Bill Simons and Vinay Venkatesh
Paris
And now it is gone.
As we first reported three months ago, the WTA’s storied Bay Area event, the Mubadala Silicon Valley Classic, will depart. After 52 years, the longest standing women’s-only event will move to Washington DC and be known as the Mubadala Citi Open.
Now, for the first time in 134 years, the Bay Area will not have a truly elite men’s or women’s event. The SAP Open, which traced its origins to 1889, left in 2013.
But we will have memories – memories of co-founder Billie Jean King and her feisty volleys, memories of Chris Evert’s beautiful backhand and Martina Navratilova drawing LGBTQ+ fans to the Oakland Coliseum.
We’ll recall Monica Seles blasting her two-handed groundies off both wings, Graf’s punishing forehand, and Davenport’s and Keys’s efficient power. We can still hear Vika Azarenka’s grunts. The whimsical quips of a 15-year-old will always be enchanting reminders of innocence. And we’ll long envision Sharapova’s death stares.
But, in a way, today marks the death of a superb event that gave such joy to so many for so many years and so boosted the game. Here, as a kid, Cici Bellis flipped the coin before a Sharapova match. And then she went on to thrill locals on court.
The tourney was first played at the San Francisco Civic Center Auditorium, and then had a long run in Oakland. There in 1994 we saw the greatest debut in women’s sports history – the emergence of a much touted 14-year-old named Venus.
Then the tourney gained a great sponsor, the Bank of the West, and crossed over the Bay to the Stanford campus. It was a beautiful, leafy, idyllic site. And it was a scandal that after 20 years of success, Stanford booted it out. Once it was at San Jose State, tournament owner IMG gamely tried to upgrade the gritty site.
Last year, the crowds were great and energy was upbeat. And it seemed kind of fitting for a Bay Area sports happening that a contrarian (the gay, anti-war Russian, Daria Kasatkina) lifted the first ever sports trophy made from recycled materials.
Now, the MSVC is cycling out of town. In Washington it will be a part of a first-ever men’s and women’s event at the 500 level, but tennis tears are flowing in the Bay. Fortunately, San Diego will again host a WTA 500 event in October – but many will be asking questions.
Why now, during the peak summer season, is there not a single pro event west of Ohio? And, goodness, how come such a strong tennis region, with such a rabid fan base and an affluent sponsor pool, let such a wonderful event leave town?
THE SECOND MOST CONSEQUENTIAL LET CORD IN GERMAN HISTORY: The most infamous, devastating let cord in tennis history didn’t occur today. That dubious distinction still goes to Boris Becker, whose 1989 let cord in the famous long-ago match against Derrick Rostagno allowed him to come back from two sets down, and eventually win his only US Open.
Today another German, Daniel Altmaier, benefitted from perhaps the second most consequential ATP let-cord ever. Here’s what happened.
The considerable Italian Jannik Sinner, a trendy long shot to win the French Open title, was in a perfect position to hit a backhand volley winner and secure a second-round victory over Daniel Altmaier. But the German’s groundy ticked the net and skipped over Sinner’s racket.
The No. 79 player in the world took full advantage, and an hour and a half later, on his fifth match point, scored a devastating 5:26, 6-7(0), 7-6(7), 1-6, 7-6(4), 7-5 win. Sinner has now suffered gut-wrenching five-set losses in all of the past four Slams. Fortunately, he’s only 21.
A BRIGHT DAY FOR KAYLA: In 2017, Santa Barbara’s Kayla Day reached the third round of Indian Wells. The press wanted to know everything about the tennis phenom du jour. She was a lefty and of Czech heritage. That worked! Left-handed Czech women like Navratilova and Kvitova are pretty good at tennis.
Plus, Kayla had a thing about Spaniards. She named one of her dogs after the best Spanish lefty ever – Rafa. And her other dog was named after the best Spanish women player of the day – Garbine. But most of all, she was a young American prospect – and there’s little that US fans like more than a star in the making.
But then countless days were dark for Day. There were no big wins. She was burdened with dismal triple-digit rankings – as low as 999. And she had a string of health problems – mono, torn quad, fractured foot, bum hip. Then when she was just coming into form in 2020, Covid hit.
For six years, she didn’t even play a Slam main draw match. But this year, she began working with Pat Cash. Her movement improved, her level rose. She won three qualifying matches and found herself out on the most beautiful court in the world, Simonne Mathieu, playing against the former US Open finalist, Madison Keys. Playing great defense, she muted Keys’s imposing power and found herself up 6-2, 4-6, 5-2 with a match point in hand.
But the hard-hitting Keys broke back and seemed poised to overwhelm Day, who’d never beaten a top 20 player. But for Kayla, this was a good afternoon. Madison made four quick errors and Kayla scored the win of her life.
“It feels absolutely amazing. It was incredible.” said the 23-year-old. Later she spoke of her six years in the tennis wilderness: “I never wanted to quit…I learned that I was a lot tougher than I thought I was. A lot of people wrote me off.” But not anymore. Kayla’s into the third round, where she’ll face Slovokian Anna Karolina Schmiedlova, who’s No. 100.
BTW, Claire Liu, who’s from Thousand Oaks, California, and has practiced for years with Kayla, fought hard against Iga Swiatek on Courte Centrale, but fell 4-6, 0-6.
STUCK IN THE MUD: When Novak Djokovic suddenly found himself struggling in his second-round match against the Hungarian Marton Fucsovics, Radio Roland Garros noted, “It’s like Djokovic is in concrete. He can’t go forward. He is reaching, he’s lunging.” Then, near the end of Novak’s straight-set win, broadcaster Eleanor Preston added, “Novak has had a suppressed fury all evening.”
QUOTEBOOK
“I’m just gonna swear. It’s me.” – The very likable but very x-rated Thanasi Kokkinakis.
CALIFORNIA DREAMIN’: California native Kayla Day told the press corps in Paris, “Santa Barbara is the most beautiful place in the world.”
