Is Del Potro Back?

When you write about tennis, you tend to read a lot about it too. The other day, I was checking out a post over at The Fan Child's blog on Juan Martin Del Potro, specifically whether or not the 6'6" Argentine was back.  What originally began as a comment on his blog got longer and longer and well, turned into the full post you see here.  My question isn't "Is Del Potro back" it's "What does 'back' mean?"

The Sunday Line, 7/24/11

Making the call on this week's ATP & WTA Singles Finals

Atlanta Tennis Championships
Atlanta, GA, USA (Hard)

John Isner

Mardy Fish

The US Open Series kicks off in Hotlanta with two Americans in a rematch of last year's final and my how things have changed since that meeting.  Fish, once a perennial also-ran is now a solid, if unspectacular, top ten player.  Isner, the 6'10" ex-golden boy, on the other hand, is here trying to arrest a slide in the rankings that has him on the verge of going into the US Open unseeded.  

Legends In Their Fall

Lleyton Hewitt at the Atlanta Tennis Championships

The beauty and brutality of tennis is that it's an exercise in solitude.  Unlike in team sports, there's simply nowhere to hide in tennis. We don't have baseball's rehab starts, football's injured reserve or basketball's veteran minimum salary.  Tennis fans don't even have the solace of rooting for the uniform.  We can't hope that someday the tennis equivalents of Red Sox or the Knicks make good, even if it's a couple decades after we first fell for the team.  That's right Richard Gasquet fans, your boy doesn't have forever. 

Get On The Puddlejumper

Quick multiple choice question

Is ATL-LAX-IAD-YUL-CVG-INT-JFK

a.) A long few weeks for a corporate road warrior
b.) The route my lost luggage took to get home from Atlanta
c.) A great opportunity to rack up frequent flyer miles
d.) Mardy Fish's US Open Series summer schedule

If you answered D...well, at least you know what kind of website you're on.

Best Wishes to Alisa Kleybanova

This update comes late in the day, but the sentiments are no less sincere.  We want to join the chorus wishing the best to Russia's Alisa Kleybanova.

She announced today, on her 22nd birthday, that she has been diagnosed with 2nd stage Hodgkin's Lymphoma.  She is currently undergoing treatment in Italy.  In a statement released today on the WTA Tour website, Alisa said:

      "It's not an easy time for me right now. I have Hodgkin's lymphoma, a form of cancer. I'm having treatment in Italy and it's going well, but it takes lots of patience and time, and I need to be really strong and positive to go through this. I still have a few more months of treatment to go. But the good news is, if I feel well after I'm done with everything, there's a chance that I'll be able to play tennis again. There is nothing for sure, but the chance is a big hope for me and it helps me to stay positive and focus on my healing every single day! I really miss playing - I miss seeing fans and friends around the world, I miss hitting the ball, I miss everything. Tennis has been my life for the last 15 years."


Alisa's full statement can be read on WTATennis.com here 


Her phone interview with Tennis Channel's Cari Champion can be seen here

Photo Album: International Tennis Hall of Fame

With the eyes of the tennis world turned toward the International Tennis Hall of Fame today, I thought I'd take a second to share this shot from last year's Hall of  Fame Induction Ceremony in Newport, RI.

Always Andre

Growing up much more a brain than a jock in my hometown, my dad had an interesting theory on me and sports.  A former high school football player and mid-distance sprinter himself, he decided he wanted me to play a sport, but not one where head injuries were par for the course.  Given the recent scrutiny around football and concussions, dad might have been ahead of his time when he first put a racquet in my hand.

I'm not sure if it was my first racquet, but it was certainly my favorite.  It was a Wilson, laminated wood with an orange stripe on the throat, it bore the signature of some player I was too young to recognize at the time, and whose celebrity is too faded for me to remember now.  Secondhand, with a wooden racquet holder and black and white strings that I beat until they broke a year or two later.  I should point out it was the late 80s at this point.  There were metal frames on the market, but none that cost a dollar, so, it was decided, I would learn like the old masters.

I hated the game too.  Should I mention that?

Davis Cup Quarterfinals Preview

Just a week after the biggest event in tennis is the event Wimbledon and the other majors dethroned, the Davis Cup.  What commenced as a US vs. Britain challenge in 1900, now includes more than 130 countries in a relegation style system competing for the eponymous trophy and its comically oversized base.  Depending on who you ask, the Davis Cup is either one of the most revered events in tennis or an archaic sprawling mess that unnecessary clogs the calendar.  

Davis Cup is tennis' only true team competition, no one player can win it all himself.  There are five matches, four singles, one doubles and at most any one player can only play their two singles matches called "rubbers" and cover half the doubles court, meaning countries with two strong singles players generally have the best shot at the title.  This focus on team feels completely out of place in a sport that is overwhelmingly an individual pursuit and is met with mixed reactions from the players.  Roger Federer has famously been criticized in some quarters for his lack of commitment to the event.  Since 2004, when he won his two singles points and couldn't pull out the doubles against France, Federer has only played World Group playoffs to try to keep Switzerland from being relegated to lower level competition.  We can only guess he figured Yves Allegro, Marco Chiudinelli and Stanislas Wawrinka didn't need his help to get the title.  Andy Roddick, presumably thrilled to find a tennis court where Federer wasn't dominant, has made Davis Cup a career long commitment, helping the US to the 2007 title.  Federer, though, is more the exception to the rule, other top players largely have embraced the event, even while railing against its byzantine scheduling.  Novak Djokovic and Serbia won the 2010 title, apparently turning him nearly invincible, while the Spanish armada have won three times in recent years with Rafael Nadal figuring prominently.