Tennis is a sublime reflection of life.
Every match, every tournament amplifies our condition: clear or subtle images, shimmering in a still lake.
Every tournament is its own journey — a distinct novel defined by its own pace and pulse, challenge and response, collapse and redemption. And never before this year’s U.S. Open has a tournament produced such an astounding, more-than-jarring, array of storylines.
There’s Our Melanie [Oudin] in her tennis slippers, neon yellow and pink. Just 17, semi-tiny, the brave and tireless spunkmeister humbled one imposing Russian commissar after another. Such stutter-step speed, a square-jawed refusal to loose. A star is launched, Broadway bright. No, my fellow Americans, our future may not be that bleak. There is hope.
But, Oh, Happy Day was not the only song at this Open.
For starters, there were fond farewells to grand operatic characters: woe-is-me underachiever Marat Safin and the little French overachiever, magician Fabrice Santoro. And there were farewells to grand expectations. James Blake remained mired in a career-threatening slump. Wimbledon’s inspiring loser, Andy Roddick, inexplicably fell with modest protest to Georgia giant John Isner in the third round, and never before has the game’s top No. 1 player been in such a miserable mess. The New York Times dismissed Dinara Safina’s first-round meeting with Olivia Rogowska as a “dark comedy masquerading as a match.”
Safina’s “just terrified. Her mind is in the way,” added one critic. “She’s a potential human train wreck,” claimed another. Ba-boom, ba-boom: the pile-on was brutal. Even the Russian was unsparing toward herself, calling her serve “a disaster,” and saying she was “so stupid” to continue hitting it that way. For Safina, being No.1 has all the charm of a chilly Dostoyevskian wind sweeping the Siberian steppes.
But all was not gloom and doom, even amidst the relentless mono-drizzle that dulled this once bright Open. A brooding genius, Pancho Gonzalez, and a couple of almost saintly lads — Arthur Ashe and Andre Agassi — were all honored.
Taylor Dent, a less exalted but eminently likeable fellow, who was bed-bound and on the brink of turning to a career in real estate, scored a couple of feel-good triumphs. “It’s elation,” he gushed. “Like waking up on Christmas morning.” A trim, 19-year-old Belgian, Yanina Wickmayer, playing for the memory of her mom, reached the semis. But, Mama Mia, it was another Belgian, “an inspiration to mothers everywhere,” who captivated us. In just her third tournament after a two-year retirement (or was it a maternal sabbatical), Kim Clijsters looked, as Serena noted, like she had “just taken a week off.”
You go, girl! And she did. Tennis’ Mother Superior swept aside elder Venus and (amidst utter chaos) sister Serena to get to the final, where she pulled the curtain on The Wizard of Woz, The Dane With the Mane, teen Caroline Wozniaki.
But that was nothing compared to the protracted play-and-prance antics of one of the cutest kids to ever drop by Planet Earth. With her soft blonde curls and puffy Belgian waffle cheeks, daughter Jada stole the Open show. Never before had a 2-foot-6 bundle of bliss so adeptly captured the hearts of 21,406 hardscrabble New Yawkers with such wide-eyed ease — the power of innocence.
Of course, Juan Martin Del Potro is no innocent and hardly 2-foot-6. The towering hulk is 6-foot-6, and after losing the first set of the men’s final to Fed, it was naturally assumed that he would be Roger’s sixth different victim en route to his Tilden-busting sixth straight Open title.
After all, Roger is our reigning Raj, with his abundant rites and rights.
But on this loud Monday The Perfect One was flawed. Forehands began to fly, backhands sputtered and once-punishing serves lacked sting. No it wasn’t that the emperor had no clothes, but our sport’s mercurial mover seemed laden, slightly small. But hold on, don’t worry. After all, this is TMF — The Mighty Federer — the man whose will was touted to be greater than his genius: amaze and deliver. Certainly, Fed would again navigate choppy currents and survive the storm, like he did on that sticky Parisian clay court and on the drama lawns of London: triumph is his poetry, victory his destiny.
But, as Ashe arena shadows lengthened, DelPo proved to be no teetering giant, (think, Ivo Karlovic, John Isner or Sam Querry) whose “too tall for tennis” flaws could be exposed. After all, as Nadal said, “for all his altitude, Del Potro moves okay. No?” Plus, JMDP was not just another happy-to-be-there, slightly overmatched finalist — like, say, Robin Soldering, Andy Murray or Novak Djokovic — who would put up a proper fight and then depart. No, despite that dismal first set and coming within two points of losing the entire match, DelPo ultimately imposed his power and called on his blazing guns and surprising fitness to achieve the unthinkable.
For now, Picasso seemed but a mere house painter, Einstein was just an accountant. Our genius proved ordinary. And as the arena roared — “Ole, Ole Ole, Ole,” yesterday’s master was humbled. Under normal circumstances this there’s-a-new-sheriff-in-town fable would prove to be the pre-eminent story. But remember, this wild Open was like no other: untidy, unpredictable.
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Serena Williams is a wonder with legions of fans. “She pulls higher ratings than anyone,” says Mary Carillo. Writer Rick Riley called her achievements (along with those of Venus) “the single most underplayed story in American sports in the past 25 years.”
Still, please somebody, take out an insurance policy the next time Serena plays tennis’ favorite hausfrau, Kim Clijsters. After all, the two have now played the two most controversial matches in tennis history. At their infamous Indian Wells meeting of 2001, Serena was in the crosshairs. In New York, she dished it out. Time and again in her new, ironically titled autobiography — Serena Williams: On the Line — she talks about how she just flips on court and off, like when she just flipped and came out of her mid-career depression.
Well, just a point from defeat against Clijsters in the Open semis, she flipped, offering a now infamous blast of fury. Crazed and bristling with rage, she pointed her finger and approached a petite woman who had flagged her for a foot fault. Menacingly waving her racket she screamed, “You better be f—ing right. You don’t know me! I swear to God I’m going to take this f—ing ball and shove it in you f—ing throat.” Plus, there were other, not quite audible, barbs.
Yes, the foot-fault call was iffy. Refs in hockey traditionally mute their whistles at crunch time, and writer Filip Bondy contended the call was “akin to whistling an illegal defense violation in the last second of a one point-game at the NBA followed by pure madness.”
Madness — no problem here. This is tennis. The land of Gonzo, Nasty, Mac and Jimbo. We know madness, we embrace madness.
So madness it was as Serena uttered one of the most shocking denials ever heard in sports. “I didn’t say I would kill you!” she told the terrified linesperson. Jaws dropped and Serena tossed her racket on her bag. She strode out to Clijsters, shook her hand and was gone.
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GAME, SET AND MATCH, MR. HOLLYWOOD SCREENWRITER
Dazed fans howled. “I came here all the way from Venezuela just to see this?” protested a courtside fan in a spiffy suit.
But Serena was already gone. In the bowels of the arena her agent, amidst jostling chaos, shoved a photographer. Her mother Oracene seemed in a daze and could only tell IT that it was all “startling.” Her big papa Richard — stiff, somber, stunned — stood on sentry duty outside the locker room, where he spotted a writer who — less than two weeks before in Manhattan he had asked to help him on a project. But this time his tune was different.
“Get away from me, you dog,” he scowled. “Security, get this dog away from me.”
Many of Serena’s press conferences have been dogs: perplexing performance pieces that feature a disingenuous mix of truth, humor and candid confession on the one hand, with wink-and-tease diversions, outright deceit, prima donna vanity and gamesmanship on the other. (Go figure. Will the real Serena please stand up?)
But this presser was a best-in-show. Weaving and bobbing, Serena insisted she couldn’t remember what she said on court, that she didn’t threaten the linesperson, that other players had uttered worse and she was moving on (Already.)
Then IT asked if she felt she owed the lineswoman an apology. Williams said, “An apology for? From me?…Well, how many people yell at linespeople?…Players, athletes get frustrated.”
Serena should have taken more time to reflect and offered a simple, heartfelt apology. But, just a half-hour after her meltdown she remained clueless and unaware, adrift in a remorse-free zone.
Mary Carillo suggested, “She could have won an Oscar for her performance in that press conference.”
Reporters shook their heads when Serena insisted that she “used to have a real temper, and I’ve gotten a lot better…I used to be worse.” But what got worse was the messy fallout of the situation. In an era of mind-bending, self-serving apologies, Williams first offered a spectacular (‘tis all about moi) non-apology in a written statement which noted that people “saw the passion I have for my job…[and] that while I don’t agree with the unfair line call, I let my passion get the best of me…I would like to thank my fans and supporters for understanding that I am human and I look forward to continuing the journey.”
Some journey. Maybe we should check the map before we continue. Her statement lacked a single reference to her threat, to the victim, to Clijsters and the fact that fans were cheated of a real conclusion. Jim Rome suggested that she apologize for the alleged apology.
Serena’s freefall then slowed a bit, but there was still plenty of surreal silliness to digest. She was allowed to go on and play the women’s doubles final. She was fined a measly $10,500 and then (la-di-da) went out and hobnobbed with the glitterati she so adores at MTV’s Video Music Awards. There she joked that since the singer Pink, whom she was introducing, was suspended high above the stage, she “wouldn’t have to worry about stepping on any lines.”
Then, the next day, came a greatly improved, real apology (“I want to sincerely apologize first to the lineswoman, Kim Clijsters, the USTA and mostly fans everywhere for my inappropriate outburst.”) Still it suffered from ample tone-deafness, including a self-congratulatory line that said, “I’m a woman of great pride, faith and integrity.”
Then a testy joint press conference with Venus devolved into a kind of sparring match as the sisters and a USTA handler tried to prevent reporters from being real and getting to the heart of the matter. A farce, more concerned with spin than serious reflection and truth telling, it concluded when Serena let her inner-girl come out and laughed that she would like to give the linesperson “a big ol’ hug and…just put it all behind us like I have and just move on…and like I said, learn.”
Over the years, we’ve learned much about Serena. What a fabulous athlete, so inspiring! What a fighter, beyond fierce. She recently wrote that you need to have a wild streak. “You need to put it out there that you are reckless and unpredictable… You’ve got to embrace the wild, rash abandon that transforms you in the heat of a cutthroat moment…You’ve got to get to that weird place where you don’t recognize your own behavior.”
Not surprisingly, Serena’s resume is crowded with confrontations from swearing at a French player Down Under, to bumping into Daniela Hantuchova at the L.A. tournament and to her not-so-pretty confrontations with Justine Henin at the French Open and with Jennifer Capriati in New York.
Then this spring in Paris after a dispute, she told Maria Jose Martinez Sanchez, “I’m going to get you in the locker room for that, you don’t know me.” Then she told the chair umpire, “She better not come to the net again.” When reminded of that comment later, she offered, “Well, I am from Compton, so, you know…”
Women’s sports is filled with shocking moments. The WNBA has endured plenty of brawls. Mary Decker was tripped at the Olympics and her career was over in a teary flash. Monica Seles was stabbed and Tonya Harding hired a goon to whack her foe Nancy Kerrigan’s knees. Still, in any highlight reel of the most tumultuous moments in women’s sports, Serena’s tirade will be front and center.
But what about the macho brat-corps on the men’s side who have long stirred the pot? Rude and crude, many were boorish fools and in-your-face sarcastic bullies. Most were masters of degree, taking their outrages (“You are the pits of the world” or “You’re an abortion”) right up to the line. And sometimes, like Connors against Krickstein in ‘91, they crossed over the line and should have been booted out and suspended. They weren’t (except for McEnroe, who was suspended a few times). So, hey tennis, bad on you!
But the best observers I know have yet to find another case of personal threat. Serena’s (“I’m going to shove this ball down your f—ing throat.”) is a case apart, as is her threatening, in-your-face gestures. The response has been viral. Some say the brouhaha is just dandy, thank you very much. Bring your Cracker Jack, what’s not to like at a three-ring tennis circus. Some are concerned that Serena will keep on spinning and turn this into a PR bonanza. John McEnroe claimed that the often-absent star should be punished by having to show up and actually play smaller events. Others wonder, if Serena is suspended, will Venus join her on the sidelines?
But, ultimately, it’s not that complicated. A sport has to protect its officials and its integrity. All sports do. Kids everywhere have to be shown that threatening officials with bodily harm will not be tolerated. The woman who earned over $17 million last year should be fined, and despite possible protestations by promoters and TV execs, the ITF needs to suspend her from playing the Aussie Open.
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Sometimes the story is not known, the tale is not told. And on Super Saturday, September 12, far from all the noise and hullabaloo of the East Coast, a man quietly passed on the West Coast. And, were it not for this fellow, our wondrous pro sport simply wouldn’t be. All the A-list stars would not have migrated to Ashe Stadium, all the millions around the world would not have seen the action, all these sleek and joyous young athletes would not have their bounty of wealth and fame, were it not for a single man of vision and insight, will and force — Jack Kramer.
Babe Ruth and Jackie Robinson, Michael Jordan, Pete Roselle, Wayne Gretsky, Arnold Palmer and Tiger Woods were all central to the their sports bounty. But not a one of these icons was as relatively important to their game as Kramer was to his.
Yes, Arthur Ashe was tennis’ inspiring conscience. Billie Jean King was our great pioneer, an inspired crusader. But Kramer was Mr. Tennis. For starters, he was the best player of his generation who brought a new power style to the game. But, he was much more. He promoted and played on a rag tag pro circuit that toured the American outback for years. He battled a fiercely entrenched gaggle of self-important control-mongers — the old school tennis establishment — who zealously circled their wagons to prevent Open tennis, pro tennis, from breathing.
Kramer went on and co-founded the ATP. He bravely led the ‘73 Wimbledon boycott which empowered pros, created the rankings system, was a knowing broadcaster who helped popularize the game, was an adept tournament director and a marketing trail blazer. (His Wilson Kramer Autograph is the industry’s all-time bestseller.)
Aside from that he didn’t do much.
Well, we did forget he was a tough but fabulous businessman who founded tennis clubs, was the go-to guy in Southern California tennis affairs for years, a caring mentor and a beloved family patriarch.
How ironic then, that the man who worked so tirelessly to create the modern pro game — to let the dancing genie of big money, big competition, big ego and the big time sports — out of the tiny, weeny amateur bottle, quietly passed away in L.A. precisely when his creation was winding up the most loud, zany, awe-inspiring, mind-boggling and tumultuous tournament in the history of that fuzzy ball that now, thanks to Serena, has never been so famous.
