TENNIS ANYONE?

 

In my columnizing days I looked forward to the U.S. Open tennis tournament, which takes place every year around this time. It meant two weeks in glorious Gotham on the Wall Street Journal’s dime, my favorite way to travel. Wife Susie or one or another of my kids often would join me for a few days, using tickets to which I had access. Sometimes a New York friend, too.

While I loved visiting the city (living there hadn’t been quite as big a pleasure), I also loved the tennis. I was an avid player then, so I had a feeling for the sport, and the Open offered total emersion. I best liked the first week, when the side courts were active and unfamous players would have it out in early-round matches.  I was something of a tennis maven, able to hold forth on that 43^rd-ranked woman from Sweden or that tall, lefty Australian junior, and whatever the court the tennis was excellent. As Charles Barkley said about the NBA, there are no bad players in the U.S. Open.

But no more. Now I barely watch the sport— maybe a set here and there on TV during the Grand Slam tournaments, almost never a match start to finish. The main reason is that the stylistic differences that used to flavor competition no longer exist. Just about every top player plays the same, baseline-rooted game, and while small differences in ability are decisive at the elite level they’re hard to discern with the naked eye. It’s difficult to tell the players apart if they aren’t wearing different-colored clothes.

 Evidence of the change has been easy to see. Wimbledon’s grass courts used to show wear in sideways-T-shaped patterns on each side of the net, one path along the base line and another down the center to the net. In recent years only the baselines paths show wear. Gone is the so-called “big game,” the serve-and-volley style that brought glory to the likes of Jack Kramer, John McEnroe, Pete Sampras and Martina Navratilova, along with the puncher-boxer matchups that made for memorable duels.  The great rivalries of recent-decades past—McEnroe-Borg, Sampras-Agassi, Navratilova-Evert—were of that nature. Now it’s all boxer-boxer, for better or (by me) worse.

The villain is technology, which has changed tennis more than any other sport. Starting about 1980 the wooden racquets that always had been standard in the game began giving way to ones made of first, metal, and ultimately, graphite. The new materials created weapons that were stronger, lighter and more flexible than before. They also allowed larger racquet faces, from a former nine inches across to 10 to 12 inches, with corresponding increases in the size of “sweet spots,” the face areas for optimum shot results.

  Those things made tennis easier to play, which was good for recreational players, and boosted the power of the pros’ games. At first it was supposed that big servers would benefit most at the expert level and, indeed, service speeds have zoomed. People oohed and aahed at 100 mph serves in Kramer’s day but now top women players routinely register triple digits while the best men exceed 130 mph.  Returners, however, countered by stepping back a pace or two, and the new racquets permitted them to blister back their deliveries almost as fast as they came in. That made net-rushing unprofitable.

What’s happened in tennis has been paralleled in other sports, but with fewer consequences. Pole-vaulting heights climbed radically with the 1960s switch from bamboo to fiberglass poles, and the advent of high-tech clubs and balls have allowed the golf pros to conquer space, but both sports have proceeded much as before, only over greater distances (PGA Tour courses used to measure about 6,800 yards, today about 7,500 is the norm).  In tennis, the whole serve-and-volley game has been a casualty, probably a permanent one.

The predominance of the baseline style has changed tennis in another important way, with longer rallies making for longer matches. This comes through strongest at tennis’s biggest showcases, the Grand Slam events (Wimbledon and the Australian, French and U.S. Opens). There, the men play best-of-five sets singles matches instead of the best-of-three format of the women, and the other men’s tournaments. Best-of-three setters usually are concluded in about 90 minutes while best-of-fivers that go all the way typically run about 165 minutes (two hours, 45 minutes). 

Oftimes, though, four- or even five-hour contests take place, sometimes punctuated by contestants cramping and/or barfing. That’s inhumane. Murphy’s Law made its certain appearance in 2010 at Wimbledon when John Isner and Nicolas Mahut played a fifth set that went 138 games (70-68) in a match that spanned more than 11 hours over three days. Wimbledon didn’t allow a fifth-set tiebreaker then and the fossils that run the place took eight more years to institute one.  Such is the state of tennis governance.

Five-setters can be tough on spectators, too. In my trips to the French Open, whose gritty clay (dirt) courts permit the longest rallies, I learned that the seasoned match-goer watches the first set of a men’s singles match and goes to lunch during the second. If the sets are even after two, he or she might sip another glass of Beaujolais before returning to the stands.

Men’s tennis in this century has been dominated by three players—Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic—who have won 20, 22 and 23 Grand Slam titles, respectively. Federer, now retired, is best known for his grace, Nadal for his athleticism.  Djokovic’s main strength is stamina, as attested by his astonishing 37-10 career won-lost record in five setters. They’re running marathons out there, and when the men’s Slams grind to conclusions he’s usually been the last standing, a man for his time if there ever was one. Usually, I’ve been watching the highlights on Sports Center.