The Unfortunate Tale of Ms S

A short post today, because what more can I say about Serena that has not been said?

I think we were all really, really looking forward to having her back. When she went out, Serena was so far above the rest of the field that I think everyone was subconsciously expecting her to return there - to immediately re-ascend her throne and command the WTA during the Slams. And it looked like Roland Garros was her comeback time, and we were all excited, and...

And now Serena's been admitted to hospital with a pulmonary embolism and a subsequent hematoma and could be out for another year. And the question is beginning to be asked - not by me yet, I would hasten to add, but the question is out there - will she ever come back?

I'm sure there's a bunch of Serena skeptics out there who, just like when she was in the boot for an extended time, thought that she was faking it and it was all a big act, ra ra ra. I hope these people have the taste and decency to bite their tongues this time, because this is serious business. According to her statement, Serena is recuperating at home under strict medical supervision and hopes to be back by early summer. (Is anyone else confused as to what 'early summer' means? Which summer?) But her main goal, if she is to come back, is to come back safely.

Which, duh.

It is terribly, terribly sad that Serena's experienced another setback on her road to recovery. What seemed like a reasonably little deal at the beginning - Serena cutting her foot on broken glass outside a restaurant - has blossomed into something very big and scary and worrying. The WTA is not the same without Serena. And I'm sure she wants to be back playing as much as we want her back.

Get well soon, Serena.

Be Prepared (Trust Me, You Are Not)

Cherbourg! It's going to be a thing this week. Be prepared to have your world rocked by my Cherbourg coverage. Be prepared to have your mind blown and everything you thought you knew turned on its head.

...I should probably make sure I've watched some of the tournament before I start making large, grandiose, sweeping promises, but hey, I bet you kept reading till the second paragraph!

Cherbourg is a Challenger event, and it is a defending champion that we all know and love in Nicolas Mahut, he who should have been given a wildcard to the Australian Open but who qualified anyway and made it to the second round. (Yes, I'm still harping on that hobby horse.) And he played last night, this Mahut of whom I sing, and he won.

And yes, this makes me happy.

I didn't see the match, but I'm going to talk about like I know what I'm talking about, so be prepared. (I've seen the stats sheet. Surely this is enough!) Mahut played a nasty first set of badness and despair wherein his opponent - qualifier Matwe Middlekoop, if you are a) interested and b) know who that is - pretty much walked all over him. The stats show that Mahut wasn't playing that badly - they're not great stats but they're not awful either - but the real telling one is the return. Middlekoop clearly had that serve cranking and Mahut wasn't reading it, because his return percentage on both first and second serves was not a happy fun joyful return percentage of sunshine and rainbows, if you know what I mean.

So, yeah. Down went Mahut in that first set. Into her mouth went Jodi's heart (or it would have, had I been watching. I was busy doing this thing called 'being asleep'. People are determined to have their tennis tournaments at very inconvenient times of those of us here in the land of Oz). But then what light at yonder window breaks (broke)? Suddenly, Mahut returned much better! Middlekoop returned much worse! And this trend continued until Mahut was winning 89% of points on his first serve in the third set. And, oh yeah, he was serving at 82%, so Middlekoop didn't get much of a look in there.

It highlights a) what a big freaking deal serving and returning is; b) the way that players - even ones you might not usually think of as 'great' - can change gears in the middle of matches; and c) that Jodi is capable of rabbiting on like a crazy person about a match she hasn't seen. (If you are new to this blog, I do this a lot. Be prepared.)

Anyway, it wasn't Mahut's most gloriously stylish win ever, but he got the job done, and a win is a win - no matter what that craptacular study I was talking about yesterday would have you believe.

I'm pretty sure that Mahut faces 'OMG, you killed' Kenny de Schepper in his next match, who came through a tough three setter. I know nothing about de Schepper, so I might just stop here before I start predicting matches I probably won't end up seeing. I'll just say ALLEZ NICO and leave it at that.

Oh, and also - whatever happened to Josselin Ouanna? Remember when he was all Safin-beating third-round-making at Roland Garros? Now he's getting smacked down by Ivo Minar in the first round of Cherbourg. What happened there?

And Finally, In The 'Completely Stupid' Category...

It's Davis Cup week. Yawn. At least until Friday, there's going to be pretty much fat nothing to write about. Except the INEVITABLE GLORIOUS RUN of my main man Nicolas Mahut in Cherbourg (antijinx). He is the second seed in the singles (after Grigor Dimitrov) and the top seed in the doubles with Edouard Roger-Vasselin. And they just won their first round doubles match. So... yeah. Awesome.

But due to this very little 'actual tennis' thing I have to write about, I thought I would write about this. It's a study. Possibly one of the worst studies of all time. The formula it uses analyses and tallies up how many wins players had over other 'quality players', regardless of arena, and then churns out a Greatest of All Time.

The GOAT, according to this study of stupidness? Jimmy Connors.

We all know where I stand when it comes to GOATness. If one has to pick, I'm Team Federer forever. But even if this survey had come out and said that yes, Federer is the greatest of all time, their methodology is clearly more than a little specious. Did you know that Federer has only, according to this, won 39 quality matches in his career? So that's eight victories over Rafa, thirteen over Djokovic, six over Murray, eight over Agassi... that's 35. Oh! one over Sampras. Make that 36. Chuck in a few others, and hey presto! Roger Federer has never won anything else ever.

And that's not even starting on the Rafa stats. He's only won 21 matches of quality. Because that's how you win five Roland Garros titles, bitches.

Surely when results like this came out of the study - Connors at #1, followed by Lendl and McEnroe - they should have realised it was a bit, how shall we say it... not very good? I mean, those dudes were great, and they did great things, but the greatest? I think not. If they're the results you're getting, your scale is wrong, bro.

I don't know if it is possible to quantify a Greatest of All Time. But if it is, this is not the right way to go about it.

I wonder how the system decides what a 'quality win' is, as well. Does Federer's victory over Andy Roddick in Wimbledon in 2009 count as a quality win? Because it was pretty freaking spectacular. But Roddick has been his bunny for a while now, so I'm sure that twenty-odd wins against Roddick can't be counted in those 39 wins he's apparently had. There's no regard to situation either, so matches like Roger's AO win over Baghdatis probably doesn't count.

I hope this 'prestige ranking' thing doesn't catch on. Because I am telling you right now that I think it is stupid. And you should all listen to me. Just because.

One Step At A Time

There is no three title run for Nicolas Almagro. Such a thing was not writ in his destiny. Instead, David 'Lord Farquaad' Ferrer took the title. And he is looking gooooooooood. Australia was no fluke. David Ferrer is a force to be reckoned with and no mistake.

He is one of those dudes that, given the right draw, could go very, very deep at Roland Garros. Or even given the wrong draw. No one expected him to end up in the semis in Australia, and yet semis he made. So keep an eye on this one. No telling where he'll pop up.

He will be seeded. This we know. And he will be seeded high. So while it probably wouldn't be a top player's MOST FAVOURITE THING EVER to have Ferru land in their quarter, he's hardly a dangerous floater.

One of the other winners over the weekend, on the other hand, is. Welcome home, Juan Martin del Potro.

I don't want to go proclaiming that JMDP is 'back' in some definable sense of the word or anything like that. For one, that's not really a quantifiable concept; and two, it's a long way back up to where he was, because he was forced to fall from so very high. But winning titles is the way to get back up there - step by step, rung by rung, hand over hand on the ladder.

Sure, it was a Mickey Mouse tournament - there's not much else going on this week. But Mardy Fish and Janko Tipsarevic are quality opponents and JMDP basically ate them for breakfast. These are all good signs, positive signs. While Juan's results over the Australian summer might not have been spectacular on paper, I think they did give him some useful matchplay. Want to get your eye in? Try playing three hours against Feliciano Lopez. It's been a grinding, wearing summer for JMDP, but it is paying off.

Delray Beach is JMDP's first title since he lifted the trophy at the US Open in 2009. I don't see him lifting another Slam trophy this year - or maybe not even next year - but these signs are all good. In a lesser field, his return might be quicker. Unfortunately, we have an extraordinary level of depth in men's tennis at the moment, crowned with some truly extraordinary players at the top. If JMDP is going to get back up there, climb the mountain again, it's going to take a while. No single title win is suddenly going to propel him back among the echelons of the top ten.

But there's only one way to climb a mountain, and that's step by step. And winning Delray Beach is quite a large step - one might almost call it a leap.

If A Tree Falls And No One's There...

I have found myself spectacularly uninvolved in the world of tennis this week. I know it should have been the first week that I really cared post-Australian Open, what with the return of my main man Roger, but no. I found this week terribly, terribly dull.

This is not to say that I am not a bit cross with the selfsame Roger Federer for his performance in the Dubai final. Djokovic is playing so well at the moment that even if he had played better I don't know if he would have been able to win, but missing overheads? Dude, seriously? Ferd the turd was out in this match in full force.

So let's not talk about him. Or I will shout. LIKE THIS. Instead, let's talk about Nicolas Almagro, who keeps, like, winning stuff. Like, lots of stuff.

He is in his third straight final, going for his third straight title. I know these are Mickey Mouse clay tournaments, but that is still pretty impressive. Almagro is a fearsome claycourter at the best of times (he is, after all, the Prince of Clay) but this is a good run for him. This is a run I don't think Rafa would be ashamed to have to his name, if Rafa were the kind of dude that played these tournaments.

And now Almagro is going up against another Spanish dude in the in-form David Ferrer. And you've got to think... if you've just played about 2394729387 matches on the trot, David Ferrer is the last dude you want to face. (Ask Rafa.) Because here is the thing - three finals in a row is a great result, but is it the best idea for your body?

As far as I recall, Almagro is not the most injury prone dude. He's no Tsonga, that's for sure. But clay is a demanding surface and even when you're winning pretty comfortably, as he has generally been doing, it's got to take a toll on your body. Again, let's look at Rafa, the clay machine. I think we can all agree that Rafa's fitness is superhuman, that he is lightyears ahead of the field on clay, and that there is quite a high possibility that he is a cyborg. And yet he didn't win those three Masters 1000s on clay until he stopped playing Barcelona.

If Almagro gets good draws - ie. doesn't come up against that selfsame Rafa, or Federer, or Djokovic - he is perfectly capable of going very deep in the important clay tournaments to come. On clay, he is top ten in the world, no doubt. But if he guns it too hard now, when no one's around, then he's going to burn out. And no one will remember these tournament wins here... because, as always, Roland Garros will eclipse everything.

(On Roland Garros - there is a slight possibility I might actually attend for a day or two this year! How cool is that?!)

Doggerel Time

On the world of tennis today
I do not have much to say
So I'll save it for another time
And instead give you this rhyme.

Why You Should Never Listen To A Thing I Say

My sister and I have a new addiction. We live in different cities, but this is something we do together every week. Once a week - either on Thursday night or Saturday afternoon, depending on when we're both free - we sit down, put each other on speakerphone, and watch the weekly highlights of WWE.

Yes, this will be an article about tennis. I'm getting there. Trust me.

WWE may well be the funniest damn thing I have ever seen in my life. A soap opera about men wearing no pants pretending to punch each other? Genius. What is there not to love about something which is basically Passions with punching (and less pants)?

My favourite thing about WWE is not the punching - which I can take or leave - it is the hilarious storylines they have going on. I'm not sure to what extent WWE tries to take itself seriously, but it is HIGH CAMP THEATRE OF HILARITY. So last night, in that drifting state between waking and sleep, it came to me. What if the world of tennis was like that?

I would not wish it, of course. BUT IT WOULD BE HILARIOUS. Tennis players coming out into the middle of the court with a microphone, talking smack about their opponents... and then their opponents would come out, to the strains of hilariously hardcore music! Djokovic could be all 'the king is dead, long live the king', and out comes Federer! to the strains of Don't Stop Me Now! And he's all like, 'if you're the king, then prove it - let's have a match right here, right now!'

And then they play. And Mirka and Ana Ivanovic are on the side trying to interfere while the referee (who is probably Kader Nouni, on account of his excellent voice) isn't looking.

Grand Slams would no longer exist. Things like 'the Wimbledon title' would probably be redecided weekly. And there would be no trophies - oh no. There would be belts. HILARIOUSLY OVERSIZED BELTS. And things like 'the Nadal forehand' and 'the Federer volley' would become WWE-esque finishing moves that people would scream for and anticipate. No more of this 'RKO' or '619' business. It would be all 'FOREHAND!'

Of course, this would no longer be tennis. But it would be funny.

There would be terribly written storylines as well. I'm sure that the Roger character and the Rafa character would have some epic ongoing feud and would be punching each other and stealing each other's girlfriends all the time. Djokovic and Murray would both be trying to become the new #1 contenders and sometimes succeeding, but mostly failing. Murray would probably go through a straight edge phase. There would be a lot more crazy eyes, a lot more theme songs, and a lot less pants in this world. Because they would have to wear speedos. And leg warmers. Because that is what WWE is about. Or WTE, in this case - World Tennis Entertainment. It would not really be tennis, but it would be entertaining.

In case you can't tell, this entire post is trying to mask the fact that I don't have much else to write about. WTE is, of course, a terrible idea. But it is nightmarishly appealing. We can dream. Even if our dreams are not good ones.