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.

Finally, a Brouhaha in Doha!

The fields for the early tournaments next year are beginning to take shape - and the organisers of the ATP tournament in Doha must be quivering with delight. The women's season-ending championships (why, why did no one think to call it the Brouhaha in Doha? I thought that was hilarious) may have been a bit dull, but the field that's starting to take shape for the Qatar ExxonMobil Open is very exciting. It includes not only the Andies (Murray and Roddick respectively) but now the two biggest guns in tennis, R-Fed and... Rafa ('R-Nad' just doesn't work.)

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Federer's played Doha before, but not for a while - 2006, if memory serves - but I don't remember a field of this high a quality there in years. I remember Ljubicic winning it in recent memory, and possibly Gael Monfils, though maybe he was only a finalist. I can't remember. So what a boost for Doha this will be. Maybe this will be the real Brouhaha in Doha. I invented that pun, and I'm dying for someone to use it - so maybe Roger, Rafa and the Andies will give me reason.

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Sydney, on the other hand, which is close to my heart, because, hello, closest thing I have to a home tournament, is looking... all right, I guess, but not whoa, smash bang fabulous. So far, they've announced Tsonga, Simon, Berdych, Nalbandian, Hewitt, Gasquet, Robredo and most recently Fish and defending champ Tursunov. So not a bad field, but it ain't no Doha. Rafa played there the first year I attended, which was '07 - though to be fair, he only played for about a set before deciding he was injured and throwing in the towel against Chris Guccione. Still, I was there and I saw him, up close and personal (I may be exaggerating slightly there, but in the flesh, nonetheless). It'd be nice for the Sydney folks to see some of the big stars that they might have actually, you know, heard of.

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But we all know the tournament that's closest to my heart is the Hopman Cup, even if it's clear across the other side of the country. Marat Safin promised he'd give the tournament organiser a decision on whether or not he would play in the first week of November, and we're well past that and his name's still on the schedule, so I'm quietly hopeful that we might be seeing Marat on the ATP tour again next year - hurrah!

Blast From The Past

It hasn't been a good week for the legends of the sport - and I'm not talking Federer and Nadal, our current legends, here. No, we're going old school. Tennis is clearly fraught with drama, even from beyond the proverbial grave.

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First, Boris Becker gets dumped by text message. I thought this was pretty hilarious, to tell the truth. Tennis Australia does this piece every week called 'Off The Court' - here's a paragraph from their article on the Becker incident:

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'Becker has led a tortured personal life in recent decades, divorcing from the mother of his two sons, Barbara Feltus, in 2001. He later gained playboy notoriety after fathering a child, now eight, with a Russian model, after a tryst in a London restaurant broom closet.'

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Can you tell me that he doesn't deserve to get dumped by text message? He seems like a bit of a tool, really. Maybe this is some kind of grand karmic revenge. Ha ha ha. That's pretty much all I have to say on the matter.

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And then Jimmy Connors goes and gets arrested at a basketball game. Guess he took his break up (presumably not by text message) with Andy Roddick pretty hard, returning to his old badarse ways after a brief stint as a respectable coach type. John McEnroe got sent off the court in a seniors match a while back for being a dickhead - guess Connors couldn't stand to be beaten and had to one-up him.

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It kind of makes you wonder - what will today's tennis heroes be like in twenty years? I would bet you any money that Roger and Rafa will be tennis statesmen in the model of Laver and Agassi, the classy guys: still making the sport proud, quiet family types, some endorsements, light commentary duties. (Can you imagine Rafa the commentator? Hilarious!) Djokovic, on the other hand, will still be trying to seduce Paraguayan javelin throwers and Slovakian singers, and will probably be getting dumped by text message for his troubles...

The Stephen Hawking of Tennis

The top story on the ATP website today is about a poll they did of fans - I remember voting in it - about who will be the year-end #1 at the end of next year. The winner? Roger Federer, with 42% of the vote.

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I'm unable to decide if this is surprising or not. Rafa is #1 now, and I think most people have finally caught up with that fact - not to mention the fact that Roger is ten points away from slipping to #3. But taking nothing away from Rafa and yes, even Novak Djokovic, I think this is an indication of the faith people have in the immense genius of Roger Federer. He may not be as young as he used to be (an old man at 27) and he may not have had the bestest year ever this year, but in the public mind and ideology, if that is not too strong a word to use, Federer is still #1. The legacy of his incredible dominance is this profound belief that he is too good to be #2 for long.

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And I'm right on that bandwagon. Much as I was saying the other day that Rafa is one of the greats too and we're living in an age of true tennis greatness (for men - women is a whole other story), the genius and the greatness of Federer transcends even that. What he has done is so phenomenal that he can lay claim to the title of Greatest of All Time. Rafa Nadal is great, one of the greats, but I doubt anyone would call him the greatest: certainly not yet, anyway. Greatest dirtballer, maybe, but when it comes to Greatest Player Ever, my mind only goes one place, and that is straight to Federer.

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Historical competition includes Rod Laver and Pete Sampras, both of whom were fabulous, as well as a whole pantheon of other tennis greats. But I don't know if any player has ever had quite the same mystique as Federer. If he is on, playing to the best of his ability, there is only one player in recent memory who has even come close to beating him, and it isn't Rafael Nadal - it's Marat Safin. (Australian Open semi '05 - heartbreaker, but one of the greatest matches ever.) He is a prodigy, the Stephen Hawking of tennis - his genius for the sport is so great I don't know if we will ever see anyone with so much pure, unadulterated talent. He is tennis clinic and tennis statesman all in one - because have we ever seen more evidence that tennis is a gentleman's game than in this man?

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This wasn't meant to turn into a paeon of praise, but all of it is deserved. I'm part of that posse whom thinks Federer will get back to #1 - and it's good to know I'm in the majority.