Happy Birthday

Would you look at that?! In the course of the last three days, we've had post #1000, Christmas and now this blog's third birthday. So many celebrations!

I am obviously choosing to celebrate them by writing very little, because you should be off eating lots of delicious things and lolling by a beach (southern hemisphere) or a fire (northern hemisphere) rather than listening to me try to talk about tennis when none is happening.

Happy birthday to me! (And let's hope for a slightly better day in the cricket tomorrow.)

It's Not Cricket

Another post inspired by cricket and the transference of stuff across different sports (though I have just realised that the Hopman Cup starts on Saturday and the Abu Dhabi cashcow exo on Friday and I will be saved! saved! from the horror that is the Time With No Tennis).

At the moment, as I watch the cricket, one of the Pakistani batsmen has started to go for his shots, to smack the ball all round the ground and suchlike. Even if one isn't necessarily going for the Pakistanis, it's much more interesting to watch than the normal slow pace of test cricket, where it can take half an hour to score a run (or so it seems).

And then I thought about tennis and how players sometimes play in their shells, even when the shots are there to be taken, because it's percentage play. Sure, if they go for their shots they might make a mistake, but what's the worst that can happen? They lose a point. It might be a crucial point, but it's not like cricket, where you can lose your wicket.

I don't know where I'm going with this... except to say that people should go for their shots more. Because that's what the sport is, surely? It's not nudging the ball around the court until someone makes a mistake. It's shotmaking and artistry and winning a point rather than waiting for someone else to lose it. Yet some people play tennis like test cricket, and that's totally not the point of the sport.

In cricket, you have one day cricket and twenty20, where the whole point is to smack it around and score some runs and put on a spectacle for the viewer. We have no real equivalent to this in tennis - well, exos, I suppose. But it's kind of a shame we don't have an arena where players can open up freely on their shots.

Though I think we do, and I think it's day to day tour level tennis. There's no point being a tennis player if you're a wuss that won't, you know, play tennis.

Not Pictured

I saw something on Sunrise (Australian breakfast TV, for those of you not in the know) this morning that really demonstrated how much Australia cares about tennis. On the newsbar down the bottom, the following story flashed up: 'Lleyton Hewitt, Chris Guccione, Carsten Ball and Bryan Klein arrive in Bangkok for Davis Cup.'

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I'm sorry, but I've never heard of an Australian tennis player called 'Bryan' Klein.

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You see, this is indicative of how little awareness the average Aussie has of tennis. I bet hardly anyone even noticed. If they'd spelled a cricket player's name wrong, even a relatively minor one - Phil Jaques, for example - you can bet EVERYONE would notice, and I'm sure there'd be admonishing emails to the channel. But how many people do you think have noticed that Brydan Klein has been misnamed? The show's been on for about two hours now and no one seems to have picked it up...

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Sigh. I guess it is a little bit of a dream, hoping that tennis suddenly becomes huge in Australia. Playing it is big, but because we have no top players right now, there is very little knowledge of what's going on on a larger scale, except when the Aussie Open is on. I have a dream wherein the French Open is on free-to-air television. Unfortunately, this isn't looking likely.

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Today's Results

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Delray Beach International Tennis Championships (Delray Beach)

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Mardy Fish def. Evgeny Korolev, 7-5 6-3

Raindrops on Roses, Whiskers on Kittens, and... Tennis?

I just read an article on the ATP website that made the following, very surprising, claim:

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"Despite no Australian male or female player being ranked in the top 50 of the world’s tennis players, tennis retains its position as the sport in which most Australians are interested."

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Bullcrap.

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I wish it were true. But it just isn't. Tennis is nowhere near Australia's favourite sport. (What does 'interested in' mean anyway?) They must have had a very pro-tennis sample, because that is just wrong. As a nation, Australia cares about cricket, about swimming, AFL, rugby league, rugby union, soccer, occasionally horseracing. We might show a brief flicker of interest in basketball or netball occasionally. But tennis? Hell no. Not unless Pat Rafter or Lleyton Hewitt is in the final.

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You can tell every time you open a newspaper. There'll be pages on the various codes of footy, the racing guide, cricket all over the shop. Tennis? Not unless it's a Slam or Bec Cartwright has just given birth. Australians care about tennis in January, and pretty much no other time, unless someone's winning - and even in January, it's a ratings war with the cricket.

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So I wish this was true. I wish tennis was Australia's favourite sport. But in reality? Not a chance.

An Age Of Greatness

I think we have to admit it - when it comes to men's tennis, we are living in an age of greatness.

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The word 'greatness' is one that tends to get bandied round a lot - it's something I especially notice in Australian sport. We have some really, really good teams, yeah? Our cricket team, for example. I'm no cricket aficiando, but it seems to me that our team has been lauded here as the 'greatest ever' for about fifteen, twenty years now: certainly as long as I can remember. But surely the team has changed almost totally over these years - so how can it make the claim to be the greatest ever?

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Team sport and individual sport are different, I know - maybe cricket is a bad example. But I think we may be able to safely say that this era in men's tennis is one of the greatest, if not the greatest, ever.

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Why do I make this claim? You have to go straight to the top. No one can contest Roger Federer's claim to be one of the all-time tennis great - if not the greatest of all time. He has an amazing genius for the sport while being an outstanding statesman. But now - I say now, it's been coming for a while - we have the emergence of Rafa Nadal. He's not just some schlep who usurped Federer's position at the top because Roger was having a bum year. He's genuinely an amazing player - and I mean amazing. That's what sparked this rant off, actually - there's an article in DEUCE magazine about Nadal's pursuit of various tennis historical geats and his claim to all-time greatness. And I think we have to realise this. We are spectators in one of the most intriguing, high-level sports rivalries of all time. Even Sampras/Agassi had nothing on Roger/Rafa. We only have to look at the final of Wimbledon to understand the intensity and the high-level of their rivalry. And it's not a rivalry in the antagonistic sense - I get the feeling Roger and Rafa quite like each other, really. They're certainly always very cordial to each other: and, moreover, both are gentlemen. I feel that's part of being a true great - it extends off court as well. And on court - can anyone deny these are two of the most phenomenal players world tennis has ever seen? Rafa is certainly the greatest claycourter of all time. Roger has got a pretty good grip on that Greatest of All Time trophy. We are so privileged.

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And, just to bring it down a notch, it really shows up what's going on with women's tennis at present... I don't think anyone would say this is one of the greatest ages for women's tennis ever. The top level is confused at best, and I think a lot of people have felt that those who have reached #1 this year haven't really deserved it. Would anyone say that of Roger or Rafa? I think not. We have too many #1s in men's tennis and too few in women's - and I know which problem I'd prefer!