OnTheLine blog

Flops and punks at the Aussie Open

There were two big shockers on day one of the Aussie Open.

First, the ouster of Ivan Ljubicic at the hands of Mardy Fish. Fish is a dangerous big-hitter who has made fine srides in a comeback from wrist injury, but it was hard for the media to portray the result other than as "another Grand Slam failure" for the "serial underachiever".

This is a problem I thought Ivan had licked, at least in part. He had started the 2006 slam year pretty well, with a quarterfinal in Melbourne and an excellent semifinal in Paris. But on the heels of a first round ouster to Feliciano Lopez at the US Open, now we have yet another early dismissal.

The other shocker was the punchup between -- apparently -- Australians of Serbian and Croatian origin. Ethnic brawling at tennis? I can't remember anything similar in the past (I'm sure ace historian Bud Collins will weigh in on the subject in the days to come). Certainly there have been occasional flashes of unsavory behaviour, usually around Davis Cup, but has there been anything in tennis like the organized hooliganism that has plagued sports such as football?

Moreover, Australian culture has (seemingly) increasingly been the scene of of violent activity by gangs of punks. Recall the 2005 Cronulla riots, for example. And the article cited in the previous paragraph makes reference to other hooliganish goings-on Down Under: "non ethnic-specific drag racing violence and recent rowdy crowd ejections from the cricket." Huh?

This behaviour at tennis tournaments is something I hope will not imported from the Antipodes. The influx of players pumping their fists and screaming "COME ON!" has been bad enough, thank you.

And it will be very interesting to see how the tournament handles crowd control for the rest of the fortnight.

Oh... Federer will beat Berdych and Clijsters will topple Kuznetsova in the finals. Thank you very much.

The top local hope for the AO... Guccione?

What with Lleyton Hewitt's many struggles, big-serving 21-year-old Melbourne native Chris Guccione may have emerged as the biggest hope for Australia in the men's draw of the upcoming Australian Open.

Prior to this year the left-hander was known for beating Juan Carlos Ferrero a couple of times in Australian tournaments, but did little else of note and stayed stuck on the Challenger tournament. In Adelaide this week he looked impressive, beating 2nd seed Richard Gasquet 1-6 6-3 7-6(4) in the quarters before taking out the youngest player in the top 100, Juan Martin del Potro, 5-7 6-3 7-5 to reach the final. Guccione had to settle for runner-up honours, but not before giving top seed Novak Djokovic a run for his money (6-3 6-7(6) 6-4).

I still haven't seen Guccione play, but am told he is essentially a serving machine with a useful forehand -- Rusedski-like, in other words. When you look some of the players who made it out of the round robin in Adelaide, big servers such as Guccione, Joachim Johansson and Del Potro, it appears that Hewitt's whining has not fallen on deaf ears and that the courts may have been made faster Down Under this year. Not that is has helped Hewitt much! We'll see how that plays out in the coming weeks.

Following up on the other items of interest we flagged this week:

Dinara Safina looked anything but chronically fatigued, outlasting Martina Hingis to win the Gold Coast tourney. The odd part of Safina's run was that she was down 4-6 1-5 in her semifinal match with Shahar Peer when a rain delay struck, apparently causing Peer to lose the plot completely. Safina came back to take a second set tie-break and a 6-1 third set.

An honourable showing for Nadal's pal Bartolome Salva-Vidal in Chennai: the 2004 Euro junior champ lost in the first round but took eventual runner-up Stefan Koubek to three sets. And Nadal/Salva also competed in doubles where they reached the final, where they are to face the Belgian duo composed of Xavier Malisse (who defeated Nadal in singles and won the tournament) and the ageless giant Dick Norman.

Rasheed dumps Hewitt

Interesting news today that Roger Rasheed has walked away from Lleyton Hewitt.

By no means can Rasheed's tenure as Hewitt's coach be considered a success, since under his guidance Hewitt went from world number one to an occasionally dangerous player who regularly loses matches to random journeymen, most recently Russian Igor Kunystyn this week in Adelaide.

But I don't think Rasheed can be blamed -- his appointment was odd in the first place since he seemed singularly underqualified to coach a top level player. My suspicion at the time was that Hewitt felt his game was in place and he needed an acquiescent buddy more than a coach. An excess of confidence that proved fatal, as Hewitt's game stagnated and confidence waned while the game passed him by.

It will be interesting to learn more about the breakup in the weeks to come, and to see how Hewitt goes about trying to put his game, which as his mate Pat Rafter has pointed out is in serious need of retooling, back together.

We had some upsetting news from the Justine Henin-Hardenne front, as the women's #1 is taking some time to put her life back together after an apparent marriage breakup. Another story whose gaps will surely be filled in during the coming weeks. The winners here are the other contenders for the Aussie Open crown, notably Sharapova, Mauresmo and perhaps Clijsters, who would now figure as favourites.

Chronically fatigued Safina

Dinara Safina has confirmed reports that she was suffering from chronic fatigue syndrome last year. After reaching the 2006 US Open quarterfinals, Safina played three tournaments poorly, and after a 1-6 2-6 first round loss to Anna Chakvetadze in October she did not play for the rest of the year.

"I had no resistance," Dinara says according to the AAP report. "I couldn't run from side to side and had to stand in one place and still I was very tired."

Safina is not the first player to be linked with CFS, a puzzling and controversial condition whose exact cause is unknown. The most prominent case I can think of in tennis was Alex Corretja, and even Alex's case was a bit ambiguous. Diagnosed with mononucleosis in 1999, Corretja seemed to be suggesting during a 2000 Indian Wells interview that I attended that it may have been chronic fatigue syndrome.

There were also some suggestions that Justine-Henin Hardenne suffered from CFS in 2005, although last I heard these reports had been dispelled by Justine's camp.

Good luck to Safina, who is hovering at the threshold of the top ten and who got the season off to a winning start over Elena Likhovtseva at the Gold Coast tourney. The recovery period from CFS varies -- it could be a question of months, years or never.

Nadal pal gets Chennai wild card

In his pick for the least nice moment of 2006, our colleague Chris Gerby chose to nominate the "Delray Beach fiasco", which saw Andre Agassi agree to play on the condition that his good friend Sargis Sargsian get a wild card into the main draw, despite the fact that Sargsian had already retired from the sport.

We may have another such "sweetheart deal" in India this week. World number two Rafael Nadal surprisingly opted to play in the low-profile Chennai event, and lo and behold, one of the Chennai wild cards was given to Bartolome Salva-Vidal, Rafa's childhood buddy from Mallorca.

This is unlikely to create too many waves since Salva is far from retired, and is a legitimate pro prospect as the 2004 European junior champion. He's also compliled a fairly decent record at the Futures level, although he's yet to make a breakthrough at higher levels.

Still it looks like we have a trend on our hands. Appearance fees plus a break for my buddy, please! We'll see how "Tomeu" fares when he faces Stefan Koubek in the opening round.

Player kisses off dad!

Here's a refreshing item: a WTA player severs tennis ties with an overbearing father.

Granted, Aleksandra Wozniak's dad Antoni does not seem as bad as some. One thinks of a most worrisome case in 2005, when the father of Russian teenager Evgenia Linetskaya was arrested in California, suspected of beating his daughter. Linetskaya is now ranked 402 and hasn't played since early 2006. Her absence has never been explained, and a promising career is now in limbo.

Still, it's nice to see Wozniak realize that the best path to success is to get solid professional coaching, even if it means the father who sacrificed so much for her is pushed aside. It must have been a tough decision to make, but at some moment it's time to make the break.

Hopefully she'll stick with it. I've seen Wozniak play and while it's true that she is a bit on the plodding side movement-wise, she hits an impressively hard and clean ball. I think she's right in focusing on her fitness this year.

Good luck to her!

The Disneyfication of Tennis: Mickey Mouse or just Goofy?

Since the lonnnnggg tennis off-season is upon us, it's a good time to consider some of the long-term issues the sport is dealing with. I read an interesting article that focuses on the ITF-ATP tensions.

Etienne De Villiers of the ATP seems to be the quintessential marketing hack -- make a few superficial changes, get a message out about how great the product is, and people will buy it. The round robin tournaments being instituted next year do nothing for the sport's credibility and are strictly a marketing ploy. Get out your calculators to see who makes the semis. Spare me!

One good idea that both the ATP and WTA are promoting is to have more mixed tournaments. But you know Francesco Ricci Bitti of the ITF will push back on that one, since over the years he has consistently expressed fears that they would devalue his Grand Slam events. My take is that this is a somewhat unrealistic fear -- the Slams are and will remain the centrepieces of pro tennis, regardless of what the tours concoct.

I also struggle with Ricci Bitti's assertion that players are earning too much money when they start out on the tour. Tennis is a very expensive sport, what with travel expenses, coaching expenses, and so forth. Even if these lesser tournaments are sometimes happy hunting ground for veteran players who are happy to pick up money and cruise along, I would hate to see a roll-back on lower-tier tournament pay cheques.

By the way, the author of that piece, Sebastian Fest of the German agency DPA, is usually worth reading. He consistently has his eye on the "big picture" and is not afraid to stir things up. He recently got into a bit of trouble for writing
an article that featured some hard-hitting quotes from Justine Henin-Hardenne's coach Carlos Rodrigues about Kim
Clijsters, comments that Kim angrily rejected.

"When Justine began to beat Kim, won her first Slam and became world #1, Clijsters' father accused her of doping and Kim criticized her for lack of sportsmanship. If they had apologized, I wouldn't say the things I do. We're not holding a grudge, but when they talk as if nothing happened, there's a certain hypocrisy."

Rodrigues subsequently denied making the statements. Mm-hmm!

Balderdash in Bangalore

Early New Year's resolution: I shall not neglect this blog!

Here's a hearty chuckly provided by a report on a press conference held to promote a February tournament in Bangalore:

"Serena, in her message flashed on the screen at the launch, said, 'I'm very excited to be playing in Bangalore. Tennis as a sport has become more and more popular in India and I hope many fans of all ages will come out and see us play. I always look forward to visiting a new country and playing in new good tournaments.'"

I hope nobody is taking this commitment to the bank, since her withdrawals from overseas tournaments are legendary. Plus, even Serena's statements under oath in a court of law are being disputed these days....

Blogging from Toronto -- Wednesday action

Fernando Gonzalez (15) def. Juan Carlos Ferrero, 6-2, 6-1

Sheesh. Remember when JCF used to be a player? He showed next to nothing of value today. That said, Gonzalez looks in top form -- more so on the evidence of subduing the much tougher opposition of Soderling in the first round. I don't know if the Chilean has gotten lighter but I'm not sure I've seen him move as well as he has this week.

Richard Gasquet def. James Blake (5), 6-4, 6-3

This loss should be a concern to Blake. I've read him say that he's learned to win matches when his big shots are not going by staying in rallies with his speed. But today was certainly no evidence of that. Blake got off to a roaring start, his bombs blazing past Gasquet and buffeting the French lad around the court. But once the big shots started missing, Blake had no answer. Eventually nothing was going in and it was a meek surrender by the 5th seed.
Gasquet, once he was allowed into the match, let his eloquent shotmaking speak. He hit a handful of glorious backhand winners as well as a couple of tasty lobs. Ti-Rich looks on course to start knocking on the door of the top ten, as he was last year. In any case, he seems a good bet for a quarterfinal meeting with Nadal.

Q-Davide Sanguinetti def. Q-Jan Hernych, 6-4, 7-6 (7-4)

I guess my man Jan has to wait a bit longer for his first Masters Series title! The experience, guile and desire of his 34-year-old opponent out of Italy was just a bit too much. There wasn't much to choose between the smooth-stroking Euros, but Davide made the big plays when it counted. The Silver Fox also entertained the Court 1 fans with repeated self-critical screams accompanied with flamboyant gestures. He plays Nieminen for a spot in the quarters: good luck to the geezer!

On my way past the grandstand I caught the final stages of Andy Murray def. Tim Henman, 6-2, 7-6 (7-3). Henman was serving to level the match at 6-5 of the second, but lost a lengthy deuce game, disappointing the crowd that was clearly in Tim's corner. Timbledon will particularly rue a gift backhand volley on set point that he crisply and decisively struck into the net.

Martin Damm/Leander Paes def. Tomas Berdych/Jaroslav Levinsky, 7-5 6-1

I was glad to note that Leander continues his campaign to reclaim the chest-bump from the Bryan Twins -- Paes correctly noted in January that he and Mahesh Bhupathi were chest-bumping when the Bryans were "in diapers" after Mike Bryan accused him of stealing their trademark celebratory gesture -- as he and Damm performed two of them. It's rather amusing to see the stolid Czech Damm chest-bumping.
In the resistance to change department, I was exposed to no-ad scoring for the first time. It doesn't feel like real tennis to me, but I guess I'll get used to it!

Thomas Johansson def. Lleyton Hewitt (11), 6-3, 3-2, retired

My Canadian Open ended for the year with a whimper when an off-form Hewitt threw in the towel, with umpire Steve Ullrich announcing Lleyton was "carrying a leg injury." Apparently this problem is a carryover from last week in Washington. Johansson was serving big and hitting the ball better than I expected given his recent results.

I have to say I was a little disappointed with much of the tennis I saw. There was a shortage of interesting matches and too many good players went out with hardly a whimper. Hopefully we will see some good showdowns from here on. For me it will be on TV.

Blogging from Toronto -- Tuesday action

Q-Jan Hernych (CZE) def. LL-Nicolas Mahut (FRA) 6-3, 6-3

I had to keep up with my guy Jan, especially since he was playing the entertaining Mahut. This was as straightforward as it looks from the score. Hernych's compact returns and passes kept Mahut's inconsistent attacks at bay, and the smooth Czech was much too solid in the baseline rallies.
Something that occurred to me in watching Mahut again is how unfluid he is. There's a lot of herking and jerking in his movements, and it seems to me that all those moving parts increase the likelihood of something breaking down somewhere. His coach also seemed to have issues with Nico's footwork.
Oh, young Monsieur Gasquet came to watch Mahut and sat next to me for a half hour. Richard neglected to thank me for my nice comments about him yesterday, but I don't hold a grudge.

Xavier Malisse (BEL) def. 6-Nikolay Davydenko (RUS) 6-3, 7-5

This was played on a pretty crowded Court 1 while Kevin Kim was beating Robbie Ginepri on a much larger but almost deserted Grandstand. Malisse seems quite popular for some reason, but there were also some Russians on hand giving it up for Kolya.
The match didn't unfold like I expected it would. X-Man seemed content to hang back well behind his baseline, feeding Davydenko deep balls without going for very much, as if he was daring Kolya to hit one past him. The Russian rarely did, usually missed when he tried, and also missed too much on relatively routine groundies. There are of course ways to attack a player who is conceding so much court position, such as going to net, drawing him in, playing angles, etc., but I don't think they occurred to Kolya's rather metronomic way of thinking.
To Malisse's credit he kept the errors to a strict minimum and served very well.

7-Tommy Robredo (ESP) def. Marat Safin 7-5, 5-7, 6-2

This was an excellent match played mostly at a very high level. With Safin playing fairly well, Robredo had to be good to win, and he was. Tommy has always had the forehand going for him, but his serve is much better than I remember, getting up toward 210 km/h on occasion. He also seems to run around the bckhand less than he used to, and can now exploit the backhand as well as the forehand as weapons. And he handles pace extremely well. It's easy to see how he's progressed in the rankings to the top ten.

Since this was the first main draw match I have seen in the stadium, I had my first taste of the dreaded "challenge". It so happened that one challenge changed the course of the second set. With Robredo serving at 5-6, deuce, Tommy hits a winner that sets up game point. Ah, but Marat challenges! The computerized contraption rules in Safin's favour to set up break point/set point, which Safin promptly coverts. Marat might not have won that set, at least not as quickly, had it not been for the challenge.


Andy Murray (GBR) def. 12-David Ferrer (ESP) 6-2, 7-6(6)

I was glad to finally see Brad Gilbert's pupil for the first time and get a taste of what Murray is all about. The most impressive thing is his change of pace. He mixes his spins and speeds alarmingly well for a young lad, which is the kind of thing that induces errors. Not that this was very difficult with Ferrer blowing as he was, but hey. Andy also wins a lot of cheap points with a good serve. And you can see he has some flash -- he came up with a few exceptional winners, particularly off the forehand.
I confess to missing what must have been a major Murray meltdown since I left with Murray leading 6-2 5-0 and Ferrer looking like a man anxious to get off the court!
There was an interesting moment when Murray was distracted by a crying baby and lost the point. Andy waited for the dad to rush the unhappy child out the exit before resuming play. It all seemed fitting somehow.