How The West Was Won
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By TennisWorld Contributing Editor Andrew Burton
In the brief space of time between Indian Wells and Miami/Key Biscayne, here are some semi-random thoughts about the week or so of tennis that I saw, and some of the conversations that I had.
Get There - While I was reviewing some of the match calls, I saw that matches I'd enjoyed very much were being panned as low to average in quality. Some of this, of course, is personal taste - nothing wrong with that. But there's a heck of a difference between watching a top ATP or WTA match in the stadium and watching it on TV. It's like the difference between owning a concert DVD and being there to hear the thing when it happens (well, minus the ringing in the ears the morning after).
TV gives you a number of things you don't get in the stadium - action replays from multiple angles, statistics, commentary (yes, I know that's a double edged sword - but every so often I like to have Darren Cahill sitting next to me pointing something out). But when you're close to the players, you get a much more visceral connection to the action in front of you. You can hear, as the strings contact the ball, just how hard the players are hitting. You also gain an appreciation of just how good an athlete you need to be to survive at this level. You're part of a crowd, and close to its emotions. You won't necessarily see a great match, but your appreciation of tennis players is likely to go up. So shake your couch, count your pennies and go see some live tennis.
Good, not great - talking about match quality, I can't honestly say that I saw any matches at Indian Wells which will show up in the year's top 10.
I thought Nadal - Berdych was the highest quality match I saw during the week. Nadal was the better player on the night, and he made a slight advantage count, rather like a chess grandmaster turning a one pawn advantage into a win (possibly the first time Rafael Nadal has been likened to a chess grandmaster). My formula for good tennis matches is simple:
To become a great match, the quality of player has to be outstanding, and there has to be a meaningful chance that either player will win. And it helps if there's a lot riding on the outcome - a final, or late stage in a Major.
By this standard, Federer - Baghdatis and Nadal - Ljubicic were pretty good matches, but in both cases the high seed played a good step below his best level, and missed several chances to close out the match. We all know that Federer failed to convert 3 match points against Baghdatis: Nadal didn't get to match point against Ljubicic, but at the start of the 3rd set tie break in their semi final match, Nadal was leading the points tally 97 to 85. That ought to be enough for the win, but as we know, Ljubicic accepted the lifelines and ran away with the tie breaker. Federer came in for some flak in the press room for his rueful comment that the match with Baghdatis should never have got to a breaker - but Nadal said just about the same thing in his own remarks after his semi:
I Been Working On The Railroad - I hope by now you've had a chance to read Steve Tignor's posts from Indian Wells. Tennis journalism may seem like a pretty cushy way to earn a living - travel to exotic places, watch a match a day, tell people what they've just seen, collect a paycheck. But just as Federer's seemingly effortless style hides the fantastic amount of work he's doing with his core and legs to achieve the balance and footwork, Steve's posts have come from a ton of legwork watching all kinds of different matches and hours in the media center hammering away on his MacBook. At times, I thought Steve had cloned himself, and one Steve was writing in the media center while Steve Mark II was out at Stadium 3 taking notes on Yanina Wickmayer.
This year, Steve sat in a Murderer's Row of tennis journalists - Doug Robson of USA Today, Matt Cronin of TennisReporters.net, Steve, and Tom Tebbutt of the Toronto Globe & Mail. When I was tapping away at my own laptop, I'd hear these guys checking stats, making observations or just wisecracking behind me. It was like being courtside at a journalist's All Star Game.
Go Big Or Go Home - one of Steve's posts last week looked at Marcos Baghdatis. Steve talked about Baghdatis' failure, so far, to follow through on his spectacular coming out party in Melbourne in 2006:
"Players are so much stronger." It seems strange to think that the game can change appreciably in four years, but I believe I saw evidence of this in the press conferences I attended. I've seen Andy Murray, Ivan Ljubicic and Andy Roddick on several occasions since I first started going to IW on a media pass in 2008, and this year each of them seemed to have bulked up noticeably in their upper bodies, particularly their arms. Even the WTA is getting into the act - watching Elena Dementieva, all I could think was "damn, I wish I could have delts like she has."
uh oh. mines only raison for to live, gones. MOPE!!! - When you've just spent a not inconsiderable sum of money on planes, cars and rooms, and gotten excited because the dude did actually show up, seeing your favorite player blow 3 match points and exit early is a bit of a downer - one shared by Jane (jb) and Susan (lpb), so we slunk off to a hotel bar to drown our sorrows. But then I remembered this lolcats parody of Twilight - New Moon ("is mines fambly. thay is want for you to be a snack. i am luvs you too much for you to be snack. stead i jes go way for evar. k thx bye") Through the magic of iPhone, we could read the immortal tale of Bella and Edward, and be hapy gane.
Indian Wells 2010 is in the books. Before the two singles finals began, Steve Tignor and I sat down in the press gallery, and he talked about being a full time tennis journalist, and about where the two tours are right now. It's up on YouTube, so take a look. I hope to keep posting tennis related videos to YouTube - if you want to keep up to date, you'll find me at adbuton1.