Tag: Tennis

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The Davis Cup is getting a makeover

This November, the Davis Cup will feature a face-off among 18 countries that meet in Madrid, marking the first time in 119 years that the tournament will not conclude in a two-team final on the favorite’s home court.

The new look for the top event in men’s team tennis will condense into two singles matches and one doubles match, with the outcome of each match determined by the best-of-three sets. That’s down from four singles and one doubles match, with the winner determined by the team that won three of the five matches.

The change, which the International Tennis Federation announced in August, aims to lure elite players who have tended to pass on competing for their countries thanks to the demands of their schedules. For example, Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal have played each other 38 times but never in Davis Cup competition.

“I honestly don’t see it as the end of an era as much as I see it as the end of a chapter of a long book,” David Haggerty, president of the ITF, told the Times.

Some current and former players disagree. “The Davis Cup is dead, and part of the history of our sport is gone for a handful of dollars,” tweeted Nicolas Mahut of France, the third-ranked doubles player in the world

The reformatting comes amid a rivalry in team tennis competition. This January, the men’s tour will launch the ATP Cup in Australia with a 24-team format. The prize money for both cups — $18 million for the Davis Cup and $15 million for the ATP Cup – will be similar. But the ATP Cup also will enable players to compete for points toward their ranking.

In 1900, teams from the U.S and Britain (competing as the British Isles) faced off at the Longwood Cricket Club in Boston in the first Davis Cup.

The Americans won the cup that year and again the next in Brooklyn, setting off a rivalry that reversed when Britain won the title at Longwood in 1903. Fast forward to November, when Croatia, led by Marin Cilic, the seventh-ranked player in the world, clinched the title in a 3-1 victory over France. 

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Sports

Serena Williams wipes out

A documentary that played recently at the Film Forum, “McEnroe: In the Realm of Perfection,” assembles hours of footage of the tennis legend on the courts of Roland Garros in Paris. Over years at the French Open – the film centers on McEnroe’s battle in the final there against Ivan Lendl in 1984 – McEnroe displayed both the greatness and outbursts that defined him.

During one tirade, McEnroe, exasperated by the whir of a recorder, turns on the recordist. “Keep that thing away from me, you understand? ” he says. Pointing at the grip end of his racket, McEnroe adds, “In your mouth.”

The narrator, the actor Mathieu Amalric, notes that the fury McEnroe struggled to contain throughout his career on the court reflected a competitor who played “at the edge of his senses.” The flutter of a recorder amid the silence in the stadium during the moments preceding a point reverberate within McEnroe like an eruption.

I was reminded of that acuteness of sensitivity while watching Serena Williams melt down during the women’s final against Naomi Osaka at the U.S. Open. Williams shares with McEnroe both a game to behold and a tendency toward tirades.

On Saturday, Williams became furious when the umpire Carlos Ramos called out her coach Patrick Mouratoglou for signaling to Williams from the stands, a violation of the rules. Though the fault lay with Mouratoglou, Williams perceived it as a slight. “I don’t cheat to win,” she told Ramos. “I’d rather lose.”

Williams could not let it go. A few games later, while serving and up 2-1 in the second set, she forfeited a point when she smashed her racket on the ground after an unforced error.

A few more games later, during a changeover with Osaka ahead 4-3, Williams continued to insist to Ramos that she did not receive coaching. She demanded an apology from the umpire.

“Say you’re sorry,” Williams implored. “You stole a point from me. You’re a thief, too.” Ramos issued a third violation, which resulted in the automatic loss of a game.

Williams appealed, without success, to the tournament referee and the Grand Slam supervisor, to whom she raised a charge of bias. “Do you know how many other men do things that are — that do much worse than that?” she said, referring to the comments that cost her a game. “This is not fair.” (The Times has chronicled each moment of the meltdown.)

As we now know, Osaka defeated Williams, whom Osaka had called her idol. Ditto for the fans. The nearly 24,000 of them who filled Arthur Ashe Stadium booed during the trophy presentation. Social media exploded (what else) with criticism of Ramos and support for Williams.

Afterward, I wondered why Williams took such offense at Ramos’ warning her coach about coaching from the stands. It was, after all, a warning to her coach. And yet it became Williams’ unraveling.

Thus the flashback to McEnroe. Perhaps Williams, too, plays at the limits of everything. What for others, including her fellow competitors, might be an annoyance to shrug off, or a cue to get on with the match, to Williams it became an indictment of her character. She  would rather lose than “cheat to win,” Williams told Ramos.

Williams was neither cheating nor losing when Ramos warned Mouratoglou. And while she never cheated, she later lost a point for smashing her racket. And then she forfeited a game for calling Ramos a thief.

The ruling by Ramos on that last point seemed to be an excess. As Sally Jenkins notes in the Washington Post, he could have de-escalated, by warning Williams without penalizing her, and “let things play out on the court.”

That leaves the racket-smashing as the only one of Williams transgressions that, strictly speaking, ran afoul of the rules. And yet Williams unraveled, which cost her the match.

Like a pro skier on a downhill run who catches an edge and crashes, blowing out her knee instead of winning a medal, Williams wiped out. The edge of her senses turned out to be a razor.

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Sports

On a court in Central Park, contemplating tennis anew

Ball boys and girls shield players from sun at the U.S. Open. (Photo by Brian Browdie)
Ball boys and girls shield players from sun at the U.S. Open. (Photo by Brian Browdie)

An 84-degree afternoon in September may not be the best time to take up tennis.

“Don’t turn your back to the net,” Sam, the Ghanaian tennis instructor, told me from across the court under an azure sky in Central Park on Thursday.

What I didn’t tell Sam is that I turned after hitting my forehand because circling back to the center of the court consumed less energy than moving there laterally while bouncing on the balls of my feet.

What I did tell Sam is that I’m out of shape. That is, I’m out of tennis shape, which is part of what brought me to Court 27.

My path started six days earlier under an equally blue sky at the U.S. Open. I made the trip aboard the No. 7 train from Times Square. “So you don’t have a car?” a nice lady from Fort Worth who happened to be seated next to me, asked me as we chatted about life in Manhattan, the players we hoped to see (she Roger Federer; me, Eugenie Bouchard) and the mild weather until recently in our respective cities.

“Lately we’ve had 13 days of 100 degrees, which means that the kids start football practice at 6:00 p.m. and the coaches tell them to drink water throughout the day,” the Texan told me.

I know what she means. On Court 27, I stopped play every 10 minutes or so to drink from a paper cone that I filled with water from a yellow and red Igloo cooler attached to the fence that runs behind the baseline.

Later I consumed a quart of lemon-lime Gatorade. Old-school flavor. While I drank I recalled the bounce in my legs that my 17-year-old self managed effortlessly in singles and doubles matches throughout four years on the tennis team during high school in Pennsylvania.

My sister and I also played a prodigious amount of tennis in our youth. Most nights after dinner we descended into our neon-lit basement, where we battled at table tennis for a half-hour before returning to our homework.

“I decided to take up a new sport at age 41,” Jessica, a woman who played on the adjacent court told me afterward while we sat on a steel bench painted green, our faces flush from the humidity.

Maybe tennis is my new, old sport.

Throughout the lesson, Sam directed me to stand at the service line, then in the back court and later at the net. At each spot, he hit a series of balls to my left or right. Maybe a dozen forehands, followed by roughly the same number of backhands. “Turn your body perpendicular to the net,” he called on the forehands that I hit wide. “Come up over the ball. Step into the shot.”

For every forehand I returned, I hit four more wide, deep or into the net. I also hit three balls beyond the fence. The ratio remained roughly the same on backhand and volleys. Sometimes, usually after rest, I experienced a surge of spring in my legs – a groove? – only to tire and bury the ball in the net a shot later.

At the Open, I made my way to the distant courts, where I watched Garbine Muguruza and Carla Suarez Navarro of Spain defeat their compatriot Arantxa Parra Santonia and Marina Erakovic of New Zealand in three sets.

I marveled at the apparent ease with which the women seemingly made every shot, even the ones that cost points. Every other game, the players retreated to chairs at courtside, where attendants shaded them with umbrellas opened expressly for that purpose. The teammates sipped water or sports drinks. Otherwise they said little, sitting quietly in the shade. Suarez Navarro tapped her feet continuously, as if she could not wait for play to resume.

After my lesson, I made my way back to the tennis center, which has an LED clock above the door the faces the courts. The clock has orange digits that give the place an air of precision. Near the other door a gentleman strung rackets on a stringing machine. All those rackets arrayed in a line appealed to me.

As I left the center, I passed a man a who headed toward the courts, two rackets poking through the opening in his backpack. “Beautiful day and so few people here,” he said as we paused to survey the rows of courts. “This is fun.”