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by Pete Bodo
Mornin', folks. A few notes before we get to the Fed Cup theme. Hope you enjoyed the Super Bowl last night. While my "Go canonized equines!" may have been obtuse, it wasn't intentionally so, nor an endorsement of the Colts. I was indeed a fence-sitter, although it didn't take the Saints long to pull me off the pickets. How could you not love a team that goes into its first-ever Super Bowl with such "feel-good story" potential and then does not collapse into a gutless, dithering, excuse-making, sympathy-seeking collection of losers? Let's face it, feel-bad stories are the norm these days, although there's an active industry dedicated to making us feel good about feel-bad stories.
The Saints. You had me at Hello, Colts. . .how you like this on-sides kick to start the second half? Was that the call of the decade, or what?
I discovered very early in the game that I could not not want to see the Saints win, despite the respect I have for the Federer-esque Peyton Manning. But respect isn't a very good driver of emotion. How could you not grin at the sight of Drew Brees, who is in some ways Manning's runty doppelganger, so calmly and assuredly taking charge despite that early Colts' points blitz? Brees reminds me of Joe Montana. Neither of them can heave the ball the same distance as a Manning or Tom Brady, but both of them are the equal of the other two men as leaders and shrewd operators.
Also, I just want those of you whom Ruthie has been trying to recruit as Philadelphia Eagles fans to know that the Johnny Sample she rhapsodizes about in the comments (He was a New York Jet, thank you very much) was the same guy who published an autobiography, Confessions of a Dirty Ballplayer. Not much info at Amazon about that title any more, but check the comments. Maybe it's time for someone to re-issue the book, because it certainly seems like an interesting product of the times in which it was written.
You have to be careful on the Internet, kiddies. Who knew that this seemingly pleasant, erudite, Davis-Cup promoting "Ruth" is really a Johnny Sample-loving, trash-talking, Santa-booing granny! (And yes, I expect to have a talk with her about all this when I see her at that Madison Square Garden exhibition.)
Seriously, though, I bring all this up partly because Johnny Sample also had second career as a tennis official, and I talked with him a bunch of times at the U.S. Open and other tournaments. Chances are that if you ever saw Jimmy Connors behaving decently on a tennis court, Sample was up in the umpire's chair. Jimbo probably knew that if he started acting up, Mr. Sample would jump down out of that high-chair and lay him out with a vintage clothes-line tackle, penalty flag be danged. But Johnny Sample was a really pleasant guy after he ended his career as the premier NFL cheap-shot artist. I don't think his book did much to further his reputation as an amiable and praiseworthy citizen, but it was honest. And it sure generated more loyalties than would an auto-biography titled: Confessions of a Closet Tennis Chair Umpire.
Funny, I haven't thought about Sample in years until I cruised through the comments last night, long after the Fed Cup action faded to echo. The U.S. team put in a surprisingly strong performance, but how about that win by Russia over Serbia? It raises the question, how much worse can things get for poor Ana Ivanovic?
I'm not that big on promoting the Ivanovic vs. Jelena Jankovic rivalry; such intra-national relationships usually contain more hot air (pumped by the media) than genuine ennmity. But there's almost always some competitive animus at work, even if it's not entirely personal - just look at the history of Sampras-Agassi, Evert-Austin, Connors-McEnroe or Henin-Clijsters. You can't battle for the heart of your nation and promote your own cause without inviting comparison and thus competition with your domestic rival(s). Which means that this was a very tough week for Ivanovic and a confidence-boosting one for Jankovic.
You couldn't have written a more favorable script for a Jankovic vehicle titled, The Conquest of Belgrade. She won both her singles, including the critical 2-1 point over multiple Grand Slam champion Svetlana Kuzentsova, and was, we're told, preventing from putting up stiffer opposition in the doubles because her serving shoulder was worn out.
Meanwhile, Ivanovic looked just as woebegotten in her second singles as she did in her first, despite the enormous opportunity it offered for redemption. Ivanovic got just five games off Alisa Kleybanova in the match that allowed the Russians to survive for the final doubles showdown. Say what you will about fatigue or anything else, the Serbian performance in the doubles was, at best, disappointing. They lost 6-1, 6-4. It's a wicked thought for sure, but I had it: Did Jankovic leave Ivanovic hanging out there, twisting in the wind? Maybe that's just media hot air, but when you have a chance to clinch, in front of a rabidly partisan crowd in your home nation, against a team that is no fresher than you are, you have to come up with something better than that.
On the whole, though, this was just another of the nearly infinite narratives, albeit a particularly juicy one, that Davis and Fed Cup produce, which is just another reason to embrace and celebrate the few team competitions we have in tennis. Would tennis really be a better game if it were solely and exclusively about individual performance - if there was nothing but personal glory at stake for the freelancing pirates of the tour? Not for me.
And here's another great thing about these competitions, and it just occurred to me while I was walking to the subway station this morning, Tournaments, especially majors, tend to reinforce the status quo (in that sense, the typical single-elimination draw is a harshly conservative if ultimately reliable format). Events like Davis and Fed Cup open up far more possibilities for the second-rate players and even the downright have-nots, and they pose a greater threat to the status quo. A Kleybanova, Bethanie Mattek-Sands, Dmitry Tursunov, Flavia Pennetta, Mario Ancic get a chance to fire a shot heard round the world in these five-match team formats.
One shortcoming of tennis, arguably, is that the "any given day" principle is rarely more than a sub-text. Sure, a Nicolas Almagro may beat Novak Djokovic in the second round at Indian Wells, but it's rare for the winner in an upset of such magnitude to then go on to win the event. The "given day" in tennis is the given week, or fortnight. By the end of Indian Wells, nobody knows or cares that Almagro was hero for a day, way back when. It's different in team competitions. even the most erratic player, who may never have the consistency and focus to string together the half-dozen matches it takes to craft a good story in tournament play, can do it in Davis or Fed Cup. And the top players are as aware of and threatened by this as anyone else.
On the whole, the Fed Cup weekend may not mean a great deal, but it might have a shaping influence on near future. And I'm pretty sure that it meant a fair amount to Kleybanova, Janovic, Oudin, Mattek-Sands, Francesca Schiavone (who clinched for Italy over Ukraine, taking out Kateryna Bondarenko, or Lucie Hrdecka (who came up big in the Czech Republic's win over Germany). Unfortunately, it may also have meant quite a bit to Ana Ivanovic, whose road just seems to get steeper and stonier by the day.