Woulda, Coulda, Shoulda

Afternoon, vaqueros and vauqueras. I expect that Heidi will drop her regular Deuce Club post later today, so you'll have a fresh, dedicated Off-Topic site where you can gather over the next few days to discuss - Christmas shopping? Hanukkah hangover? Anything at all. I am also suggesting that we have our TW Virtual Holiday Party next Monday, starting at 9 PM EST. I'm not at all sure how it will all work, but I'll write a post of some kind and then we'll all meet in the comments and talk over, across, around each other - just like at a real party! So put the date on your calendar.

On Tuesday, I'll  be going to Los Angeles, to visit with Pete Sampras, and I'll blog from there, even though I'm returning to New York the following day. The last time I went out that way, I had dinner with Tribe members Beth and Dunlop Maxply, along with their SO's. Don't know if we'll hook up again, holiday season is a little crazy. Coincidentally, I also had drinks last night with Pete's old friend and sometime rival, Jim Courier. We met at one of Jim's many Manhattan watering holes. Jim has become a real New Yorker, and I think he and Gotham are a perfect fit. He's got rugged, movie-star looks, he dresses  really well (casual elegant), and he has a good way with people. He had a nice little chat with the bartender in the joint before we went to sit down; knowing the bartender is always a sign that a guy is in familiar territory. Jim is the only active or former tennis player who's quoted Walt Whitman (as opposed to, oh, Wally Masur) in conversaton with me.

Jim may soon have some interesting news on the documentary movie he finished last year, Unstrung, but nothing I can confirm yet. Those who speculated that this movie project was some sort of springboard/testing ground for Jim's further aspirations in film were off the mark. Jim doesn't want to be a film maker or producer. He just had this idea, for this movie, and he wanted to get it done. It was, as he put it, "a labor of love." He also told me, "One of my main motivations was the desire to give people a sense for what a high-risk, demanding enterprise tennis can be. There can be a lot of pain, you can take a real  hit to the soul, because the sacrifices are the same for a kid who never makes it as they are for the lucky kids who do. And there are a lot more kids who don't make it."

And it's not like Jim is casting around, looking for something else to do. His dedication to the Outback Champions Tour is all-consuming. He's encouraged by the way that senior tour has grown and, just as importantly, by the high degree of support and loyalty his main sponsors have demonstrated. He's in this business for the long haul. Let me stress the points Jim likes to make about the OCT: It is a competitive tour (not an exhibition series) offering graduated prize money like any regular ATP event. Also, any eligible player can enter (as long as he is over 30, and has been a Top 5 player, a Grand Slam singles finalist, or a singles player on a winning Davis Cup squad. That, by the way, is how tennis's human train wreck came to play for Jim a few weeks ago. There is also one wild-card slot in the draw at each of the six events. BTW, the next OCT will be the Oliver Group Champions Cup, March 12-16, in Naples Fla.

We got to talking about the way senior tennis has been a hard sell in the past. There's a bias against the senior game in some quarters (in marked contrast to golf), and I think it's got less to do with, say, the level of play on senior tours than with the inherent fickleness of the tennis audience. Tennis is very much a "what have you done for me lately?" game. The people who are flocking to get an autograph from Roger Federer today will be the same ones who trample over him in the rush to get an autograph from whoever it is who finally supplants him at No. 1.

Is there a sport with a more simple, objective, almost cruel and conspicuous star system than tennis?

One of Jim's aims with the OCT is to provide veteran pro players with a little anxiety-alleviation as they face moving out of the game. "Most guys, when they retire, they want to get away from the traveling and the commitments," Jim said of the OCTs plans to stage more events. "So I think there's definitely a ceiling on the number of events we can run. But I also think that it's great for guys on the cusp of retirement to know that they can go out for a week here and a week there to keep in touch with what they've done - sometimes all they've done - in their lives to that point."

All this reminds me of the ongoing discussion at the Six-to-Nine Club thread. It always interesting to read the way apologists for a player note what he woulda, shoulda, coulda done, had he made different decisions or had the climate in tennis been different.  Bjorn Borg rarely played the Australian Open; Connors had no use for Roland Garros when he was pulling down Big Paper for playing absurd World Team Tennis matches; Agassi skipped Wimbledon for four years, and remember - it was the first Grand Slam that Agassi did win. Talk about woulda, coulda, shoulda - were it not for Sampras, Agassi might have had three or four Wimbledon titles.

I think the guy who was whacked hardest by being a victim of his times was Connors, during that amazing 1974 when he won three majors and was barred from playing at Roland Garros because he had contracted to play WTT. I was around then, and I would say there was about an 80 per cent chance that Connors would have won Roland Garros that year (all other things being equal), making him just the third man in history, and the first after Rod Laver, to record a Grand Slam. The GOAT debate might be very different if Jimbo had collected a French Open title, no?

But as much fun as it is to speculate on these issues, I think it's critical at some point to set aside the conditionals and unknowns and focus on what somebody did do, and acknowledge that it is the only admissable evidence in the GOAT (or any similar) debate. Why should Borg get a pass for thinking that it was too much of a bother to go all the way to Australia to bag a Slam? And while the difference between the years preceding  1968 and those following, in the Open era, are significant, number of Grand Slam titles won seems to be a pretty good, ultra-simple barometer. Isn't it amazing, how few guys have won the same number of majors?