The Next Point

By Jesse Pentecost

The Next Point features a selection of the finest articles on men's tennis, taken from the acclaimed tennis site of the same name.

Stemming from the apparently rare conviction that sports writing can actually be entertaining, The Next Point includes profiles of present and past players, enthralling accounts of classic and current matches, along with probing and often hilarious analysis of the sports media.

If you've ever wondered what would happen if a comic novelist and essayist turned his hand to sports writing, here is your answer. The Next Point features some of the finest tennis writing on the scene today.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jesse Pentecost
• Release date: Mar 3, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310390845

Book preview

Hopman Cup, Round Robin

Murray d. Mahut, 7/6 7/6

Lleyton Hewitt was lighting up the commentary booth again last night, his passion for 'tremendous ball striking' undimmed. But that wasn't the strangest thing he said. Invited to analyse his own loss to Novak Djokovic from the night before – in which he went down 6/2 6/4 – Hewitt waxed earnest about how extremely well he’d struck the ball, how extremely well he’d moved, and how extremely well he’d competed.[2] This was despite the fact that he won exactly half as many games as Djokovic, and was lucky to get those. If he’d made his comments before the match, then been cleaned up two and four, the irony might have been poignant. Coming afterwards, he sounded a touch deluded. Hewitt, a veteran whom the race has outrun, is coming to seem less Learesque in his impotence, and more like Don Quixote, or Eddie the Eagle.

This unintended irony persisted even after Hewitt’s departure (he never commentates for longer than a set). There’s an affliction known as the Commentator’s Curse, whereby complimenting a player on an aspect of his game will guarantee an immediate if temporary drop in execution. For example, pointing out that someone is serving well might provoke a double fault. Emboldened by Hewitt’s example, Paul McNamee and Josh Eagle set out to confound this specious causality. A double fault by Andy Murray provoked the (non-ironic) statement that he was serving well. A twenty-seven stroke rally that the Scot concluded by meekly dumping a sliced backhand into the net prompted Eagle to marvel at the variety Murray brought to the game, how adroit he was at altering pace, spin and direction. Even McNamee found this confusing, although not as confusing as his subsequent remark: ‘Yes, twenty-seven shot rally. He’s world number four.’

Otherwise, the commentary was about what you’d expect. A mishit winner from Nicolas Mahut produced a perfunctory apology from the Frenchman, which in turn inspired the regulation ponderous levity from the commentators, Hewitt included: ‘He’s apologising, but I’ll bet he’ll take it. Har har har.’ Hewitt might have pointed out that when players do this they aren’t really apologising, merely conceding to their opponent that they won the point through good fortune. A timely Murray first serve to save a break point was ‘quality’, while a Mahut forehand was ‘class’. The missing word in both cases was ‘high’. Applied to the commentary, however, the missing word was ‘low’. One of Murray’s backhands was struck both ‘extremely well’ and with ‘tremendous direction’.

Meanwhile on court, the tennis itself was highly entertaining. Mahut can be inconsistent, a quality French players acquire at their mother’s teat. He was only ever up until he had break points, or set points, but when he was up he was typically engaging. He backspun one drop volley so sharply it returned to his own side of the court. Eagle was right to highlight just how impressive it was. Twice Mahut ended up on Murray’s side of the court. The second time he nearly took the Scotsman out, but it was all in good fun. Murray tried a reverse-tweener like the one Roger Federer hit in Doha the other night – the kind where the player faces the net – but it found the tape.

Brisbane International, Semifinal

(1) Soderling d. Stepanek, 6/3 7/5

Whichever genius came up with the idea of interviewing players as they’re heading out on to court has a great deal to answer for. The intention, presumably, is to help viewers connect with the players. In order for this to happen, the broadcasters have striven to create a situation in which nothing of interest will ever be said, except by accident, and even then only by the hopelessly under-qualified interviewer. Observe today’s probing effort, as Robin Soderling was about to take the court for his semifinal with Radek Stepanek: ‘Now, you’ve been serving extremely well, and haven’t been broken so far this week. Do you plan on using that tactically in your match today?’ It’s the kind of fatuity around which drinking games are constructed. The gales of laughter that erupted in my lounge room unfortunately drowned out Soderling’s patiently distracted reply. It is a testament to his softly-spoken professionalism that he didn’t crumple into a cackling heap himself.

Owing to constant practice, elite sportspeople are generally adept at dealing with idiocy. The fluff piece aired by Channel 7 directly before this match demonstrated why it’s important they are. After a cringe-inducing intro – ‘I haven’t picked up a tennis racquet since high school! Who better to give me some lessons than world number five Robin Soderling and his coach?!’ – we were treated to the world number five bunting balls left-handed to the vivacious reporter, while his coach Claudio Pistolesi quoted da Vinci at her. Soderling’s self-control was evident from the way he didn’t serve them at her right-handed.

Once the semifinal commenced, it didn’t take long for the probing pre-match question to be answered. Soderling seemed to be tactically deploying his serve with startling regularity, about every second game by my count. He essayed various approaches with it, but personally I thought the serves that went in were the best. He clearly thought so, too, and mostly stuck with that. Then Geoff Masters blew viewers’ minds by proffering some truly insightful analysis of Soderling’s serve. Focusing on the Swede’s unusual grip, Masters demonstrated how it limits Soderling’s capacity to deliver effective sliding serves. His slider doesn’t slide. Graphics proved useful – another first for tennis coverage – proving that Soderling’s deliveries to the right-hander’s forehand lack both curve and placement. Their effectiveness is due to raw power.

As it happened, raw power was enough to get by Radek Stepanek in a match that only came alive in its final minutes, when the Czech finally broke back as Soderling served for it. This successfully whipped the Queensland crowd into a mild frenzy, although they subsided quickly when Stepanek was immediately broken again. Having learned from his mistake, Soderling returned to serving tactically – hard and in – and held to love. He’s through to the final, where he’ll face Andy Roddick. Tactical serving may well predominate.

6 January, 2011

A Tennis Player

Australian Open, Semifinal

(5) Murray d. (7) Ferrer, 4/6 7/6 6/1 7/6

The crowd in Rod Laver Arena was particularly rowdy this evening, a fact I quickly deduced from the noise they were generating, which was considerable. Lest I misinterpreted it, Channel 7’s commentary supplied a valuable second opinion: ‘The crowd is loud tonight.’ They attempted to cross to Todd Woodbridge for confirmation, but he couldn’t hear them very well, what with the crowd being so loud. Woodbridge was stationed at the back of the press pit, which means he was positioned slightly further from the action than the main commentators in the bunker, but very close to Brad Gilbert, over whose unrelieved babble Woodbridge might conceivably hear the crowd, which was very loud. These competing auditory forces were sufficient to scramble his brain. Thus afflicted, he had no trouble producing such gems as, ‘Andy Murray is what I call a tennis player’. Another 364 of those and he’ll have a desk calendar.

It is a flourishing statement, one designed to elicit applause. It’s also a cliché, and a tacit insult to Murray’s opponent, David Ferrer, the implication being that he isn’t a tennis player, even though he indisputably does play tennis. The point, as I’m sure we are all aware and as Woodbridge went on to expound at length, is that Murray plays tennis more thoughtfully than most of his opponents. Moreover, his considerable variety, court craft and willingness to adapt to prevailing conditions reveals a deeper connection to the sport than those who simply venture onto court and hit the ball very hard into the parts of the court where their opponent isn’t.

One suspects the commentators are contractually obliged to belabour this point whenever Murray plays, much like mentioning a sponsor every seventeen seconds. After some time, while we slowly assimilated Woodbridge’s radical thesis, he spelled out the corollary, which is that Ferrer is merely a ‘ball-striker’. Permitting for a moment the fatuousness of the categories, I question whether a player like Ferrer can be dismissed as a mere ball-striker. For one thing, he doesn’t strike the ball especially well, even allowing for his modest proportions. Thus limited, he is forced to come up with different methods to win the dozens of points from which each of his many victories is fashioned. His toolkit is admittedly limited – relying largely upon excellent foot-speed, boundless stamina and secure groundstrokes – but that doesn't mean he just blasts his way to victory.

These categories are not uncommon, and readily attach themselves to certain players; Martina Hingis was also ‘tennis player’, while Serena Williams is a ‘ball-striker’. It hardly needs pointing out the dichotomy is only subscribed to by those who value the former type over the latter, who would prefer it that guile trump brawn. Thus were we invited to join in the chorus of relieved sighs when Murray turned the match around with an interlocking sequence of perfect tactical adjustments, throwing off his opponent’s metronomic game with charming and varied play, including a series of bold excursions into the forecourt.

Interviewed on court by Jim Courier afterwards, Murray was invited to elaborate on his strategic shift in the third set. This was our chance to peer into the mind of a true ‘tennis player’, to perhaps glimpse the empyrean plane upon which his mind operates. Unfortunately Murray hadn’t read the script, and responded with nothing more sophisticated than some guff about going for looser strings, being a bit more aggressive, and how Ferrer’s level had dropped. Then, in the fourth, Ferrer started playing better and it got tight again. But then he (Murray) played a bit better, and he won. That was it. That’s tennis playing. It is a conceit of sports commentary (and journalism) that the inner game is more prominent than is actually the case. Mixed military metaphors are standard issue in this area, so I’ll sustain the theme by pointing out that strategy goes down the drain once the first shot is fired. When probed, most players tend to feel that the guy who played better won.

Woodbridge’s position in the photographer’s pit is often occupied by Roger Rasheed, who long ago achieved a mastery of incoherent aphorism that leaves his colleagues far behind. The impression is that Rasheed feels vaguely put out by having to insert the odd normal word into an otherwise unrelieved stream of neologistic corporatese. His entire approach to tennis is predicated on a faith in strategic management, which makes him an unlikely foil for Gael Monfils. Perhaps the Frenchman’s continuing befuddlement is not unrelated to the fact that so much of Rasheed’s advice has to be translated into English before it can be translated into French. Chinese whispers ensue.

What must Rasheed have made of the delightful moment when Courier probed Murray on his strategy as he faced set point in the second set? Murray confessed that he’d been so focussed on playing tennis – he is a ‘tennis player’, you’ll recall – that he’d forgotten the score, believing it to be 3/4. Presumably his genius operates at an intuitive level far below that of conscious thought: deep down, he really knew the score. Look for Rasheed to incorporate hypnotism and targeted head trauma into his integrated coaching solution moving forward.

Anyway, Murray knows the score now. He has progressed to his second straight Australian Open final, where he will play Novak Djokovic for the first time in a Major: two men on the cusp of greatness, hitherto restricted to near perfect parallel by the all-time greats above them, a rivalry played out in the rankings but rarely on court. Tennis, you may be sure, will be played.

28 January, 2011

Great Matches You’ve Probably Never Heard Of

San Jose 2002, Final

(1) Hewitt d. (2) Agassi, 4/6 7/6 7/6

When the time comes to compose the definitive history of tennis – probably to commemorate a milestone in the game’s development, perhaps its passing – there will almost certainly be no mention of the Hewitt Era. There was little mention of it at the time, which says a lot given the prevailing mania for christening historical epochs even as we live through them. For all that Lleyton Hewitt spent eighty weeks at the top of the singles rankings, and twice ended the year in that position, it rarely felt as though he was indisputably the best player in the world, and more that a rotating cast of others took turns at being sporadically better or generally worse. It is for this reason that many consider Hewitt’s time merely to be transitional.

This lures one into the trap of thinking that Hewitt wasn’t a very good tennis player. He was. At his finest, he was both technically and mentally impregnable, and surprisingly fearless. However, his very best periods – there were two of them, occurring almost precisely three years apart – only partially overlapped with his time at number one, and this is the problem. For at least fifty of those weeks atop the rankings – the last fifty – he was not at his best. The latter part of his reign was marred by an overwhelmed tentativeness perplexingly enabled by cowed opponents. Based upon the grim and precipitous way his time at the top concluded, it is easy to forget how exuberantly it began.

A great deal had to go right for Hewitt to ascend to number one, but that a great deal did go right owed little to luck. He played some fearsome tennis on the way up, with the highlights including an 83 minute dismemberment of Yevgeny Kafelnikov in the 2001 US Open semifinal, his mauling of Pete Sampras in the final the following day, and, perhaps most strikingly of all, his consummate manhandling of Gustavo Kuerten in the Davis Cup quarterfinals, on a fissured clay court in Florianopolis. But as happens to so many once they attain number one, Hewitt discovered that the limp cliché about preferring to be the hunter rather than the hunted is firmly anchored to fact. By mid-2002 the thrill of pursuit was forgotten, and his matches invariably devolved into dour advertisements for attrition, in some ways prefiguring the current era. He lost his backhand up the line, and the depth on his groundstrokes, although that wasn’t enough to stop him claiming the worst Wimbledon in living memory. His top ranking slipped away forever in mid-2003, and by the end of that year he no longer featured in the top ten. He would resurface as a stronger and more rounded player in the US Summer of 2004, but by then the top spot was beyond the reach of everyone with the misfortune not to be Roger Federer. In the US Open final of that year, Hewitt played as well as a world number two should, and was bagelled twice.

In February 2002, most of this lay in the future, but not the distant future. The free-spirited lad with little to lose was scant weeks away from vanishing for good. The San Jose final that year thus represents a unique moment: Hewitt as world number one, but playing like he isn’t. Partly this owed to how badly his year had gone to that point. Forced out of the Australian Open with chicken pox, San Jose represented the true start of his season. Coming into the week, he insisted that he didn’t expect to win the tournament, which was the kind of statement a world number one could make seriously back then, before we grew accustomed to world number ones winning everything. Certainly he strayed close to losing early, saving match points against Paradorn Srichaphan.

Awaiting Hewitt was a sternly-goateed Andre Agassi, whose 2002 had so far proven about as memorable as the Australian’s. Agassi’s travails commenced on the eve of the Australian Open when, as two-time defending champion, he withdrew with an unspecified wrist injury. He hadn’t played since. Like Hewitt, San Jose was a chance for the American to reset the season. He was certainly crooning from the same songbook as the week wore down, to the nonchalant tune that he was just happy to be there, and that match practice was his sole aim. This constantly reprised chorus invited everyone to calibrate their expectations for the final accordingly low. When it proved to be a classic, viewers were therefore appropriately astounded. As Hewitt would now insist if asked, or even permitted near an unattended microphone, it featured some ‘tremendous ball striking.’ Barry MacKay, the tournament’s illustrious chairman, declared it the finest match he’d witnessed since taking over the event in 1970: ‘The way tennis is supposed to be played was what happened out there today.’

Agassi took the first set, looking as ever in this match-up like a man facing down a boy. Hewitt appeared out-scaled and out-gunned. Mostly this was an illusion of scale. While they’re both about the same height, Agassi could famously bench-press a silverback gorilla, while Hewitt cut a deceptively weedy figure (at least until 2005, when he bafflingly attained a heroic musculature closer to Rafael Nadal, or Achilles as incarnated by Brad Pitt). But Hewitt had already fashioned a notable reputation for slaying giants, and he certainly never felt overmatched. Agassi knew how close the first set had been, and that these things can turn