A Shot Fired Across the Bow

A few days ago, I was going to post on the latest installment of Wounded Warrior-Champagne Queen Kim Clijsters seemingly endless “will she or won’t she?” saga, based on this curious bit of foreshadowing.

We’ve had quite a few lively debates in these precincts about the calendar, injuries (real or imagined), last minute pull-outs and, of course, the most important (to me) but least discussed aspect of the whole situation: the ethics of players commitment. That is, is it fair of the ATP and WTA Tours to ask what they do of the players, vis a vis tournament commitments, and is it fair for the players to go back on those commitments (citing injuries or even simple fatigue) when it’s in their best short-term interest to do so?

Not-so-Li’l Kim must be trying to send a loud-and-clear message to the Belgian Federation with this latest proclamation on the upcoming Fed Cup semifinal vs. the United States. She obviously doesn’t want to play on clay in Belgium (or anywhere else, I assume) between grass and hard court tournaments, event though clay is the surface that gives the Belgians their best shot at winning.

This is as classic a bit of cherry-picking as we’ve seen in a while and a great example of the way players like to put conditions on their commitments: Sure, I’d love to play Fed Cup – if you play it on closed-cell foam, schedule my matches so that they don’t interfere with The Sopranos, give me 8.5 per cent of the gate and provide a courtesy Hummer. What do you think, I don’t love my country????!!

I can certainly see where Clijsters and her stable mate Justine Henin-Hardenne might want to play on hard courts, to avoid potential problems of surface transition after Wimbledon. But why wouldn’t the Kim camp talk to the Justine camp and then go to the federation camp to settle all this? Why hash this out via the newswires?

My take is that Clijsters is increasingly bent on doing just what she wants, when she wants. There are two ways to look at this: she’s earned the right to take that position by virtue of her stardom and talent, or, she’s being a selfish prima donna, acting in flagrant disregard of the “good of the game.” Which, of course, takes us back to the ethical core of what I described, in former posts, as the basic PFC – the player-fan contract (or PTC, player-tournament contract).

That is, you have to work out just what you feel the players owe the game at-large, and the fans, before you can take consistent positions on this. I generally come down on the fans’ side, and think the players are getting away with murder while moaning and whining about their debilitating schedules and the demands placed on them.

Clijsters helped me formulate my current anti-player stance on this a few months ago, when she limped out of the Australian Open, declaring that she needed six to eight weeks recover time from her ankle injury. Then, after an apparent a miracle recovery, she popped up just two weeks later to play in the Proximus Diamond Games (the Antwerp tournament with which she has a very cozy relationship). She banged and slashed her way to the final, and then promptly returned to the sidelines to further nurse her injuries.

Seriously, how bizarre was that?

This kind of behavior is becoming the norm; these days, players actually become offended when fans or others take them to task for pulling out of events, or seemingly using the excuse of injury to get out of commitments. I have it on very good sources that Rafael Nadal was genuinely shocked and puzzled when he took so much criticism – from fans, now, not media – for pulling out of Rotterdam.

I don’t want to force people to play any more than they want, but the way the tours are set up, commitments are a necessity. There is a truth-in-advertising issue here, and the WTA and ATP tours should not be using a system that begs to be abused or violated. Don’t have rules that you can’t, or don’t want to, enforce. It destroys your integrity and credibility.