I know I started with the weather last week, but yesterday it was about as good as it can get in New York. It would have been perfect for tennis, too, if I hadn’t slipped into a dark Brooklyn bar to drink beer, eat a large order of wings, and watch football. I knew something was up when neither of the place’s two regular drunks were perched over their traditional bottles of Bud and shots of Yagermeister (yes, Yagermeister in the afternoon is how we roll around here). Could they actually have been outside enjoying the sunshine? I almost felt guilty, until they both showed up at 4:00. I shouldn’t have worried, the Jets were playing the late game.
Oh yes, there was tennis, too, as the tours officially began their late-season slide into pointlessness. Indoor play has begun, and while the sport drops off U.S. radar screens, the players globe-trot as much, if not more, than at any other time of year. This week, Roger Federer flew from his Davis Cup tie in Switzerland to Bangkok for the Thailand Open, while Anna-Lena Groenefeld crossed his path, losing the final of the China Open Sunday before playing her first-round match in Luxembourg early this week.
This is the traditional money-grubbing season for the men. During the 90s, the now-defunct, season-ending Grand Slam Cup allowed guys like Michael Stich and Magnus Larsson to walk away with multi-million dollar paydays—and bizarre trophies (“gold helicopters,” as Martin Amis described them)—for winning a few matches on a fast indoor carpet in Munich while no one was watching. Now that the German market has dried up, the ATP is betting on Asia. While the top men were in Thailand, there was another ATP event going on down the road in Vietnam. Next week, Japan. They’ll finish the year in Shanghai.
However the promoters pulled it off, there was a solid draw in Bangkok, highlighted by defending champion Roger Federer. He cruised to the final, where he faced a wild card, Scottish teenager Andy Murray. A blowout on paper, it turned out to be an entertaining match. A few observations about both players:
—Federer, whose one “weakness” is an occasional bout of the shanks, can struggle against someone who has the guts not to try too much. Murray is that kind of player, a guy who always plays within himself, and he pushed Federer into errors with good defense yesterday. In Cincinnati in August, Robby Ginepri nearly beat Federer just by getting the ball back and keeping it away from the middle of the court. It’s the last part that’s the problem. Murray had to play on a knife-edge—when he left the ball hanging in the middle, the point was over. Immediately.
—Murray is a nice antidote to the new generation of genetic super-athletes. The muscled-up Rafael Nadal’s uncle played world-class soccer; Kim Clijsters’ dad did as well, and her mom was a top gymnast; Gael Monfils, whose body seems elastic at times, is the son of two major-league sports stars. Murray’s mom was a tennis pro, but he looks like a normal, somewhat tall, kid, and he wins with point construction rather than off-the-charts athleticism.
—Murray has a different, though just as intelligent, approach to big points. He’s not afraid to be creative and use the same variety he would at any other time. On break point down late in the second set he had a short forehand. Rather than crank a conventional approach, he carved a little reverse angle that landed inside the service line and out of Federer’s reach.
—Murray matched Federer for long stretches; it was just a slight lapse at the beginning of each set that cost him. That’s what many rookies say is the biggest difference between the junior game and the pro game—the pros don’t take mental vacations. Murray still does.
—Finally, Federer is having another year for the ages. Yesterday he clinched the No. 1 ranking for 2005; he’s won five straight titles for the first time; he’s won 24 straight finals, which is getting to seem DiMaggio-esque (can you imagine that record ever being broken?); and he hasn’t lost since the French Open semifinals. Fed’s got a shot to beat John McEnroe’s 82-3 season of 1984; he’s currently 77-3 (just so you know, in two of those losses he had match points). And yesterday he was presented the winner’s trophy by Thailand’s Miss Universe.
This season, at least, Federer has a counterpart on the women’s tour. Kim Clijsters continued a career year yesterday with a straight-set win over Groenefeld for her fifth title in Luxembourg and eighth title of 2005 (in just 13 events). Now that the Grand Slam monkey is off her back, and season-ending No. 1s in store, Clijsters seems to be on a road to greatness, as long as she doesn’t quit, which she’s threatening to do in a couple of years.
As for Groenefeld, it was her second final in a row. She’s a tall, blonde German, but these days, with her ponytail pulled tight, she looks more like Meghann Shaughnessy than Steffi Graf. That may be because she trains with Shaughnessy’s coach, Rafael Font de Mora, in Arizona. It’s another case of the U.S. helping to raise a “foreign” woman pro. While we’re not churning out many prospects of our own, promising young girls come from everywhere else to learn from Robert Lansdorp (Maria Sharapova, Anastasia Myskina), Nick Bollettieri (Nicole Vaidisova, Jelena Jankovic), and to train at Saddlebrook in Florida (Justine Henin-Hardenne, Martina Hingis, Jelena Dokic).
Groenefeld is a big girl, but she moves decently (nowhere in Clijsters’ league, of course) and is willing to use her wingspan at the net. Like most women, she has an outstanding two-handed backhand. Yesterday she just wasn’t ready to win. Break-point up in the second set, she had a good look at that outstanding backhand—and almost sailed it into the bleachers.
Still, Groenefeld appears to be hungry. Maybe she’ll bring the German market back, and we can all forget Bangkok and Ho Chi Minh City and the players can once again fight for gold helicopters in Munich. Either way, no one in the U.S. will know.