Forty Deuce

Ponder This: Dance With The One That Brought You?

Pete Bodo stole my thunder on this in his Fed Cup post but it's something I've been thinking about since Sunday.

What are people's thoughts on the Williamses playing the Fed Cup final against Italy?  Obviously we want to field the best team possible and that *really* is potentially the best team possible (even on clay).  So of course as a U.S. Fed Cup fan, you kind of have to hope they play.

Then again, wouldn't it just defy the script?  I mean, the U.S. team that Captain MJ has cobbled together has been nothing short of heartwarming and extraordinary.  These ladies could justifiably watch Miracle and Hoosiers before their matches and there would be no sense of irony.  But if the Williamses play it flips the script, and now the U.S. plays with expectation and pressure.  And how would the current Fed Cup team feel about being pushed out of the final?

There's no right or wrong answer.  I think I side with really wanting the Williamses to be there.  I doubt they will be though.  And that's not going to break my heart either.

Ponder This: Toughest Slam To Watch?

So I get made fun of a lot for how much tennis I watch.  I'm always dragging in the mornings because invariably I've been up until at least 3am watching some tournament taking place somewhere on the other side of the world.  But when it comes to Slams it's even worse because you really don't want to miss anything and there's like 8745234 matches going on at once, with the early rounds occupying 14 hours of the day.

So question:  What's is the toughest Slam to watch? 

You would think for me it would be the Australian Open, but I actually find that super easy to watch because it doesn't really take place during work hours.  I can get a good 6 hours of work uninterrupted by any concerns about tennis.  Plus I'm a night owl so I can stay up to watch matches and I love coming home from work and being able to watch 6-8 hours of tennis immediately.

The US Open is annoying because it takes place during my work day.  And, since I'm a night owl, it bugs me that the tennis is over by 10pm my time.  That's like, FIVE HOURS of live tennis I'm not getting during my prime tv watching time!

For me the toughest Slams to track are probably Wimbledon and RG.  I'm not a morning person, so rolling out of bed at 4 or 5am is not good times for me.  And play is finished by the time I get home from work, which means I don't get to watch that much live tennis.  Factor in the rain delays and it's just really hard to know who's playing where and when at any given moment.  That said, Wimbledon does have the best livestream service, so that's a check in their favor.

Thoughts?

Ponder This: Tennis Off-Season

Pete's got an interesting post at ESPN.com summarizing his thoughts on why players and fans shouldn't complain about the short tennis off-season:

But let's keep a few things about tennis in perspective. First, it's an individual sport; tennis players are, at least in theory, free to come and go as they please -- and to train (or not) as they see fit. They can jump onto, or off, the circuit at their discretion. The only person to pay a price for his or her absence is said player (and his or her fans).

And the sport itself has always been a year-round enterprise. This isn't because the Lords of Tennis were slave drivers, refusing to give players a seasonal break. It's because tennis is a global and seasonal sport, and it's always summer somewhere. Let's remember that when the annual holiday bowl games are being played by college football squads, often amid driving snow flurries, it's summer -- and time to think tennis -- in Australia, a major tennis outpost.

The larger truth lurking beneath the surface is that tennis is, in every sense, a periodic sport. The game is organized around the Grand Slam events, and those majors found their places on the calendar over a century-long desire to hold them at the right time and place in each nation. The four majors are really the four national championships of their respective countries, and each is the highlight of what might be called that nation's tennis season.

Players have always responded to this reality by embracing a judicious approach to the sport. They customarily chose their spots, alternating rest and play in the way that best suited their preferences (in terms of surface and tournament location). And that works, precisely because tennis is an individual sport populated by, essentially, freelancers. The athletes have always controlled how much they worked, and where, in a shifting international workplace. That's not a bad model.

The real culprit here is the demands placed on the players by the tours, mainly because of the way the rankings system works. The players are under pressure to play, but as freelancers they're also able to say no -- either overtly or by falling back on tennis' nuclear option: the claim (or reality) of injury or fatigue.

I tend to agree with his points.  No one is forcing these players to play as much as they do.  To the extent that the rankings systems are set up to "encourage" players to play as much as possible, then yeah, they're going to play a lot if they want that #1 ranking.  But the top players all agree (well, except for JJ apparently) that the Slams are where it's at.  So to the extent the players can shape their schedules to revolve around those four Slams, they really don't need to be playing 20 tourneys a year.  If they do and they get tired, that's their fault, no?

Another good read here where Pete elaborates on his point.

Thoughts?

Ponder This: Should Ana just have stayed home?

Introducing a new segment here called "Ponder This", wherein I pose questions to you guys that I don't really have a firm stance on to get your wise thoughts and opinions.  Pretty simple game, no?  Here we go.

Jim Courier, in his analysis of Ana's loss yesterday, said that he gave a lot of credit to her for even showing up and playing at the US Open this year given her injury.  I hadn't really thought about this angle before.  Clearly, given her pressers this week, Ana was under no illusion that she was going to win this tournament.  She was just happy to get out there and be playing pain free.  But as the #1 player in the world and the #1 seed, given the lack of practice and match play, she had to have known that she was throwing herself to the wolves.  Because as the #1 player in the world and the #1 seed, anything less than winning the whole tournament would have been an upset.  She was setting herself up for mocking/ridicule/doubters/etc.

Now obviously, sitting out of the biggest and last Slam of the year because of sore thumb would have been ridiculous.  I think she would have opened herself to even more derision had she done it.  But she and her team could have "lied" and told everyone the hand was a wreck, that she had to immobilize it in a cast for a couple of weeks, etc.  She really could have avoided this whole debacle.

So should she get credit for coming into this tournament as the #1 seed knowing that she wasn't going to win?

Let it rip in the comments section.