2013/05/21

Oz and Ends – Day One at the 2013 Australian Open

Melbourne park grounds

Oz and ends  and bits of news from the Australian Open for January 14, 2013

 

Bagels and breadsticks

Maria Sharapova won her first match of the Australian Open 6-0, 6-0 in 55 minutes over fellow Russian Olga Puchkova. It was her third career “double bagel” in a major tournament. She only needs a double bagel at Wimbledon to complete a “double bagel slam.”

Three women have completed the “double bagel slam” – they are Hall of Famers Chris Evert, Steffi Graf and Monica Seles.

Venus Williams added to the bagel set count with a 6-1, 6-0 demolishing of Kazakhstan’s Galina Voskoboeva.

 

Win streak continues

Agnieszka Radwanska has extended her 2013 win streak to 10 by defeating Australian wild card entry Bojana Bobusic of 7-5, 6-0 on Monday.
Twitter News

Maria Sharapova has officially joined twitterverse. Follow her at @MariaSharapova

[tweet https://twitter.com/MariaSharapova/status/290778598774829058]

 

Tweets of the day

 

 

Lucky Loser is a winner
Tim Smyczek is lucky loser was a winner on Monday with a 6-4, 7-6, 7-5 victory over Ivo Karlovic. The American it into the draw thanks to housemate John Isner who pulled out of the tournament with a right knee injury.

 

Tough day for Aussies

Matthew Ebden, Ashleigh Barty, Olivia Rogowska, Sasha Jones,  John Millman, Lleyton, Hewitt and Casey Dellacqua all exited on day one of Australian Open. Sam Stosur was the only victorious Australian on Monday.

 

Two seeds falls

The 11th seed Juan Monaco was the only seeded played not to win on Monday. The Argentine who withdrew from last week’s Kooyong Classic exhibition tournament with a hand injury was clearly stuggling clearly struggling on the court in his straight set loss to Alex Kuznentsov, was applauded by spectators for not retiring from the match.

Monaco told Reuters: “My leg tightened up at the start of the second set and it was very tough for me,” pointing to his right leg.

On the women’s side Ksenia Pervak  stopped 32nd seed Mona Barthel 7-5, 2-6, 6-4.

Federer out of Davis Cup

Roger Federer will not participate in Switzerland’s first round Davis Cup tie versus the reigning champions, the Czech Republic

 

Five set marathons

[22] Fernando Verdasco def. David Goffin 6-3, 3-6, 4-6, 6-3, 6-4
[10] Nicolas Almagro def Steve Johnson 7-5, 6-7, 6-2, 6-7, 6-2
Edouard Rogers-Vasselin def. Ruben Bemelmans 6-3, 6-7, 2-6, 7-5, 11-9
Daniel Gimeno-Traver def. Lukasz Kubot 6-7, 6-4, 6-0, 4-6, 6-4
[23] Mikhail Youzhny def. Matt Ebden 4-6, 6-7, 6-2, 7-6, 6-3
[28] Marcos Baghdatis def. Albert Ramos 6-7, 7-6, 6-4, 3-6, 6-3
Roberto Bautista Agut def. Fabio Fognini 6-0, 2-6, 6-4, 3-6, 6-1
[31] Radek Stepanek def. Viktor Troicki 5-7, 4-6, 6-3, 6-3, 7-5;
Brian Baker def. Alex Bogomolov 7-6, 6-3, 6-7, 3-6, 6-2.

 

Karen Pestaina for Tennis Panorama News

Share
Filed Under: Front Page News, tennis news, tournament coverage, tournaments Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

“On The Call” With ESPN’s Darren Cahill and Chris Evert on The 2013 Australian Open

Chris EvertDarren Cahill

(January 9, 2013) On Tuesday, Jan. 8, ESPN tennis analysts Darren Cahill and Chris Evert spoke with media about the Australian Open, tennis’ first Major of the year, on ESPN2 and ESPN3 starting Sunday, January 13, through the finals two weeks later. This press release has all the details.

 

Highlights from the conference call:

 

Q. Watching Serena and seeing what shape she’s in, watching what she’s done early in the season, is there a chance she could win the calendar slam? I know it’s hard to do. Obviously she has to stay healthy, which is a question. Looking at the way she is right now, certainly seems she might want to do that. What do you guys think?

CHRIS EVERT: Is it possible? Absolutely. It’s absolutely possible. I think you nailed it when you said the thing with Serena is not only her health but her motivation. I think she’s got the motivation, there’s no doubt about it, because she’s been out of the game so many different times, either for injuries or for other interests in her life, whatever, so she’s still a fresh older player. So I don’t think that motivation will be a factor.

 

To stay healthy in this day and age is, as we’ve seen Nadal and other players, I think more difficult, especially for someone like Serena who is such a physical player and has a tendency to get injured. When she’s on, she’s unbeatable. She’s dominant and unbeatable. I don’t know if anybody can really stop her. But you have to remember that we’re talking Grand Slams in the same sentence, and they’re two-week tournaments and have always provided surprises for us.

 

So the big question is for those two-week periods, can she keep the high level of focus and fitness for 14 days in a row. There’s no easy matches anymore, as we saw last year here when she lost, and also last year at the French when she lost. You got to start out 90% to 100% from the first match.

 

But is it possible? It’s absolutely possible. Do I think it will happen? I have my doubts that it would happen only because she is human.

 

DARREN CAHILL: I agree with that. I think at the moment she’s playing a level or two above the opposition. She’s a stronger, faster athlete than she was maybe three or four years ago. I think she’s a more intelligent tennis player now. I think the fact she’s been looking to take other people on, other people’s advice, has helped her tennis. I feel like she’s always learning. I think it’s a great example for everybody, that even once you reach your 30s there’s still ways to improve your tennis. That’s why Federer has been so good over the years and with Andre lasted until he was 36 inside the top 10. He was a student of the game and was continuing to try to get the most out of himself.

 

I agree with Chrissie. The reason so few people have won the Grand Slam is because it’s such a very difficult thing to do, different surfaces, different balls, different challenges along the way, stumbling blocks along the way, they’re enormous. Some of them you do see, some of them we don’t see. But a fit and healthy Serena absolutely has a chance. I think if anybody can do it on either side, Serena can do it.

 

Q. Can I ask you what you’ve seen from Sloane Stephens this year? What are your impressions of her coming back this year?

CHRIS EVERT: Well, I think that last year really helped her as far as experience. She went into last year with these big eyes, you know. She was a novice. She was finally on the big stage, on stadium courts. I think it was an awakening for her. It was like a dress rehearsal for her. Now I think she’s had that experience behind her and it seems to me that she’s moving better and she’s also more relaxed in the position that she’s in, you know, in the top 50 in the world. She certainly was one of the more touted players as a junior. I think there are a lot of expectations. I think finally now she’s mature, she’s calmed down. I for one think she does have the talent to win a Grand Slam title. So I think she’s on the upward swing.

 

DARREN CAHILL: I agree with that as well. We see a couple of kids, male and female, come through every year that to me have top 10 written all over them. Sloane is one of those players. I feel she’s matured in the last 12 months. Her game is great. It’s always been good. I feel like she’s got that personality that expects to be in the top 10, and that’s half the battle, feeling like you belong on the big stage, you belong playing the greatest players in the world.

We even saw that last week in Brisbane, when she was playing Serena, she maybe gave Serena her toughest match of the week. Even in conversations with her coach, you can see it’s a confidence, not an arrogance, it’s a confidence that, Okay, when everything comes together, when she gets a little bit faster and stronger, becomes a more intelligent tennis player, this is going to be her stage.

 

You just have to play a little bit of a waiting game with a player like her because she has a lot of weapons. She needs to find the best ways to utilize those weapons. Maybe that might come in three months, maybe that might come in three years, but there’s no question she has top 10 written all over her and can certainly win a slam.

 

Q. Could you say the same thing about Laura Robson?

DARREN CAHILL: Absolutely. I think she’s a half a step behind Sloane as far as the development. She’s certainly got a lot of weapons. Laura has improved her movement around the court, which is going to be a big factor with her to deal with the strength of shots, a lot of the top ladies, what they play with in today’s game.

There’s no question Laura has the talent. I don’t think I’ve seen anybody in the ladies’ game that varies the spin the way she can do it. The fact she is a lefty is a slight advantage going forward. She also understands the game extremely well. She certainly has the weapons. But there’s the court speed and the ability to play a little defensive tennis at times that is going to be important for her to evolve and improve. But there’s no question there can be a rivalry there.

 

Q. Back to Serena real quick. She’s done so much in her career, has had an amazing career already. Getting a Grand Slam this year, where would that rank her in terms of all time with Chrissie and Billie Jean and even some of the other international players? Then if y’all could talk a little bit about Ryan Harrison and what he needs to do this year, where he’s at.

CHRIS EVERT: Let me tell you, if she wins four Grand Slams in a row this year, I would think she would be the greatest of all time for the simple reason that, first of all, does she have 14 now, is that what she has?

 

DARREN CAHILL: 15.

 

CHRIS EVERT: She has 15. Anybody who wins a Grand Slam in this era with the level of tennis as high as it is, because the level of tennis gets higher every single year, would currently have to be the greatest player that ever lived. Point-blank, that’s all that needs to be said. She would still be the greatest player that ever lived even if she didn’t win four in a row, in my mind.

 

DARREN CAHILL: I would agree with that, Chrissie. I think in the era we’re playing in, it’s so competitive, so many different countries competing. Look, the game has changed. It’s improved every year. I feel the players now are more professional in turning over every single stone they can, not just on the men’s side but the women’s side as well. If she would go through and win the four majors in a row, that would mean she won six in a row. If she won six in a row, there’s no question in my mind she would be the greatest female player that’s lived.

 

CHRIS EVERT: You asked about Ryan Harrison. Go ahead, Darren, you can take that one.

 

DARREN CAHILL: Yeah, look, I’m a big fan of Ryan’s. There’s talk down here in Australia about Bernard Tomic, how it was last year. He’s a young guy that’s made a bunch of mistakes off the court. Some of those mistakes have come on the court as well with a lack of effort the last two or three months of last year. I’m sure he’s very happy to see the rear-end of 2012 and look forward to 2013. But always the second year on tour is always an extremely tough year for these players. You make a break as a youngster, break into the top 50 in the world, people pay more attention to you. They work out your strengths and weaknesses, they spend more time breaking down your game. All of a sudden, players are coming onto the court to play these kids and they have game plans which they’ve never seen before.

 

The second year on tour is a real learning year for a lot of these players. It’s what happened to Ryan as well. Exactly the same at Bernard Tomic. What would be a pretty good ranking for Bernard Tomic this year, I would have said around 50, because it’s going to be tough to replicate what he did in 2011, and I would say exactly the same for Ryan Harrison. He slipped down a little bit after having a breakthrough in 2011. It’s a learning year for him. I feel that this is a kid that takes the right steps to be as good as he can be.

 

He’s changed coaches a few times. He works incredibly hard off the court. He’s taken on a mentorship with Andy Roddick, which I think is a good thing for him. I think you’ll find in the next few years, with Tomic, Goffin, Raonic is already up there. They’ll be around the top 10 if not in the top 10.

 

If you have a look at the top 20 at the moment, most of these guys are approaching 30, if not 30. The shape of the men’s game is going to change in the next three or four years. These guys need to keep working on their games, staying healthy, getting the best out of their games and they’ll find themselves at the top of the game very soon.

 

CHRIS EVERT: I’d just like to add that I think the men’s game, as far as American men players, was a bit disappointing last year. I think the women’s game, the American women’s game is looking stronger than the men’s. I think Ryan and even Jack Sock, Isner, these players – not to be too critical – but need that hard work ethic where they look and see how a Nadal trains, Djokovic and Federer and Ferrer. The top players are at a different level when it comes to hard work ethic and the training and even the dedication. I think it’s just brutal now. I think that’s got to be one of the things, intangibles as far as, Okay, you got a great game, but how much do you want it and how much are you willing to work for it? I think there’s a lot of talent in those two players I mentioned, Jack Sock and Ryan Harrison. But I think they’ve got to maybe go up a little level as far as their fitness and their hard work ethic.

 

Q A question about Federer and Nadal. Do you think this is going to be the first year in what would be 10 years or more that neither one of them wins a major? What are the chances that neither one of them wins a major this year?

CHRIS EVERT: Oh, heavens. It’s all speculation, isn’t it? I mean, I don’t know how you can say. First of all, Nadal, we don’t even know if he’s going to come back, right? I think it very well could happen. Yes, it very well could happen. But I just think if Nadal gets his act together in February, March, and he gets healthy, he’s pretty invincible on the red clay, even though Djokovic did have a good match with him last year at the French. I think Nadal, he puts all his eggs in one basket when it comes to winning at least that one Grand Slam. I think he’s going to do everything he can to prepare for that one Grand Slam. So in that respect, you know, no, that won’t happen. I mean, I predict Nadal is going to come back and win the French. I think Murray is also going to win a Grand Slam this year, and Djokovic also. And Roger, you can never count Roger Federer out, especially on the grass. But I think, gosh, each year gets a little bit tougher, you know, for him.

I would love to see him win a Grand Slam, but I don’t know. I don’t think you could ever be 100% sure with him.

What do you think, Darren?

 

DARREN CAHILL: I have a question for you in are you willing to go bet against Nadal?

 

Q. I’d never make that bet.

 

DARREN CAHILL: Then you can’t expect us to make that bet!

 

Q. I don’t expect you to. I just see it as the first time in a long time where that’s a possibility. It never even used to be a possibility.

 

DARREN CAHILL: It’s always been a bit of a possibility because these players, the ones that have been chasing Federer and Nadal are so good these days. No question Nadal, I think he’s going to come back and he’s going to be just as strong as he was. It was three years ago at Wimbledon that we were all throwing our hands up. I went through the same thing, patellar tendonitis, not to compare myself with him, it’s in a different world completely, but I understand what he’s going through when it comes to this knee pain. It put me out of the game when I was 25. I was going, you know what, this is going to be tough to get back to the level he was at. Lo and behold, he came back a better tennis player.

 

Anything he achieves on the tennis court is not surprising. Everything Federer achieves on the court is not surprising considering what he does to get the best out of himself and what he’s achieved in the past. I do think you’re right that 2013 might shake the future in the men’s game. We might get an insight as to how the men’s game is going to look at from the next five or six years and beyond from the results in 2013. But there’s no way anybody is going to put a red line through Federer and Nadal just yet.

 

CHRIS EVERT: If I were to be a betting woman, you know, you can never bet against Djokovic on a hard surface, like an Australian or a US Open. And Federer certainly I think is going to be — I think Wimbledon is his goal in his life. And Nadal, the French Open. Murray, he’s going to be the spoiler this year. Somehow he’s going to be the spoiler. He can play great grass court tennis, as we saw last year at Wimbledon. And he’s a great hard court player also. So he’s going to be the one that’s going to be the spoiler, I think.

 

Q. Around the time when Nadal or Federer were winning everything, 2005, 2006, I think everyone saw Murray and Djokovic as strong, probably going to get to the top, the only thing holding them back were these two guys. I don’t know if you would say that now about some of the guys younger than Murray and Djokovic. What do you two think? Is that next generation maybe a little bit behind where this generation was a few years ago or are they coming along okay?

CHRIS EVERT: I’ll just say briefly, because Darren knows a lot more about this than I do, I’ll say briefly I think this is the year, 2013, for these players to emerge. I think we kind of saw hints of it last year.

But especially this year, with Nadal not being 100%, Federer, like I said, as each year goes on, it’s going to be harder and harder for him to be mentally tough for every match. I think this is the year that some new faces are going to pop up, and have to. That’s always been the way it’s gone in tennis.

 

DARREN CAHILL: I agree with that. You’re right, absolutely. This generation of Murray and Djokovic, the one previous in 2005, 2006 that came up, were right there with these guys.

 

I remember a little story actually with Andre. Remember back at the French Open in 2006 when Djokovic got through the quarterfinals, played that match against Nadal. He walked off the court after a couple sets because he was injured. Obviously it was a big thing for the young kid to get through to the quarters. In the after-match press conference he said he felt comfortable on the court against Nadal. That caught the attention of Andre back in 2006. I remember vividly the tournament right before Wimbledon, just before Andre announced it was going to be his last Wimbledon ever, and the US Open was going to be his last tournament, he played an exhibition against Djokovic.

 

Andre said, The kid just played Nadal, right? This is the kid that said he felt like he was the better player at the French, right? I said, Yeah, this is the kid. So walking out from the locker room onto the court, I remember walking next to these guys, and Andre peppered him with questions about his career. This is an 18-, 19-year-old kid that came out and said he felt like he was a better player than Nadal on clay. Obviously I’m paraphrasing him a little bit.

 

Andre peppered him with questions about why he would make such a statement. Novak wasn’t being cocky, he wasn’t being over the top. He basically answered each question with, No, I just felt for this reason, if I could play my game off the backhand side, I have a big pocket. I felt if I could push him back on the backhand side I would make this progress, my forehand down the line, I could make this progress. He answered every one of Andre’s questions like a true pro. That’s the intelligence and the thinking of that generation of player.

 

Now, Murray was exactly the same. You’re right, that generation of player is slightly ahead of the generation we see right now. I think Nadal, Murray, because Nadal is only a year or two older than those guys, but Nadal, Murray and Novak was a unique circumstance for men’s tennis to get those three guys into the game. But they are special tennis players that you rarely see. We haven’t got those generation of players coming through. We have some really good players. But it might be the generation after that that comes through and pushes them. But you are right, they are a level ahead of what we have at the moment.

 

CHRIS EVERT: The four men are so dominant, they’re so close. They beat each other. They just keep beating each other. Nothing is predictable when they play one another, whereas that’s so different in the women’s game.

Like you said, Darren, they can sort of rationalize and speak intelligently, have intelligent strategy against the other men. In the women’s game, I think the top players look at playing Serena, and they’re hoping that she just has a bad day. It’s hard to figure out what the winning strategy is against her. That’s where it’s different.

 

Q. In Abu Dhabi, Janko Tipsarevic described Andy Murray as a different animal. Have you seen a difference in the way Andy carries himself on the court, his attitude? Can you see him going on to win multiple majors this year potentially?

DARREN CAHILL: Look, I do see a slight difference on the court with his attitude. I feel like he spent 12 months now with Ivan. He knows exactly what the plan is. This time last year, it was a little bit, Let’s look and see how this goes. Obviously it was a big step for him to take someone on like Ivan. He knew what media attention it would gain. He never won a Grand Slam tournament before. Obviously all eyes were going to be on the Murray/Lendl partnership.

 

They’re 12 months down the road now, they have an Olympic gold medal under their belt, a US Open under their belt. I see a little bit more swagger on the court. It doesn’t mean anything when it come to playing these top guys. It means he’s not focusing on that one major; he’s focusing now on multiple. There’s no question he’s capable of winning multiple slams.

 

Two or three years ago in 2010 when Novak was going through the rough spot, the serve was all over the place, the forehand was all over the place, he was struggling in the heat. Chris Fowler was doing a tournament with Brad Gilbert and myself, posed a question to us, if we could go back to coaching, who would we take on at that particular time, and both of us in unison said Novak Djokovic. The reason for it is we saw the most improvement coming from someone’s game in the top 10 from. Credit to his coach, Marian Vajda, to get him to where he is. I look at Andy Murray’s game a bit the same. Even though he’s achieved what he’s achieved, there’s still an enormous amount of achievement that can come from Andy Murray’s game. I think if they stay together the next couple years, I think you’ll see him realize a lot of his dreams and win more major championships.

 

Q. Do you think Ivan would be the key then?

DARREN CAHILL: Yeah, I think it’s important. I think stability in a relationship, in a player and coach partnership, is more important than people realize. The message sometimes is the same message. There has to be that belief and that trust between the player and the coach. You don’t get that from spending a couple of months together; you get that from spending years together.

 

I feel like in the next couple years, if they can stay together, it will only be good for Andy. Obviously the big question mark is the amount of travel is takes on Ivan with his family. The fact that he’s stepped up and committed to Andy to do this job, it was a little bit surprising for me that he would do it. But also I think it brought a smile to everybody’s face in tennis that somebody that achieved so much in tennis in the game would be so willing to invest in somebody else’s career. It’s great for everybody on a whole and specifically for Andy.

 

CHRIS EVERT: I think Ivan Lendl was the perfect, perfect fit for Andy Murray because Andy Murray’s attitude has completely changed and his demeanor on the court. It still shows up now, but Andy used to be a very emotional and very passionate and very impulsive, would just get down on himself so easily. Then you would have Lendl on the other side known for being stoic and unemotional. He didn’t let anything bother him.

 

I just think that nowadays when Andy is about to erupt, he’ll look over and Ivan will give him a look like, Don’t you even think about starting that kind of crap, you know. And Andy Murray will just go back to being more serious.

I think temperament-wise he’s really helped him. I think that’s exploded into his game. He’s just playing so much better. I think they need to stay together. I don’t know why they wouldn’t. I don’t even know where Andy Murray would be today if it wasn’t for Lendl because I think he significantly changed him and changed his temperament and his whole personality out there.

 

Q. The weather. It’s usually very hot in Australia. It’s particularly hot this year. Do you think that may play a bigger factor this year than in previous years at the Open?

CHRIS EVERT: Conditioning is always a factor. It’s 100% a factor. Especially coming off of everybody had a rest. Who knows, some players went skiing, some players really did take time off and are kind of working their way into the beginning of the year. Some already have worked hard and are very fit. I think conditioning and fitness is definitely going to be a factor with the heat. You’re going to have some players that are going to fizzle and some players that aren’t going to be able to cope as well as others. It’s just a matter of conditioning for the players.

 

DARREN CAHILL: I think that’s also why you see so many players get down here much earlier than they used to with the Australian Open. It’s to get used to the climate in Australia. Everyone is coming from Europe or America. The weather over there is pretty average at the moment. Ana Ivanovic was down here on the 21st of December to get ready for the Australia summer. Daniela Hantuchova was down here two or three weeks before Christmas to get ready. Most of the players are either doing their pre-season in Australia or they’re coming out before Christmas to make sure they hit the ground running. By the time they get to the Australian Open, they are well used to the heat, if they have to play matches in those 35, 36 degree days.

 

Q. I wanted to go back to the Andy Murray/Ivan Lendl partnership. Are there technical differences that Lendl has made in his game so far or would you just say it’s temperament-wise?

CHRIS EVERT: I think definitely there’s been some technical changes. But to me it’s mostly been attitude.

Go ahead, Darren, about the technical.

 

DARREN CAHILL: You know, I spent a lot of time with both these guys, especially with Andy back in 2011. It’s a little difficult for me to comment on the Lendl/Murray partnership because I played a small part in it. I’m sitting back now wondering how it was going to go last year. Like everybody else, I’m happy that it worked. Getting any real information out of Ivan is like pulling blood from a stone. The guy keeps everything really close to his chest. That’s what good coaches do. They reveal little bits of information but nothing too specific that is going to give you an insight as to what they’re actually working on because they don’t want to give any ammunition to their main rival.

 

Nadal doesn’t tell us what he’s working on when it comes to the serve. Federer doesn’t tell us what he’s working on when he’s working on the backhand, the net game, or being more aggressive. These guys don’t give you much and the coaches don’t give you much as well. Sitting on the outside looking in, there’s no question that he’s trying to get more weight behind that forehand side of Andy. If you go back to tape three years ago and watch Andy Murray hit forehands compared to the way he’s hitting them today, there’s a stark difference in the amount of weight behind each and every one of those forehands and his willingness to take that forehand up the line earlier in the point. That creates much more open court for you. While you can do it well, you can also look to the direction in which Andy is hitting the second serve. Used to hit it the same spot in the court every time. Now he’s moving around the service box to possibly get free points off the second serve. He didn’t serve great, even though he won the tournament in Brisbane. On the whole, there’s also a lot more miles per hour behind that second serve than there used to be. The first serve is now considered a big weapon and one of the biggest shots in the game. There’s no question that he’s targeted four or five different areas in Andy’s game. Again, that takes time to work on. You can’t fix that stuff in one week, in two weeks, in one month. It takes a lot of time. I think you’re starting to see the benefits of late last year, the Olympics, US Open time. All that came together for Murray and Lendl.

 

CHRIS EVERT: I think with Lendl, the attitude is a big thing, but I also think second would be he’s a more intelligent player. I think Lendl really helps him with strategy with these players. I saw that when he played Djokovic, when he plays Federer. Actually, he was playing Djokovic last year at the Australian Open. He’s just slicing his backhand, giving him no pace. That was something that had been talked about with Lendl.

I think Ivan is really one for exposing what weaknesses these top players have. So I think he’s become a more intelligent player as well as a more focused and more calm player on the court. Like Darren said, that’s why I gave him the question, Lendl doesn’t say anything. You are not going to get anything out of him (laughter).

 

Q. A lot of the Andy Murray stuff has been covered, but a quick one. Darren, how do you see the head-to-head between him and Djokovic if these are the two strongest guys? Who do you think has the upper hand mentally between the pair of them? Considering the kind of improvement you see is possible in Andy’s game, would you put a number on the amount of Grand Slams potentially he could be winning in his career?

DARREN CAHILL: Look, I think it’s a little bit, as I mentioned before, in the men’s game, it’s going to be really interesting how everything plays out in the next three or four years because of the fact that we see so many guys in the top 20 around that 30-year mark. These two guys might be completely dominating every single major like Nadal and Federer did. I think it’s impossible to put a number on it.

 

I just know from Andy’s perspective, even though Federer and Nadal were dominating the game a number of years ago, the guy he spent more time thinking about was Novak. These two guys, they’ve known each other since they were 12, 13 years of age. They were born a few days apart. This was his main rival, was Novak Djokovic. They both knew they were going to be good tennis players. Who knew how good they were going to be. This was his measuring stick for success or failure. He had to be competitive with Novak Djokovic.

I think you saw him go through a little period when Novak came out in 2011 and dominated, you saw some frustration in Andy’s game, in his demeanor on the court, the way he handled himself. He made the changes to fix that up by employing Lendl.

 

Who knows how much that win at the US Open is going to help Andy in the big situations. We get the Australian Open to see that for the first time. This is the first time Andy has ever walked into a major championship as a major winner, as a Grand Slam winner. Who knows how much confidence that will give him.

 

Now, we’re in unknown territory here for the next 12 months for many, many reasons. Novak is really the only sure thing we know at the moment. That is that he’s going to put himself in a position to win majors time and time again. The rest of it we don’t know. We don’t know how Federer is going to be, how good he’s going to be. We don’t know if Nadal is going to come back. We don’t know how much that US Open win is going to help Murray. I think that’s why it makes this year a real fascinating year for the men’s game.

 

CHRIS EVERT: You’re right, it’s an unknown about Federer because he put so much into winning Wimbledon last year. You wonder how much it drained him. The other thing, Djokovic has an advantage over Andy Murray. Unfortunately, when you know somebody so well, you have an advantage. Djokovic has played him so many times, has seen him lose his temper, seen him lose focus, get ruffled and riled on the court. I think as much as Andy Murray has improved, I still think Djokovic, when he plays him, he has still that little mental edge because he knows he still could erupt. Andy Murray, again, he’s improved so much. Hopefully we won’t see that. If we don’t see that, then I think Andy Murray definitely will reach a higher pinnacle in his game.

 

Q. This question is about the game itself. This year it seems that the umpires are more strict about enforcing the 25-second time limit between points. Do you believe it to be good for the game or do you think it will hurt the players that will have to rush themselves now?

CHRIS EVERT: Oh, that’s an interesting question. I’m a rule person. I mean, there are a lot of players that have taken advantage of that rule and have gotten away with it. So I think it’s good to enforce the same rule on everybody.

DARREN CAHILL: This generation of tennis player, it’s not their fault that they’ve been allowed to change the rules, this time violation rule in the last five to 10 years because the rule hasn’t been enforced. This particular generation of tennis player doesn’t understand playing to a time limit. We’ve had 45, 50, 55 seconds between points. We were never able to get away with that. While it’s not their fault, this generation of tennis players is not the first generation to play long rallies. You look to Connors, Wilander, Lendl, they used to play just as long matches, and maybe the game is more physical now, but it’s become more of a physical game, taxing on the body, sliding on the hard courts, whatnot. But it’s not the first generation of players to play incredibly long rallies, where they have the heart rate up around 190 after every point. Because they don’t know it, because that rule has never been enforced, it’s a bit of a shock to the system for these guys.

 

But I believe for the good of the game, for the game moving forward, not just from a spectator point of view, but also from a television point of view, even from a player point of view, because the fittest and the strongest will benefit from this, that time violation has to be enforced.

 

I have a little flexibility with it. I feel like maybe 25 seconds might be a little too fast. 20 seconds at the Grand Slams, that’s just ridiculous. I believe 20 seconds is going to be enforced again. They don’t actually enforce it at the Grand Slams. This is an ATP thing, where the ATP is becoming much more stricter on the time violations.

I think there’s an easy way around this. After you hit a serve, it’s an ace, no problem, the umpire calls the score, starts the clock, there’s a pregnant pause in the time between when the crowd applauds, 5 to 10 seconds, the umpire calls the score, then you start the clock. At the moment, no matter if it’s a one-shot rally or 50-shot rally, as soon as that point is dead, the clock is being started. I think there’s a little adjustment that could be made. But I applaud the ATP for taking the stance. I believe this is a good thing for the game of tennis and tennis moving forward, no question about it.

 

CHRIS EVERT: Boy, you put a lot of time into researching that one, huh (laughter)?

 

DARREN CAHILL: More time violations given out in the last couple weeks than all last year. A real big shock to the players. All of a sudden they don’t know what’s going on. A couple players have lost a couple of first serves in big moments. I think Baghdatis lost a first serve for a time violation in Brisbane. It’s been a real shock to the players, but it’s not their fault. They’ve never played to a clock before. It’s going to take a little time for the players to adjust.

 

Q. I would like to ask you a couple of questions about Caroline Wozniacki. Do you think she’s able to win the Australian Open and how do you see her year in general after a really bad 2012?

CHRIS EVERT: I think that’s a question that we’re all wondering. Anybody who admires her, there’s really no harder worker out there than Caroline. She trains so hard. You can tell she wants it so much. She’s had trouble with the coaching situation. She had her dad, then she tried two coaches, that didn’t work out, so now she’s back with her dad again. I think that’s probably a good idea. You have to get the person back that you feel the most comfortable with. And I think it’s just obvious to everybody and to her what she has to do, and that basically is just to hug the baseline a little more, take the ball earlier.

 

She’s playing the tennis of the last generation. I don’t mean that in a bad way. She never misses a ball, she’s consistent. She’s got great feel, great concentration. But the fact of the matter is she’s giving her opponent too much time on the other side of the net, when she could be offensive. She has to take a few more risks off the second serve. Anything inside the baseline she should go for. It’s a tough task for her. You know, I think her goals have to be she has to take baby steps. Right now she’s not looking to be No. 1. She should be looking to be in the top 5, top 6, work her way to be back in the top 5. That would be a reasonable goal for her. She has everything else. But I think her game, her thinking is going to have to change and get a little more offensive and a little more aggressive.

 

DARREN CAHILL: I agree. You know I know Caroline quite well and I think the world of her. I think the game is better off if she’s in the top 5, pushing for majors. I think she’s good enough to eventually win one, no question about it. I think she’s got herself into a little bit of a rut at the moment because she doesn’t know what type of game she should be playing. I agree with Chrissie. She builds her game on making her side of the court feel so small to everybody. At the moment she’s trying to be the player that she’s not really comfortable with.

 

You have to evolve as a tennis player; you have to get better. She needs to pump up her serve. She needs to find spaces in the court, not being three meters behind the baseline and wait for the game to come to her. You have to become better at her game. You can’t go away from what’s made her a great player.

 

About Lendl and Murray, stability, there has to be stability in the camp. I think you’ll find that Piotr is a very intelligent man. I think you’ll find that he gets a bit of a hard time because of his whole coaching scenario. But Caroline is just as strong minded as what Piotr is and she wants Piotr around. She wants her dad in charge of her career. If that’s the case, call her shot and say, This is the way it’s going to be. Stop messing around with the trial coaches. She has the ability to get some advice off other coaches in the game as well through the adidas program. But get that stability that she’s looking for.

 

I think the other factor, she fell into a little bit of a trap that a lot of players do when they have success on tour. She made a change to equipment. She was the No. 1 player in the world. All of a sudden you get these major contracts being offered to you. The two things, unless it’s going to do your game a lot of good, that you should never mess with, I believe, it’s my personal opinion, I talk about this all the time, never mess with the shoes you’re wearing and never mess with the racquets that you’re using. They are the two most important pieces of equipment that are going to determine how many you’re going to win and how many you’re going to lose. Any change you make to that, it takes time. You can never turn a career around because of that particular change. I would have loved to see her stay with what she had and keep evolving her game from there.

 

Look, I can point to a hundred examples where a change of equipment has been a negative for a player. I can maybe point to a handful where it was a good one. A good one last year was Sara Errani. She handed back a big check for her racquet sponsor because she found a piece of equipment that was better for her game. Look what happened to her. Unless you find a piece of equipment that you know is going to be better for your tennis game, stay with what you have.

 

CHRIS EVERT: I agree. Darren, you made a good point about, I think she does feel comfortable with her dad. You know what, she tried it the other way. She went past her safety zone and she went to two coaches and she tried it and it didn’t work. So now she’s back with her dad. My dad was my main coach for my whole career. But I had hitting partners. I had other coaches come in and out, travel to tournaments with me. But my dad was my main coach. And I think she makes that decision and now we’ve got to respect that.

 

The other thing is, you have to change with the era. When I played, when Martina played, we played through three different eras. I started with Margaret Court, then I went through Martina, then I ended up with Steffi and Monica. I had to change my game and I ended up being a better player than when I was starting out and when I was No. 1. You have to be flexible, you have to really understand that the game has changed and you’ve got to make those minute, and they are, you keep the main focus of your game and the main strengths, the base of your game, but you do have to change certain elements of it to really play in that era. And that’s what she maybe hasn’t adapted as well as she could have.

 

Q. I also wanted to ask both of you guys where you feel Rafa is right now. Should we be worried about Rafa or not? What other girls are there that we should watch? Petra certainly has had a slow start. Who else can challenge?

CHRIS EVERT: I’m going to give you the girls and Darren can do the Rafa. I mean, I have one eyebrow up when it comes to Rafa because I don’t know. He’s been out of the game really since the French. Even at Wimbledon he played, what, one or two matches. That’s a long time. So, yeah, I think everybody is concerned.

 

As far as the American girls, I think we’ve had four girls do extreme think well at the start of the girls. Madison Keys, I like to mention her because she’s had two big wins. She had two upsets actually. She’s in Sydney right now in the quarterfinals. I mention her because she, like Serena, is a power player. I think her serve even rivals Serena’s. I think it could be just as good if it isn’t now. So I think we’ve got to watch her.

 

Jamie Hampton, I have to give her kudos because her work ethic is unbelievable, she’s a fighter.

 

Then Lauren Davis, she had a big win over the 27th-ranked player in the world, Cirstea. I think between Lauren Davis, Jamie Hampton, Madison and Sloane, starting out the year the way they have, I would like to personally keep my eyes on them.

 

Q. Then we can watch Taylor Townsend.

CHRIS EVERT: Then there’s Taylor Townsend and CoCo. And Donna Vekic, being 16 years old and being in the main draw of Australia, I think that merits having a look at her also.

 

Q. Is there hope for CoCo?

CHRIS EVERT: There’s always hope for CoCo, but CoCo has to get in better shape. She’s got to drop a few pounds and get into better shape and she knows it.

 

Then I’ll throw in Maria Sanchez who went from 800 to 127 in a year, too. She’s an American player that graduated from SC. She’s out there on the tour, too. She was actually 800 last summer. At the end of this year, she’s 127. She’s taken a big jump. She’s an American player. But I think between the American players and Ashleigh Barty and Donna, I think it’s looking really exciting.

 

Q. So the American women look promising coming up?

CHRIS EVERT: Yes, because there’s 10 in the top 100, and that’s more than any other country. I think Russia might have 10. So it’s looking good.

 

Q. Darren, can you address the mysterious Rafa.

DARREN CAHILL: You know what, for me I look at him and we never quite know the stuff that flows through the veins of champions. It’s a little bit different from us normal people. I feel like whilst there’s a big question mark about his game, I know he’s been out for seven or eight months now, this is a guy that you can just see it in his eyes when he steps onto a tennis court, you can see it when he’s put into a position when somebody is threatening him. The guy hates to lose.

 

He won’t put himself back on a tennis court unless he’s ready to win. The guy will do everything he can to get back to where he was. If he does come back, he’s not coming back to be top 10 in the world, he’s not coming back for the money, he’s not coming back for anything but to win majors. When he does come back, and hopefully he will, he will be 100%. He will put himself into a position that he feels like physically he can compete with these best players in the world again.

 

So that’s why I feel it was a little blessing in disguise, I know it’s not perfect for him, but blessing in disguise that maybe he’s not restarting his career in Australia because it’s a brutal thing for him to do on the hard courts. Looks like he’s going to play his first tournament in Acapulco, a clay court event, to ease his way back into the game.

But make no mistake, if Rafa steps back onto the court, he’s stepping back onto the court to win tennis matches, simple as that.

 

CHRIS EVERT: Also history has shown, if you look at Serena, players that have had injuries and taken time off, they come back with more of a vengeance, more passion. They appreciate their health and life so much more.

If he can get himself back physically at 100%, he could be a better player, no doubt about it.

Share
Filed Under: Front Page News, interviews, news conference, On The Call, tennis news, tournaments Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Chris Evert – A Life Devoted to Tennis

NEW YORK, NY – From hoisting 157 singles trophies during her career on the court, to her current role as tennis commentator for ESPN, tennis hall of famer Chris Evert continues to be very active in the sport.

 

Evert was ranked No. 1 in the world for seven years, won 1309 matches, captured 18 majors titles, and won one slam each year for 13 years in succession.

 

Not resting on past laurels, the Floridian has stayed involved in the sport since she retired in 1989.

 

On Friday night the International Tennis Hall of Fame & Museum honored the Class of 2012 at the “Legend’s Ball”  at Cipriani – the inductees included Jennifer Capriati, Gustavo Kuerten, Manuel Orantes, Mike Davies, and Randy Snow (posthumously).

 

Also among the award recipients was Chris Evert, inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame back in 1995. She was being honored for her dedication to tennis and the positive impact she has made on the sport with the Eugene L. Scott Award. Scott was a US Davis Cup player, tournament director and the founder of Tennis Week magazine. He wrote a column for magazine called “Vantage Point.” Many referred to Scott as “the conscience of the game.”  He died in 2006. Former winner, Billie Jean King presented Evert with her award.

 

“I don’t win any trophies anymore for tennis on the court so it’s nice to receive a service award to put me back into the game and I never really retired,” the 57-year-old Evert said.

 

Past recipients of this award which were selected based on their commitment to communicating honestly and critically about the game, or has had a significant impact on the tennis world have been John McEnroe (2006); Andre Agassi (2007); Billie Jean King (2008); Arthur Ashe and his wife Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe (2009); Martina Navratilova (2010); and Dick Enberg (2011).

 

“I stopped playing professional tennis but it’s still my life and I still talk about it on ESPN and I write about it in Tennis Magazine, Evert said, “and I have a tennis academy. It’s been a great livelihood for me.”
Evert also reflected on this years’ US Open.

“It’s kind of a sad, bittersweet US Open,” Evert said due to the retirements of Kim Clijsters and Andy Roddick.

“It’s not really a happy US Open with those two players gone because they’re very well-liked and they had a lot of presence on the court lot of personality. But that’s how life is. We also saw the emergence of Laura Robson and some other young players. And we’re going to see some young players not. It’s kind of like the changing of the guard right now.”

Speaking of young players, Evert noted the success of a player in her own academy in Boca Raton, Florida. “We had one girl Anna Tatishvili get to the round of 16,” Evert said.  Tatishvili lost to Victoria Azarenka 6-2, 6-2.

“So she had been training with us for like 10 years. We have a lot of young kids and if their goal is to get a scholarship to college or to win their local tournament or to be on their high school team, it’s the same to us as if they’re going to be on tour.”

On top of her academy, her broadcast work for ESPN and her work as publisher and contributor roles for Tennis Magazine, Evert also hosts a charity event each year since she has been retired. Over the years, her philanthropic endeavors have raised more than 20 million dollars to fight against drug abuse and child neglect in Florida.

Her playing days may be long over, but it doesn’t stop her from serving the game that has been her life.

 

Karen Pestaina is the founder and editor of Tennis Panorama News.

Share
Filed Under: Approach Shots, Events, Front Page News, interviews, tennis news, tournament coverage Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

“On The Call” with Brad Gilbert and Chris Evert

ESPN Tennis Analyst Brad Gilbert

On Wednesday ESPN’s Chris Evert and Brad Gilbert discussed the US Open which begins Monday, August 27, with extensive coverage on ESPN2 and ESPN3.  Jason Bernstein, senior director, programming & acquisitions, and Jamie Reynolds, vice president, production, were also on the line.

 

Q.  Wonder if Chris and Brad can both talk about Roger.  He’s pretty much had a great year and some people had not really written him off but sort of thought he was kind of the third or fourth guy, and will he ever win a major again and all that.  So he’s done real well and I’m just wondering what you think his chances are of winning the U.S. Open.

CHRIS EVERT:  You’re right.  I think a lot of people did write him off because Djokovic, the engineer that Djokovic had last year was phenomenal, and Nadal was looking sharp and he was looking like he was going to play seven to ten more years. Nadal, physically, to me, those two players looked a lot stronger.  And Roger almost looked a little bit frail in comparison, because, you know, just the training that they had done and how fit they were.

 

But, you know, Roger surprised us all.  I don’t know he’s gotten his second wind in his career.  It just seems likes there’s been a little bit of luck in the sense that Nadal seems to be injury‑prone and Djokovic, because he had such a great year last year, was sort of in and out this year, and really was inhuman to ask him to duplicate the year that he had last year.  So he had a few more up‑and‑downs.  But Roger came through and I guess it took the pressure off him when he was No. 3.  He wasn’t No. 1 and he wasn’t No. 2, and when he was ranked No. 3, I think not many people were talking about him; people were counting him out and I think it took the pressure off.

 

Certainly the last few months, he played the most beautiful tennis that we have seen in a long time.  And the fact that at the end of the year, he’s still playing so well, is remarkable, because this year has been as we all know, such a long year.

 

I already feel like we’ve had four Grand Slams, and now we are going to have a fifth Grand Slam coming here.  It’s just been a really rugged year for everybody.

 

BRAD GILBERT:  First of all, I think he’s the youngest 31‑year‑old ever and I think he can take a lot of stock in what Andre did about six or seven years, seeing somebody that he can remember that played great until he was 35.  He takes amazing, good care of his body and he never gets injured.  Has not missed a major in numerous years.  Has not in any injuries in his entire pro career.  And obviously his team does a great job of keeping him ready and he paces himself unbelievable on the schedule.  Doesn’t overplay and seems to know when to take breaks.

 

I’m a little bit surprised that he made this re‑push, but it’s not like baseball, he went from .370 to .220.  He just dropped off to No. 3, and the two guys, maybe the best top three of all time, and he just turned around a couple of matches that he had lost.

 

I remember the last two Opens he lost were matches where he had match points.  He’s been right there.  So it’s not like he fell very far and he’s regained his confidence in winning some of these big matches.  But the thing that amazes me more than anything, he never looks stressed on the court.  He barely even sweats.  He’s younger at 31 than Nada at 26.  Nadal seems older at his age than 26 than Fed does for his age at 31.

 

CHRIS EVERT:  Also, Brad, to take it one step further about his attitude, the beauty of him is that when he loses a match, even if it’s a big match, he just let’s it roll off his back.  And as you said, that’s part of being relaxed.  He physically plays a very relaxed game out there. The other two, I think, have to work harder when they play a match.  But Roger physically is relaxed; emotionally and mentally, he’s fine, but if he loses, he let’s it roll off his back.  He goes back to his family and he’s got another life outside of tennis that maybe keeps him fresh.  I think the attitude has a lot to do with it, too.

Q.  It does feel like there’s been four majors and I totally get that, given the Olympics.  I guess each guy has one, right?  So you have Federer, Djokovic and Murray each winning one.  Do you view the US Open as kind of settling anything?  Can you sum up who has been the dominant player?

BRAD GILBERT:  Well, you can definitely argue that whoever wins between Federer and Djokovic wins the Open, will more than likely be the Player of the Year and will almost certainly be the No. 1 player in the rankings at the end of the year. If somebody came from outside of ‑‑ we have not had somebody win four different majors in a season since 2003.  So if Murray were to win the Open, it would be four different winners.

 

I, like Chris, also feel like winning the Olympics is like winning a major, but we do have four majors, and so whoever wins this major will have a huge jump up on not only being the No. 1 player; being the Player of the Year, and I think there’s tons at stake in this event.

 

It’s just a little bit of a bummer that one of the leading singers in the band is not there in Nadal.  So that will completely change one‑half of the draw.  It will be interesting to see which half Murray goes on; whichever half he goes on, maybe the other path is the easier path this year to go to the finals.

 

CHRIS EVERT:  I agree with Brad in a sense that I think the Olympics is a fifth Grand Slam.  I still think of the top four Grand Slams, because of history and obviously more people play in the Grand Slam tournaments; bigger draws.  I think it is a different sort of setup than the Olympics.

 

But I think Djokovic, Federer, and I think you can say the same thing on the women’s side.  The last seven Grand Slams have been won ‑‑ the thing is, Serena is not a lock.  If Serena wins the Open, she would be a lock.  But if Sharapova wins the Open to win two Grand Slams, that would be a lock.  Azarenka won the Australian.

 

It’s the same thing in the women’s, and I think there for that’s why I think it will be such an exciting US Open, and because there’s so much at stake for both the men’s and the women’s draw.  And the fact that I think just so much has to do with how sharp they are mentally, how fresh they are.  Everybody’s body seems to be breaking down a little bit now and they are starting to get fatigued.

 

As we said before, it has been an usually tremendous year for the players as far as opportunities, but really, there’s been a lot of tennis.  You throw in a Davis Cup and Fed Cup, it’s been grueling.  It’s been a grueling year.  So the US Open comes at a time when it’s the hottest.  I always felt like I had to be in the best shape for the US Open condition‑wise, because of the heat.  You go over to Europe and it’s 70, 75, 80 degrees.  It’s almost like the heat doesn’t bother you as much.  It’s the end of the year, the toughest tournament on hard court, which is going to be maybe even hotter, and you just have to be physically in your best shape at the US Open I think of any of the Grand Slams.  That’s going to be a factor physically and mentally how fresh they are, and hopefully ‑‑ I don’t know, the creme is going to rise to the top during this tournament.

 

BRAD GILBERT:  You bring up a good point, the first week is a lighter week because they stretch the first round over three days.  And then if there’s any rain the second week, potentially ‑‑ you know, the last few years, there’s been at the back end of the tournament, sometimes guys having to play three days in a row is a brutal prospect, and it will be, you know, a big thing on who was the most economical in the early part of the tournament, or who is in the best physical shape.

 

CHRIS EVERT:  Well, I just remember the French and Wimbledon, we had jackets on at some times.  I mean, it was cold.  And the weather was ‑‑ and let me tell you, I mean, I get out here in Florida, I walk outside, and even in New York, you walk outside and you’re sweating in your clothes already.  It’s almost too bad that almost the Grand Slam of the year, when everybody is starting to get a little tired, has to be the one that you have to be in the best shape.  I mean, even though Australia is a hundred degrees, you still have two months to prepare for it.  You know, you don’t really have that time before the US Open to get used to the heat after being in Europe.

Q.  With regard to the US Open, for both of you, what makes it special?  And secondly, some of your favorite memories from opens you’ve played in the past.

CHRIS EVERT:  Well, I guess you’re talking to two Americans, so it’s obvious that, you know, I think for me, just being an American and playing my country’s championship was, you know, was always special.  Because when you go to Europe, it’s not the same.  In France, I never knew what they were saying, saying about me or saying about anybody.  England, you go over there and it has its own charm and prestige and it’s a wonderful, wonderful tournament.  But when you go to the US Open in New York, and it’s all about Americans and it’s all about supporting the Americans, and you feel it.

 

And even though ‑‑ and I don’t mean to complain like it’s the last Grand Slam and everybody is starting to get tired.  But I honestly did start to get tired around August, September.  But it lifted your spirits and it inspired you to still work hard and grind it out and just try to play your best tennis.  It really lifted you up to hear that crowd.  And to ask me what my favorite moments are, I can’t even ‑‑ gosh, I can’t even start to, I really can’t.  Brad, you go on and I’ll think about my favorite moments.

 

BRAD GILBERT:  Also, too, the US Open is the first major that went to a night session.  It’s the biggest tennis stadium in the world.  You have the most interesting mix of fans; they come from all over the world, all over the states.  You’ve got the hard court fans.  To me, you have small side courts, you have big courts, you have ‑‑ if you play on a side court, you’ve got people walking and going.  You’ve got music playing.  It’s one of the most interesting, I call it, two‑week parties, of all time.

 

As a kid, obviously as an American, you know, growing up and wanting to be in the Open and it’s one of the greatest cities in all of the world.  They just really know how to host the event.  I think some of my fondest memories, obviously when I was a kid, I think a crazy one, just remembering ‑‑ I think I just saw a replay of it was when McEnroe was playing Nastase and they got the umpire removed from the chair, Frank Hammond.  They got him removed from the chair. And Mike Blanchard, the tournament referee says, “I’ll umpire the rest of the match.

 

And just seeing night matches for the first time.  It was a tough night, but incredible match, sitting there for four sets watching Andre and Pete have no breaks and four sets, one of the most amazing matches that I ever saw in a night match there.  Unfortunately didn’t get the last point but it was an amazing match.

 

CHRIS EVERT:  Jimmy Connors, I guess the electricity in the crowds when the American players played, especially Jimmy and McEnroe, I remember Nastase, just with his antics.  You took me by surprise with that question, but my first US Open I think was just very special for me because that was sort of the beginning of ‑‑ it was a Cinderella story for me.  It was the beginning of my career.  Just the women that I had to beat to get to the semifinals and lose to Billie Jean, but having her say to me while we are walking out to the course, “You’re riding on the crest of a wave, enjoy it.”  I still remember those words.

 

I remember Tracy Austin with her pinafores and pigtails.  And I remember her beating me when she was 16.  It’s the one tournament I remember my losses just as vibrant as my wins.  I think that says a lot.  I think that really, because it affected me, I remember losing to Tracy and then I remember beating her a couple years later in the semifinal after I had lost to her five times in a row in tournaments, and never lost her again.  So it sort of revitalized my career over that win, and I remember that big Super Saturday match with Martina, which I lost.  But it was the loss ‑‑ the Super Saturday was bigger than any one match, and I remember that pretty much made history, that one Saturday that you had those three great matches.

 

I remember Renée Richards coming out and playing at the US Open and what a sort of enigma she was and the curiosity everybody had.  A lot of issues, you know, social issues were brought up.  Even Arthur Ashe, naming the stadium after him, and Billie Jean naming the whole ‑‑ the same sort, and then Billie Jean naming the whole US Open.  Wow, a lot of great things happened to American tennis players.  Very poignant.

 

THE MODERATOR:  From a TV production standpoint, Jamie, you’ve mentioned over time how the four slams, all of their different personalities, how does that play out in your efforts?

JAMIE REYNOLDS:  I think that’s a great point.  The point about this particular event, as everyone knows, the unique character of being in New York and being one of the hottest tickets available, it’s clearly the extravaganza; it’s the paparazzi and the red carpet treatment as the summer wind down and concludes.

 

With the personalities like Chris and Brad and the rest of our team, the family captures the historical perspective and the energy and excitement that comes across in this event; either through the day session here or certainly during primetime theatre at night, which is our focus through many of these windows to just have an evening that goes well on past midnight more often than not.

 

So that’s really our approach.  When you look at the four majors and the Australian Open, which is great fun in the sun during the winter months here in the northern hemisphere; and the French with its Parisian flair, obviously, and the tonality of what that city offers in a backdrop; and obviously the cathedral that is Wimbledon, is a whole different event.

 

Now being able to ride the wave of Wimbledon, the success there, and then on through tennis, the buzz that came through tennis in August back at SW and coming now back in New York, it’s a great amount of energy and terrific amount of enthusiasm surrounding this event now, which as Brad and Chris so poignantly pointed out, there are terrific stories that will shape this year and define this year that will certainly make 2013 a great run for all of us.

Q.  Brad, how big of a psychological boost do you think the Olympics will be for Andy, and how do you sense the last couple of weeks he’s had where there’s been a few issues?  And for Chris, with everything that’s Serena has been through the last couple of years, is it written in the stars that she’s got unfinished business there?

BRAD GILBERT:  I think the Olympics was a huge boost to his confidence, because it’s the first time that he beat the No. 1 and 2 in a world in a major.  He had done it in Masters Series but never in a major.  I think that was a huge piece for him, and especially he lost three times to Roger in best‑of‑five in the finals.  And to do it the way he did; I actually thought that would lead him to have a pretty big summer.

 

But I’m sure made the right call in pulling out of Canada and not stressing.  He said he had some sort of knee injury that he never had.  I was surprised he lost early in Cincinnati, but you know, I see that Lendl is already there with him in New York and I’m sure that he’ll be able to put all of this behind him and just work his way in the tournament.

 

I think the big $64,000 question, which half will you go on, will he go on the Djokovic half or will he go on Federer’s half.  But the way he was playing at the Olympics, if he can sustain that level for 21 sets, I have no doubt that he can win a major.  It’s just the way he played the last two matches in beating Djokovic and Federer both in straight sets; but the way he did it, he did it by winning it, by going through guys.  Not waiting for guys to make mistakes.

 

I think ultimately, that’s what will push him, and I’m sure that’s what Ivan is looking for him to do more of; be more proactive on the court.  You know, if he won, it certainly wouldn’t surprise me.  I feel like the tournament is about three deep to win it, maybe, maybe four if he won, include Djoko, that’s about it.  That’s just kind of the way it is in the men’s.   It’s obviously a little bit different this year with Nadal not in it, but I’m expecting exciting ‑‑ and I would love to see Andy in the business end of the tournament.

Q.  And Serena, the last couple of years, all sorts of things have gone wrong; is it written that she’s a dominant player and she can confirm that again?

CHRIS EVERT:  Well, I think Serena has proved more times than none that when she’s motivated and healthy and playing well, she’s the player to beat.  I think that’s obvious.  If you put Sharapova at her best against Serena at her best playing for a title, you know, Serena is going to be the one to win.

 

The question is:  As we saw at the Australian when she was out early and the French Open when she was out early, and a couple weeks ago when she lost a match, the question is, can she keep that level of tennis for over a two‑week period consistently.  The danger, she is going to be her rival or worst opponent.  I don’t think it’s going to take a player who has a hot day to beat her.  I think it’s more like going to take Serena, if she’s below par, and that very well happens the older you get.  You have more flat days.

 

You have to remember, also, two other things.  No. 1, he dominated on the grass.  I mean, it was really good luck to her that the two big tournaments, Wimbledon and the Olympics were on grass.  Basically that’s her surface and that’s basically where no one is going to return her serve and she’s going to get 20 aces a match.  That’s the surface that balls don’t come back as much as they will on the hard court.

 

She’s going to have to work hard the next two weeks, because there are a lot of eager players out there, as we have seen the last couple weeks, with Li Na and Kvitova and Wozniacki and Sharapova, Azarenka.  There are a lot of tough players that are good, solid hard court players; that she’s going to have to play her best tennis.  Kim Clijsters, her last year.  She’s going to have some momentum going in.

 

Serena will have to work harder the US Open than she did at Wimbledon.  She had a lot of free points at Wimbledon and the Olympics because it was on grass and shots didn’t come back, and she dictated every point.  This is going to be a different story.  She’s going to have to run down a lot more balls and get a lot more balls back, be more consistent and probably be even in better shape.  So therein the question lies; can she do it.  Of course she can.  But will she do it?  I’m not sure.  I’m not 100% sure.

Q.  Kevin Anderson is really struggling at the moment and probably won’t be seeded; I wanted to know, in general, what does a player have to do when in a slump?‑

BRAD GILBERT:  You know, that’s a great question.  He’s a big guy, at 6’8″, and about three years ago, he dramatically changed his game.  He used to be much more of a counter‑puncher for a 6’8″ guy and then started working with this Australian guy, besides the South African guy he works with.

 

He’s a statistic ‑‑ a static‑guru guy, and he started working with this guy.  And he also works with a few of the other guys that played with him at the University of Illinois on changing his game to being like one of the biggest hitters.  I guess he showed him these statistics, this Australian guy, about being aggressive.

 

Now when I watch him play, it’s almost like he plays too aggressive.  You know, he just tries to play maybe too big on every ball.  And now, at about 34 I think he is in the rankings, he’s obviously the biggest and he’s going to be a little bit at the mercy of the draw.  Because now obviously he won’t be seeded and, you know, potentially, if he doesn’t play a seed first round, he’s got to play one second round.

 

You know, sometimes with tennis players, it’s quickly as you lose the confidence, sometimes you win one close match, you win a 7‑6 in a third, you win one of those close matches, you can regain the confidence.

 

I think it’s easier for a guy at 6’8″ possibly than a little guy, because the way he plays, his serve, if he’s having a big day on a serve, he’s tough for anybody to beat.  So I think that’s his big shot, big weapon, at 6’8″, and sometimes when I do watch him play, I feel like it’s a guy on the end of a ten‑meter diving board.  He’s on the edge by how aggressive he does play.

Q.  My question to you about is the depth of American men, there don’t seem to be many players coming through.  And I wanted to ask how you feel about the chances of Kim Clijsters.

BRAD GILBERT:  Obviously the Americans have four guys in the top 28, but for most countries, that’s pretty good.  Obviously for our pedigree and where we’ve been for the last 50 years in tennis, any time we don’t have someone in the top 5, you know, people ask these questions.

 

Unfortunately, if you look at the rankings, the top four guys haven’t moved.  Just because we want to have a top guy in tennis, so does everybody else.  I mean, before Fed, Switzerland never had anybody great.  It just slows how global the game is, where they are playing all over the world, and there’s just no birthright that you can have a great player.  We want to, desperately, and as you know, we have lots of great athletes and lots of many other sports.  And hopefully, I’m a patient person, and hopefully, somebody will come.  And you know, the USTA is doing more.  We are doing a lot more with QuickStart Tennis to try to get a lot more kids involved in tennis.  But me included; I want to see somebody in the business end of the majors.  I want to see somebody in the semifinals or finals of a major, but we might just have to be patient.

 

CHRIS EVERT:  With Kim Clijsters, she’s won it twice before and she has the game, she has that hard court game.  She has every ingredient to win it again.  She’s one of the few players that plays great defensively, as well as offensively.  So she can run down balls all day.  That’s why she needs her body to be healthy and that’s sort of a question mark right now is just the last few weeks, she has been injured.  But I think she’s got every shot in the book.  She can volley and hit ground stroke and she’s got a good serve.  She moves well.  She can handle a Serena or a Marina Sharapova’s power very well.  Mentally she’s tough, and it is her last tournament.  Will she just put everything she has into this one last tournament?  I think she’s been a little disappointed with the way her summer has panned out.  I think she would have liked to have done better at Wimbledon and the Olympics.  But I think at this point, hopefully she’s excited about her last big hurrah coming at a very special time in her life and coming at a very special place where she’s had so many fond memories.  But, you know, her body is a big thing.  That’s the question mark.

 

THE MODERATOR:  I have a question for somebody who e‑mailed and said they are going to work off the transcript we send out.  We brushed by this topic, but what is the impact of the Olympics on players physically, having that extra big event this summer, making it a really crowded schedule?

BRAD GILBERT:  Obviously, the hardest thing is most of the top guys, after Wimbledon, they rest for about a month to get ready to play on hard court in Canada. Now, I think the hardest transition is going from grass to hard court, because it’s a surface that’s the toughest on your body.  So now, a lot of these guys ‑‑ I mean Djokovic went right from playing the last Sunday at the Olympics to playing right away at Canada.  So it’s like these guys had no rest time to prepare for two Masters Series, week off, US Open.

 

I think that obviously, physically, it’s going to be about how they manage their body and how they can just keep their mind and body free of injury.  I mean, I just think it’s a really tough transition going from grass to hard court with no time.  So maybe, the guys that played at the end of the Olympics, you might say it’s a little bit of an equalizer potentially; for the guys that didn’t play in it, maybe somebody might have an off‑day or they are tired from the grind of this whole summer.

 

CHRIS EVERT:  Yeah, I think that players, when they look, when they map out their year, they like to have certain periods of the year where they had rest and like to have certain periods of the year where they train a little bit harder.  You really have to pace yourself during the year. I think as Brad said, after Wimbledon is one crucial time for a tennis player to take their rest.  Because most of them have been over in Europe for anywhere from six to eight weeks, and they have been playing tournament after tournament after tournament.

 

And before they get ready for the heat, which is going to be ‑‑ which is a factor, along with the hard courts, getting used to; to gradually get used to the heat and to rest, you really as a player ‑‑ I mean, I remember I liked to, anyway. You like to take anywhere from two to four weeks and sort of relax and rest and then slowly get back into, okay, I’ve got one last go here and it’s on hard courts and the heat at the US Open, and then you just start gradually training.  Well, the players didn’t really have that this year, at all.

 

BRAD GILBERT:  After the Open, they step it down a little bit.

 

CHRIS EVERT:  And if you look at the women right now, Sharapova, she pulled out of two tournaments because of a virus.  And you look at Radwanska, she’s in trouble.  She had to pull out of New Haven.  I think the players already have showed signs of fatigue; the ones that did well, so far that had played in the Olympics and had grueling summers, and this is actually the right time for those players like a Clijsters or Azarenka or a Kerber or Wozniacki, players that maybe didn’t have that great of a first half of the year to kind of sneak in there and they are going to be the fresher players.  So it’s definitely ‑‑ I think we are going to see some effects from some players.

Q.  Do you have a dark horse, somebody under the radar that might sneak in and steal it?

BRAD GILBERT:  I always like to call dark horses when I see the draw.  Sometime it’s easier to prognosticate where guys are.  We’ll know the draw more tomorrow.  It will be interesting it see where Isner falls in the draw, because I think he is somebody that has potential.

 

I think the ‘Missile’ from Canada, Raonic, is somebody that has potential, very soon, to make a major breakthrough.  I think he’s got firepower, and I think he has next‑level capabilities, where he falls in the draw.  Those are two people right away where you kind of see where they are going to be in the draw.

 

And if anybody, you know, is capable of really making ‑‑ it’s a stretch to say somebody is a dark horse.  But I mean, Del Potro, I think is starting to get back.  I don’t think he’s back to where he was in 2009, but he’s starting to get a lot better and he’s somebody that obviously has won before.  I think that he’s potential to being close to back there, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he had a big Open, as well.

 

CHRIS EVERT:  When I look at the Top‑10 women, it’s so good and so solid and so close that I really don’t see anybody creeping into making any sort of statement outside the Top‑10 as far as reaching the final or winning it or whatever.

 

You look at Kerber, and even though she’s ranked, I think, what, five in the world right now, she was out of the Top‑100 at this time last year.  She’s got that fire in her; she’s got that look that she wants to annihilate you.  I don’t think the American public has probably has heard of her as much as some of the other top players, so she can sneak in there, as Kim Clijsters if she’s healthy.  Kim Clijsters, again, everybody wishes her to do well, but if she’s healthy, she’s beaten everybody in this draw; she’s beaten everybody in the past five, six, seven years, and she knows how to win.  So she could sneak in there. But you know, it’s pretty solid.  And I didn’t even mention the defending champion, Sam Stosur; people are not even mentioning her and she won it last year.  You know, again, Wozniacki, she was No. 1 last year.  Just to look and see how well Radwanska has done this year, and Li Na with the new coach is starting to hit her stride and Kvitova, who won Wimbledon last year.  This Top‑10 is so solid and so strong depth‑wise, that I just think the winner is going to come out of the Top‑10.

Tennis Panorama News participates in many tennis media conference calls. “On The Call” serves to give readers an inside view of tennis news.

ESPN & the 2012 US Open: Nearly 100 Hours on ESPN2 HD; 400 on ESPN3

Share
Filed Under: Front Page News, news conference, On The Call, tennis news Tagged With: , , , ,

New Haven Open Preview: Wozniacki’s Drive for Five is Alive

By Jack Cunniff

NEW HAVEN – For the fifteenth straight year, several of the top Women’s Tennis Association professionals will be at the Connecticut Tennis Center in New Haven the week prior to the U.S. Open.  And defending New Haven Open champion, Caroline Wozniacki from Denmark, hopes to be holding the winner’s trophy for the fifth straight time.  As always, the path to the title has a lot of obstacles, with eight of the Top Twenty ranked women entered in the draw.

When Wozniacki defended her title last year, she was holding seven other tournament titles and ranked No. 1 in the world.  Her form has dropped off in the last 12 months; she’s been unable to win a title since the 2011 New Haven Open.  As a result, her ranking has dropped to No. 8, and she’s seeded third.  But Wozniacki still has to be considered a title contender.  She holds a perfect 17-0 record at the event, and nine of those wins have come against opponents ranked in the Top Twenty.  Is that enough to snap a streak of twenty straight events that Wozniacki has lost? She will make history if she can win her fifth title; only three other women in tour history have won an event in five consecutive years, Chris Evert (Charleston), Steffi Graf (Hamburg), and Martina Navratilova (Wimbledon, Eastbourne, and Chicago).

The top seed at the 2012 New Haven Open is Agnieszka Radwanska of Poland.  Radwanska had her best career result just a few weeks ago, reaching the finals of Wimbledon before losing to Serena Williams in three sets.  She’s improved her world ranking to No. 3 on the strength of five titles in the last 12 months, including three Premiere events (Miami, Tokyo, and Beijing).

The hottest player coming into this year’s event is Petra Kvitova of the Czech Republic.  She is the only woman who has reached the quarterfinals at each of the 2012 Grand Slam events.  More recently, she won the Canadian Open in Montreal last week, and reached the semifinals in Cincinnati this week.  But on the downside, that’s a lot of tennis for Kvitova, and she could be feeling the effects here.

Rounding out the Top Four seeds in New Haven is the Italian who made a surprise run to the French Open final a few months ago, Sara Errani.  Since moving off of clay courts, Errani has found things more difficult, winning only four matches on grass courts or hard courts since June.  She has been able to show winning form on hard courts earlier this year, reaching the quarterfinals of the Australian Open.

In looking at title contenders, recent history in New Haven shows that you must look past the seeded players.  While the first nine New Haven finals did not feature an unseeded player, there has been an unseeded surprise finalist in four of the last five years.  Some names who could continue that trend in 2012 include Andrea Petkovic, Sloane Stephens, and Laura Robson.  Petkovic, the entertaining German player, reached No. 9 in the world last year, but has played only a few events this year because of injury.  New Haven marks her return to the tour after a four month absence.  Stephens, from the United States, has made her breakthrough this year reaching the fourth round of the French Open.  She is also the youngest player ranked in the Top 50, at age 19. Robson is even younger, at 18, and is coming off a silver medal win in the London 2012 Summer Olympics, where she partnered with Andy Murray in Mixed Doubles.

It’s a difficult field to handicap, but one thing is for sure: whoever is holding the trophy next Saturday will have a great chance of making a run at the U.S. Open title as well.  In the last fourteen years, the New Haven champion has reached at least the semifinals on ten occasions.

Around the Grounds – Saturday August 18th: Nicole Gibbs, the Stanford sophomore who swept the NCAA singles and doubles title this year, defeated her first Top 100 opponent Saturday, dispatching No. 77 Lourdes Dominguez-Lino of Spain in the second round of qualifying… Melanie Oudin, the surprise 2009 U.S. pen quarterfinalist, continued her comeback by ousting Silvia Soler-Espinosa in three sets.  After her win, Oudin confirmed that she and Jack Sock would be attempting to defend their 2011 U.S. Open Mixed Doubles title… Andrea Petkovic isn’t the only player on the comeback trail at New Haven; 2007 runner-up Agnes Szavay of Hungary is playing in her first WTA main draw of 2012. Szavay also played in The London Summer Olympics this month as she returns from a career-threatening back injury.

Jack Cunniff is covering the New Haven Open for Tennis Panorama News. Follow his updates on twitter @TennisNewsTPN. His personal twitter is @JRCunniff.

Share
Filed Under: Contributors, Features, Front Page News, tennis news, tournament coverage, tournaments Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Evert to be honored with Eugene Scott Award at The Legends Ball

On Friday, September 7, the International Tennis Hall of Fame & Museum will gather at Cipriani 42nd Street in New York City for The Legends Ball, an annual social event that celebrates tennis and honors some of the sport’s greatest champions and contributors, including the International Tennis Hall of Fame Class of 2012 – Jennifer Capriati, Gustavo Kuerten, Manuel Orantes, Mike Davies, and Randy Snow. In addition to honoring the newest inductees, this year’s event will salute Hall of Famer Chris Evert, who will be awarded the Eugene L. Scott Award in recognition of her years of dedication to tennis, and the positive impact she has made on the sport. The award will be presented by fellow Hall of Famer and a past Scott Award recipient, Billie Jean King.
“Gene had a remarkable ability to encourage people to really pause and think about what was important in the sport of tennis, and where the game was headed. I always admired his insight, and appreciated his dedication to the sport,” said Evert. “Today, I’m grateful for the platforms that I have to publicly observe developments in tennis and to speak out to help grow the game. It is truly an honor to be recognized with an award that pays tribute to such an effective communicator and important tennis industry leader as Gene.”
Eugene L. Scott was a United States Davis Cup player and a tournament director, but perhaps his greatest impact on the tennis world was as a voice for the game. He founded Tennis Week magazine and wrote the most widely read and well-respected column about the sport, “Vantage Point” until his death in 2006. His writings about the sport were known for their poignancy and clarity, and he was dubbed “the conscience of the game.” Presented annually, the Eugene L. Scott Award honors an individual who embodies Scott’s commitment to communicating honestly and critically about the game, and who has had a significant impact on the tennis world. Previous recipients of the award have been: John McEnroe (2006); Andre Agassi (2007); Billie Jean King (2008); Arthur Ashe and his wife Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe (2009); Martina Navratilova (2010); and Dick Enberg (2011).
“The International Tennis Hall of Fame’s Legends Ball is an opportunity to pay tribute to the outstanding contributors to the sport of tennis who have played an instrumental role in its growth, and naturally, Chris Evert is at the very top of that list. We are pleased to be able to say congratulations and thank you to Chris at this very special event, and are so pleased that Billie Jean will be able to help us do so,” said Christopher E. Clouser, chairman of the International Tennis Hall of Fame & Museum.
Chris Evert during her Hall of Fame career, she won 18 major singles championships, including a record seven championships at the French Open and a record six US Opens. She also captured 3 major doubles titles. Evert was the year-end world No. 1 player seven times, and she captured a total of 157 singles titles and 29 doubles titles. Evert’s decade-long rivalry with fellow Hall of Famer and good friend Martina Navratilova is considered one of the greatest in sports history. Since retiring in 1989, Evert has focused her time on philanthropic efforts. She hosted the first Chris Evert Celebrity Pro-Am just one month after retiring from her 17-year playing career, and over the years, her efforts have contributed more than $20 million to an ongoing campaign against drug abuse and child neglect in Florida. Still an active leader in the tennis community, Evert is a publisher of Tennis magazine. In 2011 she officially took a spot behind the broadcast booth, joining the on-air team for ESPN’s Grand Slam coverage. Evert was inducted to the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1995. She is the proud mother to three sons.
Fellow Hall of Famer Billie Jean King is one of the nation’s most influential and charismatic leaders. Her strength as a voice for not only tennis players, but for all athletes, has been a driving force behind growth in opportunities for men and women in sports. During her playing career, King won an extraordinary 39 Grand Slam singles, doubles, and mixed doubles titles, and she was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1987. She is the founder of the Women’s Tennis Association and the Women’s Sports Foundation and co-founder of World TeamTennis.
Joining Evert and King, a legendary line-up of tennis greats will be in attendance, including current players, Hall of Famers, executive leaders from the ATP World Tour, WTA, ITF, and Grand Slam tournaments and tennis fans from around the world. In celebration of their Hall of Fame Induction, which occurred in July, speaking programs and video presentations will pay tribute to former world No. 1′s Jennifer Capriati and Gustavo Kuerten, Spanish tennis great Manuel Orantes, tennis industry innovator and promoter Mike Davies, and the late wheelchair tennis champion, Randy Snow.
The Legends Ball silent auction will feature an array of exclusive experiences and luxury items that will excite tennis fans and non-tennis fans alike. Among the items up for bid are exclusive tickets for the finals of all four tennis majors in 2013, luxurious vacation packages to the Caribbean and Europe, tennis camps for juniors and adults, including a week of instruction at esteemed academies like the Chris Evert Tennis Academy and Ivan Lendl’s International Junior Tennis Academy, and exclusive tickets to events including Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week and various pro sports events.
Proceeds of The Legends Ball, which has been held annually since 1980, will benefit the International Tennis Hall of Fame & Museum and support the mission of preserving the history of the game, honoring the legends and inspiring the future.

 

Share
Filed Under: Events, Front Page News, tennis news Tagged With: , , , , , ,

“On The Call” – Evert, Drysdale and McEnroe of ESPN Preview Wimbledon

On Wednesday, June 20, a media conference call previewing The Championships, Wimbledon was held with ESPN analysts Cliff Drysdale, Chris Evert and John McEnroe.  The action begins Monday, June 25, exclusive to ESPN platforms through to the Ladies’ and Gentlemen’s Finals on Saturday, July 7 and 8, respectively.

Here is the transcript of the call:

 

Q.  I wanted to ask about the men’s field and whether you see anybody having any chance of winning this title other than the three guys who have won 28 of the past 29 Grand Slam titles.  And also just wondering for a little perspective on that run by those three, and if that’s a good thing for the game, a bad thing for the game and its popularity.

JOHN McENROE:  Well, let me just jump in and say that it’s good for the game.  As far as the rivalries, I think any sport that’s a one‑on‑one sport needs that.  I think that’s what’s hurt our sport for a while, that we didn’t seem to have that, and with the Nadal‑Federer obviously and then Djokovic in the mix, to me has made it more interesting and in some ways more historic as we saw at the French.

 

As far as anyone else, Murray is obviously the other guy.  He would be the other guy that would have the next best chance.  It seems like there’s a little bit more distance.  It’s not as far as I think people think, but he has been unable to break through with these guys, and that just shows you how great they are.

 

The only other guys like an Isner, a Berdych or a Tsonga, I say it when I do a telecast, to see someone have to beat three of these four guys seems almost impossible.  It’s a string of events that would have to occur for anyone else besides one of those four guys.  If someone gets hurt, you don’t want that to happen, or someone gets upset, or someone let’s say like a Tsonga doesn’t have to play more than one or two of the guys at the most.  That would be the only scenario where someone could go all the way, otherwise at the moment it’s still going to be one of these guys.

 

CLIFF DRYSDALE:  I feel like we’re turning a corner here in tennis, and one of the big questions for me is whether the big servers, you mentioned them, like Isner, you have to had to Raonic and Kevin Anderson of South Africa, and whether we may be getting back to the era when big serves did dominate, the Sampras‑Ivanisevic final, for example.  And if one of those guys can upset the top three that you’re talking about, then that could open the draw up.  I’m just saying could open the draw up.  That for me is part of the excitement question here.

 

CHRIS EVERT:  I think if I may say, I think that it’s like one of the most exciting times in men’s tennis, because you have three men who are not only the greatest in their era, but I would put them in the top five in the greatest in the history of the game, and they all are breaking records right and left.  The French Open was one example.  Wimbledon is tricky.  I’ve always thought there was a little luck when it comes to winning a Grand Slam.  You’ve got to have a break.  And these three have been very healthy so far.  But you just never know.  If one of them, something happens to one of them, they’re sick or they’re hurt or they’re upset, like Cliff said, it really does open up the draw, and somebody like a Tsonga could slip through or an Andy Murray and have one big win and win the title.  But if that doesn’t happen, then one of the three definitely are going to win.

 

Q.  I wanted to switch over for a minute to the women’s side.  The last time we spoke before the French Open, everyone was very high on Serena, and she was kind of the big favorite, with people saying that Maria had elevated her game, too.  Can you talk about what you expect going into Wimbledon.  And what does Maria’s return to the top mean for the game and what do you think about Serena’s chances?

CHRIS EVERT:  First of all, I feel like Serena, she can’t be too happy with that first‑round loss at the French.  I think grass is so much more suited to her game and her style, and she’s so much more comfortable on the grass.  Yeah, I think knowing how competitive she is, she’s going to be full blast.  She has to definitely be one of the top ones, if not the top one, in my book.  But again, if you look at Australia, she’s lost to Makarova, then you look at the French, and her last two Grand Slams she hasn’t been very successful.  It’s a two‑week tournament.  So hopefully if she’s on top of her game, I don’t think anybody disputes the fact that she is the favorite to win Wimbledon because of her game.  But there’s that unknown factor again.  Maria on the other hand has to be coming into Wimbledon with that much more confidence.  Her serve has got to work on the grass, and it started to get better at the French.  The double faults were down and she started to, I think, free herself up and serve the way she wanted to serve.  I think she’s looking good.  Azarenka, kind of an unknown on grass.  I’m not 100 percent sure that she is 100 percent comfortable on the grass.  And Kvitova, the pressure, I think she lost first round in the warm‑up tournaments, so you kind of have to wonder how the pressure coming in as Wimbledon champion is going to affect her.

 

CLIFF DRYSDALE:  In my book Serena is a clear favorite.  I think she was the best player in women’s tennis going into the French championship.  So she loses a match on clay.  It’s not her best surface by any means.  You can name anybody including Sharapova, and you put them head to head, Serena is the clear favorite.  I still think she’s the best player in the business.  The confidence level for her I think will be just fine, having lost the first round.  I don’t think that’s a big issue for her.  I’d be very surprised if she doesn’t win. ‘

 

JOHN McENROE:  You know, basically I would have thought Serena would have won the first two already, so I’m sort of surprised at what’s happened.  What I would think, unless I’m seriously misreading something, the two that have been mentioned, hopefully they won’t be in the same half, but Serena and Maria to me definitely have distanced themselves.  If Maria has problems with her serve, that could be more of an issue because she’s not going to break as easily on grass as she was on clay.  Sort of ironic that for her, considering clay was always her most difficult surface, it actually worked for her because I think it took some of the pressure off her own serve because she was breaking so much, but it won’t be quite as easy on grass.  Her serve has gotten better, but it’s still not where she wants it to be.  So hopefully it’ll be a little bit better.

 

CLIFF DRYSDALE:  The toughest floater is going to be Kim Clijsters.  She’s done it before, comes out of nowhere, wins a Slam.  Just watch for her.

 

Q.  Just a quick follow‑up for John:  Do you think that anyone in the field believes they can beat one, two or all three of the top three?  And if you were asked to pick those three of the rest of the field, who would you take?

JOHN McENROE:  I’d pick Roanic, Isner and Tsonga if I was going to pick the three guys that are sort of ‑‑ not in left field, but would be the best bet to upend all those guys.  But I don’t know if anyone can do that, have that great a day three times in a row. Also, I find that as much as I’ve seen John advance and he’s a legit 10 in the world, and Roanic is certainly headed in the right direction, I would like them to alter ‑‑ to me if they’re going to beat those guys, they’ve got to play more of a Pete Sampras style where they unsettle the guys that are playing, and don’t get stuck in the type of rallies that these guys seem to be getting stuck in, especially ‑‑ grass would seem to be tailor made for that type of big shot tennis, going for broke, holding serve.  They don’t come in much.  I’m looking at these guys, Isner is 6’9″ and Roanic is like 6’5″, and these guys are in the baseline, it’s incredible.  I never thought in my wildest dreams I’d see guys serving big and staying back. So it’s a bit crazy.  But I think they could be even more dangerous if they altered the game a little bit.  Tsonga has done for of that, and Berdych got to the finals.  He’s dangerous.  He’s one of those big hitters.  He’s one of the guys that I would pick.

 

Q.  And if I could follow up for all three of you, a couple Americans heading in different directions, Donald Young has lost his last nine first‑round matches and Melanie Oudin just won a tournament.  Can you guys comment on those two?

JOHN McENROE:  I’ll comment real quick before these guys.  I’ve seen my brother working out with Melanie in New York, and I think the change of scenery obviously could do nothing but help her because of what ‑‑ I think people know sort of the history of what she was going through the last couple years, and obviously there was distractions and then obviously confidence loss among other things and conditioning.  It was nice to see I’m sure for my brother especially, because he’s put in a lot of time with her to try to get her back on track and see her win that tournament.  So that was nice.  I think her breakthrough was a couple years ago when she beat Jankovic and someone else at Wimbledon.   It’s a shame what’s happened to Donald Young, but that’s sort of like an old story, because I saw him when he was 10 years old.  Disappointing to see what’s happening, but it’s nice to see when the more obvious hard work pays off.

 

CHRIS EVERT:  I’ll just comment about Melanie.  When she was training with the USTA down in Florida I got to see a lot of her training down there.  One thing about Melanie is she never lost that look in her eyes, even when she was losing first round in $50,000 tournaments.  She was in that gym for hours, on the practice court for hours, and I’d watch her play matches and she was losing to a lot of girls in practice that she should have been beating.  But she just had that look in her eyes that she was ‑‑ that determination, and I’m so happy ‑‑ I think we’re all so happy for her because the work has paid off, and the perseverance has paid off.        She never lost it.  She never lost that look, and I think that really helped her get through the adversity that she went through.  And I agree with John about the ‑‑ John was talking about getting into a new environment and to a very positive environment I think has really helped her.

 

CLIFF DRYSDALE:  A very interesting thing to me is this keeping up with the Joneses factor.  With so many young players doing well at the French, Sloane Stephens, Christina McHale, Lepchenko.  I think that’s huge, too.  And if they can do it, I can do it, and I think Melanie has woken up.  I think mechanically and technically she is good.  Her problem was, as John said, mental.  So I think she’s in a good place.

 

Q.  For John, I was curious, it seems like Roger is ‑‑ well, not seems like, but he’s getting older, so I’m curious how much longer you think he can keep up winning majors and keep up the level of play that he’s become accustomed to.

JOHN McENROE:  Well, that’s a question we’d all like to know the answer to.  It’s going to have to play out.  I’m sort of picking him to win this year at Wimbledon, even though it looks like the gap has grown between the other two and him.  But to me Wimbledon is his best chance to win another major.  He seems to still want it as much as he’d already won.  His body is ‑‑ he’s a lot better athlete than he’s given credit for.  His movement has allowed him to remain incredibly healthy for the most part.  I think this is going to be his 52nd straight major.  He’s been to 32 straight quarters or better.  His record speaks for itself. But I think the fact that he wants it so bad still, he’s just got to find a way to get that ‑‑ sometimes he seems to sort of ‑‑ he could probably, people are pulling for him, use the crowd to his favor.  I’d be interested to see if he does any of that and alters any of that because he doesn’t show much on the court.  It seems like he’s losing out on something that could help him maybe against these other two guys if he had to play those guys.  I mean, not if, when. So I think he’s got a great chance this year.  I think that’s his best bet.  Obviously, I mean, everyone knows he’ll be 31.  He could play another three, four, five years.  His body has been pretty resilient.  But winning majors, that’s a short span now that you think he’d have a shot.  Certainly at Wimbledon he’d have a shot the next couple years to me.

 

CHRIS EVERT:  John, you’re talking about a guy coming along and playing serve and volley and play aggressive against the baseline.  I think this is his best surface.  He’s going to try to keep the rally short, and he’s going to try to serve and come in a lot against the Djokovices and the Nadals, and this surface suits him of all the Grand Slams better because I don’t think he has the patience to sit out there and hit groundstrokes all day.  Certainly didn’t at the French.

 

JOHN McENROE:  I hope not.  He comes in one out of ten points in Wimbledon.

 

CHRIS EVERT:  I think we’re going to see something different.  I don’t know, I think he has flair, he has finesse, he can drop shots, he can slice that backhand and come in, he might sneak in a couple times on serve.  He’s not prepared to ‑‑ at this stage of his career, he doesn’t want to stay back there, so he’s going to try to make an effort anyway to try to come in.  But it’ll be interesting.  I think between Wimbledon and the Olympics both being on grass, it would be great to see him win one of them.

 

CLIFF DRYSDALE:  31 isn’t that old anyway.  The 39‑year‑old Connors a semifinalist at U.S. Open.  Rosewall, 39, finalist at Wimbledon, and I don’t think things have changed that much.  He’s got years left in him.

 

CHRIS EVERT:  The great thing about Roger is he takes ‑‑ I think one of the reasons he has a lot of longevity, he doesn’t take his losses really, really hard.  I think he’s a pretty happy‑go‑lucky guy considering he’s such a competitor, and I think he can kind of let it go.  And then he can just go on to the next week. I think that just emotionally and mentally will keep him in the game even longer.  But I think in the last few Grand Slams my question has been he hasn’t closed.  He’s been up and he’s having trouble closing matches, so that’s got to change a little bit.

 

CLIFF DRYSDALE:  He won’t like it too much if he keeps losing.

 

Q.  I was wondering if you wouldn’t mind a specific about another young American and that’s Christina McHale, where you think she’s at, what you like about her game, if anything, and her chances as one of those future American stars in tennis?

JOHN McENROE:  You know, I hit with her on a handful of occasions, most recently probably a month or so before the French, and each time I’ve noticed a noticeable improvement in her game.  She’s someone that she listens well.  She’s been well coached.  She’s gotten herself in better and better shape.  She seems to have learned from her time on the tour.  She’s got a bigger game, like her forehand is bigger than people realize.  If she can do sort of more with her serve, that would be quite helpful, and develop more her own sense of identity.  I think she’s already going to get to like the top 20, but as far as if you’re going to talk about top 10 and higher than that, she’d have to develop something more like her own thing that would allow her to get in the heads of more opponents. But I think her progress from when I first saw her maybe three years ago, she’s really made some great progress.  So if she can even keep close to what she’s done, she’s really got a chance to move quite a ways higher up the rankings.

 

CHRIS EVERT:  Yeah, I think she’s the most solid of all the young American players, and obviously the best prospect that we have right now.  I think she’s gotten to where she is now, a lot of because mentally she just doesn’t give up, she just digs in.  She’s a great competitor, and she’s been very consistent.  And I agree with John as far as she’s still ‑‑ when you look at the top ten, you look how these women are so strong and big, and I think physically she has to develop a little bit more, get a little bigger, get a little stronger and maybe work on that backhand a little bit in the serve.  She’s a work in progress.  It takes longer for these girls to develop the all‑court game and to develop their strength.  It takes more years than, say, in my day.  And very often it takes somebody to be 22, 23 years old before they’re completely sort of at their peak physically, emotionally and mentally.  So she’s a work in progress.  But I think there’s an uphill swing with her right now.

 

Q.  This is for all of you or any of you, and I hope this doesn’t seem too tired of a question or tedious, but I really wanted to ask about grass.  Could you remind us, what are truly the skills and the smarts that are required to really excel on the grass?  And is it truly gentler on the body for a player?  And then finally, could you foresee a day where it’s just too retro or old school to be continued?  Will it live on as long as tennis lives on, or is it kind of a vestige of the past?

 

CLIFF DRYSDALE:  Let me fire away first on this one.  It’s a really good question and a really interesting one, because the game is evolving.  In the same way that the strings and the rackets and the tennis balls are evolving and changing, so has the grass court at Wimbledon.  It’s not the same as your daddy’s grass court.  When we played, and I think even in the early years of John’s career, and I know he’s going to address it, but when we played at the Australian on grass and Forest Hills, they were both terrible grass courts.  The ball hardly got up at all.

 

Wimbledon was always the best grass courts, but they were not what they are now.  They’re so much more like a hard ‑‑ the surface is much harder.  The ball bounces up, the bounces are good, the balls are heavier, so there’s been a balance of conditions.  Grass is here to stay.

 

I’ll just say one more thing:  To me, watching tennis on the grass court now is more fun than either the hard court or the clay court.

 

CHRIS EVERT:  I feel like I was in the wrong era.  I played against the serve and volleyer Martina when the grass was really fast.     I think that power is very important.  I think court coverage, moving is very important.  But I also think for a baseliner, for a ground stroker like myself or Steffi or Monica or anybody, I think you have to adapt and you have to make adjustments in your game.  No other surface do you have to except on grass.  You have to shorten your swing, you have to bend your knees and get down lower for the ball.  You have to make split‑second adjustments if that’s what it takes. And I think, therefore, you don’t see a lot of baseliners winning Wimbledon because a lot of them can’t make those adjustments, can’t adapt to them.  But I hope it’s around forever because Wimbledon is just the epitome, really, of tennis, and I hope as long as they keep the courts really well groomed, I think it’s around forever.

 

JOHN McENROE:  I think it will be.  I thought it was going to be gone in the ’80s because the serving just got so absurd, particularly by the time you got to Sampras and Becker.  But the change has been so much the other way, it’s unbelievable to watch guys in the baseline.  So it’s sort of thrown away the argument that there’s no rallies.  If anything, it’s too much like the other surfaces, which is incredible. But the subtleties of the game, I still think the ball will react in a different way, it’s going to go through the grass and hit a knife slice.  People don’t seem to get the nuances.  They play a similar way almost, and to me maybe that’s why Roger, if he made those subtle adjustments, could win.

 

In my day the reason I was taught the way I was taught was because three of the four Slams were on grass, and like Cliff said, the grasses were bad, so you had to have short back swings and take the ball in the air as much as possible.  Which you don’t have to do.  It allows the guys, big swingers like Nadal or Sharapova, they have those lasso‑like forehands, they can get away with it.  It’s totally different.  I guess the good news is all the guys that are good all around they can pretty much any surface now.

 

But it’ll be interesting to see what they do in the next ten years to sort of address some of the issues now with what’s going on, the changes that have taken place, if they hopefully will continue to try to work with things so they get the best out of all the players.

 

Q.  Chris, women’s tennis seems a little like golf now with a different winner in each major, not one sort of lead presence in contrast to the men’s game.  Do you think women’s tennis needs that presence, and is Sharapova able to be it for a while?

CHRIS EVERT:  First of all, I think it’s at a better place than it was this time last year because I remember we were all making predictions last year at Wimbledon, and we were choosing one out of like eight women.  Any one of eight women could have won Wimbledon.  It was so wide open. And I think the gap has closed a little bit, and when I took at the top now, I see Maria and I see Serena and I see Azarenka, and only Kvitova because it’s a grass court, but I see the gap closing.  Azarenka the first four months of the year was very dominant, and Serena on the clay court, the warm‑up started to really come into her own, and of course Maria. I think it’s coming to the point where it’s starting to form some rivalries, and it might take another year to get to that point, but I think tennis is more interesting when you do have rivalries, and you do have contrasting players, and you do have different sets of fans for different players.  I just think it’s more interesting.  It’s not there yet, but I think it’s getting to that point.

 

I think it is great that Maria won the French and that it really sort of solidified ‑‑ I know she’s so young, it’s hard to believe she’s only 25.  It seems like she’s been around for so much longer.  But it really has put a stamp on her career by winning that fourth one, and puts her in a very exclusive club of Wimbledon. Good for her, and good for women’s tennis.

 

Q.  John, you talked a little bit about Andy Murray earlier, and he’s got two shots at Wimbledon this summer, given the Olympics coming after the championships.  I was just curious, what do you think his chances are right now given the strength of the men’s field like you talked about, his back problems recently, his first‑round exit at Queen’s?

JOHN McENROE:  Well, it’s obviously very difficult to say.  He’s focusing on the majors.  That’s why he hired Lendl.  I think he’s tougher to beat in the longer matches.  He’s gotten himself in that type of condition that he can deal with almost anyone except these guys, and he played for five hours with Djokovic in Australia.  He’s been in three finals.  It’s hard to tell how much it’s gotten in his head, how discouraged he is, how close he really thinks he is, how big the gap is.  It might not be as big as it appears to be.  If he’s willing to sort of somehow figure out a way to have the crowd help him.  These are the type of things we won’t be able to tell until we get out there and see it.  But he’s only going to have to play two of the guys, for starters, and it’s possible that one of them may be upset.  That’s not inconceivable, so that he’d have an easier road potentially.

 

But it seems like as each event goes by, the pressure is amped up, and it seems less likely for it to happen because he’s still the same age as Djokovic, and he’s only a year younger than Nadal.  I don’t know how well he’s meshing with Lendl as far as the coaching situation, if this is something that takes time or it’s not working out as well.  It’s hard to say what’s going on.  Obviously the results haven’t been that great so far.  But this is where ‑‑ let’s face it.  The French was always a long shot for him.  That’s the toughest one for him out of all of them, and Wimbledon is where he’s going to, by far, get the most support.  It seems this will be the real test to see if he’s able to bridge the gap at all.

 

Q.  Is there somebody that they can bring in to help Andy cope with the pressure, if that’s what it is?

JOHN McENROE:  Well, I think it’s a mental thing.  It’s not like how to play Wimbledon.  I think he knows how to play on the grass as well or better than Lendl.  Chrissy said she played when the grass is not as good.  With this court Lendl wouldn’t have had to serve and volley, and he decided he had to.  I think Murray stays back too much personally, doesn’t use the grass to his advantage.  But I don’t think they need to bring someone else in.  I don’t see that working at all.

 

CHRIS EVERT:  Can I just say one thing as far as bringing somebody else in?  Do you think you think it’s like when Azarenka brought in Mauresmo at the French Open, and that didn’t work.  You’ve got to rely on yourself.  You can’t rely on other people to help you win.  It’s got to be inside you.

 

JOHN McENROE:  The irony is she had just won her first major, and she was already bringing someone else in, so that seemed like bad timing.

 

Q.  This is for everybody, about the Nalbandian incident, just curious your thoughts about that, and could it affect him at Wimbledon in terms of the crowd reaction, British tabloids?

JOHN McENROE:  Well, I would assume that it could definitely affect him, and it’s hard to say exactly what’s going to happen.  It’s not like he’s going to be Centre Court in the first round.  That seems to be ‑‑ I think everyone agrees that that wasn’t done on purpose.  I think anyone who saw it, obviously he was upset with himself.  He wasn’t even upset with the linesman as far as I saw.  He just missed a ball and was pissed at himself, and then he reacted and he paid a pretty stiff price for it, because I don’t think when he kicked that wood that he expected the wood to splinter or break, and then hit the guy in the shin and then the guy suddenly have what ‑‑ I don’t think it’s fake blood, I think it’s real blood.  And then sort of their backs were against the wall as to what to do.  I don’t even know if it could have been out anyway, but if the linesman had said he’s okay and said, I don’t want him to be defaulted, maybe that would have allowed the match to continue.  I’m not even sure if that’s possible.  But obviously Queen’s did not have the field that it had in the past at the tournament.  Murray had lost early, a lot of guys had lost early.  It looked like the weather was dicey as usual, and finally they had a good crowd it looked like for the final, and that was a bummer way to end the match.

 

CLIFF DRYSDALE:  I don’t think it’s going to hurt him at Wimbledon.  I think the crowd is going to take a negative position, obviously.  I agree with pretty much everything that you said, John, I just don’t think it’s going to affect him too much.  Tennis players are out there on their own.  It’s one‑on‑one, and they’ve had to deal with these issues before.  I wouldn’t breathe any easier if you get Nalbandian at Wimbledon.

 

CHRIS EVERT:  Yeah, I think the first match the crowd might be rough on him a little bit, but I think if he can get through the first match, people will just get on to Wimbledon and forget about the week before.

 

CLIFF DRYSDALE:  Can I just go back quickly to Andy Murray?  We talked about coaches and we talked about mentality.  There’s another thing that it takes to win matches, and that’s the technical side of it, and I think that is where he’s lacking below the top three.  I think his forehand has got to be worked on.  Just wanted to throw that in.

 

Q.  I would just like to ask if the rest of the world has caught up with the Bryan brothers.  And if you can also see if you can give me an idea of the development of Ryan Harrison.

JOHN McENROE:  I’m not quite sure what you mean about the world catching up with the Bryan brothers.  You mean what exactly?  Help me out there.

 

Q.  Well, it’s been a while since they’ve ‑‑ Nestor and Mirnyi win the French Open.  They’ve been losing some matches that you would normally think they would win, that’s all.

JOHN McENROE:  Oh, okay.  You know, there’s sort of a bit of the carousel.  The only constant has been the Bryan brothers, otherwise the Nestors and the Mirnyi‑type guys, they’ve been sort of trying to find combinations that work maybe good enough to deal with the Bryans.  There’s about ten guys, six or eight of which keep switching teams and trying to make a run.  Perhaps it’s to see if they can deal with the Bryans, who have been pretty consistent.  It’s pretty amazing how well they get along, the twins, and it’s a cool story.

 

Doubles players come in ‑‑ I believe Nestor is 39 and Max is 35 and I believe the Bryans are 34.  Doubles you can go on much later.  There’s not a lot of guys taking on ‑‑ the top‑ranked singles players play an occasional event, but don’t play it that seriously.  So doubles, to me, continues to sort of be on life support, but there’s a handful of guys that sort of keep it ‑‑ the Bryans are doing their very best to keep it going, and there’s a handful of other guys that make a great living off it.  It’s sad because doubles meant something to me, and so did Davis Cup, which is another thing that seems to be on life support.

 

As far as Ryan Harrison, again, he’s made some very good progress, he’s very serious about his professionalism, and he’s made it to where I think he’s going to get straight in the Olympics.  Again, he’s got to find his own identity, his own thing that sort of separates him.  He’s not just a guy out there playing.  He’s already a very good player, but if he wants to make a real breakthrough and get higher than the top 20, 25, which I think he’ll get to at some point, in order to get to the top ten he’s going to develop his own thing, something that distinguishes him, and I haven’t seen that yet.

 

CLIFF DRYSDALE:  I would still take the Bryan brothers over any other team on a consistent basis, notwithstanding their age.  As for Ryan Harrison, I feel better about his chances now than I did when I first saw him.  I thought that he was a little slow.  But he speeded up, he’s really dedicated.  He’s got a great, outgoing Andy Roddick‑type personality, so I think he’s going to continue to get better and better.  I have high hopes for him.

 

CHRIS EVERT:  Yeah, I think with these young kids, so much is about experience, and just being in that situation where you’re on Centre Court or you’re on a show court or you’re playing a top player.  These are all still new experiences.  You’ve got to know through experience, also, what shots ‑‑ like John was saying, you’ve got to know your own style of play.  You’ve got to know what shots you can fall back on, what shots you can go for under pressure, and this doesn’t happen when you’re 18, 19.  This happens after playing years on the tour.  Like I said, they’re all a work in progress right now.

 

Q.  Cliff, this is for you:  When you called the first tennis match on ESPN back in 1979, could you ever have imagined a time when ESPN might be televising the entire Wimbledon tournament?

CLIFF DRYSDALE:  In those days, people wondered whether you could take 24‑hour sports on television and what a crazy idea it was.  There were those who thought it wasn’t going to last, and that it was going to be the broadcast networks forever.  In these years, since the beginning of ESPN, obviously a lot has changed.

 

And could I have imagined it?  I really couldn’t.  I’m just not that smart enough to be able to figure out how quickly things are changing, period, in this world, and that was one of them.  And it became what it is now, a behemoth.

 

Q.  This is for John primarily, but if Cliff and Chris could also respond, that would be great:  John, you were involved in two of the greatest matches in the ’80 final and you commentated on the Federer‑Nadal 2008 final.  When you think of those two matches, what’s the first thing that comes to mind?  And why did those matches resonate with tennis fans the way an Ali‑Frazier match resonates with fight fans?

JOHN McENROE:  Well, that’s a good question.  The first thing that come to mind is it was a tiebreak obviously with Borg.  That’s when something unbelievable seemed to be happening.  And then when I won it I thought okay, finally I’m going to get this thing done, and I didn’t.  It was rather spectacular and certainly hopefully some other people felt that way.  I don’t know if I could pick one thing.  That last serve seemed to be in the dark.  Where I was sitting it seemed to be completely dark, and people were taking pictures of Nadal‑Federer, which with the rain delays and the way it all panned out, and the way it ended, it couldn’t have gone another point or two was unbelievable.  It was a privilege to be a part of in a way.  It is sort of like it’s amazing when you feel like you’re part of history in a sense.  That’s makes me feel very proud.

 

CHRIS EVERT:  You know what’s interesting is when they replay John and Björn’s tiebreak so many times, and at one point I didn’t even know who won the match.  Nobody really cares about who won the match because that tiebreak is so dominant.  That’s what everybody remembers about that match.  It’s not who won it.

 

JOHN McENROE:  I remember who won it.

 

CHRIS EVERT:  I know you do, John.  But most people don’t know that you lost the match because everybody probably assumes that you won it.  But it was such a great ‑‑ I love it when they replay it.

 

CLIFF DRYSDALE:  From my perspective, what I was interested in is Djokovic, you talk about the great matches, he’s played so many great and close matches in the last year, and he’s escaped some traps, like Federer used to do and may not be doing now, that I just wonder how much longer it can last for him.  It sort of translates to what Djokovic is faced with now, and I think that may be one of his problems between now and the end of the US Open.

 

Q.  John, my question is just past Wimbledon, you’re going to be leaving the booth to come back onto the courts for World Team Tennis.  I want to know what the appeal is for you in terms of playing World Team Tennis and what the benefit is for players like Ryan Harrison who are on the tour to switch formats and join up like that?

JOHN McENROE:  Well, the appeal for me is that it’s very short.  And then the other appeal is that the New York team plays at my club, so that helps.  And also, I like to play as a team.  I actually enjoyed team sports as a kid, so I sort of like the idea of what the concept is.  But I’m not sure what the upside is for a guy like Ryan is other than paying respect to sort of the people that sort of trailblazed, particularly Billie Jean obviously, it’s her baby that she’s been working out for 35 years.  And I think really the respect that the players have for her is really the overwhelming reason why people think to play it.  It’s also sort of a nice way to not have the pressure of a tournament.  You go out and you’re playing a competitive match, but it’s not something that counts on your record per se, and you get to go somewhere and be part of a team for a few days.  I only play a couple of matches out of the total amount, so that suits me, and I can come in and just get into it for a few matches, and then go my merry way.

 

Q.  John, your approach to developing tennis appears to be working.  How has the academy found its niche so fast?  And what do you think will be accomplished with the Open tryout you’re having on the 21st?

JOHN McENROE:  Well, the Open tryout is hopefully for people to realize that we’re in this for the long haul and that we’re looking for talent and athletes and that we’re trying to provide opportunity for people to can’t afford it.  Also we want to see the best kids.  I like to work with the best kids around, so in a nutshell that’s where I’m at. As far as expanding, the club that I work for has like 14 clubs.  The idea is that I’m almost predominantly in one place, but to make it easier for some people they may have to travel fairly long distances, so that we have sort of a semi orbit or triangle where people can go to one or two different places, and a lot of the same pros will be there at the same time.  So that’s the idea behind it, and hopefully it will work and allow more people to be part of our program.

 

Q.  Just very quickly, you were saying that with Andy it’s a mental thing.  Just explain what you mean about that in terms of the way he deals with the pressure.  What do you mean by it sort of could be a mental thing with him?

JOHN McENROE:  Well, I think that was Cliff that said that, but obviously the mental thing is a big part of it.  Belief and will and overcoming things, whether or not ‑‑ who knows what’s ‑‑ I don’t know what’s going on with his back.  I know that when I had stages where I could have sworn I had back problems and I started second‑guessing myself, and then wondering how mental it was because obviously that affects your body at times.            It’s very difficult to say exactly.  Only he knows, and he may not even know.  It could be a combination of a whole lot of things because he might be frustrated that he’s not doing as good a job as these other guys, and it gets in your head.  There’s all types of scenarios that make it difficult to say exactly what’s going on, and there’s certain issues as far as his playing.  I don’t know.  I don’t know if he knows.

 

Q.  It could be stress and pressure that ‑‑

JOHN McENROE:  Well, stress and pressure play a part in it, there’s no doubt about it.  Stress and pressure, everyone feels that.  I think Cliff made a good point because he talked about how many close matches can you play before that starts to wear on you?  Djokovic has pulled the rabbit out of the hat in some matches, but to put yourself under that stress takes its toll.

 

Q.  You know Tim Henman very well.  Do you think the crowd are less forgiving of Andy than they are of Tim?  With Tim do you think the crowd are a lot better towards him than they are towards Andy?

JOHN McENROE:  No, I think it’s pretty similar.  You know better than I do.  I don’t know if there’s anything with whatever.  You tell me.

 

Q.  I just thought the Scottish thing sometimes people don’t get behind him.

JOHN McENROE:  You know that better than I do.  I’m not really sure.  I don’t see a big difference.

 

CHRIS EVERT:  No, there’s no difference.  The British want to root for somebody.  Can I say something about Andy Murray?  I just think we forget that Andy Murray, he’s beaten all of these guys.  He’s beaten Federer and he’s beaten Djokovic and Nadal.  He knows how to beat them, but can he put together two matches like that in a row?  He’s up against three of the greatest players of all time.  I mean, let’s just cut him some slack, and hopefully he’ll get a little more pumped up since it is England, and I think the English love to have somebody to cheer for, and they’re going to cheer for him.  Hopefully that’ll maybe elevate his game a little bit.

 

Q.  Just a couple of quick ones if I may.  Cliff, first of all, you said you were very critical of Andy’s forehand and seemed to suggest that may be a technical problem in his game, which is stopping him.  Just want you to elaborate on that.  And also, I think you’re coming up for 50 years in terms of visiting Wimbledon.  Just what changes have you seen in it over the years?  You maybe touched on some of that.  And for Chris, you spoke with Petra Kvitova and maybe she’s feeling the pressure of being Wimbledon champion.  Could you elaborate on that for us?

CLIFF DRYSDALE:  I’ve watched very carefully, I’m very interested in the technical side of things.  It’s very hard to find any chinks in the armor of the top three players. With Andy on the forehand side in my opinion, he meets the ball a little bit, sort of like Stefan Edberg used to do, and he doesn’t have the same margin for error of the forehand side that any of the other three have.  And that to me, you need three things:  You’ve got to have fitness, which he has absolutely, you’ve got to have a very strong mentality, which I think he has, but the one thing that I think is lacking and the one thing that keeps him from beating the top three or going higher than where he is now is technical on the forehand side.

 

As for the changes at Wimbledon, they’re almost unrecognizable.  The game that is played now is unrecognizable from the game that we played.  We had slice forehands.  The only reason to play a shot was to try to get into the net and then to finish the point off at the net.  That was what it was all about on three of the four Grand Slams.  As you can see now, it is a completely different game.  The balls have changed, the court surface as we said earlier, that’s different, the strings have changed.  It’s a very different game.  I don’t think it’s any worse to watch than it was, it’s just different.

CHRIS EVERT:  Petra, this is a different year for her, and last year she won Wimbledon.  Number one, she had nothing to do, she felt no pressure, she wasn’t on the radar.  And number two, I felt like she played the match of her life against Sharapova.  This year she hasn’t won a lot of matches coming into this.  She can’t be confident because in the warm‑up tournament she lost first round.  It’s going to be more of a struggle for her to win it this year. Does she have the game to win it?  Yes, but everything is going to have to be working.  Her serve, she’s going to have to move as well as she did last year, and I haven’t seen that since.  I haven’t seen her move as well since last Wimbledon.  I think it’s going to be a bit of a struggle for her.  She wouldn’t be one of my top two favorites to win the title.

 

Q.  Chris, did you see Caroline Wozniacki against McHale yesterday?  What do you think of her situation right now?  And what should she, in your opinion, do to get back on track?

CHRIS EVERT:  Yeah, I actually did not see her yesterday play.  But I have observed her in every other tournament.  Caroline, you know, I think that one big problem with Caroline is her court positioning.  I’ve always been critical of this.  I think she stands too far back.  I think she waits for the ball to come to her.  I think she’s got that big swing, and I think she needs to really move in and take the ball on the rise a lot more, and be more aggressive with her groundstrokes.  I sense that her serve she’s starting to get a little more zip on her first serve, which she’s going to need to compete or be back in the top four.  Hopefully her new coach will be able to cite these things.  But I would hope that she’s working on being more aggressive and not just happy with the fact that she was ranked No. 1, and it’ll happen for her and she will win a Grand Slam.  She’s got to make some changes.  I don’t know how you feel, Cliff, but that hasn’t been evident to me yet.

 

CLIFF DRYSDALE:  I agree with everything that you’ve said, and in a way she benefitted from a stagnant women’s game to become world’s No. 1.  Now she has got to do technically the things that you’re saying that she has to do to get back to No. 1 or just to stay alive in the top five.

 

CHRIS EVERT:  Yeah, not only change her court positioning and move it and hit on the rise but also even speed up the racquet head.  She kind of guides the ball sometimes, and that would have been good enough for ten years ago, but it’s not good enough for this.  The women are playing so much better now than they were this time last year.

 

Q.  One more question on a specific player:  Mardy Fish has had some serious health issues, and he’s slated to be coming back at Wimbledon.  Do you think he has the capability to be in the conversation as one of the top men’s players, or do you think even John Isner has more potential in the long run than Mardy Fish?

CLIFF DRYSDALE:  In my view John Isner has got a lot more potential than Mardy, regardless of Mardy’s health issues.  He had a terrific year last year, Mardy, but he’s struggling with this health thing that you mentioned, and he hasn’t played.  So his confidence quotient is way down.  So I’m not expecting much from Mardy, to be honest.

 

On the other hand, I’m very high on John Isner because he’s got the kind of game that can really work on grass, and for me the big question is whether the big servers, as I said earlier, do we go back to the era of Sampras and Ivanisevic or at least get closer to it?  I don’t think we’ll ever get to the point where the servers can dominate like they did in the Sampras era.  But if we can get closer to it, John Isner and Raonic and maybe Kevin Anderson from South Africa, all huge servers, are the guys that can benefit from that sort of new game.

 

CHRIS EVERT:  I think John Isner is going to be kind of scary to watch him serve on grass.  I mean, that ball is going to come through pretty fast, and that’ll be something that I’m really looking forward to seeing.  I think his downfall has always been the return serve, but he knows it.  He’s aware of it, and he’s trying to work on being more aggressive on that return.             Gosh, if he could just get a better return of serve and be more confident, just think how lethal he would be on the court.

 

As far as Mardy, I think Mardy had such a great resurgence, like a resurrection last summer, he was playing so well, he lost the weight, he was confident, and he had a really great five or six months, and now with the illness it’s going to be a little bit of an uphill battle for him to get back to that place again.

 

CLIFF DRYSDALE:  Just one more word on Isner:  If I’m a player at Wimbledon this year and I’m looking at the draw, and you said would you rather play Berdych, Del Potro or Tsonga?  I want to stay away from John Isner, I think he’s a really dangerous player on grass.

 

Q.  My question is directed for Chris:  Regarding player development, can you talk a little bit about the state of player development in the U.S. these days?  Do you think the USTA is kind of in the right place, or do you think more academies kind of like yours and John McEnroe’s are needed?

CHRIS EVERT:  I think they all should work together.  I don’t like the division, if there is any division.  Patrick and I, we talked all the time about the girls from my academy and the girls from the USTA academy, and the beauty of being down in Boca is they are at my academy.  The USTA are on our property, and they’ve rented the property.  Our girls play matches every afternoon, and it’s wonderful to see Melanie and Coco and all the girls that are down there playing matches with ‑‑ there’s Jamie down there, playing matches with a Tracy or playing matches with a Lauren Davis.  We’re all mixing and we’re all supportive of one another.  I think everybody should work together, and nobody should sort of have a division there.

 

But I always said, we missed a generation after the Williams sisters, but there are a lot of girls from like 16 to 21 right now, there’s a good stable of women, I’m not as educated on the boys’ side, but I know on the girls’ side there’s a good stable.  They keep playing one another, practicing, playing matches, playing on the clay, that the cream is going to rise to the top, and some really hopefully top 10, top 20 players are going to emerge from that group right now.

 

I think the USTA is really doing a good job, and they’ve really kind of revved up the New York ‑‑ as far as at the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center.  I think they also have a great program up there.  The USTA is working up there with Patrick, and the more programs the better as far as I’m concerned.

Tennis Panorama News participates in many tennis media conference calls. “On The Call” serves to give readers an inside view of tennis news.

ESPN Wimbledon Coverage Schedule

Share
Filed Under: Features, Front Page News, news conference, On The Call, tennis news, tournament coverage, tournaments Tagged With: , , , ,

Evert, Graf, Navratilova and Late Wheelchair Star Randy Snow to be Part of Charitable Initiative “Avenue of Aces” at US Open

 

USTA Serves, the National Charitable Foundation of the United States Tennis Association, announced on Tuesday that it will complement its donor-supported Avenue of Aces by adding new “neighborhoods” honoring US Open singles champions Chris Evert, Martina Navratilova, Stefanie Graf, and the late wheelchair tennis pioneer Randy Snow. They join tennis legends Andre Agassi, Pete Sampras, Ivan Lendl, John McEnroe and Billie Jean King in lending their names to the Avenue of Aces charitable initiative, which allows the public to order their own personalized pavers.

 

The Avenue of Aces provides an opportunity for supporters of USTA Serves to create a lasting legacy by ordering personalized pavers on the grounds of the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center—the home of the US Open. Since its inception in 2005, the Avenue of Aces initiative has raised more than $1.5 million to support programs that benefit people with disabilities and children in underserved communities with opportunities to play tennis, fight obesity, improve academics, and apply for college scholarships.

 

“USTA Serves is honored to have the support of these great champions to help make a difference in the lives of America’s youth,” said Mary Carillo, President, USTA Serves. “Through the Avenue of Aces Neighborhood initiative, USTA Serves will be able to expand tennis and educational opportunities in underserved communities across the nation.”

 

USTA Serves has granted more than $10 million to fund 226 programs in 43 states, including $600,000 to adaptive tennis programs for people with special needs. In addition, USTA Serves has awarded more than $4 million in college scholarships and player incentive awards to more than 770 middle school students and high school seniors. To date, USTA Serves has awarded more than $14 million in grants and scholarships to people and programs throughout the country in order to provide the underserved youth with greater opportunities to realize success.

 

“I’m honored to have a neighborhood on the Avenue of Aces, to be a part of US Open history and to be moving in with other champions,” said Navratilova. “I support USTA Serves’ efforts to use the powerful combination of tennis and education to make our youth healthy, fit and academically strong.”

 

Those wishing to order a paver in the neighborhood of their favorite champion may do so by visiting www.ustaserves.com/paver or by calling (914) 696-7223.

 

Share
Filed Under: Events, tennis news Tagged With: , , , , ,

Jamie Reynolds of ESPN on Approach Shots

Jamie Reynolds (Photo by Rich Arden/ESPN)

Tennis Panorama News had the unique opportunity to visit the ESPN broadcast compound  and spend time in the control room in Melbourne during coverage of the Australian Open back in January. Senior Vice President of Event Production for ESPN Jamie Reynolds took time out from his extremely hectic schedule to speak to us about the logistics, technologies, philosophy and personalities of ESPN’s Australian Open coverage.

Karen Pestaina for Tennis Panorama News: How are the logistics of planning different for the Australian Open versus the other slams?

Jamie Reynolds: The way that we approach the Australian Open is similar in the way we do all four majors. And ESPN is unique in the aspect that we literally take apart our entire operation, our entire family, our entire circus and we take it three continents and an island.

We go to Australia and then go on to Paris, we then go up to the UK for Wimbledon and them back down to New York at the end of the summer. The nine month rip is pretty aggressive. So we probably pick up 115 people, and literally land on these hotspots for these events, move them in for three weeks. And I think we are probably the largest broadcaster who does all four majors at that level of commitment or the magnitude of the production assets that we bring. So it’s pretty challenging.

The biggest thing, the hardest thing for us, relative to the Australian Open, candidly is that we are upside down on the time zone to our audience and the fact that we don’t start until 9pm and we run the overnight hours, that’s great, but when we are trying to grow the sport, it’s a little challenging. How do you get people to stay up all night long or want to get invested, either TIVO, record, DVR the matches, because they are that much of a tennis fanatic to take advantage of what we are doing versus what they getting immediately either texting, news reports, Morning wheel of the news, they can get all that social currency to get up to steam.

So our challenge really, for this particular event is probably more editorial that logistic.

 

TPN: What is the biggest technological challenge in covering the Australian Open?

JR: This event is technically, is one of the easier events for us to handle technically. We’ve got a partnership going with Channel 7 Australia, who is also the host broadcaster. So ESPN comes in and effectively we are a world feed embellisher. We put our own character, our own personality, our own voices, graphics, music. Pick the asset that can actually tailor the world feed presentation to look and feel like a standard ESPN product.

So perhaps our biggest challenge is what if we don’t necessarily agree with you on covering a match? Or perhaps the isolation plan for Tomic or for Federer or for Roddick or for Rafa perhaps. That assignment of cameras may not be perhaps the level or the rate or philosophy that we might bring to a match. So how do we cover that chasm?

Technology wise we continue to push the envelope by bringing assets like the Spidercam, the aerial system that you see out on Rod Laver, that’s a device that we on ESPN brought to the tennis world and introduced at the majors at the US Open three years ago, convinced Tennis Australia, Channel 7 that it might enhance their coverage, convinced all the parties to come together and bring it down and fly through Rod Laver.

This year we’ve been very aggressive in trying to help Channel 7 understand how that could be an asset to enhance the coverage package. I think that everyday we chip away at it and get a little bit bolder with its flight pattern and we kind of rely on it a little bit more. I think that it enhances the value of its coverage.

 

TPN: Now that we are down to one American left in the singles draw, what are your angles going to be?

JR: Without the Americans doing well for the first time in the open era and not get to the round of 16, that’s challenging for us. Because we’ve got a lot of personalities and lot of what we do look at from the access to a lot of these players, what the interest is back home. Our particular productions have migrated to a new way of thinking. Specifically this is truly an international event with so many great personalities form around the globe, and because we do reach a lot of countries with ESPN, we think a little bit broader in how we are actually in going after a Hewitt story, a Roger or a Rafa or a Raonic or Tomic and any of the ladies as well.

That our goal now is to make that as personable, as desirable, in terms of wanting to understand the back story, getting our audience invested inn them, just trying to figure out the best way to convey that to our audience so they don’t mind that there are no Americans. We don’t have to put the red, white and blue all the time but there’s really great tennis out there that is fun.

 

TPN: Any new technology being implemented at this year’s Australian Open.

JR: The Australian mindset is very unique. They are gregarious fun loving good folks down here. They tend to be incredibly open-minded in terms of progressive introductions of new ideas to help convey the event and one of the initiatives they’ve helped us achieve is what we call our behind-the-scenes franchise. And that behind-the-scenes franchise as effectively as I describe to our teams is this: “Take behind the velvet ropes. Give me discovery and access. Take me places I couldn’t get to if I had a ticket or if I had the ability to watch every hour of what ESPN puts out, I need to feel like I actually in the event and going somewhere where no one else can go.”

And with that kind of mindset and philosophy with Tennis Australia, “where can you give us access to?” Well we can go to the workout room, we can go to the locker room, we can go to the hallways, the waiting rooms for the players, the player lounges. We can go to the car park area, where a lot of them just go and out their headsets on and just get into a zone and just kind of shut the world out to deconstruct their match. They’re very open-minded, progressive in terms of allowing that access. With that comes the ability to kind of shape the way we convey this event as opposed to just a rectangle on a screen, two players back and forth, three-hit rally or a 17-hit rally. It’s a little sexier, a little bit more valuable, more attractive presentation. I actually feel like I’m part of it, a part of the community, behind the velvet ropes and going somewhere where I couldn’t even go if I were on site.

 

TPN: What would surprise tennis fans about being behind the scenes?

JR: There’s an incredible amount of camaraderie and I think that what doesn’t convey that whether it’s the ATP or the WTA, these athletes and personalities do travel the circuit week after week and what you actually see behind-the-scenes is the feeling of family amongst the players themselves. As combative or as aggressive as they can be with each other out on a court there is sincere appreciation, chemistry, commitment to one another, whether they are having a good year or a poor year. There’s respect but there is a dynamic that these athletes share with each other. It’s not as adversarial as it might convey over an 11-hour show window where we are just showing guys beating back and forth with each other.

 

TPN: What is a typical day for you and the talent?

JR: This is probably the most challenging because of the sheer number of hours that we televise. When we say first ball to final ball, it is a very solid commitment to coverage of the most important matches from front end to back end. That really requires commitment of literally hours per day. So when you look at the first ball starting at 11am and often times ending like New York ending after Midnight, if not later, keeping people motivated through that 14-day stand is challenging. And with a roster of  personalities, our talent roster, keep them enthusiastic, keeping them invested and focused on being “on” for that 10 hours a day waiting for a match, getting ready for one that is coming up tonight,  and you really gotta go through your head for 2 hours and come back with the same enthusiasm, that’s challenging. You are asking a lot of people.

So what happens behind the scenes to help that? It’s the sense of community, family and respect for each other we all try to create. This isn’t just a group of specialists, assassins coming into do a single job. We’ve got to keep everybody working with the chemistry and taking advantage of that. So we’ll rotate teams. You might see Chris Evert working with Pam Shriver today or you will see Patrick McEnroe and Darren (Cahill) or Patrick and Chris Fowler so we can actually keep them involved with each other because they don’t have to always rule out “ Oh God I’m just sitting with my partner for this match and I’m doing every single match him for the next 14 days.” It changes up the dinner table a little bit.

 

TPN: Who are the practical jokers behind the scenes?

JR: I think that those in the tennis community and those of us who are running the sport know what kind of personality a Brad Gilbert brings. And we know, we look loving and fondly at Cliff Drysdale. He’s the godfather of our team, the elder statesman. As a perspective, he is the longest running talent on ESPN, bar none. He’s been with us since 1979, so we look at that history, having done Davis Cup that year, he is the man who is the franchise longer than anyone.

And then you look at Darren Cahill. Cahill with the Aussie wit, terrific personality. Patrick McEnroe, that’s pretty good – an acerbic wit. And McEnroe has a pretty good timbre to work with. Look at the gals – Mary Joe (Fernandez) and Pammy (Shriver) are well respected. Pammy can be polarizing, she’s got a great personality, she will go off on a flyer and make us all laugh and look at things a way many of us would never think about. She connects the dots on a lot of different stories and a lot of personalities. So that’s kind of like a really valuable spark. It’s a good roster.

Follow ESPN’s tennis coverage on ESPN2, ESPN3.com, on twitter @ESPNTennis and @ESPN10S and online on their tennis home page.

Share
Filed Under: Approach Shots, Features, Front Page News, interviews, tennis news, tournament coverage, tournaments Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

Tennis News Net Notes Podcast for February 28, 2012

A brief look at the news headlines of the day in the tennis world.

Tennis News Net Notes Podcast for February 28, 2012 [ 2:09 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download
Share
Filed Under: Front Page News, Podcasts, tennis news Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
«Older Posts