Tennis Magazine contributing editor Joel Drucker was covering the ATP event in San Jose this week for the 26th straight year. He checked in here with a quick missive after the final. I'll be back with my armchair quarterbacking later today.
Hi Steve,
There are those who say they wish for bygone days.
There are those who believe contemporary baseline play is boring and long for serve and volley tennis.
I say, let them watch Ivo Karlovic. And believe me, after what happened this week a whole bunch of players would rather not.
The key factor in San Jose this week was that the tournament organizers, after hearing that the court was playing too slow last year, speeded it up, perhaps too much for the game's good. Tournament director Bill Rapp confirmed that this was unquestionably the fastest the court has played since the tournament moved to San Jose from San Francisco in 1994.
Karlovic, all 6-foot-10 of him, blew through the likes of James Blake, Mardy Fish and Benjamin Becker. And the whole time, as Ivo fired aces and service winners, there was hardly a drop of sweat left on the court. The same thing happened tonight in the final, but unlike those other three, Andy Murray knows how to spit back just enough balls, and, like waiting for a long red light to turn green, Murray was able to run across the street just quickly enough.
Since this is a tournament where appearance fees can be made, there were jokes that perhaps the fairly non-charismatic Karlovic would subsequently be given a disappearance fee—a good chunk of change to stay away.
But of course that's hardly fair. Ivo shouldn't be penalized because he's biologically disposed towards mastery of the game's most important shot. Though not the swiftest of men, he showed adept volley skills and on this surface showed an increasing awareness for moving forward. If anything, Karlovic should be penalized for occasionally falling prey to what I call the Complete Player Syndrome—the notion that a player must be adept in all aspects of the game. Instead of hanging around the baseline, Karlovic should instead borrow more pages from the book of that old-school disrupter, Mr. Chip-and-Charge, Paul Annacone. While it's been noted that few players are even willing to practice with Karlovic, so what? Message to Ivo: Hire college players in every town as hitting partners. And keep charging forward on service returns. Don't even let those baseliners settle into a groove. This, by the way, was very similar to the way this event's longstanding tournament director, Barry MacKay, played back in the 1950s and '60s.
It will be interesting to see how things roll for Ivo in the coming weeks. Indoors he's a force even if the court is slower. In the thin air of Las Vegas he could also make life miserable for many opponents. But he wasn't ranked high enough to get into the less-friendly Masters Series events in Indian Wells and Key Biscayne. And I don't expect him to be too serious a threat on clay. But come Wimbledon time, this guy will be one big-time pest. I'm selling my shares in Max Mirnyi and making an investment in Ivo.
As far as Ivo's persona, he compels me to reflect on the odd demands we journalists place on ourselves and our subjects. So many times I have sat in press conferences at this tournament listening to the likes of Agassi and Roddick wax on in American English. This of course makes them personalities, right? Or are they just facile? And so here comes Ivo, a man clearly self-conscious given his height, the fact that English is not his native tongue and a stutter that. I'll confess this made me simultaneously uncomfortable and compassionate. I think I got the best sense of Karlovic when a journalist I despise asked him how he felt about the notion that some people thought all he had was a serve. Karlovic revealed more teeth than he had all week and then said, "I don't care." I'd like to think he has a bit of that worldly candor I've seen in other Croatians such as Ivanisevic and Ljubicic. But I suspect he'll remain mostly a man of mystery.
I'll leave the deconstruction of Murray to our fellow southpaw, Ms. Tandon. And Steve, with Kamakshi already having been at the Australian and San Jose, and soon to be in Las Vegas, Indian Wells, and Key Biscayne, it seems that she's racking up the points. She's clearly leading the Tennis Magazine traveling-trenches points race.
Best,
Joel