The Rally: More Stock Talk

Part two of a 2011 stock market Rally between freelance tennis writer Kamakshi Tandon and myself.

Hi Kamakshi,

I didn’t say Philip Bester would be the next Roger Federer, did I? I hope not. I would have been, well, wrong. I think I just said he was the first kid I had seen who had modeled his mannerisms after Rog.

The second, and even more thorough, copycat is Grigor Dmitrov. I’ve called him Baby Federer, the same way I called Richard Gasquet Baby Federer. But while it was Gasquet’s (untapped) skills that inspired the homage, it’s strictly Dmitrov’s form, the way he swings the racquet and struts around the court, that makes me think of Federer. Though Dmitrov seems to have veered off-script recently—did Federer ever shove an ump? I say, keep going, Grigor, tennis may be ready for a shove. Don’t let wise old father figure Fed try to civilize you.

For all the tennis I’ve watched, I’m still fairly clueless when it comes to foretelling a player’s long-term future at first glance. My friend and former colleague Jon Levey got pretty good at it from his many conversations with pros like Robert Lansdorp and Nick Bollettieri. Jon was onto Federer's potential from day one. Speed was obviously a huge factor they looked at, as well as size. Those were the absolute pre-requisites. They also looked at smoothness of technique, which was not as obvious a criterion to me as it might seem. Having watched Borg and even Lendl dominate with games that were far from smooth, I thought orthodox technique was a thing of the past. And it’s true, not all great players are extremely smooth on the surface, but the fewer screwy things in their strokes when they’re young, the better. The higher you rise, the more trouble those technical flaws give you; the truth eventually comes out. And then, of course, there’s the head, but it’s hard to know how that’s going to turn out when you watch a 14-year-old.

In the case of someone like Ryan Harrison, I tend to see the glass, unfortunately, as half empty. I like the guy a lot, and he seems to be doing everything the right way, but does he have the unstoppable weapon, the shattering serve or forehand that can win him points at will? It’s obviously safer to be skeptical about a kid’s chances; there are only 10 guys in the Top 10 (another fact that may not be as obvious as it sounds). Yesterday I wanted to get excited about Thomas Schoorel, the Dutch kid who threatened Federer for a set. He’s 21 and ranked 152. What I liked was his serve, mainly because it was the first I’ve seen that reminded me, at least for a split second during his motion, of John McEnroe’s. I’ve been watching a lot of vintage Mac tapes lately, and I’ve started to think that his serve is the most beautiful shot in the history of the sport. Not the broken-toy start, but the moment when the toss is at its peak, his right hand is fully extended upward, and his racquet is low and behind him. That’s tennis magic.

Schoorel had a little of that going with his lefty serve, he can belt a forehand, and I liked his topspin one-handed backhand. But is the speed there? He’s 6-foot-7. The same was true for Lukas Lacko yesterday. I liked how calm he was right from the start against Nadal. I’ll be looking for both of those guys in the coming months, but how good are they? I have no idea. On both the men’s and women’s sides, it seems tougher for young players to break into the top ranks than it once was. The last immediate shooting star was Nadal, correct? The game is at its best when a new face comes in and turns everything upside down—think Sharapova at 2004 Wimbledon; Nadal at 2005 French Open. I don’t see that happening this year, but I guess that’s the point, you never see it coming, which is what makes it so exciting.

Anyway, let me finish by giving some quick thoughts on a few other futures:

Ana Ivanovic: I’m thinking the worst is over, even if she has become a chronic coach killer. Maybe my optimism is a case of “expressing my hopes”; I like Ivanovic.

Juan Martin del Potro: Nowhere to go but up, obviously. We’ll see how he is by Indian Wells. It’s a major bummer that a potential No. 1 and next great player has been derailed this long. I can’t another remember another case like his.

Heather Watson: What do you think of her? I’ve liked the little I’ve seen, and she seems more athletic (i.e., quicker) than her countrywoman Laura Robson.

Sam Querrey: His story is getting more curious. He’s the lord of the 250, but nowhere else. He has already gone farther/further than I would have thought when I saw him as a junior. Would you put your stock in Isner or Querrey for this season? Too close for me to call. Both have been pleasant surprises the last two seasons, and it’s hard to ask for more.

Vera Zvonareva: You have to sell here. I like her, I like her game, I like how she’s mostly overcome her volatility, I like her matter-of-fact press conference style, but she’s not a No. 2.

Caroline Wozniacki: I don’t think she’ll end up No. 1 again, but I don’t think she’ll go the way of Jankovic or Safina either. She almost has to pretend she’s not No. 1 and just go about her business with her own expectations. Her game won me over by the end of last year. She makes the most of it.

Marin Cilic: Wow, what a mystery. The coachable kid, the Spartan worker, the level head, none of it seems to mean anything in his case. Maybe he’s worked all personality out of his own game? I don’t know, but he’s due for a big ranking fall-off after the Australian Open.

Marcos Baghdatis: Love the guy, but I always think glass half-empty with him.

See you next time,

Steve

*

Hi Steve,

I don’t remember if there was a Bester—Federer comparison, so let’s say there wasn’t. Schoorel—McEnroe? I’ll have to look out for him.

You know the old saying, at any given time there are about 30 players with Top 10 potential. Probably about 60 with Top 20 potential. Still, even if the likes of Xavier Malisse and Gasquet don’t pan out, wouldn’t it be much worse to never have known how good they can be? The multiple Grand Slam winners usually announce themselves pretty early, but apart from the prodigies, it’s pretty hard to predict what someone is going to do over the course of a career because so much depends on the small improvements they keep making.

Looking back at Querrey, for example, I think one had to factor in that he didn’t really start playing seriously till he was almost out of high school. So the rawness turned out to be due to that rather than lack of coordination or ability, and his rate of improvement once he started working hard at things was a lot higher than you’d get from a player who’s already spent a lot of time honing his skills by the time he’s 18. De Bakker, for example, says he never worked hard until he was 19.

The other thing Querrey taught me was not to discount laid-back personalities. When he was coming up I once asked if he’d ever walked off a court with regrets about not having done this or that—hit more to the backhand, had more stamina. He said no, that he never thought about it. I wondered where the drive to improve was going to come from, if losses weren’t going to be the fuel. But at the same time, the fact that he doesn’t seethe like Hewitt has also helped him bounce back and take things in his stride—how many players, feeling the way he did at the French this year, could take a week’s vacation and come back and win at Queens?

Predicting what a player is going to so over the course of a year is easier, but you need to delve deeper into more immediate issues like fitness, hunger, belief and ambition. It was hard to see Mardy Fish coming last summer. At the beginning of the year, it looked like he was thinking about becoming a doubles specialist, teaming up with Mark Knowles. But if we’d known how hard he was working on his body, we might have expected him to do something at some point in the year at least.

The fun thing about doing this series was looking at the rankings and stopping beside all the names—“Fish, I wonder if he’s going to back up that summer this year,” “Stepanek, coming back from injury, dangerous but probably won’t be very consistent,” etc.

With the women’s game the way it is right now, predicting over the course of a year seems a bit like predicting the average temperature over the course of a year—there are going to be so many highs and lows that it’s meaningless. Maria Sharapova looks poised for a resurgence one second, then goes down to Greta Arn the next.

That’s why Australia is the toughest. There’s no lengthy buildup or specialized surface, and everyone claims to be feeling great. It makes sense to think Justine Henin and Sharapova are going to get back into the mix at the top, though I really think Henin should go back to her pre-retirement style. I’m not quite are sure about middleweights like Ana Ivanovic or Dinara Safina. Ivanovic could make a Grand Slam semi or final this year quite easily, but having multiple good results in a row has been quite rare for her recently. Safina is such a confidence player that she really needs to luck into a few wins so get herself started. I’d invest in the first three but wait on Safina. Clijsters has the potential to become the dominant force the tour lacks, but practically speaking she’s never going to play enough and that may also affect her at the Slams. I’d just hold on her, rather than buy.

You’re absolutely right about Wozniacki. She needs to forget that she’s No. 1 and just focus on building her game. I’ve said I can see her evolving into a Dementieva and then perhaps into a Clijsters, which is a pretty good path. But she needs to stop playing everywhere and focus on the big events, which she shows no signs of doing. The other leading member of the sisterhood, Victoria Azarenka, has been a lot less consistent and more injury prone, but there’s a good chance she’ll have at least one big result this year.

The Williamses—there seems to be a feeling this is the last stand, but we’ve said that so many times before I’ve given up predicting. Holding their stock is for more iron investors. Zvonareva gets a reluctant sell, though that shouldn’t discount what she’s done in the past six months.

Predicting how a player’s going to do over the next week is easier than over a year, but it requires even more detail—form, mood, surface, draws, etc. It’s like day trading, it requires a much bigger commitment, but there’s more immediate gratification, and probably more money, too. If only it was that way in tennis.

Kamakshi