Tennis Blog

As the players make the long, rushed journey from the Olympics to the U.S. Open this week, it seems an opportune moment to reflect on the first player to win those two events in the same year. This was Steffi Graf, of course, the owner of the most remorselessly successful career the modern game has seen. Nearly 10 years after her sudden retirement, however, that career has begun to seem just the slightest bit neglected—not forgotten, exactly, but less remarked upon than an historian of the game might expect.

Twenty years ago, Graf pulled off, if not the greatest, then certainly the most unique achievement in tennis history. In 1988 she won all four Grand Slams and topped them with a gold medal at the Seoul Olympics. At the time, her Golden Slam was a unique example of dominance on every important stage in the game. That’s still true—let’s face it, no one is going to do that again in our lifetime. But what feels equally unique in 2008, a year when Yannick Noah’s 1983 French Open win was widely memorialized, is the fact that the anniversary of Graf’s far greater accomplishment hasn’t, as far as I’ve seen, merited any attention at all.

In a sense, that’s only fair. Tennis fans and media hold Graf at a distance because she always held them the same way. Chris Evert was a beloved girl next door to everyone in America by the time she was 16. Martina Navratilova has wished and worked for acceptance from the people of her adopted country for most of her life. Monica Seles became an instant figure of sympathy when she was, you know, stabbed. Today these women are well-loved WTA icons. Graf? She was the Blonde Bomber, Fräulein Forehand. She stomped all over girls-next-door for a living, never wished for the acceptance of anyone outside of her family, and wouldn’t have had the faintest idea of what to do with your sympathy if you offered it.

I loved to watch Graf play, particularly in her early years, when she marched—that’s what it looked like she was doing between points, marching—straight to the top of the game when she was 18. We’re the same age, and along with her now-husband Andre Agassi, Graf was the first champion whom I could identify with as a generational peer, as one of my own. In the mid-80s, I relished seeing Graf stand up to Navratilova’s overweening sense of entitlement (and eventually surpass her career singles achievements) the same way I enjoyed seeing the “punk” Agassi toy with the “legend” Connors at the U.S. Open.

I heard Graf’s name before I ever saw her play. At the 1985 French Open, Chris Evert was interviewed after winning her semifinal. She had just defeated a much-hyped 15-year-old named Gabriela Sabatini, but it was a girl named Steffi Graf, whom she had played earlier in the tournament, that she seemed most pleased about beating. Evert knew who the real threat was, but I doubt she realized the extent of that threat. The next spring, in the final at Hilton Head, Graf beat Evert for the first time. She would go on to win their last seven meetings, six of them in straight sets. The year after that, in Miami, Graf didn’t just beat Evert, she blitzed her 6-1, 6-2 and showed the legend once and for all that there was no path left back to the top. The future was here. It hit hard. It ran fast. It showed no mercy.

I was shocked by how badly, how viciously Graf beat Evert that day. Frankly, it was a thrill. In the past, the German, even when she was winning big events, hadn’t had a fully developed game. For every roundhouse forehand she rifled into the corner, there was a tentative slice backhand that she dumped in the net. Now, at 18, Graf’s choppy backhand didn’t seem to hurt her anymore. She may not have been flawless, or even technically all that sound, but it was clear that that wasn’t going to matter. She was going to be too fast and too powerful for everyone else. Beginning with that rout of Evert, Graf played the next two years like a whirlwind, running rings around her opponents and sweeping them off the court before they knew what had happened.

These were golden years for Graf. She had vanquished Navratilova for the moment, and her personal troubles, as well as the rise of Seles, remained on the horizon. In 1988 Graf won the Grand Slam, then added three more majors in ’89. How did she become so dominant in so short a time? At first glance, you would have thought she was too raw to win so consistently. Her service toss was too high, she took her forehand too late, she hacked her backhand and couldn’t come over it when she got nervous. Everything looked rushed, as if she had too much energy for the court and was on the verge of overrunning each ball.

But Graf did dominate, and it was her athletic energy that overcame any flaws. She did it with a flying, flopping mane of blonde hair and the best legs—in form and function—the game has seen. She did it by moving as if her feet were bouncing on hot coals. She did it by throwing her body into the ball as if she needed to end each point now. She did it by overwhelming her opponents with her relentless tempo—the term “playing like she’s double-parked” was invented for Graf, and she was the last top player to keep a ball in her off-hand during points.

Most of all, she did it with her forehand. To call this shot—with its late preparation, high take-back, and explosive contact—a “stroke” is too tame. To say that, like Ivan Lendl before her, she changed the sport with it, is too boring. The only way I can describe Graf’s forehand is to say that she wielded it like a weapon. Not in the metaphorical sense, the way we say a certain player has “a lot of weapons,” but in a very real sense. She looked like she was trying to hurt the ball with it.

Why was Graf so exciting to watch in the late ’80s? She was attractive, even sexy at times, and I didn’t mind the famous nose. But it was the way she used her body that mattered. More than any other player, Graf played with total abandon during points, then closed herself off and went into a hard shell of concentration between them. Graf didn’t come from wealth—her father Peter, a tennis freak who began training her in the family rec room when she was 3—was a salesman. Still, her on-court presence— total excellence mixed with a reticence that bordered on the haughty—made me think of her as tennis’ version of an aristocrat. A friend of mine’s mom called her “Starchy Steffi,” but I thought this was a sign of class. She had too much of it to worry about what anyone thought of her.

That detached style, which I eventually realized was a product of a stunted early social life as much as it was a sign of class, would come back to haunt Graf in the second half of her career. After Seles was stabbed by a crazed Graf fan, Steffi was widely scolded for not reaching out to her rival. It seemed cold indeed, though I’m guessing Graf didn’t know what to say, that she thought the situation was too emotionally fraught for any token gesture to make a difference. (I don’t remember what Graf’s public explanation was, if she had any.) Still, I lost a little of my fan’s love for her as she went on to rack up many more major titles—more, most likely, than she would have if Seles hadn’t been stabbed. By the mid-90s, her dominance almost seemed too easy. Two players, Jana Novotna at Wimbledon and Martina Hingis at the French Open, handed Graf majors on silver platters. More important, Graf didn’t seem to take any joy from the game or the tour aside from winning. Always a step removed from her peers, she ruled the WTA but wasn’t of it.

Was Steffi a cold fish? Does she deserve the lack of retrospective attention her accomplishments have been given, because she didn’t give the sport enough of herself in the first place? Was her success the result of a frightening, single-minded drive to grind her opponents into the dust, to hurt the ball? I was ambivalent for a while. Graf had tried to console Novotna at Wimbledon, but she had seemed to revel in Hingis’ tear-stained meltdown at Roland Garros, showing more joy in that victory than I’d ever seen from her before.

It was Graf’s induction into the Hall of Fame in Newport that helped make up my mind. Agassi, another another tennis prodigy with a love-hate relationship with the sport, inducted his wife with a classic, over-the-top tribute that was widely replayed. But it was Graf’s opening lines from a few moments later that I remember. She said that her entire tennis career had been worthwhile only because it had led her to Agassi. Strong words, but it wasn’t the sentiment as much as the way she expressed it and how much she was moved that made me think that I’d missed the real reason for Graf’s greatness.

Tennis is a sport of heart and emotion, we always say, a test of our emotional reserves. So it makes sense that, somewhere down there, the very best tennis player would have the deepest well of emotion from which to draw. Graf had it all along. How else could she have gotten those feet to bounce like that for all those years? How else could she have turned such a strange-looking forehand into the most lethal shot in history? What we think of as raw athletic ability doesn’t just come from the body; it comes from something inside as well. Twenty years ago, Graf dug down deep enough to produce the best season in tennis history—in an interview that TENNIS Magazine just did with her, she said that when she won the final point of the U.S. Open in 1988 to complete the Slam, she was so drained that she doubted she could have played another point. Would you have ever guessed that from Steffi Graf?

In this season of non-dominance on the women’s side, it’s worth remembering exactly what it takes to be a champion, to be the undisputed best, to win all the time. That’s worth a tribute, isn’t it?

Source : by Steve Tignor

Safina becomes heavy favorite for Olympic gold

BEIJING, Aug. 4 (Xinhua) -- Russia's world No. 7 Dinara Safina has become a heavy favorite for the Beijing Olympic tennis event as she beat Slovakia's Dominika Cibulkova 6-2, 6-1 to claim the Montreal Cup on Sunday and her second title in a row.

Safina, who is enjoying one of the most productive runs of her career, needed just one hour and eight minutes to beat unseeded Cibulkova. Last week, she claimed a WTA title in Los Angeles.

"I think my experience helped me a bit in the final, I'm sure Dominika's time will come soon though," an elated Safina told the WTA official website.

"It's the first time in my life I have won tournaments back-to-back, Usually I would win a tournament and the next week I would lose in the first round.

"So I was happy when I won the first match and then I was just taking it one match at a time."

Safina becomes the fourth player this season to win three Tour singles titles, following Maria Sharapova (Australian Open, Doha and Amelia Island), Serena Williams (Bangalore, Miami and Charleston) and Agnieszka Radwanska (Pattaya City, Istanbul and Eastbourne).

She has 28 wins and just three losses in the past three months. During that stretch she defeated nine players ranked in the top 10.

Safina will compete in the Olympic tennis event slated for Aug. 10-17 with compatriots Svetlana Kuznetsova, Elena Dementieva and Vera Zvonareva.

Russia has just lost world number four Maria Sharapova due to her shoulder injury.

Countdown to Beijing 2008 24 Days > Hantuchova’s game for a medal

From: Malay Mail

SLOVAK tennis star Daneile Hantuchova is looking forward to a memorable outing at the Beijing Olympics next month by winning a medal. SLOVAK tennis star Daneile Hantuchova is looking forward to a memorable outing at the Beijing Olympics next month by winning a medal.

She will be competing in both the singles and doubles with Jannette Husarova.

Some tennis players have debated the Olympics' worth, as it falls in the middle of the Tour season and ahead of the US Open this year.

But Hantuchova said while some see the Beijing Games as a deterrent to playing well in Flushing Meadows, she sees it as another highranked hard court tournament to help fine-tune her game.

“Beijing will be the highlight of my year, so all the schedule around it will be so good that I will be as fresh as I can for the Olympics,” she said. “Nothing changes around the Grand Slams. Those are still the biggest events in tennis, and I will probably approach the Olympics as a fifth one, in terms of preparation. “Right after the Beijing Games is the US Open, which I don’t think is a big problem. “Hopefully, I will be in good form playing a lot of matches.

“The rest of the season won’t change for me either.” Another good reason why Hantuchova is so adamant about playing in the Olympics is that she wouldn’t be a tennis player if not for the world’s biggest multi-sports event.

“Definitely this is the reason why I started playing tennis,” Hantuchova said. “When I was five years old, the first time I saw tennis on TV was when I saw my countryman (Czechoslovakian) Miloslav Mecir win the 1988 Olympics. “For me that was the No 1 reason why I started playing tennis.

“So, it means so much to me, and I just can’t wait to be out there.” Hantuchova said she would play in the doubles at the Beijing Games if the opportunity presented itself. The last Games i n Athens was a short stay for Hantuchova as she was ousted in the second round, but that didn’t stop her from experiencing the Olympics in the time she had.

“My first time around, I was going all over the places there,” she said.

“I was following my fellow athletes to all venues and I had a very good time. “It was crazy but I think this time I am going to concentrate on my sport. This time I’ll try and go for the medal.” The only sport she said in terms of wanting to go and see was short-distance swimming.

Hantuchova, after a Grand Slam lull in her career from the 2003 Roland Garros through to the 2005 US Open, has recorded six fourth-round appearances since 2006, including her semi-final appearance in the Australian Open in Melbourne last January. After her quarter-final win at the Australian Open, Hantuchova revealed that she used to play the piano after practices and matches to soothe her nerves.

“It was a great way to relax, especially after a tough practice, tough day at school. “I was always so tired and sometimes falling asleep there.

“I used to play all the classics — Mozart, Beethoven, Bach.

“That kind of stuff,” the Slovak added.