The Exolry (Watercooler)

Mornin', folks. While we're awaiting the making of the Australian Open draw (the seedings are out, BTW; the top 32 women and 30 of the top 32 men are entered. Tommy Haas and Guillermo Canas withdrew with injuries), we have a few bits of news to discuss at the Watercooler.

First, following up on my last post,  I had a lengthy chat with Tony Godsick, agent to Lindsay Davenport (as well as Roger Federer) and I may try to get a few minutes on the phone with Lindsay next week. It will be tough, because at Slams the players tend to do only on-site stuff. Also, I think Lindsay's pressers will be telling, and may answer most of the questions we have anyway.

Of course, we also got to talking about the upcoming Roger Federer vs. Pete Sampras exhibition match in Madison Square Garden. Grant Chen, who works with Pete, had already told me that within days of the tickets going on sale, and before the sale was open to the general public (USTA members got first dibs), over 5000 seats had been sold.

I'm hoping that this will be a New York happening on the order of those historic, one-night stands that took place in the Garden many years ago, dating back to well before the Open era. I've written a fairly short piece on the subject for an upcoming issue of Tennis, so I won't go into great detail here. But the most compelling of those matches was the battle between Jack Kramer (who has just turned pro) and the wily old barnstormer, Bobby Riggs.

The two met on the night of December 26th, 1948, in a clash billed by promoter Jack Harris as “the tennis match of the decade.”  Unfortunately, New York experienced the worst blizzard in its recorded history that evening. But while the snow massed to 25.8 inches, over 15,000 interpid fans made their way to the Garden (many on skis or snowshoes, bravely plowing through four-foot drifts) to make the match a runaway success –and extraordinary happening.  Riggs, much to the surprise of many, won that one in four sets, 6-2, 10-8, 4-6, 6-4. It's just another of those results that Riggs KADs point to when they claim Riggs may be the most underrated of past champions.

BTW, for those of you who are, as they say, "students of the game", especially all that came before the Open era, there is one indispensable source book: The Fireside Book of Tennis (Simon and Shuster, 1972), by Allison Danzig (a long-time New York Times tennis correspondent and Peter Schwed.

Anyway, it would be terrific for the game to have that kind of a transcendent event again (and it has been known to storm, and mightily, in New York in March!), which is just one of the reasons that I find this entire, fell-out-of-the-sky exolry (that's a combination of "exhibition" and "rivalry") so significant and worthy of discussion.

Tony told me that Roger is pretty fired up about this meeting as well, and thinks it will be fun. That's important to remember because, as Tony said, starting with Indian Wells, fun will not be a big word in Roger's vocabulary - not with the clay season, and then a crazy summer made crazier by the Olympic Games. If you think about it, flying into NY from Dubai, and spending a day or two here (Roger and Mirka are honorary New Yorkers) before going on to the California desert will be a fairly convenient itinerary.

It's funny but we (sportswriters and fans alike) often over-dramatize certain results and events in the life and times of players - especially those we either love, hate, hate to love or love to hate. While there are watershed matches and moments in every player's life (Andre Agassi's devastating loss to Pete Sampras in the US Open final of 1995 pops right to mind), it's good to remember that tennis players, like many of the rest of us, are pretty good at rolling with the punches, as well as reacting to events in a more "human" and low-key way than we imagine. To some degree, the top players exist on two planes: the public one, in which every shanked forehand or wasted break point seems like it must tremble with cosmic significance, and the private plane, on which, in the immortal words of that great philosopher, Cindy Lauper, Girls (and boys - TW is resolutely anti-sexist!) Just Wanna Have Fun.

Keeping that in mind is the best way to appreciate the ongoing Battle of the GOATs (I think we've all agreed that the oxymoronic plural is the only way to approach a subject so complex and qualified). For instance, who would argue that that for The Mighty Fed, playing a few exos against Pistol Pete Sampras would, first and foremost, seem less like Armageddon than a bit of . . . fun. To mangle a popular expression, Fun? There's no fun in tennis! Sometimes, we act as if that's a truism.

And it could be fun, come what may in the way of results, or the blowback from pundits and critics. Fun, as in a welcome change from closing the year by playing his rival, Rafael Nadal, in a few comparable, remunerative one-night-stands. "When it comes to these great players from the past, Roger just absorbs them like a sponge," Tony told me. "He isn't envious or jealous of anyone, and he knows that these guys (Laver, Sampras, Agassi et al) went through many of the same things he's living. This is just something he enjoys doing and how often does he get the chance?"

One good way of looking at this is: What does it say about TMF that he can play his main rival-in-history, lose one of three matches, and refrain from complaining about the fast court surface, carping about season-ending fatigue, or incessantly reminding people, It was just an exhibition! For he's done nothing of the kind.

Nothing in recent memory has increased my appreciation and respect for Federer more than the way he has handled this whole saga of the exhibitions. And I believe Pete feels that way, too. He went into those matches thinking Roger is a classy guy; he came out of them with that belief intensified. Of this I am sure: Nobody is drawing fewer conclusions from these exhibitions than Pete and Roger. At some level they know it's just tennis, and that, as in most things, the truth always comes out. Their records will speak for themselves over time and in the record books.

Of course, this doesn't explain why I find this Battle of the GOATs despite the groans the subject elicts in some readers. Maybe I'm making too much of this, but I love the fact that TMF calls Sampras "Pistol." And I can't help but thinking that in his shoes, a guy (let's say Andy Roddick's coach) would, snarlingly, refer to Sampras as "Pop Gun." This relationship between TMF and Pistol is, to me, one of the ultimate feel-good stories in tennis, and I think it should be exploited to the max at a time when tennis has been hammered with a good deal of negative publicity.

And now, for the answer to the million dollar question: you bet the surface in MSG will be slower than the one in Macao. I'm expecting a medium to medium-fast Supreme Court.

So let's move on. Someone in the previous post has already linked to this, but this virtual chat conducted by Chris Clarey with a  handful of prominent journalists is a good read, especially as a table-setter for the upcoming Australian Open. Incidentally, those of you who feared Jelena Dokic would miss her chance of qualifying for the Australian Open will be interested to know that she is very much alive in that Australian Open qualifying tournament. She is up against Tamarine Tanasugarn today.

And, in a stop the presses development, it looks like Mark Philippoussis, coming off a bad loss in a reality TV train wreck called The**Age of Love, may want to enter a comparable event, Australia's domestic Dancing with the Stars.

You know how it goes - after a beatdown, you want to get right back out there to restore your confidence!

Hey, how do y'all feel about an AO contest, to see who can predict the correct answers to a set of questions a little more nuanced than who wins in either draw? Also, fabulous Mariya and her buds at Talk About Tennis have offered to host a special TennisWorld division of their Grand Slam Suicide Pool. Details later.. .