Teen Sensation

With Cori “Coco” Gauff winning the US Open this year at the age of 19, fulfilling the predictions of many who saw her play as early as 11 or 12 years old, now is probably a good time to post this selfie I took with her at the old Memphis Clay Courts in 2016. I expect Gauff to continue playing in and winning big matches over the next decade +. She has great rivals in Aryna Sabalenka and Iga Świątek who promise to be around for years. Perhaps Naomi Osaka will return to the tour with the power game that won her three majors since 2018. It will be fun to see Coco hit her 20s with a major already under her belt and a hunger for more! 

Jeff Menaker

Novaxx DjoCovid’s Year Somehow Gets Worse

I have already written about the poor judgement displayed over the last year by Novak Djokovic. Between the Adria Tour Covid fiasco and his proclamations that positive emotions can purify water, the world #1 seems to be taking cues from the Kanye West School of Public Meltdowns. Kanye wants to run for president? Novak wants to start a player’s union. Kanye can’t get on the ballot? Novak forgot half of professional tennis players are women. So I’ll be brief about what happened today in Novaxx’s 4th Round disqualification from the U.S. Open.

I’m grateful this happened. It’s a net positive for tennis to reinforce standards of self-control and it is a long time coming for Djokovic. This behavior of slapping balls that are out of play all over the court has been festering with Novak and others for years now. When I was a ball kid in the late 90s, I saw more than enough of it. More recently, Dennis Shapovalov broke an umpire’s eye socket on a total accident of teen stupidity during the 2017 Davis Cup. Somehow, in the few years since, players did not get the memo that such a thing sticks with you forever.

There are some who are questioning the rule or pondering the seriousness of the line judge’s injury. Sorry, this rule is cut and dry. Obviously, it was a total accident. I’m 100% sure he thought he was hitting the ball on the fly to the ball person who would be looking for it and catch it. The language of the rule is clear: “hitting a ball with negligent disregard of the consequences.” Djokovic hit the ball out of frustration and didn’t take care where it was heading. Anybody who has played competitively at the junior level or above knows: if you’re slapping balls around the court that are not in play and you hit anyone, including your opponent, on the fly, it’s game over. How hard or whether it causes injury is not even part of the equation.

Shapovalov knew immediately what he had done in 2017. He didn’t argue the rule for a second. He apologized to everyone involved, including in-person to every Canadian citizen (so I’m told) and went to his press conference to express regret and shame. He was 17. Djokovic is 33. Novaxx not showing up for his press conference compounds his disgrace. Issuing a statement on Instagram… who is running this guy’s PR? Novaxx has had a bad year off the court and today it followed him onto the court where he had been having a year for the ages.

Year for the ages? 2020, you are a year indeed!

Anti-vaxx Djokovic (and other points of ignorance)

Update: At the start of the Adria Tour last week, I wrote the post below about Novak Djokovic expressing anti-vaccine sentiments and hosting a multi-city tennis event without a semblance of public health safety or precaution. Doubling down on hubris, Novak then:

-Declared water can be purified with positive emotions.

-Posted Instagrams of himself and other players playing soccer, basketball, dancing in a club, all in perpetual physical contact- without masks or social distancing.

-Encouraged 5,000 fans to pack a small tennis stadium to watch Adria Tour matches without any health safety protocols.

-Held a kids day event with large crowds and no social distancing.

-Left Croatia and crossed borders without a COVID test, fully aware that players and coaches he brought together had just tested positive.

-Tested positive for COVID (along with his wife) back in Serbia.

The Adria Tour was a super spreader event for Europe. In addition to the tennis players, coaches, staff and an untold number of fans who now have COVID, NBA star Nikola Jokic, who played a little basketball with Djokovic’s posse, also tested positive for COVID. Viktor Troiki and his pregnant wife tested positive. WTA insider, Courtney Nguyen, may have summarized the “irresponsible,” “weird” Adria Tour best: “This isn’t a seat belt issue. This is a drunk driving issue… Family, friends, innocent strangers, kids, hotel workers, food service, transportation workers. I don’t care if YOU get sick. I care if the people around you get sick and the people around them and the people around them.”

There is a movement afoot among ATP players to have Djokovic removed from the ATP Players Council of which he is the current president. When Nick Kyrgios has taken the moral high ground over your behavior, there’s a strong argument you do not belong in a position of leadership.

Here’s my post from last week:

One of the greatest disappointments of tennis’ COVID-induced hiatus is the revelation last month that World #1, Novak Djokovic, is an anti-vaxxer. “Personally, I am opposed to vaccination, and I wouldn’t want to be forced by someone to take a vaccine in order to be able to travel.” Could there be a more cringe-worthy statement during a public health crisis?

This shocked many across the world as Djokovic has shown himself to be a generally enlightened kind of person. He is a leader on the ATP Players Council and joined with fellow superstars Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer to implement a plan assisting lower-ranked ATP competitors who are struggling financially during suspension of the tour. Through tiered donations from the world’s highest paid players, Djokovic demonstrated the kind of leadership, compassion and foresight needed in this moment. Still, Djokovic is among the ever-growing, ignorant minority on the subject of vaccination.

Djokovic never attended college. In an interview for NDTV in 2012, he lamented his lack of formal education: “I never went to university. Well, if I can say, that’s one wish I have in life, one regret, that I would like to go in some university, because I really like the idea of educating yourself and being part of a group of students.” As a Tour leader, he may want to pursue a bachelor’s degree in Public Health before undermining global health officials on a matter of such extreme seriousness… or organizing a stadium full of fans amidst a global pandemic.

Many pro tennis players lack a college education. Not that attending college enlightens all minds. In the case of former University of Tennessee standout, Tennys Sandgren, that includes homophobic and anti-abortion comments, supportive online exchanges with white supremacists and his endorsement of “pizzagate”, the b@tsh:t crazy conspiracy theory claiming that Hillary Clinton was linked to a child sex-trafficking ring.

John Isner, who graduated from the University of Georgia as the #1 player in the NCAA, found himself being savaged on Twitter last week over a series of tweets and replies that seemed more concerned about law and order than black lives. Isner, who has expressed admiration for President Trump in the past, repeated the President’s view that violent protesters were members of Antifa and should be branded terrorists. He had also “liked” several tweets from accounts that mocked protesters while focusing on opportunists looting stores during the civil unrest. If Isner had ever had an African American teammate at Georgia, perhaps he would have a different take on current events.

Tennis has a long history of bigotry and biased thinking. The most glaring stain on the sport currently resides Down Under. Women’s tennis legend Margaret Court is an unabashed, vocal homophobe. Her steady antagonism of lesbian players on tour and her history of supporting apartheid in South Africa have led people across the sport to call for renaming Margaret Court Arena in Melbourne Park. Even so, it boggles the mind that there is not a single member of the ATP Tour who is openly gay. Recognizing the statistical impossibility, what is it about the ATP that has prevented gay male athletes from feeling safe in 2020?

There is hope for the future. Coco Gauff, who isn’t old enough to attend college, who had wins over Venus Williams and Naomi Osaka before she turned 16, has shown an enlightened outlook. Gauff has put the stars of the men’s tour to shame, showing precisely how a platform can be utilized for good. When the top men’s player is amplifying vaccine conspiracy theories and flouting social distancing guidelines, it’s nice to know there is a better future for the sport. In Gauff’s case, it is widely agreed, the quality of parenting makes a real difference in the kind of person one grows up to be. To quote Steven Sondheim, “Children may not obey, but, children will listen.”

– Jeffrey Menaker

In Memoriam: Terrence McNally

A man who saw drama in tennis and put the game’s social reckoning on stage before we even understood it was happening.

Four-time Tony Award-winning playwright, Emmy Award winner, the prolific “Bard of the American Theater,” Terrence McNally, died from complications of COVID-19 on March 24. He was a gentle, classy, humble man who I once had the pleasure to work for as a playwright’s assistant. In a career that spanned six decades, Terrence famously enjoyed opera, India, Bob Dylan, the Florida Keys and tennis! His 2007 Broadway play, Deuce, featured Angela Lansbury and Marian Seldes playing retired tennis greats returning to the U.S. Open to be honored at a women’s quarterfinal. They sit courtside and reflect on the great athletes who preceded them like Babe Didrikson and Althea Gibson. They consider the state of the modern women’s game and critique everything from its fashion to its lack of grace (before Serena Williams experienced her first legendary U.S. Open meltdown).

With Seldes and Lansbury in the leads, it was impossible to miss the parallels Terrence was making between athletic and theatrical performance and the personality traits of the divas that occupy those respective stages. The play also delves into class disparities that tennis still struggles to discuss. That original production also took time to skewer tennis announcers for lacking substance, something which still plagues tennis on TV more than a decade later.

Deuce was well-received by audiences, but, panned by critics, though Lansbury was nominated for a Tony and Seldes was praised for her performance. I actually don’t think the director understood the play. Eric Grode of the awful New York Sun wrote quite fairly of the director: “[He] appears to have staged the play when he had a few hours to kill one afternoon.” Painful.

In late 2000, I directed Terrence’s anti-war play Bringing It All Back Home (which he named for the Dylan album) in New York and I assisted him on one of his most challenging works, Some Men, in 2006. Those experiences changed my life and I will miss running into Terrence around town and saying hi. May he rest in peace and may we prevail in defeating the scourge that has swept our planet and stolen so many a gentle soul like his.

Jeffrey Menaker

Tennis Hygiene and COVID-19

The COVID-19 public health crisis and the suspension of the NCAA, ATP and WTA tennis seasons bring to mind a long-simmering hygiene problem in professional tennis.

As the Governor of New York announced his quarantine order yesterday, closing non-essential businesses and asking citizens to stay in their homes, a wave of relief came over me. Somebody in government has finally taken a bold step to thwart the scourge of COVID-19 and to mitigate its effects, flatten the curve, until our best and brightest scientists and doctors can get ahead of this predicted global pandemic. With tennis lessons on hiatus, a porch bench sanded and painted, and no Miami Open to watch on TV, the post I’ve been meaning to write since February is finally on the screen before me. Play The Let, Quarantine Edition: Tennis has a hygiene problem and there couldn’t be a better time to discuss it and hopefully make a lasting change.

I was reminded of this hygiene issue while sitting courtside at the New York ATP 250 event at Nassau Coliseum last month. The #4 seed was ill. He had received a bye in the first round and had beaten Marcos Giron handily to set up a quarterfinal with upcoming Serbian, Miomir Kecmanovic. As the match with Kecmanovic wore on, it was clear the #4 was ailing. His eyes were glassy. He was walking slowly between points, clearing his throat repeatedly on changeovers. He was the higher seed, but he was on his way to losing in 3 sets and he did not look or sound well. His nose was running. Then I saw it. The player called for his towel with the universal hand to face gesture. A ball person, a young lady from Queens College who had volunteered to assist the players at this tournament, ran the towel out from the corner. The player proceeded to blow his nose right into the towel and hand it back to the girl. Disgusted, the ballgirl held as little of the towel as possible, returning it to a hook in the corner of the court. The match continued. Not a word from the chair umpire. No acknowledgement whatsoever from the player.

This may seem like an extreme circumstance of unsanitary behavior from a barely adult touring tennis pro. However, as a supposed first-ballot member of the Ball Person Hall of Fame, I can attest that mucus is par for the course when it comes to tour players and their towels. Tennis players wipe sweat, blood and who knows what else onto their towels. At some stage in the late ’90s, something that was considered taboo in society somehow became the norm on the tennis court; expecting somebody else (ball people specifically) to carry a used towel.

Ball people used to just manage the balls. They were never asked to hand players their towels. This changed during the decade that I worked at the U.S. Open. I was in college and working one of my final U.S. Opens as a ball person. Tennis fashion was changing. The utilitarian headband and sweatbands made popular during the ’70s and ’80s had given way to more “stylish” bandannas and hats in the ’90s. These new accessories, while selling like hotcakes at the concession stand, did not get the job done in managing sweat. By the late ’90s, I observed more and more players bringing towels out on court.

At first, players would bring the towel out and hang it on the fence or throw it on the ground near the fence. They would visit the towel intermittently, when needed. Visiting the towel, whether necessary or not, became a tool to help players refocus, to take a breath and consider their plan for the next point. Though I’m sure he is not the first, Greg Rusedski is the player who comes to mind when I think of ball people being asked to run the towel from the fence to the player. I worked a U.S. Open semifinal of his and I probably ran his towel a greater distance than he ran the entire match. Of course, visiting the towel also became a ploy to throw off the rhythm of an opponent. So use of the towel gradually fell under the hawkish eyes of chair umpires concerned about pace of play. Somewhere between efficiency and expedience, the task of speeding towel usage fell to ball people.

Why not?  The player has to be ready for the next point. Ball people, who spend most of their time standing at attention, are talented enough to handle two jobs simultaneously; moving the balls around the court and delivering player towels. After all, ball people are somehow now responsible for drying wet courts, garbage disposal, serving players drinks, peeling their bananas, delivering coffee, and putting on pointless showy displays for the crowd.

With the onus on ball people, players now use the towel incessantly. The result is longer matches. When umpires enforce pace of play rules, players blame the ball people who can’t deliver fast enough. The ATP considered the pace of play aspect serious enough in 2018 to test new towel rules, forcing players to manage their own towels. However, what is missing from consideration is the matter of hygiene.

In the early days of this public health crisis (last week), a New York City tennis club sent out an email reminder that it was still open for business and that tennis already features the social distancing of a 78 foot court. Of course, it’s difficult for players to avoid holding the ball. I would be interested to see a study on how a virus fares in the felt of a ball being struck repeatedly, experiencing the abrasion of court surface and strings, while repeatedly losing and returning to shape. I’ll never forget the man who got himself banned from a tennis club for wiping his sweaty brow with the ball before each serve. He considered it a sort of legal spitball, a competitive advantage for the sweaty. His partners and opponents considered it disgusting and complained enough that club management ultimately had to send him on his way. What professional tennis players do to ball people with towels is actually more disgusting, unsanitary and despicable and it’s time the tours put a stop to it:

COVID-19 provides an opportunity to return tennis to sanitary sanity. Indeed, before they canceled the event entirely, Indian Wells banned players from giving their towels to ball people. The ball people would also wear gloves. In a global pandemic, these measures make sense. Even in normal times, players don’t know what ball people have on their hands and vice versa. Players travel all over the world and are probably more likely to be carriers of exotic pathogens than a volunteer 14 year old from Cincinnati. Hence, professional tennis should permanently adopt the rule that players handle their own towels. Put hooks at the back of the court where they can access towels quickly. Let the ball people focus on moving balls around the court and running for no reason. Pace of play will improve and so will hygiene.

Jeff Menaker

First Ballot

Back during the US Open, Stadium Journey revisited an interview we did back in 2014. Here is the 2019 version; my best case for first ballot entry to the Ballperson Hall of Fame. Is there a Ballperson Hall of Fame?

Q & A With Former U.S. Open Ballboy and Tennis Swiss Army Knife Jeff Menaker

The interviewer, Jon Hart, is the author of Man versus Ball (among other things). The book is a unique and endlessly entertaining first-hand look at the fringes of the professional sports world. Definitely worth a read. A great stocking stuffer!

https://www.amazon.com/Jon-Hart/e/B00BJ7CFU6/ref=dp_byline_cont_ebooks_1

– Jeffrey Menaker

Naomi Osaka learns: never meet your idols (Wins US Open)

There’s an old saying, “never meet your heroes, they will only disappoint you.” For Naomi Osaka, this discovery hopefully arrived in tandem with the realization that her athleticism, powerful groundstrokes and dominating serve have eclipsed a living legend, her idol, the most fearsome competitor in women’s tennis.

The fallout from the US Open women’s final has dominated tennis coverage and crossed over to the mainstream media. Since I was interviewed about it on the local New York evening news (and they used about 10 seconds of my interview), I want to publish my full take on what happened in Flushing on Saturday and how tennis should move forward. If you follow me on Twitter, you’ve already had a taste.

Unless you live under a rock, you know by now that there was a bit of drama that tainted the last few games of the women’s final and sullied the arrival of Naomi Osaka as the next great champion of women’s tennis. The drama, no surprise, came from Serena Williams, on the losing end of her second major final this summer- an impressive summer by anyone’s standards, returning to the tour from childbirth and associated health complications.

Serena was issued three code violations over the course of the match. #1 a code warning for coaching (which is allowed on the WTA tour, but, not at the 4 major tournaments). #2 a point penalty for smashing her racquet. #3 a game penalty for verbal abuse of the umpire (which brought Osaka a game away from sealing the second set and the match).

As I said on the newscast, the tirade and the racquet smashing, while sadly par for the course on tour, were completely unacceptable. Serena has to take full responsibility for her behavior in this regard. From a strategic standpoint, a deserving champion keeps composure and demonstrates cognizance of the situation upon receiving a code violation (justified or not). Serena’s legacy is pocked with ugly incidents like this one. Her 2009 US Open meltdown cost her a semifinal match against Kim Clijsters for threatening a line judge and receiving multiple code violations. So there is a history of Serena losing her composure under pressure at the US Open, which I’m sure loses her any sympathy in the eyes of casual tennis observers.

That said, there is plenty of shame to go around for Saturday’s ugly spectacle. In no particular order of culpability:

Serena’s coach and former boyfriend, Patrick Mouratoglou, admitted on live television that he was attempting to coach Serena with hand signals that were shown on the broadcast. He defended his actions, saying every other coach is doing the same, including Osaka’s coach and Rafael Nadal’s uncle, Toni. Just because her coach has the judgement of… well, a French playboy, doesn’t mean Serena received the coaching. In fact, she probably didn’t. A mostly insightful Martina Navratilova points out it doesn’t matter. While the penalty is assessed to the player, the offending party is the coach. Martina may not have read the rule on page 44 of the ITF Grand Slam Rulebook (emphasis added):

“Players shall not receive coaching during a match (including the warm-up). Communications of any kind, audible or visible, between a player and a coach may be construed as coaching.”

I think this explains, in part, Serena’s ultra defensive reaction. In her correct understanding of the rulebook text, Ramos misinterpreted the rule. She has to receive the coaching for there to be a penalty. However, there is a standard interpretation among officials that says if a coach is making hand signals, they are being received. Either way, her coach has shown remarkably bad judgement over the years and this episode underscores that truth.

Serena has felt targeted at the US Open dating back, before video replay was used on court, to a match with Jennifer Capriati where she was blatantly cheated by an officiating crew on a series of bad line calls. Serena’s indignant reaction to the coaching violation reminds me of her reaction to the excessive drug testing she was submitted to earlier this year. I wrote a post on Serena’s faulty logic (and hopeful legacy) on that very topic just before Wimbledon. Jonathan Liew in The Independent does a much better job placing us in Serena’s shoes than I ever could. Suffice it to say, while Serena has the baggage of meltdowns at the US Open, she also carries the baggage of being treated unfairly. I’m no psychoanalyst, but, hearing her scream “You’re a thief. You stole a point from me.” raises the question, which match is she talking about?

Beyond Serena and her coach, one has to look at the behavior of the chair umpire, Carlos Ramos. Though the ITF issued a days late statement of support for Mr. Ramos’ acting “in accordance with the relevant rules,” the WTA and USTA have shown their disapproval by releasing statements that do not back him. Much of the criticism, including my own on Twitter, has centered on Mr. Ramos’ lack of discretion in assessing code violation #1 and code violation #3. As Martina points out in her piece, it is common for chair umpires to communicate with a player about a coaching violation with a “soft warning” before issuing a code violation. This gives the player a chance to reign in a coach whose actions can have consequences for them on court. Leaving aside Ramos’ misinterpretation of the coaching rule, had Mr. Ramos shown better discretion by issuing a soft warning, we might actually be discussing Naomi Osaka and another strong tournament for Serena. Mr. Ramos has a history of rigidity, absurd rulings, poor communication and inciting players, including a coaching violation called against Venus Williams in 2016. Which begs the question, why was he on court for a US Open final with one of the most easily triggered players on the planet? He seems debilitatingly “by the book” where other umpires, Alison Hughes for example, seem to understand the discretion and communication necessary to handle the job.

While the coaching violation got Serena’s back up (beyond anything normal), the third code violation, for verbal abuse, while deserved, was an opportunity for Serena, and a women’s movement that could do without her, to make a fairly strong argument about a double standard in assessing penalties to women as compared to their male counterparts. It should first be noted that the number of code violations issued throughout the 2018 US Open was heavily weighted toward the men, 86-22. That said, Serena, Billie Jean King and everyone who came to Serena’s defense on code #3 have a legitimate argument that there is a much lower threshold for assessing code violations to women for verbal abuse, while the men (who behave worse across the board) get away with far more. As Jimmy Connors once called an ump “an abortion” without consequence, it doesn’t take a minute on YouTube to find incidents of Saint Federer, Nick Kyrgios or Novak Djokovic cursing out officials without repercussion. In a tournament where a chair umpire provided Kyrgios a pep talk to try harder, it is a stark contrast to see a lack of communication and rigidity from Ramos in dealing with Serena. Andy Roddick, no stranger to umpire abuse, was one of the first to recognize this.

Though her reactions yet again crossed the line, if there’s anything Serena understands well it is injustice. She has experienced racism and sexism from before she was equipped to handle it. Her father had a way of handling it, which has been both celebrated and derided. One of the ugliest parts of this sad affair is the reemergence of racist tropes in cartoons online. The big question facing tennis today is how do we all move forward?

First of all, the no coaching rule has to go. Banning coaching, but, putting coaches in first row corner seats, visible across the court from players, visible from the players’ benches, and within earshot when a player is on the same side, is hypocrisy so laughable there’s no wonder Mouratoglou can’t restrain himself from coaching or admitting it. Since the WTA now allows coaching, it’s time to expand coaching opportunities to all of professional tennis. Billie Jean King wants coaching allowed between every point, like college tennis or World Team Tennis. I tend to think changeovers are the appropriate time, but, I can also point to several successful instances helping my players with strategy right before an important point. Notwithstanding, just because a player receives coaching does not mean he or she is capable of executing it. As any coach can tell you, coaching in-game often does more harm than good. There are studies that show in-game coaching, across all sports, is far less useful than analysis and strategy developed over an extended period of training. Still, managed successfully, in-game coaching might make the sport more interesting to watch as strategic adjustments are made and countered.

Second lesson, officials need to be great communicators. With officials now threatening to boycott Serena’s matches (just her? not any of the men??), the ITF should include better communication training in its development of chair umpires. An umpire like Ramos, with 40 years of experience, has to be better at communicating with players. Obviously, having a pep talk is too far. But, demonstrating discretion and establishing lines of communication should be basic skills for umpires. Generally speaking, the work from the chair at this year’s tournament was a distraction and that’s when you know the standards have fallen. I can’t believe I’m about to hold up an NFL officiating crew as example, but, during the Bears/Packers game on Sunday night, textbook holding on a Bears lineman went uncalled. The result of the play was not beneficial to the Bears. They had to punt. A little discretion (I think it was discretion, not incompetence) made the game better for everyone.

Lastly, Serena needs to get some help. Whether that is adding a sports psychologist to her team or removing a coach that has failed to help her grow in the important areas of managing pressure and maintaining composure (dating her instead), change is needed.

We’re all on personal journeys of growth. Serena’s journey has played out in public from a very young age. I hope emerging American superstars Caty McNally and Coco Gauff are watching and learning from the mistakes Serena has made. I also hope the sport has evolved by the time they are on tour to prevent the sad spectacle we saw on Saturday.

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A final thought on Naomi Osaka: Why does the media insist she is Japanese without any mention that she has been in the U.S. since she was 3, doesn’t speak Japanese, and is half Haitian? Why is her biracial identity too much to describe succinctly? Why isn’t she Haiti’s first major winner? Could it be that Haiti was included in a certain list of [favorite vacation spots]?

– Jeff Menaker

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