A Fairy Tale That Wasn't

Farewell America and hello Europe, farewell purple hardcourts - welcome to the red stuff. It seems like just yesterday we were all worried about these two big hardcourt Masters titles - well, it was yesterday, but whatevs. Today, it is all about the clay.

Suddenly, my friends, we are in the lead up to Roland Garros - where, for the first time ever, Roger Federer will be returning as defending champion. Here we have a very interesting few months of tennis. Oh yes we do.

But today let's forget all that. I want to write a little bit about one particular player - a player that opened his clay account (and, indeed, his account for the year, as far as I can tell) with a loss in Casablanca. (So much for 'hello Europe' - we're actually still in America and in Africa this week. Oops). That player is Robin Haase.

A couple of years back, when Haase played Hewitt in the first round of Wimbledon and played him so, so tight (five sets) I seriously thought this Dutch kid was the real deal. He was about twenty at the time, I think, and he played tennis pretty damn spectacularly. He was to me about two, three years back what Ernests Gulbis is now - one of the faces of the future of tennis.

And then he pretty much fell off the face of the planet. And I have no idea what happened to him.

This is the case sometimes, I suppose - when a player with so much promise and talent just never makes it happen. We always hear about the ones that do - I mean, Roger Federer, hello - but there are so, so many that don't. Just take a tour through the winners of junior Slams. For every Federer, even every Monfils, you have a Todd Reid. Who is that? Good question. I only know because he's Australian - he won junior Wimbledon and then did nothing else of note ever, as far as I can tell.

Robin Haase is, I am sad to say, might just be a Todd Reid. He didn't lose badly today - he went down in straights in breakers to Marcel Granollers - but even just playing a match on the tour level is a big thing for him now. I thought he'd have a huge stack of titles by now.

For every fairy tale, there is the one that didn't quite happen. And Robin Haase is one of those stories.

Perth After Tomic

I am making an active effort to follow this tournament in Perth, but it really is very hard. Tennis Australia provides my only avenue for such following, and they seemed to have lost interest after the Reid/Tomic match. I know Tomic is the next big thing in Aussie tennis and there's all the hype and such... but really, at this time of year, wouldn't following the rest of the results be, you know, giving all the people at TA something to do? Maybe that's just naive, but please, what else is there to write about?

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The Reid/Tomic match was the second round, and the winners of the finals just went up on the website - Andrew Coelho won the men's, and Monica Wejnert the women's. I've never heard of Wejnert before, but she's looking a bit interesting - she's sixteen, this is only her third senior event (it is, I discovered, a Pro tour event) and she beat the top seed to take the title. I'm not saying she's the Tomic of the girls, but that's a bit intriguing. We do have some very good girls coming up in Isabella Holland and Sally Peers and Jessica Moore and the such like - but maybe Miss Monica will be in that pack. Who knows. I know nothing about her outside this match, but she's showing good stats, if that makes any sense.

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Coelho, on the other hand, has been round for a little while - not that he's a veteran or anything (he's a couple of years younger than me!) but he seems to have been floating round for a while... he's left-handed, if I remember rightly (ha ha - I only just realised I made a totally awful pun there... oops!) which is always interesting to watch. Apparently the Fremantle Doctor (a very strong wind, for those of you not up with the lingo) was making conditions very interesting, so kudos to Coelho for pulling out a toughie over Brendan McKenzie. I don't hold any great hopes for Coelho, and he's certainly not a missed opportunity like Todd Reid, but it'd be nice to see him play an ATP event here and there - perhaps qualify for the Aussie Open?

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And in totally un-tennis related news, I've just been awarded first-class Honours for my thesis at university, and I'm quite proud of myself. Not quite a Grand Slam, but when you're studying English, it might just be as close as you get...

The One Thing Lacking

If I were a tennis player, and worked my arse off eleven months of the year, I would totally kill someone if they even thought about encroaching on my precious off-season. I've been told I'm conscientious for writing this blog every day, even when I have absolutely nothing to say (eg. today!) but it takes me maybe twenty minutes, tops. Tennis players train for hours and hours a day - which you have to, considering the fact that you have to grind away on court, day in, day out, to keep your career going (and even then, as we have been discussing re: Todd Reid, it might not be enough.) Tennis is just so freakin' hard, when it comes down to it.

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Which brings me to my point. They get no time off, pretty much. There's all this talk about shortening the season and all, but sorry, I'll believe that when I see it. So if you're a player and the halcyon days of the off-season are finally here, wouldn't you just want to lie on a beach somewhere and chill out for a month? Obviously you'd have to do some training, because of the whole Aussie swing and that Grand Slam lurking dangerously early round the corner, but you'd want to do some quality quivering in the corner first - maybe chill with your family at home, have a nice Christmas or whatever, yeah?

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So why do these players seem to be jetting off all over the world at the whims of sponsors and such like? I saw pictures of Rafa Nadal hanging out with Marat Safin in Moscow today. What on earth is Rafa doing in Moscow? Surely with all his knee issues he should be at home in Mallorca with Xisca and his feet up on a pillow, watching telly? It was apparently some corporate type function he was at for something money related - but why on earth would Rafa need more money? He's about the same age as me - a bit younger, actually - and he's already made more than I will in ten lifetimes. Doesn't he deserve some time off? Off-season for tennis is preciously short - it shouldn't be on-season for corporate deals.

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Rafa, some words of advice, straight from me to you. Go home. Rest. Do absolutely nothing for at least a week. These top tennis players seem to have everything in the world: Boris Yelstin once described Marat Safin as the ideal Russian, which I suppose means the ideal Russian is all fast sport, fast cars, fast women. But the one thing they don't have is time. Grab on to what you have with both hands, boys - heaven knows you deserve it!

Missed Opportunities

All that talk about Todd Reid earlier got me thinking - how many missed opportunities are there in tennis?
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I mean, Todd Reid is only 24, but if you haven't made it by that age, then you're pretty much not going to, right? The only genuine late bloomer I remember is Ljubicic, and even then, I think he'd bloomed a bit earlier than this, so to speak. But Todd Reid was the #4 junior in the world back in the day, which, when you think about it, was not that long ago - 2002, I think, for him. That was just before the golden age of Federer began, but not that long before it. So just a few years ago, Todd Reid was seemingly going to be one of the tennis stars of his generation. Two junior Slam finals, one victory. A promising start in the first round of the Aussie Open against Nicholas Escude. And where is he now? Just scraping past sixteen year old Bernard Tomic in some schlep tournament in Perth.
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Largely, if you win a junior Slam, you go on to do a bit of something at the senior level. Roger Federer won junior Wimbledon. David Nalbandian was his junior nemesis, and he picked up a title or two. Andy Murray won the junior US Open. Stan Wawrinka won the junior Roland Garros. Names we think about now. Actually, let's go and look at who won the junior Slams in '02, the year of Todd Reid...
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...the Aussie Open was won by someone called Clement Morel, of whom I have never heard (anyone?) but the French and the US were both won by someone called Richard Gasquet. Heard of him?
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So what does this prove? I suppose one always has to assume that a good juniors career doesn't mean a great senior's career - I guess some people just burn out young, or plateau and stop improving while everyone else around them gets better. Maybe some never adjust to the pressure of the senior tour. But how different could the face of tennis be? Looking at the lists of those who have won in juniors but never translated it into the proper tour is like looking at a tennis graveyard - a litany of missed opportunity.

The Past Plays The Future

Anyone else think the picture they're using to advertise the new London season-ending championships at the end of next year is kind of funny? It's exactly the same picture as Shanghai '07, but with Richard Gasquet lopped out of the background and Andy Murray, looking extraordinarily uncomfortable, chest all puffed out, suspicious look on his face, stuck smack bang in the middle. I get that it's in London and so Murray is a major drawcard, but it almost looks like they're predicting Murray'll be bigger than Federer and Nadal next year. I think he'll be big, but I don't see that much boat-shaking going on!

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Meanwhile, on a totally different subject, I've been following this tournament in Perth. I am totally unable to discover what level of tournament it actually is, but it calls itself the Perth International and it's actually been kind of interesting - at least if you know who some of the Aussie guys are, in which case I might be in a bit of a minority.

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The most interesting match today was a real epic duel between Bernard Tomic and Todd Reid. It's a match Tomic really should have won, being a set and 3-0 up, but Reid got him in the end after a real see-saw. It was almost like watching history play itself - not that I was watching, because, hello, as if it'd be televised, but you get my drift. Todd Reid, a few years back, was exactly where Bernard Tomic is now. He was touted as the next big thing after he made the final of the junior Aussie Open in '02 and won junior Wimbledon... but then nothing ever really came of it. He pulled a few upsets in early rounds here and there, but I'd venture to say hardly anyone has heard of Todd Reid.

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So here's hoping Bernard Tomic doesn't go the same way. Because this kid is seriously awesome, and I would hate to see his talent fade away. He was beaten by the past today - but in the future, here's hoping he eclipses it. That'd be a real victory.