Snakebit Tommy

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by Pete Bodo

Tommy Haas upset No. 4 seed Novak Djokovic at Wimbledon today, and will meet Roger Federer - whom Haas almost put out of the recent French Open, and against whom he is 2-9 - in the semifinals. In the post-match presser, a reporter asked Haas which of the four surfaces he chose as the most advantageous battleground for a clash with the top-seeded Federer.

"I would prefer to play him on Rebound Ace because I have a lead there 2-1 against him," Haas answered. "That surface no longer exists. There you go."

There you go indeed - it's just another odd detail in what has proven to be the 31-year-old veteran's oddly detailed career, a long run that can best be described as a good news-bad news joke, although parts of it haven't been anything you would remotely call funny. There was the near fatal motorcycle crash of his parents, and a body of injuries, surgeries (an ankle here, a shoulder there) and freak accidents that might be enough to discourage a lesser man. Give up on tennis? This is a guy who could have been justified in not leaving his living room unless his house was on fire. Which, given that this is Tommy Hard-Luck Haas we're talking about, would almost be a certainty.

A few years ago at Indian Wells, I wrote a post, *A Hard Case*, in which I described some of Haas' travails, and also described him as the closest thing the ATP Tour has to an "institutional personality." A prodigy, Tommy was pushed into tennis as a child (his father Peter sold shares in his career long before Tommy even had one), decamped to the IMG Nick Bollettieri Tennis Academy from his home in Germany at a absurdly young age, and has dedicated most of his waking moments to tennis without ever reaping the ultimate reward of a major title (that's a 1997 photo of Tommy, below).

Haas plays an electric, high-speed game, and just a few weeks ago at Halle he became one of that elite group of players who's secured a title on every official surface. But Haas has never won a major - or even a Masters Series title (post-publication correction: he won Stuttgart in 2001, but that's excised from the performance chart accompanying his profile in the ATP media guide). In some ways, he's been tennis's model B+ student, and it seems a cruel twist of fate that, given his mercurial, versatile and highly appealing game, he's never punched above his weight for that critical three- or four-day span it would take for him to capture a Masters or major. Heck, other guys do it all the time, when does snakebit Tommy get a turn?

But don't get the wrong idea here; Haas loves getting up and going to work every day, and he's grown philosophical about his career roller-coaster ride. As he said: "You can look at life many ways, you know. Sometimes you are a little bit more unlucky than other players. Some bodies hold up better than others. You know that's in every other sport, as well. If you follow sports in general, some people just are away from injuries, and some are not.  Some people are mature at a very young age and have the right team around them, and some don't.

"So, you know, you can look at it many ways. You know, I'm sure there's been a little bit of an unlucky side in many ways, but also a lot of lucky sides in my career. So, you know, to be where I am and what I have achieved, to be living and playing the sport that I love for this long, you know, I can't complain."

Heck, this guy won't even complain about the match-up he faces on Friday. He just says: "I feel like I'm playing some great tennis. We've had a good battle at the French (Open), but I'm obviously realistic of who my opponent is. So we don't need to talk much about it. Just go out there and compete hard and see what happens."

I asked him if, with all he's been through and his advancing age, Haas still felt like he had some unresolved business in the game. He thought about this a moment and seemed to choose his words carefully: "If you just look through the past, I don't know, maybe 13, 14 years of me playing Wimbledon, you know, there's a lot of bad luck involved. . . You know, I've lost a lot of tight ones. I always felt like deep down Wimbledon will maybe still have something left for me. It better come up soon, because I'm not getting any younger."

Actually, in this guys case, it's 13, 14 years of sometimes playing Wimbledon. Haas was reluctant to dwell on the past, but he did name a few of the tough losses and setbacks he's suffered. So let's take a look at that record:

1992 - He lost to Wayne Arthurs, a left-handed Aussie who was that era's Ivo Karlovic, in three consecutive tiebreakers.

2000 - He lost to ace-maker and Olympic gold-medalist Marc Rosset (the Swiss apparently trouble him), 9-7 in the fifth.

2001 - An ankle injury forced  him to retire in the fourth set of his match with Wayne Black.

2002 - Haas was playing the best tennis of his life when his parents (Peter and Brigitte) were severely injured in a motorcycle accident. Haas withdrew from Wimbledon to help take care of them. He said, "That year I would have been seeded high, probably No. 3, but I skipped it." Later that year, perhaps because of loss of form, he injured his shoulder, requiring surgery. He wouldn't play Wimbledon again until 2004, making it three years in a row that he wasn't knocked out of Wimbledon the old-fashioned way - on the edge of someone else's racket.

2005 - Forced to retire from first-round match with Janko Tipsarevic.

2006 - Loses third-round match with Tomas Berdych, 8-6 in the fifth.

2007 - Compelled to withdraw with a torn stomach muscle while experiencing his best run at Wimbledon, allowing Federer to advance to the quarterfinals uncontested.

Did we mention that somewhere in that history of hard luck, Haas also rolled an ankle in practice and had to withdraw from the tournament - could that have been 2003? I'm not sure - they all tend to run together in a litany of woe.

In all honesty, Haas sometimes proved his own worst enemy. We saw that a few weeks ago at Roland Garros, where an inside-out Federer forehand winner that is now part of the official lore and legend of tennis kept Haas from serving for the match at 5-3 in the third set. Granted, Federer made a great shot, but it's pretty hard to rationalize Haas' subsequent collapse (he didn't win another game in the set, and lost the fourth, 6-0). It wasn't the first time that Haas took his eyes off the prize when it was there to snatch. In fact, something similar almost happened on this otherwise sunny and warm day.

After winning the first set, Haas scored what appeared to be a devastating blow when he broke Djokovic and leaped ahead 6-5, withthe set on his racquet. He proceeded to play a game that could only be called ugly, and acknowledged it himself, although not quite so harshly:  "All of a sudden I lost four points in a row on my serve, which before I've always constantly held serve pretty easily. I felt like I didn't really go for it. I hesitated. He came up with some good shots. Next thing you know, I'm down in the tiebreak, 3?6.  Then I just yelled at myself at 3?6 -  basically, Wake up! Within a minute I won five points in a row. That was huge, I think, to give me the two sets to love lead."

While Haas was puffing up his chest, Djokovic was having having breathing problems, and not of the kind he suffered so frequently earlier in his career. He was unaccountably nervous, and admitted as much later. "When I needed to step it up in the important games, I was too nervous in these moments.  He took his chances and he played better. . . he deserved to win."

Given the record of Haas' next opponent, you almost wish the poor guy would get a few days to savor his feat, perhaps order a custom blindfold and decide which brand of cigarette he'd like to smoke. No such luck in tennis - there's no week off to get healthy, study film, and replenish your reserves. Haas is between a rock and a hard place. One of his best qualities is the high regard in which he holds all of his peers; he's a live-and-let-live kind of guy. But he also knows that he can ill afford to go out there and play wingman to Federer on his flight to tennis immortality.

When a reporter asked Haas to marvel aloud at the glories of the man he's going to face on Friday, Haas demurred with a measure of blunt German realism: "What do I like about his game the most or in general? Oh, well, let's talk about that one after the match."

But that was after he'd said of their recent thriller in Paris, and that historic inside-out forehand: "You know, for me that would have been a great success beating Roger in the fourth round if it would have happened. But it's in the past. It's done. . .being a friend of his and knowing how much it meant to him winning the French Open, I'm happy he made that shot. So, I mean, you know that's basically all there is to say."

It was more than enough.