I sat down in the media dining room with my lunch after James Blake posted that rousing win over Rafal Nadal, feeling pretty good about things. It’s always good to see solid people like James win.
I was soon joined by Heinz Gunthardt, the first great pro from Switzerland, a multiple Grand Slam doubles champion, and the coach of Steffi Graf in the second half of her amazing career. Heinz is a Talking Head now on the Eurosport network. Then, Ubaldo Scanagatta joined us. He's a master of deadpan humor and a prolific writer (primarily for La Nazione) and television commentator. And in case you're wondering, that's not a shortened name.
Ubaldo announced that he had been doing some deep digging into an arcane topic—the relatively late age at which Italian players hit their peak (I know, you just blew a stream of Diet Coke out of your nostrils).
He pointed out that Gianluca Pozzi, once the oldest man on the tour, hit his career-high (No. 41) at the age of 35. And David Sanguinetti, who beat Carlos Moya the other day, is 33—and closing fast on his previous high ranking of No. 42 (he plays Paradorn Srichaphan next).
Ubaldo said he had this . . . theory.
Heinz and I, knowing Ubaldo, looked at each other and rolled our eyes. Heinz said, “Go on.”
“To be a good Italian player, you have to renounce pasta early in life, and most Italian men won’t do that,” Ubaldo said. “Italian men are never good before they are 23 or 24, because they are mama’s boys—they like to stay at home, they like to eat too well.”
In fact, Ubaldo went on, Sanguinetti himself was a borderline case. For, in his own words, Sanguinetti was not a “serious eater.” He almost blew his shot at peaking in the autumn of his career by daring to leave home to attend (and play for) UCLA for two years.
“He is a kind of exception,” Ubaldo told us, somewhat ruefully. “He was able to deal with the horrible pasta in the U.S. This is unusual.”
But the real odd man out was Andrea Gaudenzi, whose mother, according to Ubaldo, was “producing some of the best tortellini in all of Emilia Romagna—a region known for its good pasta.”
Despite his mother’s formidable abilities, Gaudenzi left home at around 18, to live and train in Austria (with Thomas Muster), where, according to Ubaldo, “they eat the garbage.”
It paid off, though, in a crass sort of way. Gaudenzi had the best career of the men under discussion, topping out at No. 19.
The stats certainly seemed to bear out what Ubaldo proudly called his “research.”
And where did all this go?
“Well,” Ubaldo concluded. “When you have it too well (mama+pasta=triple-digit ranking until at least age 30), you don’t try so hard. Look at who is successful in tennis—the Russians, the Czechs, the Americans . . .”
“Wait,” I said. “The Americans?”
“Of course. Sampras, Agassi, Chang . . . they are all immigrants, no?”
Ahem. Point taken.
Heinz weighed in with an interesting observation of his own. He said the draws at tournaments worldwide are filling up with “Ovas”—as in Sharapova, Navratilova, Bedasova—only now their national affiliations are more diverse than ever before. As Heinz said, “You have Ovas from Finland, Russia, France, the United States—everywhere.”
“Two years ago,” Ubaldo said, “ I counted in the WTA media guide and found 42 Ovas.”
By this point, I was on my knees, doing the “I am not worthy” bow to my two comrades. But wait—it gets worse. I remarked on Blake’s inspired win over Nadal, and professed surprise at the result.
Heinz gave me one of those withering, “Do I really have to spell it out for you, knucklehead?” stares.
Then he spelled it out.
“Nadal plays very short. A lot of topspin, but not a lot of depth. There aren’t a lot of guys who can take advantage of that, but if you can, like Blake can, you’re in pretty good shape. You can turn it around and put the pressure on him.”
Ubaldo, of course, was tuned in to this. He cited what has to be the single most obscure tennis statistic I’ve ever come across—this one is going to make you geeks out there go berserk.
“Only five players on the tour hit the ball so flat that it goes back bouncing lowerthan the point at which they hit it: Sanguinetti, Santoro, Nalbandian (on the backhand side, at least), Kucera, and {Jiri} Novak. And any of those are the five guys are the ones most likely to be named when you ask the other pros which ones drive them crazy.”
By this time, I was wondering if I still had a shot at being hired as a manager at my local Burger King.
Heinz nodded and wearily added, “Yeah, {Natalie} Tauziat was the same way.”
It was too much. I felt like the high-school kid who’d been accidentally placed in the Physics Honors course; my only recourse was to excuse myself to go and write.
Note: Ubaldo recently published a book commemorating the 75th anniversary of the Italian Open. It has some interesting features, including a complete list of players who have appeared in the Top 10 of the ATP rankings, and one showing all the winners of Masters Series events. Although the year-by-year stories all are in Italian, the voluminous statistical tables are in English as well as or in addition to Italian.
You can check it out and maybe end up with a collector’s item, a coaster, a conversation starter—or a reference book good for starting—or resolving—any number of bar-room bets.
Alas, no pasta recipies . . .