Well, I had expected this Davis Cup week to throw up two highly competitive semifinals, and that was a bit of a bust. It would have been nice to see the Australians win on clay in Buenos Aires, mainly because I feel antipathy twoard the sons of the Rio Plata. In the midst of one of my Doping Argies controversies, an Argentinean reader sent me an email trashing his countrymen. "How does an Argentinian commit suicide?" the writer asked, providing the answer: "By leaping off his own ego."
This is, admittedly, an enormous generalization. But it dovetails nicely with the apparent shortcomings we've seen displayed by Argentinians on the playing fields in tennis: a penchant for excuse-making, a willingness to cheat (via doping), a failure to step up on the big occasion, inflated self-esteem, a lack of professionalism, at least of the kind shown by the very top players.
Stereotyping? For sure. It's good to keep that in mind. But then, you look at all the players Argentina has produced in the past few decades, and tally up the Grand Slam and Davis Cup victories. There's a disconnect somewhere in there.
So let me anticipate your next question: You have those problems with the Argentinian players and so you want Mark Philippoussis to beat them?
I take your point. And while I do have a soft spot for Pooh (it's a much better nickname than Scud, because the latter implies power and aggression), my feelings for the Aussies is driven by simple respect for what they've achieved in Davis Cup, and how reliably they answer the Davis Cup call. This is one nation that has, at various times, lived up to the pressure of having the best players by repeatedly winning the Davis Cup, and overcome the odds against winning in the post-John Newcombe/Rod Laver era, when in any given year they had no more raw "talent" than, oh, Czechoslovakia, or Sweden.
And as much as I've criticized and poked fun at Lleyton Hewitt in the past two years, the guy is a wolverine. He's floundering now, but if Marat Safin had the heart of Hewitt (not to mention Hewitt's preternatural sense of what shot to play at any given moment to maximize his chances of winning a point), we'd be talking about The Mighty Marat and Roger Federer might be just anothe pleasant, sharp-dressed Swiss guy.
Uh-oh. Okay, I exaggerate, but you get my point.
As far as the other tie went, some comment posters read an enormous amount into the U.S. loss on clay, but it didn't seem so one-sided, or such a pitiable shortcoming, to me. Hey, that fourth rubber between Andy Roddick and Dmitry Tursunov went 72 games (tying the tiebreaker-era record established by France's Arnaud Clement and Switzerland's Marc Rosset, who played the same number of games in the 2001 quarterfinals). And Sunday's match lasted 4 hours, 48 minutes. If one or two points go a different way, the tie is "live' until the last match.
I think the Russians should get at least a wrist-slap from the ITF for using the court they did. The ITF has guidelines for acceptable surface. In the reports I read, maintenance men were out repairing the court surface, which was literally coming apart, just a few games into the opening Roddick-Safin match. Okay, I completely agree with Roddick's assessment: the surface was bad for both guys; it wasn't like Andy was playing on the good side, while Marat was on the bad side. You just should not play a Davis Cup tie on a surface that stinks compared to that of the local club down the street. That's bad for the game, and even though both home and visiting players have to put up lousy court conditions, visiting players are apt to be more discombobulated by them. It's just one more wild card-feature to overcome at an away tie.
Apart from that, I think all he hand-wringing over American players not doing so well on clay is a bit overwrought. When was the last time a Spanish player (other than Rafael Nadal )or an Argentinian was in the final of Wimbledon or the U.S. Open? People tend to forget that John McEnroe grew up playing on clay (granted, it was green Har-Tru, not red Euro-clay), and Boris Becker (and Roger Federer) emerged from tennis cultures dominated by red clay. How about Bjorn Borg, the absolute, 100 per cent, uncontested, ultimate "clay-court specialist" doing what he did at Wimbledon, and Jimmy Connors, born and bred on hard courts, having a clay-court resume that a lot of Spaniards would die to own? Jim Courier, anyone?
It seems to me that the playing styles of the very top players are so individualized (albeit in subtle ways), and so much of their greatness has to do with mental and emotional gifts, rather than technical or tactical ones, that it's a huge mistake to over emphasize the importance of playing a great deal on clay - or any other surface.
Every player is like that proverbial block of stone in which in which Michelangelo found a figure; all he really had to do was chip away the excess. Don't you think that if baseline grinding were deeply etched into Andy Roddick's DNA he'd be, oh, Robby Ginepri (and yes, that is what Ginepri is; he just doesn't know or want to face it yet, due to impatience)? I don't believe you custom-build tennis players the same way you custom build, oh, a dream home or a top fuel dragster; what you do is find the most efficient, natural, comfortable and productive, player buried inside any given individual. And anyone in the Top 100 is already a work of art.
The idea that the U.S. (or Australia) would re-claim the lofty position it once held in tennis if only its players were raised on red clay is a gross simplification and convenient fiction. Maybe the fact that so many of us are reaching for this as the Magic Bullet tells us something about ourselves, in and of itself. U.S. and Australia are no longer dominant because the rest of the world has gotten so danged good, while our own options in Anglo-land have proliferated so drastically that the chance of a kid even wanting to put in the time and effort required to become a good tennis player has drastically diminished. It's just the way it is, for now.
The only thing a U.S. fan can hope for is that our mania for competition and success will kick out two or three truly great players. Of course, the big, unsexy secret is that we once had waves of extremely good players supporting the handful of great ones. Those waves are gone, probably for good. And those waves, those Harold Solomons and Brian Gottfrieds and Dick Stocktons were in many ways the offensive line, wiping out defenders, as the Connors and Stan Smiths and McEnroes carried the ball.
To me, the best and perhaps only reason to emphasize clay over other surfaces is the health factor. It seems undeniable that you can can play for longer, with less stress on joints and ligaments and bones, on a softer surface.
One last point on this: home-court advantage is a huge part of the charm and glory of Davis Cup So what if you had a huge disadvantage as the visiting team? Next time, you get to choose the surface, tailoring it to the skills of your team. That's part of the Davis Cup game, and it's why guys like Dmitry Tursunov sometimes emerge as heroes. Personally, I wouldn't have it any other way. Besides, is anyone going to suggest that the U.S. was sandbagged here by a less-talented team?
So we're down to two. I think Russia goes with fast, indoor carpet in the final I wonder what gambling fool Shamil Tarpishchev will come up with this time, Anastasia Myskina playing second singles?
P.S. Note to Dima: get rid of the Che Guevara t-shirt, it only makes you look like the silliest kind of Hollywood poseur. I know a lot of you love Tursunov, but does anyone else think he's working a little too hard at being the life of the party? There's a point at which his type of coy humor starts to come across as disingenuous and not really appropriate to the occasion. That's what I thought when Tursunov, asked how he felt about winning the epic, tie-clinching match with Roddick, replied: I’m not quite sure yet, but I think it’s similar to [the quarter-final in] Pau – I’m a little bit tired but overall pretty happy. Yeah, it’s a great feeling, you can’t really describe it. Fine, but a performance like Tursunov and Roddick had just turned in called for something with a little more gravitas, I think.