Speaking of Venus - no doubt you all saw she was beaten by Sabine Lisicki last week in Charleston. You may remember that when I visited Nick Bollettieri's Tennis Academy back in December, I watched Michaela Krajicek and Lisicki work out (separately), and wrote: Memo to WTA: both of these girls serve huge and, purely as physical specimens, made me think they might be to the WTA what Terrel Owens is to NFL receivers,
During the workout, Bollettieri tried to wean Lisicki off a habit of running to the ball with her racket head up in the air, in front of her. He wanted her to begin her take-back much sooner, too, and to keep the racket-head relatively low, to save a little time and produce a more economical stroke. He also worked on the footwork in her return game (with one of Nick's pros serving to her, but from right on top of his own service line, in order to make her react faster), and finally Nick made Sabine do a volley drill in which she kept her off hand (the left) behind her back, in order to make sure she got a good shoulder turn, and to firm up the shot itself, as it no longer had help from that "off" hand.
Well, those details hardly matter. What does, though, is that during a breather Nick walked over to me and said, "She's a worker, Pete. She's a worker. . . "
He also introduced me to Lisicki's father and coach, Richard. The Lisicki's are Germans of Polish descent, and they struck me as having the kind of bouyant optimism you find among immigrants, at least those who have a superior appreciation for the value of opportunity. Richard Lisicki was a volleyball and club-level tennis player in Germany; he reminded me of Monica Seles's father, Karolj. Neither man struck me as being especially wrapped up in the trennis "lifestyle" per se, nor even pretended to have any great expertrise in tennis. Sometimes, these tennis careers aren't planned, at least not in the intense, calculated way that some cynics really want to believe.
Sometimes, talent just happens, and it leads the gifted one - along with a parent or some other loved one - down an unexpected, challenging path. I'm pretty sure that success in tennis isn't as complicated as some people would make it. A nice combination of talent, ambition and determination can take a lot of the mumbo-jumbo right out of it. Another way to put this is that nothing that was done to or with the Williams sisters (for example) is nearly as important as who the Williams sisters are/were. The truth is that there are a million wildly different tennis success stories, and you can pick and choose among them to reinforce whatever point you want to make, or embrace. The only thing that validates one way over the other is the success of the player, and that isn't determined by a player's background and past - at least not in any obvious way. It's determined by his or her character (in a loose sense of that word).
You know the old expression, Hindsight is 20-20? Well, something like really shapes our thinking about tennis. When someone succeeds at a high level in the game, the assumption is that he or she did something right, perhaps even something wise, or brilliant. But I'm not sure that kind of causality is at play in tennis, and I certainly believe that even if it is, it can't be adequately proved. The one thing I am sure about, and it may be the only thing, is that a lot of things have to go right for someone to have a good career in pro tennis.
So maybe hard-working Sabine Lisicki is on her way. She certainly has the tools - a big, big game (this seems more and more valuable as time goes on) capped with a 125-mph-plus servce, a big appetite for work, and a great attitude. As Nick told me, "She gives me energy, which is unusual, but it's like that sometimes. Sabine is very open. She listens. She works hard, and the progress she's made is fantastic."
Right before Lisicki left Bollettieri's (before she left for Australia for the start of 2009), Nick pulled her over and gave her some unsolicited advice: "Stay by yourself . . . Select the few friends you have very carefully, and make sure they share your mission statement."
"Is she grounded, that way?" I asked.
"Oh believe me, she's grounded," Nick said. "It's going to take a hell of a lot to sway her off path."
Bollettieri said that if she kept her game at a high but sustainable level in 2009, she could go Top 20. Maybe she's even better than that.
