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Meltdowns and Rivalries Just Ain’t What They Used To Be in Men’s Tennis
By Bill Simons
Rivalries in men’s tennis used to be so thick and fierce you could cut them with the dullest knife in the draw. Good old free-form, X-rated battles royal were as common as Tim Henman’s flame-outs at Wimbledon.
But these days — rather than feuding ‘n fighting — the guys are closer to circling the campfire and humming “Kumbaya.” Boris Becker confided, “I’m not saying the game is boring, but sometimes it could use a little spice.”
After all, Andy Roddick confided that he’s often told Federer, “I’d love to hate you, but you’re really nice.” Sure, men’s tennis is crowded with intense, hungry pros eager for victory and in-your-face spats regularly flare. But it’s a far cry from the old days, when the game resembled a blood sport.
For instance, in ‘75, Jimmy Connors sued Arthur Ashe, so Ashe and all his pals put their heads together to come up with a strategy to frustrate Jimbo in the ‘75 Wimbledon final. Yet Ashe doesn’t even make it into the Top Four of Connors’ most bitter rivals. After all, there was his testy love-hate relationship with Ilie Nastase and his contempt for (and fear of) of the on-the-rise Ivan Lendl. Plus, he had two more of the most intense rivalries this side of Ali-Fraser.
Jimbo recently told the Sunday Times, “With Borg and McEnroe, just the mention of a match between us was enough to create the electricity. And that’s what I lived for, to play those guys in the finals of the U.S. Open and Wimbledon...Bjorn was a different breed. I threw my best material at him, but he would never smile, but that added to the charm when he played me and Mac. We came close to blows a few times. I prefer to compete and enjoy myself rather than scream at a linesman or a ballboy or a person sitting in the front row.”
Of course, Mac, who’s hardly a shrinking violet, recalled that “Jimmy called me a baby and I told him what he could kiss. He was reluctant to play Davis Cup because if it didn’t put money in his pocket, then Jimmy wasn’t interested.”
The WWF had little on these guys. But it was inevitable that all this ferocity would wane.
Sure, when the 17-year-old Becker emerged in ‘85, McEnroe harshed him heavy, saying he was too big for his britches, a new kid on the block who hadn’t paid his dues. In turn, Boris went on to take many a swipe at such players as Thomas Muster (was he on drugs?) and Agassi (he’s poison in the locker room). But, come on, how can you kindle a feud with as sweet a Swede as Stefan Edberg, the nearly silent blond who won about 413 ATP sportsmanship awards.
When America’s Fab Four eventually came to rule the roost, there was plenty of ‘tude and (unlike the Swedes or Spaniards) virtually no camaraderie. These guys were not buddies. Andre Agassi and Jim Courier fought for the loyalty of their common coach, Nick Bollettieri, and early on, there relationship was nasty. When Agassi said Courier didn’t have much talent, Jim simmered and then shot back. But eventually Agassi watched supportively from the Friends Box as Courier made his final Wimbledon run.
Agassi, at times, was cruelly dismissive of the not particularly hip Micheal Chang and was clearly annoyed with the bundle of titles that Sampras denied him. Plus, when Sampras first became No. 1, Agassi offered a demeaning quip, implying that Pete was an ape. But by the end, the syrupy language flowed as the two spoke of their deep mutual respect. And while Sampras, Agassi, Courier and Chang were, en masse, spectacular Davis Cup underachievers, at least they didn’t suffer any embarrassing meltdowns, like Connors and Mac, when they tried to team up.
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These days, Andy Roddick often displays a feisty fighting spirit. (He’s not a member of the Lleyton Hewitt Fan Club. He and Ivan Ljubicic had a mini-U.S. Open feud and Italian Daniele Bracciali wanted to deck him after the American walked off their darkening Wimbledon court, allegedly on his own.) Rafael Nadal is a wildly animated but basically benign battler, while Marat Safin proudly sustains the zany clowning heritage of Nastase and Goran Ivanisevic.
But it’s the sneering, me-against-the-world Hewitt who is the only true throwback to the ferocity of the old days. His vein-popping cries of “C’mon!” (often after his foes’ unforced errors) and his most-emphatic-in-the-game fist pumps draw cries of complaint from fans, the media and many other players.
Justin Gimelstob notes that the man who never seems happier than when he has something to snarl about “brings a personal animosity to every match. It’s that [sense of] personal affront — that his opponents are trying to take what he wants. That’s what gets him going, while Federer is inspired by trying to achieve greatness and trying to be as good as he’s going to be, and Roddick is in between these two. Courier was like Hewitt. He took it personally and would go right at you and fight you for every last point. Like Hewitt, he built his game on fight and finding that fire to ‘refuse to lose.’ Chang was like that, but in a different way. He did it with tenacity. Sampras was like Federer — he just smoothed you out and lifted his game when he needed to. Everyone finds different ways to compete, but Hewitt makes it the most personal.”
According to McEnroe, “Lleyton takes on the crowd, yells at officials, bitches at everybody — and I was probably a lot like that. I learned to be uninhibited.”
At Wimbledon, Taylor Dent added that Lleyton’s yelling intimidates officials, while at the Aussie Open many a player took exception to Rock’s acidic ways, particularly his wild celebrations of his foes’ errors. Juan Ignacio Chela spat toward him; there was almost a coaches’ brawl in the locker room; David Nalbandian offered the Aussie a mini-bump; and James Blake mocked him, saying that Lleyon’s antics “can get distracting, but they shouldn’t because we’re all pros. That’s what he does to try to win...A lot of guys don’t feel he needs to do that stuff. But he gets under guys’ skin and it helps him win...If he’s more interested in winning matches than making friends in the locker room, then that’s his prerogative. He’s not doing anything outside of the rules. Unfortunately, gamesmanship is part of our sport. There are guys taking injury and bathroom breaks when they don’t need to. It’s unfortunate to see it at the top level, because you don’t see guys like Federer or Roddick doing that.”
Blake doesn’t believe that Hewitt is merely celebrating the winning of big points and not considering the effect on his opponents.
“When he does it, it seems to keep a player down,” Blake said. “If he’s up big and does it, it’s to make sure to keep a player down. You rarely see him do it when he’s behind or playing Federer or Roddick. I’ve seen him be very quiet, even though he’s intense. I don’t know what sets him off.”
Of course, these days there are numerous reasons why tennis’ landscape is relatively free of ferocious Hatfield-McCoy battles. After all, long gone is the let-it-all-hang-out, “it’s your thing, do what you wanna-do” ‘70s, when the turbulent McEnroe went to the Dr. Phil of his day — Mick Jagger — and asked for career advice. The Rolling Stone insisted, “Don’t change a thing.”
Now, after long winters of anger management therapy, our Prozac Nation no longer craves the raw, red-meat confrontations that were such eye-popping novelties back then. Instead, we take comfort in an arcane collection of micro rules that seek to subdue any kind of (“I’ve had it and I ain’t gonna take no more”) outrage.
Plus, for years tennis was a rather simple minimalist canvas. A few rowdy hotshots — mostly American — would rise to the top and along with some European-born battlers (think Borg, Lendl, Becker, Edberg) face each other time and again. We grew to know the characters so well. Their confrontations had all the comfy, ongoing melodrama of the must-see soap operas Dallas and Dynasty. No wonder rivalries flourished.
Now there are fabulous players from all over. Argentinean Gauston Gaudio won the ‘04 French Open. Spaniards and Russians thrive. Depth is a given. Can you spell G-L-O-B-A-L-I-Z-A-T-I-O-N? Plus, many of the top challengers of the past few years invite questions and fail to regularly reach the final weekend. Is the sublimely talented Safin the biggest head-case since Gorin Ivanisevic and the very definition of erratic? Will Hewitt be able to overcome his small size and troubling physical problems to regularly challenge the big boys? Can Roddick overcome the weaknesses in an otherwise explosive arsenal and become a great big-match closer? And can teen wiz Rafa Nadal replicate his clay-court wonders on other surfaces over a sustained stretch?
Still, for all these questions, there’s one straight-forward answer as to why there are really no ongoing rivalries in men’s tennis these days: a Swiss genius named Roger Federer. Writer Simon Barnes put it this way: “There are all kinds of ways of imposing your personality...You don’t have to roar at people, shout and swear, insult them and jump all over them...[Some treat their] opponents as if they had discovered them on the soles of their shoes. Federer does it a different way. He imposes his serenity on people. And they hate it. You can see them thinking: ‘Please Roger. Please hate me. Please snarl at me. Please get seriously angry with me. Because this serenity is killing me.’”
When Federer was asked by IT who, after Hewitt, was the most fiery competitor, Roger replied it was the little-known Czech Radek Stepanek. And when we asked him who his toughest rival was, the Swiss clinician responded in his typically analytical manner, saying, “The ones at the top. They’re the same. I’ve beaten them all, I’ve lost to them all.”
For all his placid tendencies, Federer (like Sampras) has been tennis’ rivalry-killing terminator. He’s been No. 1 since February ‘04. Incredibly, he’s won 21 straight finals and has lopsided records over all the game’s wannabes, except Nadal. Even Roddick himself candidly admitted, “How can I have a rivalry with Federer when I’ve won one of our last seven matches?” And Federer, long confident with both his celebrity and his seat atop tennis’ throne, is quick to put rivals in their place. When Nadal was making his torrid spring run, Federer dismissively characterized the teen as “a good clay-court player.” Before his Aussie Open match against the iconic Agassi, he calmly noted that Andre was at a different level than he was, that there was a reason he was “only” No. 4 in the world. Strong stuff.
So then, how do we answer the burning question posed by one British headline: “Are Temper Tantrums Dead in This Sport?” The answer, in large part thanks to Hewitt and, to a degree, Safin, is no not really. But they sure are on the endangered species list. So then, what about rivalries? Are they, as some claim, on hold? (Well, give me a moment to ponder.) Okay — they’re not. They’re just far more tame, intermittent and civilized than the good ol’ snarly, rip-roaring, go-for-the-jugular, alpha male battles that gave birth to what’s now a mass-market sport. |
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