The rich get richer, as we know. And the poor? I guess they just keep muddling through and pretending everything is OK. You’ll find no clearer demonstration of this truth than in the mid-year descent we’ve just made from the grass-capped peaks of Wimbledon to the dry ATP valleys of Indianapolis and Hamburg. If anything, it's an even harsher truth in tennis: As the Grand Slams get grander with each passing season, the small events that are clustered around them just look smaller by comparison.
Hamburg and Indy are two prime examples of the decline of the week-to-week tour over the last 20 years. These tournaments once had strong and recognizable identities. For years they were known as the German Open and the U.S. Clay Court Championships, respectively, names that made them seem like more than just tune-ups for the Slams. Now Indy is a hard-court event and is known, rather parochially, as the Indianapolis Tennis Championships presented by Lilly. Hamburg has suffered an even more ignominious fate. First it lost its simple, understandable, and impressive name—winning the national championship of any country sounds like a pretty big deal—and was bureaucratically rechristened the Masters Series-Hamburg, back in the short-lived and misguided days when the ATP thought it could sell the entire Masters Series, rather than individual events, to its sponsors. Last year the tournament lost more than a name when it was stripped of its Masters status, booted out of the spring European swing, and consigned to the kind of netherworld of irrelevance that only a clay-court event that takes place after Wimbledon can occupy.
The current recession hasn’t yet blown a hole in the budgets, or the retractable roofs, of the tour’s bigger events, but it has hurt the little guys. Second and third tier tournaments are struggling to retain financial backers—16 ATP events are without title sponsors at the moment—and dole out sufficient appearance-fee money to put name players on their marquees. Hamburg and Indy suffered at both ends of this spectrum last week. When Indy’s marquee catch, Andy Roddick, pulled out, the tournament couldn’t get James Blake to replace him because it wouldn’t match his asking price for a guarantee. (Next week’s ATP event, the Legg Mason in D.C., another longstanding part of the U.S. summer swing, is foregoing appearance fees altogether.) This left Indy with a final featuring Sam Querrey and Robby Ginepri. That's not a complete disaster for an American tournament, but it's a long way down the ladder from the days when Jimmy Connors and John McEnroe began their U.S. Open preparations in the heart of Indiana. Afterward, tournament director Kevin Martin said he won't be able to hold the event next year unless he can find a title sponsor for it. As for Hamburg, the tournament had to resort to accepting sponsorship from a sports gambling website, bet-at-home.com. The event was prepared to call itself the bet-at-home Open until city officials blocked the move. The name that was eventually settled on, the International German Open, is certainly more dignified. Unfortunately, it's also a total non sequitur.
The results of these two events were mirror images as well. In Hamburg, Nikolay Davydenko beat Paul-Henri Matheiu 6-4, 6-2, while in Indy Ginepri upset Querrey 6-2, 6-4. The wins ended title droughts for both players; one year for Davydenko, four years to the day for Ginepri. Hamburg’s final featured two Europeans who were comfortable sliding on clay, while Indy was a battle between heavier-footed, hard-court-loving Americans. With those basic similarities in mind, what else did these matches show us?
—All four players spent the vast majority of their time at the baseline.
—Points were similar in both places, but in Hamburg they involved a little more movement across the baseline and into the doubles alleys, and a little more topspin for safety. In Indy the rallies were contained within the singles sidelines; by today’s standards, this court looked quick.
—The only player who backed off the baseline appreciably was Mathieu. Other than the fact that he’s an inveterate choker, his biggest problem seems to be that his elaborate strokes make it difficult for him to transition forward smoothly. (This is also true for fellow Frenchmen Gael Monfils and Richard Gasquet.) Davydenko, while he looked like a featherweight compared to his opponent, was the guy dictating from on top of the baseline. He was at his most efficiently machine-like yesterday, taking the ball early and punching low lasers up the lines and past Mathieu.
—The losers had two things in common:
(1) A complete inability, or more likely a complete unwillingness, to attack even the weakest second serves from their opponents (and Davydenko and Ginepri have particularly weak second serves). Querrey, who was way off all day—he showed more anger and negativity than I’ve ever seen from him—just stood straight up and hit his returns out. Mathieu actually backed up to receive Davydenko’s weakly kicked second delivery.
(2) Serving difficulties. Tied 1-1 and up 40-30 in the second set, Mathieu double-faulted and was eventually broken; at 2-4, down a break point, he doubled again. Querrey double-faulted at 4-4 in the second set to be broken.
The serve and the return: No matter what the surface or the style of play, those two shots still constitute a good 70 percent of tennis all by themselves.
