Books about life on Tour

[TennisHack]

From Topspin, by Eliot Berry © 1995

**Issue #1: the babying of women's pro tennis -- I think it's still an issue today, and I think Dennis Van Der Meer had it right over ten years ago.


The Orange Bowl: Girls and Boys Together

Pgs 36-37

…I thought back to what Dennis Van Der Meer had said that morning.

“What is still attractive for me as a coach is the parent who comes to me and says, ‘I’ve got this sixteen-year-old girl who says she can’t make it as a pro, because she’s over the hill at sixteen.’ I tell that girl she is not over the hill.” Dennis Van Der Meer paused. “In fact, there are instances when she may be. But the fact that Jennifer Capriati’s life in tennis has not fulfilled its final promise and that she has had some big problems already has kids saying, ‘Maybe I’ll start a bit later.’ I insist to all parents and girls who want to turn professional one day that sixteen or eighteen years old is not too late for a girl to bloom into an outstanding women’s professional player. The baby boom in women’s tennis is a sham!” Van Der Meer had said, slamming the wooden table softly. “You see, we know historically just how long most tennis careers will be – and I am talking about all tournament tennis. It’s normally –”

“Ten years?” I asked, thinking of Stefan Edberg.

“No. Not even ten years. It’s usually more like seven years, from tennis cradle to tennis grave. If you’re a superstar, it may last a little longer.”

[TennisHack]

From Topspin, by Eliot Berry © 1995

**Issue #2: players' personality -- as evidenced by a recent Werthless colum, still a big problem as far as the media is concerned.


Reckonings

Pg 278

I smiled. Emerson had put his finger on it exactly. There was a world of difference – maybe three or four decades – between what character and personality meant. Not that the present players lack character in the sense of inner fortitude and courage, Sampras, Courier, Muster, and Chang all had heaps of it. But the emphasis had somehow shifted through the marketing of sports from having “character” to having “personality”, which, as Emerson suggested, was much closer t the surface. Beside “character” like Emerson’s, “personality” was a bubble bath. Agassi had always had personality; he was just beginning to develop character.

[TennisHack]

From Topspin, by Eliot Berry © 1995

**Apparently WTA Tour divas start young. Though he didn't spend much time watching the juniors as compared to the pros (just the Orange Bowl and junior Wimbly and junior USO), these little girls don't get as much coverage. But I thought it hilarious these descriptions of Kournikova, especially considering her career in hindsight.

He also chats at length with Martina Hingis (and handlers) and Meilen Tu, who was quite the little bitch at 14!


Reckonings

Pg 255-256

Anna Kournikova, whose mother had so gently and methodically braided her smooth blond hair in the wooden bleachers at the Orange Bowl, was making very short work of a girl six years her elder. The little Russian seemed to pout slightly between points as if she, a prima ballerina, was wondering why she had been scheduled on a court out in Siberia when, really, she was the new principal dancer with the Bolshoi Ballet. When Kournikova won the match, she slapped the ball behind her with a disgust only a twelve-year-old would think appropriate after beating in eighteen-year-old hollow. Her mentor, Nick Bllettieri, was standing over by the low chain fence, where he had arrived in time for the last three points of the match. The little girl trotted across the courts, threw her arms around his neck, kissed Bollettieri once on each cheek, and listening as he gave her his blessing and admonishments in nearly the same short breath. Her braided pigtail bouncing happily against behind her back, Kournikova trotted back and completely ignored her older victim, wincing slightly as if there was an unpleasant, fishlike smell of defeat lingering in the air. Kournikova walked off the court like a champion and accepted a hug from her little blond bombshell of a mother, who was wearing Ray-Ban aviator sunglasses, black Nike tights, and a loose white T-shirt with a belt that sat low on her hips. Mother and daughter beamed and went off talking in animated Russian.

[TennisHack]

And now for the grande finale! Larry Stefanki letting it all hang out after being fired from a coaching job.

Berry followed the diverging careers of two young Americans, Jonathan Stark and Ania Bleszynski. Stark hooked up with Stefanki at the beginning of the '94 season to make his move into the top echelons of the game. By the end of the year he had collected some great doubles titles and some great singles tanks, especially at the Slams. I think that's all the setup needed here...

From Topspin, by Eliot Berry © 1995

Afterword: Farther Down the Tennis Highway, pgs 295-301

Stark had not reached his personal goal of breaking into the top twenty. I thought I understood why, but I wanted Stefanki to sum up Stark’s season. I was in for a surprise: Stark and Stefanki to sum up and Pickard, were no longer a team. (Edberg and Pickard would remain friends, but after eleven years with the same coach Edberg was struggling and wanted to try something new. Pickard sadly said goodbye, knowing his young friend would never be the same player.)

The first person I spoke to after the dust had settled on Andre Agassi’s victory over Michael Stich at the US Open was Larry Stefanki. Stark and Larry Stefanki had worked together for only one year. Like a couple getting a divorce, they had agreed to part ways just the day before Stark played Jonas Bjorkman at the US Open. The rupture of their coaching relationship perhaps explained why Stefanki had avoided my gaze at the start of that match and disappeared so quickly afterward. In a sense he was already gone, and in fact Stark had played against Bjorkman as if he were missing his rudder. When the unshaven Stefanki had spoken to me in Florida at the old Spanish-style Biltmore Hotel, he had sounded tough but very hopeful about Stark’s prospects – a perfect coaching outlook. But now when I reached him at home, things had changed.

“I’m just here baby-sitting my three kids, so I can’t talk too much. Jonathan definitely made some improvement this year,” Stefanki said carefully.

“In what areas?”

“Well, he’s volleying better. And you may not consider improvement in doubles a big thing, but Jonathan improved in doubles.”

“I’m aware of his doubles,” I said. “He’s been doing great in the doubles. And he’s made a ton of money. But…” I paused.

There was a long pause on Larry Stefanki’s end of the line, and he asked his kids to leave the room. Then suddenly he let it all hang out; a season’s worth of feelings just came bursting out. “You see,” said Stefanki, “the problem with Jonathan Stark is that he just doesn’t want it badly enough. I mean, fine, Jonathan has been making a load of money, but he really hasn’t played that well. So now he thinks he knows how it’s all done. He thinks he can do it his way.”

“What is his way?”

“Jonathan’s way is the easy way,” shot back Stefanki. “He thinks he can go up and live in Seattle and train up there and see his friends and pal around and train a little and go out and then just play matches. That’s what happened this year. In my opinion, he fooled himself. And the money fooled him, too.”

“The money won’t be there in two years if he does it that way again next year.”


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[TennisHack]

“No, it won’t,” said Stefanki.

“But he made almost seven hundred thousand dollars this year, didn’t he? I’d like a couple of bad years like that.” I laughed.

“He’s made scads of it,” said Stefanki, “but he still doesn’t know how to play.”

These words were such a reversal of the bright hopes both player and coach had expressed that spring in Florida. “What doesn’t Stark know yet as a player?” I asked.

“A lot,” said Stefanki. “He goes on tour for ten weeks in a row and thinks he can improve just by playing matches. But you can’t. I know; I’ve been around guys all my life who know what it is to train and to get ready to be a top professional player. I wanted to be of more help. But Jonathan thinks he’s back in the fourteen-and-unders beating Jim Courier indoors. He’s in a dream world. He doesn’t have a clue as to what it takes. He says to me, ‘Larry, I’ve got my serve.’ Well, there are two hundred other guys out there who have their serves, too. Granted, Jonathan has a good one. But if he thinks he can take the easy way out and just serve people off the court like he did when he was in the juniors, he’s dead wrong. Jonathan does not want to do what the really top people do for training. I mean, his return of serve didn’t improve at all.” Stefanki took a breath.

“He kept swinging at it,” I said softly, “but he’s got to put the ball on the court more, doesn’t he? I remember seeing him miss that once return against Volkov that probably cost him that match, and then again against Karsten Braasch at Wimbledon this year he missed two or three crucial returns of serve by going for too much at the wrong time.”

“That’s right,” said Stefanki. “I was with him up in the locker room after that fourth set at Wimbledon, during the rain delay. And I told him, ‘All right, bud, this is a one-set match. Tomorrow is another day, but if you don’t go after this set with your teeth bared, there will be no tomorrow for you.’ I mean, hell! [Henri] Leconte came up to the locker room at the same time and told me it was so windy out there that he hadn’t hit a ball with his strings for three sets.”

“But Leconte won.”

“Leconte won because he played like he would die rather than lose!” said Larry Stefanki. “The conditions were lousy. Graf and Stich went down the same day. But in a goddamn windstorm, you got to bring the ship into port anyway. I told him he just had to win that fifth set against Braasch.”

I wasn’t sure about that “had to” as a coaching technique. But Stefanki was like Berlitz – he liked the direct method. “And what did Stark say?”


con'd

[TennisHack]

“He just looked at me like I was talking another language. See, we knew from the beginning in this coaching relationship that we were very different people. I’m the kind of guy who says exactly what I see all the time. And Jonathan doesn’t like that. Jonathan doesn’t like to hear that he needs to take two or three weeks off from the tour and work seven hours a day at the parts of his game that need it. Jonathan doesn’t want to play two hundred low volleys in a row. He’ll play five in a row, smile, and tell me that’s enough. That’s not enough! You have to do it until you are doing it in your sleep. You can’t win up here with just one big weapon. These guys have a serve and a solid fundamental game. Jonathan doesn’t want to hear that, and he doesn’t want to hurt. He doesn’t like the pain that is involved with this game. Tennis hurts!” said Larry Stefanki with passion. “It hurts when you lose, and it especially hurts when you’ve trained really hard.”

.
.
.

“…But hell, Jonathan beat Jim Courier 6-4, 6-2 out in Japan, and Courier was ranked one in the world at the time.”

“So what happened?”

“Simple, really. He did not want to do what it takes to get to that next step up. There is a very fine line in this game between one level and the next. And I think Jonathan could have gotten there if he had taken all the right steps.”

“Todd Martin takes all the necessary steps.”

“That’s right. Todd is a worker. Todd moves as badly as Jonathan does, maybe worse, but his game is so fundamentally sound and he’s worked to make himself a very efficient mover. That’s why Todd is in the top ten and Jonathan has gone from thirty-seven to sixty-seven.”

.
.
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“I remember seeing a picture of Jonathan in Tennis magazine last summer, and he was playing soccer with his shirt off. I looked at his stomach and said, ‘Whoa, he’s got a little jelly roll down there’; I thought he looked awfully soft for a twenty-three-year-old star athlete. Was that beer in that jelly roll?”

“No,” said Stefanki. “But I know what you mean. Jonathan eats about six meals a day. His parents called him up and said he was looking too thin. His diet is all wrong. He thinks it’s great, but on top of the salads he’s eating Big Macs and all this other fast-food junk.”

I shook my head. “I like him. He’s very likable.”


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[TennisHack]

“He’s too likable,” said Stefanki. “Too nice to be a top-ten player. I won’t be working with him next year. He wants to make Seattle his home base because he’s built a house up there and has all his buddies up there. Basically, he likes to be around people who like him and say nice things to him. I pick another way, a harder way, and I swear by it. I want Jonathan Stark to be down in southern California someplace, maybe out in the desert with me, working just on his game. But he thinks he knows better. We’ll see.”

“How did you two decide you wouldn’t be working together anymore?”

“He told me what his game plan was,” said Stefanki, “and I told him I didn’t buy it at all, and we didn’t have to say much else.”

“He looked just awful against Bjorkman at the Open. I can honestly say I have never seen him play worse. He won two service games a set almost at love and did nothing else.”

“Jonathan thinks he can pull that with these guys,” Stefanki said incredulously. “I’d tell him he needs to work on his movement – his feet and knees are no longer bothering him – or his return of serve. But he’d just smile and say, ‘I’ll get him with the serve.’ I mean, Bjorkman just kicked his butt.”

.
.
.

“See, Jonathan likes to enjoy his tennis,” said Stefanki. “But he’s got this professional thing backward. He thinks the tour is a place that hurts you, but he doesn’t get ready for the hurt. He goes out there for ten weeks in a row and starts to get depressed, and then he wants to get as far away from it as he can. He takes a vacation. Then he goes back and it starts to hurt again, and he wants to go back to Seattle or off to Mexico. But the place that it should hurt is back where you are living and training. You want to make it hurt so much the tour will be fun by comparison. That’s what Lendl did, and Borg did, and McEnroe did. That’s what Vitas did. Because if you want to win in tennis or in anything, it has to be fun to do. But it also has to hurt a little at first. Tennis is not fun right now for Jonathan Stark. Not anymore. He says it still is, but he’s trying to fool himself. He wishes the tour was easier, and while he’s out there he’s smiling and trying to finesse it. But you can’t finesse the tour. Now even Andre seems to have woken up. Maybe Jonathan will one day, too. But not with me.”

[TennisHack]

With his two personal stories in Stark and Bleszynski, Berry tackled college vs the pros. It was a running theme in the book, and today Larson's writers took on the same loggerheads:

The Old College Try

When the tournament at Stanford this year gave Amber Liu a wildcard, it was hard to blame them. After all, she was NCAA champion in both 2003 and 2004, and she's one of theirs. And yet, the cynical corner of our minds asked, "What's the point?" These NCAA champions never seem to do much -- and the one time we saw Liu play, she didn't appear to have the power or the precision to threaten on the WTA. And, indeed, her record in four WTA events is a less-than-impressive 1-4, and this week Liu lost in Los Angeles qualifying. Bea Bielik, her predecessor as NCAA champion, has perhaps an even worse history: She won her first two WTA matches, at the 2002 U. S. Open, but hasn't won one since (she did manage to qualify for Wimbledon last year), and has been struggling with injuries and has watched her ranking go through the floor. She left school early because she thought she had done all she could do -- and yet, it didn't prepare her for the Tour.

This struck us as worth investigating. Just how well do NCAA champions normally do at the Tour level?

The following is a list of the last 22 NCAA women's champions:

1982: Alycia Moulton, Stanford
1983: Beth Herr, Southern California
1984: Lisa Spain, Georgia
1985: Linda Gates, Stanford
1986: Patty Fendick, Stanford
1987: Patty Fendick, Stanford
1988: Shaun Stafford, Florida
1989: Sandra Birch, Stanford
1990: Debbie Graham, Stanford
1991: Sandra Birch, Stanford
1992: Lisa Raymond, Florida
1993: Lisa Raymond, Florida
1994: Angela Lettiere, Georgia
1995: Keri Phebus, UCLA
1996: Jill Craybas, Florida
1997: Lilia Osterloh, Stanford
1998: Vanessa Webb, Duke
1999: Zuzana Lesenarova, San Diego
2000: Laura Granville, Stanford
2001: Laura Granville, Stanford
2002: Bea Bielik, Wake Forest
2003: Amber Liu, Stanford
2004: Amber Liu, Stanford

That's a total of 18 names: Bielik, Birch, Craybas, Fendick, Gates, Graham, Granville, Herr, Lesenarova, Lettiere, Liu, Moulton, Osterloh, Phebus, Raymond, Spain, Stafford, Webb. Of those prior to Raymond (who is still an active WTA player), the author (who wasn't following tennis 20 years ago) remembers Fendick, Stafford, and Graham; of those after Raymond, the author knows Craybas, Osterloh, Webb, Granville, Bielik, and Liu, and vaguely recalls Lesenarova. Let's split these into two classes (pre- and post-Raymond) and look at their results.

For the Pre-Raymond group, who are retired, we'll look for WTA titles, finals, and doubles titles (we can't absolutely guarantee this list is right, because the WTA doesn't give player bios for any of these retired players, but it's close):

Fendick: Singles: Auckland 1988 W, Japan Open 1988 W, Auckland 1989 W, Oklahoma City 1993 F, Pattaya City 1994 F, Doubles: Auckland 1988 w/Hetherington, Wellington 1988 w/Hetherington, Taipei 1988 w/Hetherington, San Diego 1988 w/Hetherington, San Jose 1988 w/Hetherington, Auckland 1989 w/Hetherington, Oakland 1989 w/Hetherington, San Diego 1990 w/Garrison-Jackson, Indianapolis 1990 w/McGrath, Australian Open 1991 w/M.J. Fernandez, Auckland 1991 w/Neiland, San Antonio 1991 w/Seles, Oakland 1991 w/G. Fernandez, Indianapolis 1991 w/G. Fernandez, Houston 1992 w/G. Fernandez, Strasbourg 1992 w/Strnadova, Oklahoma City 1993 w/Garrison Jackson, Kuala Lumpur 1993 w/McGrath, Oakland 1993 w/McGrath, Sydney 1994 w/McGrath, Oklahoma City 1994 w/McGrath, Pattaya City 1994 w/McGrath, Singapore 1994 w/McGrath, Leipzig 1994 w/McGrath

Graham: Doubles: San Juan 1993 w/Grossman, Budapest 1996 w/Adams, Quebec City 1996 w/Schultz-McCarthy, Cardiff 1997 w/Guse

Herr: Singles: Phoenix 1986 W, Tulsa 1986 F, Doubles: Berkeley 1986 w/Moulton, San Diego 1986 w/Moulton, Phoenix 1987 w/Barg, Cincinnati 1988 w/Reynolds, New Orleans 1988 w/Reynolds

Moulton: Singles: Birmingham F 1983, Newport W 1983, Canadian Open F 1984, Doubles: Atlanta 1984 w/Walsh-Pete, Newport 1984 w/P. Smith, Indianapolis 1984 w/P. Smith, Brighton 1984 w/P. Smith, Berkeley 1986 w/Herr, San Diego 1986 w/Herr

Stafford: Singles: Taipei 1992 W, Doubles: Strasbourg 1993 w/Temesvari

Then we get to Raymond herself -- undeniably the best of the bunch. She has four singles titles, slightly exceeding Fendick, though they're all small (Quebec City 1996, Birmingham 2000, Memphis 2002, Memphis 2003). She has, as of this writing, 43 doubles titles including three Slams and the 2001 year-end Championships. She's been #1 in doubles, and as high as #15 in singles, and has been in the year-end Top 30 seven times. Not Hall of Fame, but certainly not a trivial player, either.


con'd

[TennisHack]

What comes after is pretty depressing, though. Lettiere and Phebus made no impression at all. Craybas did win the Japan Open in 2002, as well as the Madrid doubles in 2003; she has made a few brief runs at the Top 50 lately, but never quite made it, and she really isn't someone the top players worry about much. Osterloh peaked at #41 in the rankings three years ago, and did win the Shanghai doubles in 2000 with Tanasugarn, but she has only two career semifinals (Oklahoma City 1999 and Canberra 2002) and is now struggling to get back into the Top 200. Webb peaked at #107 in the singles rankings and had one career quarterfinal, at Pattaya 2000. Lesenarova spent a couple of years trying to be a pro,but .went nowhere (she ended 2000 at #375, played 16 events in 2001 but still ended up a mere #313 and without a WTA match; she was off the singles rankings by the end of 2002 though she still had a few doubles events). Bielik won her first two WTA matches, but that was two years ago; she hasn't won a match since, and is getting spanked by players who aren't even Top 100. Watching her, it's hard to avoid the conclusion that her college success is the result of her serve (which is very big but somewhat lacking in variety) and that the rest of her game is simply not adequate for pro tennis. Liu is a work in progress; to give her her due, she has lost to some very good players (Daniilidou, Clijsters twice, Frazier). Still, we noted her career 1-4 record above. That leaves Granville as currently the best post-Raymond player. She hit the top 30 for a month in mid-2003, and though she's been sliding badly, she is still a Top 100 player. And yet, her WTA record going into San Diego was a mere 42-48, and she has only three career semifinals (all at Tier III events), plus four quarterfinals (two of them at the Tier II level). And she has never beaten a Top Ten player.

Looking at the pre-Raymond results, while there are no Top Ten players, we see several, notably Fendick, who were significant factors on the WTA Tour. (We might add that many of Fendick's doubles wins came with Meredith McGrath, also a college player.) Since Raymond, there has been nothing. The sample is small, but it's hard to escape the conclusion that the gap between college and pro tennis has widened -- particularly in singles.

There are, of course, two possible reasons for this: Either the pro game has gotten better or the college game has gotten worse. One suspects a little of both. Certainly there is more competition at the pro level, implying that the overall quality has been raised. Meanwhile, tennis programs are suffering at many schools, which will not only depress the quality at the schools which have been cut but at those which have not, since the players won't be facing such tough opponents.

The sad thing is that this widening gap can affect players for years. For women, what would be their college years are often the years in which they perfect their games and achieve their greatest results. One has to suspect that, unless someone can somehow find a way for college players to spend more time playing Tour events (which probably means finding a way for them to get paid for playing Tour events, while still attending college at least part-time), the gap will continue to widen.

College players do seem to be a little better in doubles -- understandable, since they work on it more. But doubles doesn't carry much reward at the Tour level these days.

For the men, interestingly, the situation seems to be not quite as extreme. The past 28 years of NCAA champions are as follows:

1976: Bill Scanlon, Trinity (Tex.)
1977: Matt Mitchell, Stanford
1978: John McEnroe, Stanford
1979: Kevin Curren, Texas
1980: Robert Van't Hof, Southern California
1981: Tim Mayotte, Stanford
1982: Mike Leach, Michigan
1983: Greg Holmes, Utah
1984: Mikael Pernfors, Georgia
1985: Mikael Pernfors, Georgia
1986: Dan Goldie, Stanford
1987: Andrew Burrow, Miami (Fla.)
1988: Robby Weiss, Pepperdine
1989: Donni Leaycraft, LSU
1990: Steve Bryan, Texas
1991: Jared Palmer, Stanford
1992: Alex O'Brien, Stanford
1993: Chris Woodruff, Tennessee
1994: Mark Merklein, Florida
1995: Sargis Sargsian, Arizona St.
1996: Cecil Mamiit, Southern California
1997: Luke Smith, UNLV
1998: Bob Bryan, Stanford
1999: Jeff Morrison, Florida
2000: Alex Kim, Stanford
2001: Matias Boeker, Georgia
2002: Matias Boeker, Georgia
2003: Amer Delic, Illinois
2004: Benjamin Becker, Baylor

Obviously we haven't had any recent players to compare with John McEnroe, the glory of the NCAA circuit 26 years ago (though, given some of the things he's said since, you have to wonder how he passed his classes). But Bob Bryan is a Top Four doubles player, Jeff Morrison and Alex Kim and Sargis Sargsian and even Mark Merklein are touring pros even if none except Sargsian and Woodruff can claim even Granville-like numbers, and O'Brien and Palmer have both won doubles Slams. It's a stronger record than the women, at least. Perhaps the better results by the men may be more a result of the fact that men grow into their games more slowly; a 20-year-old man is still learning, whereas a 20-year-old woman, if she isn't playing regularly at the Tour level, very likely never will. Or it may just be that the men have more prize money; a woman whose results are equivalent to Morrison's or Kim's would probably be out of the sport, whereas the men can perhaps scrape along.

Still, the sad fact appears to be that playing college tennis is more help than hurt when it comes to playing pro tennis. It's a regretable choice for a young player to have to face.

[Heide Hugentobler]

thanks for putting these here, Hackie. I will read all of them when i have time. I enjoyed that Rostagno in Mexico story. Marc Rosset had a similar experience in NY.

the only tennis book i have (apart from the Roger one) is BG's Winning Ugly