My Tennis Beast, growling. Photo: Stephen Nessen
My Tennis Hate was featured in my colleague Richard Hake's "Weekend Staff Picks" and broadcast over WNYC's 50,000 watt airwaves to all within its radius.
Hake himself has played tennis. "When i was in high school, I took lessons," he told me. "I never played regularly, but I like it."
Haters, therein lies the key to curing Tennis Hate: play sporadically.
Follow the bus route in Florence to understand my mental game.
Haters, I've got a USTA League match tonight. Only lima beans provoke a greater gag reflex.
Put me in a tennis clinic for 5 hours at noon in the Florida heat, and I am happy. But tell me I am playing "for real" and I find myself thinking of ways to pull my own hamstring.
I doff my flop sweat-stained cap to the pros who put themselves through this every week.
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Pippa and Nico are tight-lipped about their doubles strategy. Photo: Daily News
Crying over unspilt milk: Thomas Drouet says John Tomic head-butted him. Courtesy AFP/Getty Images.
John Tomic, father and coach of Aussie up-and-comer Bernard Tomic, has been barred from future ATP tournaments pending the outcome of an inquiry into whether he assaulted the 20-year-old's hitting partner, Thomas Drouet, last Saturday outside a Madrid hotel.
Drouet says Tomic head-butted him in the nose, breaking it, in an argument that began when Drouet refused to buy milk for the Tomics prior to their flight to Spain for the Mutua Madrid Open.
Tomic, the Herald Sun's "Poster Boy of the Mad Tennis Parents Club,"is claiming it was in self-defense.
It seems the head is a favored target of Coach Tomic. According to the New York Times, Drouet told the French sports paper, L'Equipe, that Tomic punched his son in the head during a training session, hard enough that Bernie's mouth was bleeding.
“All that because Bernard had told him that he had had enough of hearing his criticism. I didn’t intervene as I have read I did other places. Afterward, John took Bernard’s three rackets and destroyed them. Bam. Bam. Bam. A half hour later, he was joking with Bernard."
Ha, ha, my boy, better the Yonex than you.
Sadly, the apple hasn't fallen very far from the tree. Bernie has had his own I Hate Tennis moments, most notably when he was accused of tanking in a lackluster US Open loss last year to Andy Roddick. He got surly with a reporter from Reuters and said, darkly, "I'll remember you."
Maybe this is why I haven't seen any quotations yet from Bernie. Reporters are too busy ordering face masks first.
Tomic needs a new coach. Currently 53rd in the world, he was as high as 27th last June. His 2013 season has been spotty. He won his first ATP Tour title in Sydney last January, but has played little, and done little, since then, except rack up a notably I Hate Tennis moment: Tomic failed to convert 5 match points against Jo-Wilfried Tsonga in Marseille.
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He huffed and puffed and blew Tsonga's surge down. Rafa and his "champion luck" escape a 3rd set against Tsonga. Courtesy Getty Images.
It will be their 34th meeting (Nadal leads 19-14) and a re-match of last year's final, which Nadal won handily in straight sets.
Fed and Nadal have played fewer matches, just 29, but they're the stuff of awe and history. Nineteen of those matches were finals, including the epic, twice-rain delayed 2008 Wimbledon championship match that Nadal won in the dark.
But those legendary Rafa-Rog moments appear to be waning.
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Why is no one playing? It's MALIBU. People don't work for a living.An empty tennis court is a thing of beauty for New York City players, who have to resort to curious rituals and chicanery to secure even an hour's worth g of beautyof playing time on the city's cheap but unplentiful public courts. But in Malibu, California, home of the #10-ranked Pepperdine University men's tennis team, an empty tennis court is cause for tears. Especially one as beautiful as this one, set inside a jungle of bouganvillia and strelizia. ]]>
Courtesy Getty Images/Matthew Stockman.
Ferrer suffered a brain fart during championship point, 5-4, against Murray's serve
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It may look like a tennis ball, but it's really a hand grenade when Tam Thompson volleys it at you."You can thank us later," we were thinking to ourselves as we made our intention to play together known to Tam and Surinder.
But here's an Easter miracle: We beat them in a tiebreak.
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And yet, it was what allowed Wozniaki to eventually triumph over Kerber for the first time in their last four meetings and to advance to the Indian Wells 2013 final.
Caroline was ahead in the third and decisive set, up 3-1, but it was a pressure point, 30-all. Kerber returned with a deep backhand right at Wozniaki's feet, prompting her to react defensively with a moonball. Kerber took the high ball out of the air with her leftie forehand, hitting a sharp, cross-court angle that got yet another moonball response from Caro.
Two can play at that game, thought Kerber, and she joined in. A murmur starts to swell through the crowd: "Hey, are we watching pro tennis, or a USTA 3.0 women's league?"
Yet no 3.0 player I know, including myself, could have kept it up for a 38-shot rally. Most of the time, those high bouncers have me flailing helplessly deep behind the baseline, as I fall back into the cold embrace of the bubble.
About 20 shots into the rally, Wozniacki goes for a hard, flat cross-court backhand, but Kerber's been knocked senseless by the lack of oxygen in outer space. She replies with a moonball, setting up another rally that Kevin Ford, Evgeny Terelkin and Oleg Novitskiy might have enjoyed on the International Space Station, had they not been preparing to come back to earth today.
On center court at Indian Wells, the tennis ball's space mission finally ended when Wozniaki came up to a short sitter from Kerber and hit a flat, hard backhand deep into the deuce court to end the point.
"I think she was moving better and hit the ball a little bit higher," Kerber said after Wozniaki defeated her, 2-6, 6-4, 7-5. She admitted it changed the momentum of the match. "I was not expect these balls."
Neither did anyone else. A journalist asked her what she was thinking during the moonball rally. Was it, "I haven't played this way since I was 5"? Or, "I'm going to kill myself if I end up being out-moonballed"? Or, "God, I hope Tennis Channel took a commercial break!"
"What I'm thinking... I don't know. I try to play the point. Doesn't matter if it's high or if it's flat. It's a different style of game, but it's tennis," said Kerber.
Yes, Haters, it's tennis. Moonballs are a legitimate shot.
Or, as Caroline Wozniaki put it afterwards, "I was trying to figure out a way to win. And it doesn't really matter how."
Let's go to the (physio) tape: Azarenka throws in the towel after crying into it over injury withdrawal.
It's the latest weirdness to happen in a tournament that saw aging Aussie Lleyton Hewitt oust last year's finalist and 15th seed, American John Isner, and South African Kevin Anderson taking an hour and 55 minutes to kick the Spanish Bulldog and 4th seed David Ferrer to the curb. Or to the cactus. After all, it IS the California desert.
Azarenka was set to meet Caroline Wozniaki before she pulled out of the tournament with tendinitis and inflammation in her right foot and ankle. It's a holdover from an injury she sustained in Dubai. According to Sports Illustrated.com, the feisty, competitive Belarussian was seen hobbling around during her practice session and crying into a towel.
"I tried absolutely everything I could to do, but I have been advised by the doctor, by my own team, that it's just a very, very high risk already," she said.
Wozniaki will face Angelique Kerber, who's beaten her in their last three meet-ups.
Stosur pulls calf, pulls out of Indian Wells. Sports Illustrated says it's only the second withdrawal in her career. Photo courtesy Getty Images.Stosur's withdrawal handed Maria Kirilenko a walkover and sets up a Kirilenko/Maria Sharapova semifinal.
If Sharapova wins, she bumps Azarenka out of the world number 2 position.
It's a shame. Azarenka is unbeaten on the court so far this season, with a 17-0 streak that includes her second Grand Slam title at the Australian Open.
Stosur also realized the extent of her injury during practice. In a statement, she said she "felt something go" in her right calf muscle while serving for the match against Mona Barthel.
"I had a bit of a rough start to the year and I feel like now my tennis has really picked up, and I've been playing really quite well these last few days," she said in a statement. "I don't know if you can get any more unlucky than that."
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