Thursday, July 21
Last updated at 7:50 pm EDT
AMERICAN PRESS
Singles stars wanted in doubles - Indianapolis Star
What ATP officials call "enhancements" to the doubles format look more like a form of de-emphasis to many of the tour's players... "It's a terrible idea," said Kevin Kim, who is playing singles and doubles this week. "They shouldn't mess with the game. It's been played the same way for quite awhile. I wouldn't be surprised if none of the top players played. It disrupts the integrity of the game."...Rob MacGill, director of the RCA Championships, believes Indianapolis is an exception in its appreciation for doubles play. He cited Monday night's schedule as an example... "If it were up to us alone, we would leave as many doubles openings as we could," MacGill said. "We look at it from the standpoint of giving people playing opportunities and giving fans the opportunity to enjoy doubles."
Kim said he believes there are other ways to increase interest in doubles. He would like to see scheduling changes that allow players more time to rest and prepare for matches. "I've been here since Friday," he said. "I could have played (doubles) on Monday."
Jonas Bjorkman, a member of the Tour's second-ranked doubles team with partner Max Mirnyi, is opposed to the scoring changes that will shorten matches. "I just hope and pray it's not going to happen, because it's going to destroy the (doubles) game completely," he said. Mirnyi, however, has an open mind. "Either way, the better team will win," he said. "It will take some time to get adjusted, but the better players will win the match... We'll never know unless we try. It's worthwhile giving it a try and seeing whether we get some of the top guys playing."
Kevin Kim registered a victory over Hyung-Taik Lee on Wednesday. But he wasn't about to gloat. Not when the two had to play doubles together later in the afternoon in the RCA Championships."It's a little unusual," Kim said of playing his partner on the same day. "But we're such good friends, there's no bitterness. I'm sure we'll go out and play doubles as it was any other doubles match. We've played each other a number of other times; it's all part of the job."
The fourth-seeded Dent, who had a first-round bye, defeated close friend Jan-Michael Gambill 6-3, 6-4 in the second round of the RCA Championships before an Indianapolis Tennis Center crowd of 5,474 Wednesday night....In other second-round action, George Bastl eliminated No. 3 seed Dominik Hrbaty 6-4, 6-7 (8-6), 6-4. Second-seeded Nicolas Kiefer fared better, defeating Antony Dupuis 7-5, 6-4.
...Kiefer, who lost to Andy Roddick in last year's RCA final, hasn't won a singles title since Hong Kong in 2000. "I'm still young and there's many years left," said the 28-year-old German, who has six titles. "That's the reason I go on the court every day and practice hard. My goal is to achieve something big."
The Indian teen tennis sensation has an uncle, Kamran, who lives in Springfield, Ohio, and she said she has enjoyed sampling the local cuisine with her uncle each night during her stay in the Western & Southern Financial Group Women’s Open. The more she grows comfortable here, the longer it appears she’ll stay.Mirza outslugged Puerto Rican Kristina Brandi 7-6 (5), 7-5 today in the second round, advancing to a quarterfinal matchup Friday against the winner of tonight’s Vera Zvonareva-Akiko Morigami match.
Jankovic needed three sets to get past qualifier Maria Emilia Salerni in the first round....In a match that was rain-delayed for 78 minutes, Shahar Peer came from one set down to upset No. 6 Ai Sugiyama, the fourth seeded player to lose before the quarterfinals
"I'm having a good year," Peer said. "This is my first year in the top 100. That was my goal for this year, but I'm not thinking too much about rankings right now."
Now, the taller a player grows, the more advantages she can use. Even at 5-11 ¾, there are times when Daniela Hantuchova, the No. 4 seed at this week's Western & Southern Women's Open, feels like a dwarf."I always thought I was a tall one, but not anymore," said Hantuchova, who beat Chanda Rubin 6-2, 7-5 in the second round Wednesday. "That's changed in the last few years."
..."I'm one of the shortest and probably the lightest," Schnyder said. "I try to do a lot of work in the gym and work on my strength. I will never be the player that hits somebody off the court. I have to rally a bit. I have to have a good serve and a lot of variations."
Prakash Amritraj looks like he's from another era on the tennis court. His serve and volley doesn't match today's power game.He would fit right in 20 or 30 years ago, when his father played. That's no coincidence.
The former USC and Harvard-Westlake High of Studio City player modeled his game after Vijay Amritraj, a successful pro in the 1970s and '80s. "I watch a lot of video of his old matches, and I enjoy it much more than today's tennis," Prakash Amritraj said. "That old-school style of serve and volley, chip and charge. I've tried to adapt sort of a modern version of his game."
..."I sort of expected it to come a little easier," Amritraj said of being a professional. "You don't expect as much of a struggle. But anything worthwhile is going to be tough."
He climbed to No. 220 in the world but dropped back into the 400s when injuries to his quadriceps and shoulder kept him out three months last season. Amritraj showed signs of improvement recently, having his best finish in a Challenger event by making it to the final at Forest Hills in New York three weeks ago. Amritraj is 21 -- not exactly young in tennis.
see that I have convinced no one. Let me put it this way: You don't want the stars.Do you know why you don't want the stars? Because stars use the tournament as a warm up and nothing more. They'll put in a good effort for an hour or so. They don't mind breaking into a sweat, but if the match is close, they tank. They don't need or want a tough match days before the start of the Open. They want to slip into town, pocket the appearance fee, give a half effort, and get out of town.
But these guys need two things: money and ranking points.
Trust me on this one: Dent is not going to win the U.S. Open in 2005, nor is Gimelstob or Ginepri. Their one shining moment on the tennis circuit comes in stops like New Haven.
AUSTRALIAN PRESS
Helicopters pried from the sky, water taxis lay in ambush on the harbour and a crowd of several hundred fans and still more photographers staked out the Opera House in the hope of a glimpse of someone glitzy as tennis ace Lleyton Hewitt and soapie star Bec Cartwright were married yesterday.Most were disappointed. After a whirlwind romance, it was - at least for those not on the list of invited guests and paying media - a "what was all that about then?" sort of celebrity wedding, a private affair surrounded by secrecy and subterfuge.
The main players were whisked past security men in their sunglasses directly into the Opera House by white limousines with heavily-tinted windows. Guests were dropped off by a convoy of seven mini-buses and required to walk, quickly, through a throng of fans, photographers, police and security guards, variously shouting "stand back", "get your hands off me" and "who's she?".
>> The ooh-aah matching-lemon-wedge-shoes account.
INTERNATIONAL PRESS
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SI: Dave, you played Saturday Night Live when tennis star Andy Roddick hosted. What do you remember about him as a comedian?Matthews: [Laughs] I'm impressed by his tennis. I'm not advocating he drop tennis and go into acting, just as I'm not about to give up music and go into tennis.
Sources told TennisReporters.net that Capriati has been working out hard with a physical trainer, but her shoulder hasn’t recovered to the point where she can resume practicing. Whether she’ll attempt to play sometime this fall is undetermined.
A day after ESPN's Pardon The Interruption hosts Michael Wilbon and Jay Marrioti slammed the state of pro tennis, arguing that it lacked personality, interest and artistry, Andy Roddick came to the defense of the sport, appearing as a guest on the show to make good. Roddick argued that there were plenty of personalities and that the game play, especially from Roger Federer, has been terrific. When asked about his recent sighting with Maria Sharapova during the ESPYs last week, Roddick maintained the two are just friends. Roddick also defended the new nicknames created for the US Open Series, suggesting that since the PTI boys brought it up that it was indeed working. PR is PR is PR, as they say...
Late last week Lleyton Hewitt according to News Ltd journalist Leo Schlink with close ties to Team Hewitt wrote a perplexing story about how Hewitt had decided to quit Nike as his major clothing sponsor.As a consequence according to the always supportive Schlink, a bidding war has broken out among other leading tennis clothing manufacturers to win his services.
...Now ordinarily you might ask why would Hewitt dispense with the world's biggest sporting goods brand only to sign to a lesser light, unless Nike had a lot more to say about why he ultimately departed their stable than is being alluded to by Schlink? Could it possibly be that Nike if it did wish to retain Hewitt, wanted to do so on markedly different terms and significantly less money than Hewitt was happy to accept?
>> Just as an aside to the "always" supportive comment -- this piece was just about the only one at the time to report that Hewitt had sworn at Coria.
Commenting on the Davydenko case (see the first link above), Higdon said that he was aware of the gambling-related rumor. But he also said that the ATP knew the condition of his wrist (which he injured at Wimbledon) prior to the match, and that Davydekno had undergone an MRI for the injury. He allegedly was also concerned about his ability to perform in a Davis Cup tie that followed the Gstaad event. Still, it doesn’t bode well that some bookmakers have declared Sargis Sargsian’s matches off-limits, and that Davydenko and Sargsian apparently are great buddies. And it sure didn’t look like Davydenko’s wrist was troubling him much in his Davis Cup matches the following week.... I’m not for rushing to judgment on any of this, but I also like to think I have a smidgen of common sense, and I see quite a few little red flags popping up on the tennis landscape.
>> This is starting to take off a bit, so again, an aside related to the original story: there's a big difference between "match-fixing" and other types of insider betting.
Match-fixing means a player lost on purpose for monetary reasons -- a big no-no and a charge that requires supporting evidence. (A circumstantial e.g. -- apparently quite a few the 'suspicious' matches have been decided by retirements.) It's also what should be the ATP's the core circle of concern. This is what they really need to make sure isn't happening.
Outside that is a grey zone -- coaches, trainers etc. using their inside information to make money through strategic betting. (ATP trainers/staff doing this would be another big no-no, obviously -- see crude diagram.) Betting by coaches, players associates, etc. is theoretically not allowed, but sometimes hard to justify and always hard to police. This isn't really match-fixing, as long as the players aren't being told to lose. In Irakli Labadze's case, the better allegedly 'knew Labadze was going to lose.' So? Maybe he saw Labadze's plane ticket for a flight leaving that evening. It's not match-fixing unless Labadze deliberately lost because a bet had been placed on the match -- and we don't know whether that's true yet. Should this kind of thing be considered a problem? Yeah, but it can probably be controlled by co-operation between the bookmakers and the ATP (already in place). The idea is not to let it escalate to Part A above.
Finally, there's 'outsider insider' betting, i.e. general chatter about injuries, someone a tournament seeing a player drop a brick on his foot, and the like. That's the bookies' problem, and it's up to them to try not to get taken.
The problem matches cited so far have been about large bets being placed on obscure matches at small tournament, with some of the matches having odd endings (e.g. this one, with Davydenko retiring up 6-1, 1-0 -- not too smart if he was in fact throwing the match.). So if one is a bookmaker, what might one do? Well -- just close the door. Don't pay out on uncompleted matches (now adopted by some), put a limit on how much can be bet on these esoteric matches, and if possible, don't let people bet anonymously.
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