despite assorted health issues."
Note to Justine: why not shoot for a non-hyperbolic 95 per cent sometime. Who knows, maybe you'll do your opponent the courtesy of scoring a clean win?
Belgian captain Carl Maes took a great, immediate shot at damage control, insisting: "The best team won, let's be clear about that." I'll tell you one group of people who might have wondered why Maes would have been so intent on articulating a truism: the Italian squad. They celebrated with such a spontaneous explosion of pride and joy that you would have thought they just won the Fed Cup, instead of having attended the latest presentation of H-2's drama: "I would have won if I wasn't dying out there!"
There's no objective way to settle these injury controversies (although publicly-posted X-rays or MRIs might help), but it certainly isn't confidence inspiring when H-2 quits in the final of the same tournament (Australian Open, 2006) that her countrywoman (and Fed Cup teammate) Kim Clijsters leaves on crutches, citing the need for a two-month break. Then, just a few weeks into that recuperation period, Clijsters throws away her crutches like some New Testament beggar and pounds and slashes and splits her way to the final of a tournament promoted by her friend and business associate, Bob Verbeeck. Hmmmmm. . .I keep getting a whiff of something rotten that they've always blamed on Belgium's neighbor, Denmark.
Well, maybe I'm being grossly unfair to the Belgian lasses. I understand that, but hey - I'll be paying the tab on sins a lot bigger, when all is said and done. So what is it that makes Belgium the Little Nation of Pain, at least for women tennis players (their men, by contrast, have borne with the physical demands of pro tennis quite well, if no nearly with the same degree of success and brilliance as the women)?
I think it's something we'll call the Quite Useful Injury Time Syndrome.
You've seen Q.U.I.T.S at work yourself, I'm sure. You're stopped in traffic along a construction site and you see the crew chief order his pick-and-shovel bearing men to begin digging. All of a sudden, four of them fall to the pavement, writhing in pain, clutching their lower backs. Or, your son or daughter wakes up on the morning of Sesame Street's all-Elmo day and claims that he or she can't go to school: My tummy, it really hurts mommy! You are audited by the Internal Revenue Service. You walk into the auditor's office, where your paperwork is all spread out on his desk. You hurl all over everything (true story, BTW). Welcome to the happy world of Q.U.I.T.S. It takes a special kind of person to live here!
But in the end, I'm not inside a laborer's back, a kid's stomach, or a tax dodger's nervous system, so who's to say? All we know is that Q.U.I.T.S exists, and Italy is Fed Cup champion; this is what folks in some quarters would call a "life-affirming" development, because it demonstrates that in team play, team spirit and/or heroic individual effort can rise to a degree of importance that simply doesn't come into play in tournament tennis. One reason for that is obvious, the other more subtle.
Let's start with the obvious one. If you check the archive (category: Fed Cup), you'll see that in a post, 24/7 Minus 2:30, this is what I wrote about the Italian squad.
*Italian women may be the best kept secret in pro tennis. They’re consistently competitive players with loads of personality and this wonderfully blasé manner. You want to hear someone tell you what she (or he) really thinks? Go find yourself an Italian player.
Francesca Schiavone is a seasoned, cagy, veteran who brought all her wiles to bear in the critical singles match with Amelie Mauresmo (first match of Day 2, with the tie at 1-1). Schiavone won in three tough sets, after which she declared it the most “beautiful” win of her career. This set up Pennetta's Husarova moment, and Flavia (that's the feminine of Flavor Flav) made the most of it.
Still, if you're French and wondering if Amelie Mauresmo has really gotten over her home crowd jitters, this tie was a setback. If you're Mauresmo in that situation, you just don't lose to Schiavone, period.
Next, Italy travels to Spain (which swept Austria in the only ho-hum tie of the World Group), while the U.S. girls visit Belgium. I like Italy to get to the finals.*
I didn't bother to make a prediction for the final, although I wish I would have; I really liked the chemistry of this Italian team all along, and there's no denying that chemistry can be a huge factor in team play. The greatest example I've seen of this on the Davis Cup side was the 1984 final (link to DC site is down at the moment, but you can access it on the right side of the ITF home page), in which a Swedish player with just one legitimate star, Mats "Big Guts" Wilander, drubbed what might have been the greatest Davis Cup team ever fielded: The U.S., featuring a line-up of John McEnroe, Jimmy Connors and Peter Fleming (Mac's regular doubles partner).
As for the subtle part:
The tournament game is individual-based, and even when, oh, say a Mara Santangelo does notch a big win over a more highly-ranked opponent (oh, say, Kirsten Flipkens), she's only one or two rounds away from having that joyous experience wiped away be a Maria Sharapova or Svetlana Kuznetsova.
