Querrey Rolls On

Sam Querrey has been on a bit of a roll lately.  Right after Wimbledon, he played in the International Hall of Fame where he made the finals, but lost to fellow American, Rajeev Ram.  Last week, he played at Indianapolis where he made the finals again, and where he lost to another fellow American, Robby Ginepri.  Although he hasn’t been winning titles, making the finals still improves his ranking.

This week Querrey is playing in Los Angeles.  This is the second tournament in a row that the defending champion declined to defend.  Juan Martin del Potro beat Andy Roddick to win Los Angeles last year.  Neither are in the tournament.  Roddick is out due to an injury sustained sometime around Wimbledon.  Last week, Gilles Simon declined to defend Indianapolis and went to Hamburg instead.  Simon has been having a very poor 2009, by his second-half 2008 standards.  The reason his rankings haven’t plummeted is because he played well on hard courts and indoors last year, points he’ll have to defend.

Querrey beat Ryan Sweeting in three sets, and is slated to play Dudi Sela.  Sela has been playing quite well as of late.  He reached the round of 16 at Wimbledon and has been a stalwart for Israel in Davis Cup play.

In an evening match, Mardy Fish overcame a big-serving lefty Aussie in Chris Guccione.  He won 6-7 (3-7), 7-6 (14-12), 6-4.  He faces up and coming Argentine, Leonardo Mayer.  Tommy Haas, the top seed, will play Marat Safin, the eighth seed, in the most anticipated match of the day.  John Isner will play Aussie, Carsten Beel, in the final quarterfinals match.

Despite the build up to the US Open, there are two clay court events being played.  Gstaad in Sweden.  Top seeded Stan Wawrinka lost to Italian Thomaz Bellucci.  Umag in Croatia.  Davydenko is the top seed, and he is still in the tournament, playing quarterfinal opponent, Simone Bolleli.

July 26 2009 Wrap-up

Although the French Open has long since concluded and the US Open is looming, the clay court season continues rolling.

Two events were concluded on Sunday, July 26. The International German Open held in Hamburg was won by Nikolay Davydenko. Davydenko’s ranking had slipped out of the top 10 due to an injury he sustained in Chennai earlier in the year which caused him to miss the Australian Open and the early hard court season (Indian Wells and Miami).

With his straight set victory of France’s Paul-Henri Mathieu, 6-4, 6-2, he re-enters the top 10 ranked 9th in the world.

Hamburg has suffered a demotion. Last year, it was a ATP Masters 1000 event. Due to some shuffling around, it got replaced by Madrid, which was formerly an ATP Master 1000 indoors event. Hamburg complained about its demotion, to no avail.

The good news, for Germans anyway, is that Davydenko speaks fluent German. He was interviewed by Michael Stich who returned to play some doubles, despite being pretty much retired. Hamburg wooed away Gilles Simon who was defending champ at Indianapolis. Simon continues his slide having played a poor first half of the year. However, most of his ranking points occurred in the hard court season. The question is whether Simon will play better on the hard courts or whether he will continue to lose early and see his rankings slip outside the top 10.

The Indianapolis Tennis Championships is an ATP 250 event, and suffered a setback of its own when the injury that caused Andy Roddick to drop out of the Davis Cup tie with Croatia the week after Wimbledon continued to plague him in Indianapolis. Roddick tweeted that he would return back to action in Washington DC’s Legg Mason Tennis Classic to be held next week.

Although attempts were made to get James Blake to play, rumor was he wanted more appearance money than the tournament was willing to shell out. This made Dmitry Tursunov the highest seed with a ranking of 27 last week.

Sam Querrey continued to be impressive making his second straight final. However, much like his loss to Rajeev Ram in the finals of the International Hall of Fame Championships (played on grass), Querrey again was unable to beat a lower ranked player in fellow American, Robby Ginepri. Ginepri won his third ever ATP title. He last won a title back in 2005 when he won Indianapolis. Ginepri had an easy win over Querrey, 6-2, 6-4, preventing Querrey from winning his second title ever.

On the positive side, Querrey continues to play well in somewhat weaker fields. On the negative side, he still hasn’t broken through to win titles. That has to be the next step if he expects to entrench himself in the top 20.

This week, three event are on tap. Two are on clay (Gstaad and Umag) and one is on hard courts (Los Angeles). Los Angeles was the event that raised the profile of Juan Martin del Potro who beat Andy Roddick en route to the title. del Potro continued his win streak by winning in Washington DC the following week. Los Angeles, like Indianapolis, is an ATP 250 event. Washington DC is an ATP 500 event and is expected to garner a decent draw (no one in the top 4 will play, however). Last year’s DC and LA draw were partly decimated by the Olympics.

Papa Fed

Some have speculated whether Mirka Vavrinec’s pregnancy was planned or not. Regardless, the birth of twin daughters couldn’t have been better planned. Falling two weeks after Wimbledon, and two weeks before a Masters 1000, Federer had a break that he could use to witness the birth of two daughters.

The daughters are named Myla Rose and Charlene Riva.

The modern athlete now has their own webpage, and Federer has a Facebook page where he announced the birth roughly midnight East Coast time.

Congratulations to the happy parents!

Who is Rajeev Ram?

Tennis fans can be pretty avid, but many of them would be hard-pressed to recognize players that don’t show up on TV much. The ATP Tour has more than a thousand participants, many who are far from household names.

India has produced its share of very good players: the Amritraj brothers, Ramesh Krishnan, his father, Ramanathan Krishnan. It’s fair to say that as American tennis is struggling, Indian tennis is likewise struggling. In recent years, Mahesh Bhupathi and Leander Paes have been the two notable players, winning Grand Slam titles in doubles.

Who is the highest ranked male Indian player? The answer is, it depends. If you want to know the highest ranked Indian player that represents India, it is currently Somdev Devvarman, ranked 127 in the world. You may not know about him, unless you were an avid University of Virginia tennis fan. Devvarman won the NCAA Division 1 Men’s Tournament 2 years in a row, and was in the finals one additional year. He recently turned pro and has been trying, like most players, to get his ranking higher. He reached the finals in Chennai (in India) earlier this year losing to Marin Cilic on clay.

But if you ask who the highest ranked male Indian player of Indian descent, then that man is Rajeev Ram. Ram (pronounced more like “Rom” or “Rohm”) is American. Born in Denver, he know lives in Indiana. Much like the Chinese migration that eventually lead to players like Michael Chang (or Kevin Kim), the Indian migration to the US (and other parts of the world) has increased dramatically, especially since the 1980s, so it was only a matter of time when someone of Indian origin would become a ranked tennis player.

Ram is currently ranked 108, which is his highest ranking ever. His ranking was based mostly on the strength of winning the International Hall of Fame Championships held in Newport, Rhode Island, which was concluded last week. He beat Sam Querrey in the final in what amounts to an upset. Ram is entered this week in Indianapolis.

Indianapolis is an ATP 250 event. To give you an idea of what that means. There’s the Grand Slams. There are the Masters 1000 beneath that. Then the ATP 500. Then the ATP 250. These events rarely draw the top pros. You’re unlikely to see Federer, Nadal, Murray, or Djokovic play these events. But they are just strong enough to get players just outside the top 10 (Andy Roddick decided he wasn’t well enough to play this week, so he dropped out).

Rajeev Ram’s rankings were low enough at the time the players had to get their names in that he couldn’t qualify for the main draw. But due to his recent win, and that he’s an American, he got a wildcard.

With that wildcard, he beat Devin Britton in the first round, 6-3, 7-5. Who is Devin Britton? Britton has something in common with Somdev Devvarman. He won the NCAA Division 1 Men’s Championship in tennis. Unlike Somdev, he won it as a freshman. Britton reached the semifinals of Wimbledon juniors where he lost 16-14 in the third set (the same set score Fed beat Roddick) to his doubles partner, Jordan Cox. Britton promptly turned pro and was invited to hang out with the Davis Cup team in their tie against Croatia, the week after Wimbledon.

And what does Rajeev Ram get as a reward for this victory? In the “what goes around, comes around”, he gets to face Sam Querrey once again.

Oh yes, in the “it’s a small small world” category. Somdev Devvarman wasn’t the only guy who did well at Chennai. Rajeev Ram won the doubles title in Chennai this year.

So keep an eye out for Rajeev Ram.

And if you a Twitter kind of person, he was given a shout out by Andy Roddick. He’s listed as @RajeevRam. Give him some love.

US Open Series

The US Open Series starts next week. This series was meant to bring increased focus to the hardcourt tournaments in the US leading to the US Open. The series consists of both men and women’s events.

On the men’s side, there are the following tournaments: Indianapolis (Simon), Los Angeles (del Potro), Washington DC (del Potro), Montreal (Nadal), Cincinnati (Murray), New Haven (Cilic), US Open (Federer).

Last year, the US Open series fields were partly decimated by the Olympics. Indeed, tennis was considered so important that the Olympics, held in China, changed its start to a week earlier because of its proximity to the US Open. It worked out well because the start of the Olympics fell on August 8, 2008 or 08.08.08, which the Chinese considered auspicious (i.e., brings good luck).

Andy Roddick is one of the few players that plays the majority of the US Open series (he’s seen in this picture that he uploaded to TwitPic). In particular, he chose not to attend the Olympics, and attended Los Angeles and Washington DC. The other beneficiary of everyone being at the Olympics was Juan Martin del Potro, who won both these tournaments, beating Roddick in LA. Indeed, Roddick finished the US Open Series more desperate than before. He had been coached by his older brother John, and it wasn’t leading anywhere. He asked Davis Cup captain, Patrick McEnroe to coach him, and did respectably well at the US Open, losing to Novak Djokovic in four sets in the quarterfinals.

The US Open Series has a point system where players accumulate points based on their results. Points winners earn a bonus pool at the end of the series.

Most of the very top pros, e.g., Federer, Nadal, Murray choose to play only in the Masters 1000 level tournaments, which are Montreal and Cincinnati. Montreal, which is formally called the Rogers Cup, used to be called the Canadian Open. Due to the French and English parts of Canada often at odds with one another, the site of the tournament alternates each year. Last year, it was in Toronto. This year, in Montreal. Cincinnati, more formally called Western & Southern Financial Group Masters, used to be called the ATP Championships.

Next week is the Indy Championships. The following is a list of accepted players:

Baghdatis, Marcos CYP
Kim, Kevin USA ,
Becker, Benjamin GER
Kunitsyn, Igor RUS ,
Berrer, Michael GER
Lu, Yen-Hsun TPE,
Clement, Arnaud FRA
Mayer, Leonardo ARG,
Dabul, Brian ARG
Muller, Gilles LUX,
Daniel, Marcos BRA,
Querrey, Sam USA
Ferrero, Juan Carlos ESP,
Reynolds, Bobby USA,
Gicquel, Marc FRA ,
Roddick, Andy USA,
Gulbis, Ernests LAT ,
Sela, Dudi ISR ,
Isner, John USA,
Spadea, Vincent USA ,
Istomin, Denis UZB,
Tursunov, Dmitry RUS
Karlovic, Ivo CRO.

Robby Ginepri was given a wildcard. It does not appear like Gilles Simon will defend his title here. Andy Roddick is the only player in the top 20 in the field so far. Tursunov, ranked 23, is the second highest ranked player in this field.

Bad Boys of Tennis

There’s a lull now between the end of Wimbledon and the start of the hardcourt season proper. In this interim, attention has focused to another sport–cycling, and the start of the Tour de France.

Cycling has always brought with it charges of doping. Performance enhancing drugs that allow the top cyclists in the world to bike over two thousand miles (3500 km) in three weeks. Lance Armstrong, seven time winner of the Tour, was frequently dogged by claims that he had used such drugs, and he always denied them vigorously. However, the notion of drugs and sport is closely intertwined when it comes to cycling.

Tennis, on the other hand, seems eager to avoid controversy, sweeping various penalties under the rug. Players like Nikolay Davydenko were accused of match fixing for money, throwing in losses. They ruled Davydenko was not guilty. Guillermo Canas was accused of doping in 2005 and spent 8 months trying to clear his name which he eventually did.

More recently, Mathieu Montcourt of France was recently accused of gambling on tennis. While the rest of the world mourned Michael Jackson, Montcourt also died at the age of 24 of an apparent cardiac arrest.

And Richard Gasquet was recently accused of using cocaine. He was suspended and hasn’t played since Miami, prior to the clay court season.

Today, he was found not guilty of cocaine use. His explanation? He had gone to a club and kissed a woman who had used cocaine. The ITF bought this story and has reinstated Gasquet to play as of this morning.

Is Sam Querrey Ready for the Top?

It’s true. Tennis fans are generally obsessed about the best. People care about Federer and Nadal, and then maybe Djokovic and Murray. Andy Roddick and James Blake are considered failures for failing to contend for Slams. This is unfair, we all know. Roddick and Blake’s careers are really just outside of stardom, especially Roddick, who has made four Grand Slam finals, winning one, and managed a top ten ranking for most of his career.

Consider a player like Fabrice Santoro. Few tennis fans know who he is. Yet, here’s a player that stayed in the top 100 for most of his 20 year career. Santoro’s career has to be considered something of a success based on longevity, much like Arnaud Clement, Jonas Bjorkman, and others who have stayed on the tour for numerous years, yet have often failed to break through at the very top.

By all accounts, Sam Querrey ought to be considered a success. He’s won a tournament already. He’s made two finals. He’s in the top 100. It’s certainly better than Donald Young who has neither won a title, nor ever been in the final.

If you think that’s insignificant, think about the last great British hope, Tim Henman. How many titles do you think he’s won? 20? 30? He’s won 11. And he made 17 additional finals beyond that. This is a very solid career. Certainly, he did quite well at Wimbledon, making the semifinals several times, and even one semifinal at the French Open. Henman is in the category of players hovering right around 10, who win an odd title here or there. Two titles in a year would be a great year for Henman.

The players you hear about, the ones that are ranked at the top. Those players often make a huge splash, a big upset that takes the tennis world by surprise. Whether it’s Boris Becker’s win at Wimbledon in 1985, or Mats Wilander winning the French in 1982 over Guillermo Vilas, or Andy Murray beating Roger Federer in 2006 while still not ranked in the top 10. Roger Federer himself upset Pete Sampras at Wimbledon in 2001. The best players often make their presence known early, and beat big-name players.

To that end, Sam Querrey has come up short. This week, he played in the finals of the International Hall of Fame Championships in Newport, Rhode Island. He was able to play in this tournament when Patrick McEnroe decided to pick Mardy Fish to play Davis Cup when Andy Roddick decided an injury would prevent him from participating in a tie against Croatia. Newport is a pretty small tournament. The big name players don’t play this tournament. This is why Fabrice Santoro, whose ranking has usually floated in the 40s, was two time defending champion.

Querrey had one solid win in this tournament, namely, his semifinal victory over Santoro who is ranked 46 and was 34 when the tournament started (since he was defending champ, he lost points and his ranking went down). Against Rajeev Ram who was ranked 181 prior to the tournament, Querrey came up short and lost in three sets. These are the kinds of tournaments Querrey should win, especially against a player ranked over 100.

Querrey gives good players a tough time, but he doesn’t win. He pushed Marin Cilic, a top 20 player to five sets at this year’s Wimbledon. But Cilic showed why he’s in the top 20, and Querrey isn’t, by winning that fifth set. Although Cilic isn’t a big name, he’s big enough. A victory over him would have been a sign of progress for Querrey.

Again, his success is more than most tennis players ever achieve. It’s certainly possible that he could improve more slowly, like Mardy Fish or James Blake. But given his results so far, it’s certainly looking like he won’t be the next Pete Sampras or even the next Todd Martin.

Davis Cup: US at Croatia

The Davis Cup held quarterfinals a week after the conclusion of Wimbledon. Due to its timing and due to Andy Roddick’s loss in the final, the team replaced Roddick with Mardy Fish.

Croatia fielded Marin Cilic, their highest ranked singles player, and the huge serving, Ivo Karlovic. They decided to host the match in Croatia.

There was a decision to be made, namely, how good was James Blake playing. The problem, really, is who to replace Blake with. Even if Blake hasn’t been playing that well lately, the next highest ranked player, after Mardy Fish, is Sam Querrey. Normally, Querrey does attend Davis Cup ties, but he had a rather unique opportunity. A big server like Querrey is likely to play well in the Hall of Fame Championships, held in Newport, Rhode Island on grass.

This tournament is generally very weak, as evidenced by Fabrice Santoro being two-time defending champion. You won’t find Federer or Roddick playing at Newport. It’s way too small, especially off the heels of the end of Wimbledon.

Croatia, naturally, picked the surface that would hurt Americans the worst, indoor clay. One could argue that grass might be pretty good for Croatia, too, but given the history of Americans playing awful at the French, it made some sense to play on clay.

That decision made some sense after Day 1, when Blake lost a five setter to Ivo Karlovic, followed by Fish losing a five setter to Marin Cilic. With the US down in a hole, 2-0, it was up to the Bryan brothers to win the doubles. The Croatian coach decided not to have Ivo Karlovic play doubles, probably predicting a loss regardless of whether Karlovic played or not, and opting to rest the big guy in case he was needed.

That left James Blake playing Marin Cilic. This was not a good matchup for Blake. Although Blake has a good head-to-head record against Cilic, they’ve never played on clay. Cilic won the match easily in four sets and with the win, Croatia had a 3-1 lead, and was off to the semifinals.

Croatia had won the previous two encounters with the US. Prior to that, Croatia wasn’t a separate country and was considered part of Yugolslavia, which shows how infrequently Croatia makes it this far.

The fifth rubber (as it is called in Davis Cup) was meaningless, with Croatia having an insurmountable lead, so the teams decided to put in backups. In particular, US decided to put in lefty, Bob Bryan, while Croatia put in 112th ranked, Roko Karanusic, who played doubles for Croatia. The Bryan brothers focus almost exclusively on doubles. Indeed, this year, Bob Bryan has not played any singles, and has no ranking.

So what are the limitations of Bob Bryan’s singles game? Recall he’s 31 years old, and mostly plays doubles. He has three problems. His backhand is adequate to keep in a rally, but it’s no weapon. His footspeed is adequate to move around, but Bryan is a bit on the heavier side, although he is pretty tall at 6’4″. His big weapon is his forehand. It says something about the modern game that a doubles player like Bryan has to play singles from the baseline. You would think, against a player ranked below 100, he could sneak in on a few serve-volley points. Nope. OK, just saw a serve and volley point. Needless to say, he doesn’t use it much.

To his credit, Bryan took a set off of Karanusic and broke to stayed in the third set. Bryan just saved match point by serve and volleying, and approached the net to get to game point.

Oddly enough, Bryan has played Karanusic before in singles, quite the surprise given how rarely Bryan plays singles. They met, not suprisingly, in Davis Cup, in a first round match against Croatia. Bryan won that match in three sets, in a meaningless rubber. Croatia, perhaps much like now, had already won the tie.

This begs the question. Where is Davis Cup lately? At one point, all the Australians were faithful players of Davis Cup. The Americans were too. Jimmy Connors was the noted exception, who avoided it most years, focusing on singles, but John McEnroe, for all his antics, was a Davis Cup stalwart. Since then, players have occasionally played Davis Cup, but not been so committed to it. Blake and Roddick have been pretty good about playing Davis Cup.

Roger Federer is noted for not playing Davis Cup that much. If it means interfering with his quest for history, Davis Cup gets the boot. Earlier this year, Switzerland was slated to play the US. With Federer’s record against both Roddick and Blake, there was a strong likelihood that Federer himself could put a 2-0 score. Wawrinka could probably win one more match, or Fed could team with Wawrinka in doubles, a team that beat the Bryan brothers at the Olympics. But Federer begged out of it, and the US won rather handily.

There has been some suggestion that the Davis Cup be played in two weeks with every round played at the same time. This might be interesting if a site would be willing have four different surfaces, say, clay, grass, indoors, and hard courts. But what you’d lose, big time, is the crowd. You could play it in a month, if you like, where the matches are played each week, or if you only permit, say, 3 days off between rounds, it could be done in 3 weeks or so. The likelihood that the tennis calendar could be cleared long enough for this to work out is probably low, and the format is likely to remain unchanged.

Well, you know, even in a dead rubber match against players that generally don’t get to see singles play, it was kinda fun watching. This isn’t the epitome of quality play, but there is a rooting interest. Bryan managed to get a break back, push into a tie-break, and win the tie-break over Karanusic. Devin Britton came to help the team practice. He won the NCAA finals last year, and was a semifinalist at Wimbledon juniors, and has decided to go pro.

A few other results. Israel completed their improbably upset over Russia, 4-1. Russia decided to go with Andreev and Youzhny and not play Marat Safin who only played doubles.

The Czech Republic won a tight one over Argentina, impressive given del Potro generally gives you two wins. Juan Monaco is also an up-and-coming player, but the Czechs were hosting the tie on indoors, and Monaco lost to Stepanek and Berdych. The Czechs also won doubles.

Spain won despite Kohlschreiber winning both his singles. They played Ferrero in the fifth rubber instead of Robredo. I don’t know the rules about swapping in a different player. Spain has such a huge stable of players, that they field a strong team even without Nadal.

Well, now a few weeks off before the next Masters 1000 tournament, as we all wonder if Nadal will be healthy enough to play by the US Open. He’s already had three weeks off (Wimbledon plus one more week). The next Masters 1000 tournament is in Montreal (the Rogers Cup, formerly the Canadian Open) on August 8, so there’s still three weeks before that.

Until then, enjoy!

The Evolution of Tennis

Perhaps no other sport has experienced the kinds of changes that tennis has in the last 30-40 years. If someone were to have taken a time machine from the 1970s and modern day, they’d see a sport that follows the same rules as the one they knew, but the play would be completely foreign.

Let’s take time to reflect on those changes by first looking back at how tennis was played in the 1970s and earlier.

Because grass dominated the Grand Slams–three of four majors were played on the surface, and because grass courts would get torn up after use, leading to bad bounces, the solution many players opted for was serve and volley. Avoid bad bounces by avoiding bounces.

There were two major styles of play/grips: the Australian style and the American style. The Aussies preferred a “one grip fits all” philosophy. They stripped tennis to its bare essentials. If you had to use one grip for everything, it pretty much had to be a continental grip. Continental grips are used for serves and volleys, and are reasonably good for backhands. The one weak area is the forehand. It’s not surprising that Australians did not have consistent forehands.

Part of this philosophy of getting to net was the slice approached shot. Indeed, forehands were generally hit flat or with a little underspin or sidespin for safety. Since it’s hard to hit dipping passing shots this way, the lob was an extremely common tool, therefore, a good overhead was a necessity to play serve-and-volley.

Americans, by contrast, used three grips: Eastern forehand for the forehand grip, Continental for serve and volley, and Eastern backhand for the backhand grip. Again, much like the Australians, Americans also preferred serve and volley tennis.

Harry Hopman provided one of the earliest “innovations” of tennis. He believed in rigorous practice, and wanted practice to be harder than real play. He preached fitness. Given the gentlemanly nature of the sport, this injection of athleticism lead to players who could play as well in the fifth set as they did in the first.

Although grass dominated the game, Europeans still played on clay, and there were still clay court specialists, many who hit with topspin, although topspin was considered something of a novelty. Topspin was one of the few innovations adopted by Rod Laver and may explain why he was so successful.

Topspin’s popularity grew with two top players in the 1970s, even though many players were already using topspin. Bjorn Borg showed that you could hit heavy topspin and still win on the fast lawns at Wimbledon. Ivan Lendl then took this another step showing that you could hit the ball much harder than players dared hit it, and the ball would still go in consistently. Lendl was the father of modern power tennis.

The 1970s was a pivotal decade for tennis in a wide number of ways.
Two-handed backhand. Although players like Cliff Drysdale used a two-handed backhand before it was popular, the real success of two-handed backhands came in the 1970s with three number 1 players: Bjorn Borg, Jimmy Connors, and Chris Evert. Although one-handed backhands were commonly taught, their success lead to a huge transformation of the game.

Indeed, experts at the time would be flabbergasted to realize that one-handed backhands would be a novelty, and two-handed backhands would dominate the game.

The two-handed backhand would lead to players that hit as well off the backhand as they did off the forehand. Indeed, classic players like Connors and Evert generally had much better backhands than forehands.

Oversized racquets. Perhaps the biggest splash came from Pam Shriver, long time doubles partner of Martina Navratilova. She made the finals as a 16 year old amateur in 1978 US Open using an oversized Prince racquet. In those days, racquets were not even 70 square inches. The Prince racquet was nearly twice the area, at 110 square inches.

Oversized racquets combined with another technology that forever changed the way the game was played.

Non-wood racquets. By the 1960s, racquets were starting to be created from material other than wood. Wood had several disadvantages. For one, it was pretty heavy. For another, being wood, it warped if the humidity was too high. Wood presses were made to prevent warping.

Although steel racquets existed before the late 1960s, the inventive mind of Rene Lacoste, the founding member of the French Four Musketeers, created the T-2000. Its unique design, perhaps the most innovative looking racquet ever, used a steel wire wrapped around another steel wire. It was Jimmy Connors racquet of choice throughout the 1970s.

1975 turned out not only to be a pivotal year at Wimbledon where Arthur Ashe upset the brash Jimmy Connors (and beat Bjorn Borg en route), it was also a final between two players that used non-wood racquets. Connors played with steel. Ashe with a composite. Composite racquets were often a mix of graphite and fiberglass. Head created many of these alternate material racquets from aluminum to composite.

The huge revolution in racquets occurred sometime between 1982 and 1983 when pros began abandoning wood racquets in droves. Graphite racquets were not only stronger than wood, they were lighter than wood, and they didn’t warp. This meant you could create racquets much larger than wood and much lighter too. In the old days, a racquet might be 12 ounces or heavier. Today, there are racquets that weigh in at 9 ounces or even less.

This lead to an increase in size of racquets. Most pros in the 1980s learned to play on wood. The change to an oversized racquet would have meant too much power to control. So most players only took modest increases in racquets sizes, typically in the low 80 sq. in range. McEnroe switched to graphite. Lendl was already using graphite. Wilander used graphite. Vilas mostly stayed with wood and was on the verge of retiring. Borg quit before the graphite revolution was complete.

The early 80s produced a mix of players. There were players like Wilander and Lendl that lead the topspin brigade. There were more classic players like McEnroe, Connors, Tim Mayotte, etc. that hit with little topspin or that still served and volleyed. But as time passed, the power tennis game was becoming more important. Boris “Boom Boom” Becker was the next step in power tennis. He competed with perhaps the last classicist of the day, Stefan Edberg, showing both styles were still effective.

Then, the Bollettieri academy kids surged forward. The first of these actually showed up in the early 1980s with Jimmy Arias, then Aaron Krickstein. They had several Bollettieri qualities. Huge forehands, deficient net games. But the Bollettieri academy finally lead to its ultimate player in Andre Agassi. When Agassi burst on the tour, even Lendl, the hardest (or second hardest, if you add Becker to the mix) hitter on the tour was amazed at Agassi’s power.

With Agassi came a bunch of similar players: Jim Courier, Michael Chang, Todd Martin, and Pete Sampras. All had big forehands. Many had two-handed backhands.

Inside out forehand. If you were to show an inside-out forehand to a player that played in the 1960s, they might laugh at the idea. Why would you give up so much space to hit a forehand? In that day, groundstrokes were merely a means to an end. Get to net. Thus, most forehands were not being used to hit punishing winners. No one thought that was possible, and so it wasn’t done.

But once the power forehand became in vogue, why not use it more? Lendl was perhaps the player that used the inside-out forehand and brought it to popularity. Again, this was made possible by hitting with power and topspin. Players like Agassi and Sampras would favor their forehands by cheating to their left.

Reverse forehand. Pete Sampras pushed the game forward as well. Although he is noted for his huge serve, the serve that won him 7 Wimbledons, Sampras is less renowned for a stroke that has become hugely important today: the reverse forehand, formerly known as the buggy-whip forehand.

One reason Agassi had so much trouble beating Sampras, other than his huge serve, was that Sampras was a decent enough baseliner. Agassi would try to hit Sampras off the court. A typical strategy was to hit a hard crosscourt shot. Sampras would track this down, and use his reverse forehand to create an even sharper angle, with pace, and Agassi would be flummoxed. How did Sampras do that?

Rafael Nadal has taken the idea of a reverse forehand to an extreme where he hits a large number of his forehands in this style. It allows him to barely get to a shot, and still hit a powerful accurate shot.

Modern passing shot. The reverse forehand also became a staple of the modern passing shot. In the old days, hitting a flat passing shots was fraught with risk. How do you control the ball accurately? A passing shot was either hit sharp crosscourt, or hit deep up the line. With the advent of topspin and the reverse forehand, you could hit a short down the line passing shot with tons of power, or a sharp crosscourt as before, dipping wildly.

A volleyer as talented as Federer will come to net and not even be able to touch a passing shot. This is how good passing shots have become. Indeed, it’s so good, that you rarely see lobs, though that has made a small comeback. Look at players from the 1970s or earlier and you’ll see the lob is a staple of the passing game.

Standing back. Professional courts have always had a lot of space behind the baseline. Most players generally stood close to the baseline. However, Borg did something unusual. He would often play many feet behind the baseline, and receive serve way, way back. Lendl would do the same. In the old days, if you stood that far back, you would have to hit an extra 10 feet, and that would weaken your return.

Players, especially defensive players, learned to play 6-8 feet or more behind the baseline, but because they hit so hard, they could still hit winners that far back. Andy Murray has been criticized for being too passive. Part of his passive nature is standing 8-10 feet behind the baseline.

Fitness and movement. Lendl not only pushed the game forward by hitting power forehands, inside out forehands, etc. He also took training and diet to a new level. Both he and Martina Navratilova worked hard at off-court practice, building strength, endurance, etc. to find any additional edge they could. Lendl routinely invited young players, like Pete Sampras, to hit with him so he could play upcoming talent, a practice that Roger Federer also uses today.

Once the game got faster with sharper angles afforded by reverse forehands, players realized they needed to chase these shots down if they were going to win. This meant an emphasis on movement and recovery and balance. This also meant a commitment to weight training so the body wouldn’t break down due to these fast changes in direction.

Watch a match on clay from the 1970s. When winners are rare, and no one serves and volleys, conservative play is king. This means a lot of hitting, but not a tremendous amount of running. With today’s power game, a shot can be hit anywhere on the court, and players have to run really fast and hard, and still hit a huge shot when they get there. In the past, any such running meant a defensive lob would be tossed up.

Windshield-wiper forehand. In the good old days, a forehand was hit with a high follow-through. Even Pete Sampras did this. Agassi may have been the first to follow through to the left of his body and use a 180 degree core rotation. What was a novelty in the 1990s became staple in the 2000s. Now every player rotates 180 degrees, from Federer, to Murray, to Djokovic. Nadal is something of an exception mostly because he hits so many reverse forehands.
This style of hitting leads to power and topspin.

Squash shot forehand. The defensive lob was huge in its day. You were in trouble, you hit a defensive lob. A lob typically lead to an overhead, and usually, point over. Today, the squash shot forehand is the solution to a huge shot hit to the forehand. It’s an emergency slice that every modern player needs to know how to hit, and even in an emergency, it must land deep, so players can have time to recover, and not put themselves in danger of a huge shot afterwards.

Recovery slice backhand. Once upon a time, the slice backhand was used to approach the net, and was more of an offensive shot. Ken Rosewall used this as a staple of his game. These days, the slice backhand is used more to recover. It is not meant to hit winners, but to float very deep and provide recovery time as well as a change of pace. The technique is even different. There is a sharp chop downwards, partly to address the high topspin shots that are frequently being hit.

Swinging volley. Lendl’s innovations continue here as well. Given his huge topspin forehand and his so-so volley, Lendl often takes floating forehand volleys as in-the-air swinging forehand volleys. Players like Agassi and Federer have used this as well.

Serving percentage. This is one of those things that’s crept up on people. If you check the statistics of the 1980s, it was pretty common for servers to serve under 60%. Lendl routinely served around 50% first serves. These days, the best servers are averaging 70%. Andy Roddick, with one of the biggest serves in the game, average a little above 70% first serves. Ivo Karlovic also averages this high. Roger Federer typically serves around 65%.

Despite the serving percentage increase, players are returning better than ever, so free points aren’t that much easier to come by.

Kick serve. Kick serves have been around for a while, but it has now become the staple second serve. The slice serve is seen far less, though it is still used. The top pros all kick it extremely high.

Drop shots and drop volleys. Now that players stand way back behind the baseline, they have suddenly become vulnerable to the drop shot and drop volley. In the 1980s, this shot was rarely seen and often poorly hit. These days, the top players have all added these two shots to their arsenal. Touch players haven’t made a resurgence, but these touch plays have come back to deal with the problems that power tennis poses to modern players.

Conclusion. With the change in equipment and racquet material, players have changed their hitting style, and with each change has come responses to deal with those changes. It will be interesting to see where things go in the next decade.

The Path to Number One

It’s the dream of many players to reach number one in the world, to be the best at something. Tennis, fortunately, has a system in place that allows players to achieve this goal (say, unlike being the best cook in the world).

But what does it take to be the best in the world? If you consider some of the words used to describe the top players–confident, brash, arrogant–they don’t sound like virtues, at least, to a non-competitive world that values cooperation and friendliness. Everyone believes that Federer, Nadal, Murray, and Djokovic are as certain of their abilities as Serena was when she said she felt like number 1. They understand the public doesn’t want to here that kind of bragging, so they go into damage control.

This is a real challenge. Players often need to believe in themselves strongly, possibly even arrogantly. Go watch some junior tournaments, and you’ll see that seething smugness of some players that know they are the best, even if they aren’t. Occasionally, you might see a few folks that break the mold, the nice guys of the tour like Sam Querrey, who are certainly competitive, but aren’t outwardly smug.

Players that are barely out of their teens are expected to show civility and class. Some are naturally gracious. Others require a bit more advice from their agents, from their friends. Thus, Andy Murray, the patriotic Scot, didn’t have the traditional British grace of Tim Henman who said all the right things. Murray, by contrast, seemed angrier, more brusque, more American. It’s perhaps not surprising that Murray’s tennis hero was Andre Agassi, that his favorite TV shows and comedians are American. His accent is often a bit more American. Americans probably like Andy Murray better than the Brits do, but when it’s been more than 70 years since you had a Wimbledon champ, the Brits will take him as a champion. In any case, the Brits have always thought that they were too nice a culture to win in tennis, and Murray certainly portrays the dogged determination needed to win.

Of course, Murray has had to do spin control. He tweets, as so many athletes do now. He has a website where he details his training, where he hones an image of a guy that makes bets with “Team Murray” and losers must pay in “forfeits”, usually a bit of cross-dressing or some mild form of humiliation, like schoolboy pranks. He’s been more gracious with the press. He’s cut his hair. Remember when his hair was huge and wild? Now that he’s a legitimate contender, he needs to look the part.

Sometimes all the spin in the world doesn’t protect you from an indiscriminate act. Remember when Novak Djokovic was that new guy, that funny guy? He impersonated Nadal. He impersonated Sharapova. Never mind that Andy Roddick also does hilarious impressions, Djokovic was the one that got noticed. With a haircut that seemed more sculpted than grown, Djokovic was seen as an easy-going guy.

Then came a bit of fateful indiscretion. Djokovic had heard that Roddick “accused” him of faking his injury during the 2008 US Open. Timeouts are supposed to be taken for pre-existing injuries rather than for a loss of conditioning. These days, timeouts are even used to disrupt a player that is playing well, as most athletes have some nagging injury. Djokovic had squeaked out of a long five setter over Tommy Robredo, taking numerous breaks to recover from the heat. Robredo complained bitterly, claiming these injury timeouts were just hiding his lack of fitness.

Roddick, being the dry humorist he is, wondered if Djokovic had such illnesses. Said he might be suffering from all sorts of maladies like SARS. He wanted the press to decide.

Djokovic took this as an attack on his integrity, and decided to use his post-match comments, to say he didn’t appreciate those comments. Perhaps in another situation, people would have sympathized with such comments. It’s likely that the audience, as knowledgeable as they may have been, had not even heard the interviews. They interpreted this as an attack on Roddick, and began to boo. It’s arguable that this scene bothered Djokovic enough that he performed less than his best against Federer in the semifinals that followed.

Djokovic has perhaps never fully recovered from this incident. Usually, nothing succeeds like success. How often does Kobe Bryant’s indiscretions get mentioned anymore? He wins. No one cares. However, Djokovic has not had as much success as he should, given his talent. His confidence, once overflowing, seems tempered.

Oh yes, then there’s Federer. Roger has won the sportsmanship award plenty of time. But unlike Stefan Edberg, who routinely won this award, who was shy and gracious, Roger’s graciousness always seems more rehearsed. He wants to say the right things even if, deep down, he may not fully believe it. He wants to say Andy Murray is nothing until he wins a Slam, but he doesn’t say it directly. He says things like “we played a great match at the US Open”, i.e., a straight-set drubbing. He understands Murray has had lots of victories against him, but in his mind, as long as they occur in tiny tournaments, it doesn’t matter. Being a champ, means winning the big tournaments, and he’s done that time and again.

People used to criticize Venus Williams, in the early days, for being arrogant. If you simply read her words, you could see that. But she was always quiet and shy, so the sense you had from listening to her say these words was not of arrogance, but of shy confidence. Roger Federer is much the same way. It always feels like he says what he thinks he needs to say, rather than what he’s truly feeling.

Does this make Federer a bad person? Not really. It just means he’s competitive. He’s confident. He tempers his words because his sponsors want him to do so. I mean, think about it. Roger Federer went on Centre Court wearing a crazy outfit. Each Wimbledon, he comes out with something new, like he’s a fashion model on the catwalk. Nike is even so outrageous, that they handed him a jacket as the match finished for him to wear with “15″ embroidered on it. The stageiness of this spectacle should have been insulting to Andy Roddick who was out there just to play tennis.

Finally, there’s Rafael Nadal. Nadal is in an unusual situation. He’s been coached by his Uncle since he was young. Uncle Toni feels the needs to show he is boss, so Rafa would listen to him. By all accounts, Nadal is still the same guy he was when he was a kid. Respectful to his elders. Still eats dinner with grandma. Still, there is a competitive drive and tenacity that pushes him like no one else on the planet. His English, which probably hinders him from getting the vast endorsements of Roger Federer, also helps portray a gentler personality. In other words, he gets into far less trouble.

All these men exhibit, to one degree or another, a great deal of confidence. But they all understand that tennis is a gentleman’s sport, and the media wants to see great competition, but love guys that will go for a beer afterwards, as friendly and jocular as the Aussie men of old. They balance what the public sees so they can best get endorsements and an adoring public with what they feel so they can best accomplish the goals of being the best in the world.