Wednesday, October 31
Last upated at 7:20 pm EDT
BRITISH PRESS
Fabrice Santoro’s kind of magic may spell trouble for Andy Murray - Neil Harman, The Times
There is much complex arithmetic to be resolved before the last two spots in the eight-man field are filled, but Murray knows that nothing less than victory will suffice today. It is kill or be killed and at the hands of Santoro, defeat can be a painful experience. Novak Djokovic, the third-best player in the world, probably felt that having two wisdom teeth extracted last week was about as bad as it gets, but to have to try to withstand Santoro’s armoury of delicate incisions, aggravating angles and deft touches in their second-round match yesterday was equally unpleasant.Djokovic was torn to shreds, beaten 6-3, 6-2. He arrived on court wearing a black mask, like a cross between the Lone Ranger and Batman, and his experience was akin to falling from a horse and being “kapowed” at the same time. The Serb, who long ago qualified for the Masters Cup, said that it was his Hallowe’en tradition to go on court with his face hidden; but he went the whole hog and camouflaged his entire game.
A masked 'Zorro' lost to 'The Magician' yesterday, a surprise second-round result at the Paris Masters which surely improved Andy Murray's chances of qualifying for the Masters Cup. Murray would have been expecting to meet Novak Djokovic in the third round today, and yet the Serbian world No 3, who had celebrated Halloween by walking out on court in a black Zorro eye-mask, rarely looked interested against Fabrice Santoro, known for his rabbit-out-of-the-hat tricks with a racket....Murray, who is also one of the smartest pros on the tour, said that Santoro was his favourite player to watch. "You probably won't see a game style like his for the rest of my career. He's a completely different player, plays some unbelievable shots. I love watching him," Murray said. Santoro returned the warm words: "He's a great player and I love the way he plays."
So, two of the creatives of modern tennis, two antidotes to the biffing and bashing of the modern game, seem to have set up a mutual appreciation society. It will be Murray's first meeting with Santoro, a 34-year-old who is the oldest player in the top 50, and who has has heavy strapping on one of his legs.
How many five-year-olds have an official biography that stretches to almost a thousand words? Legend has it that Silva was almost born on a tennis court. "His mother's waters broke when she was on court giving a lesson," Scott said. "When he was one he was soon demanding to see a tape of James Blake and he imitated the one-handed backhand Blake hits. Before he was two, Silvai was capable of rallying from the baseline. You should have seen him when he was two, hitting a foam ball against the glass sliding door of our house. You would have said, 'God, this kid is going to be a monster'."A tape of Silva was sent to a number of sports management companies. He was invited to visit Nick Bollettieri's facility in Florida. Then came the offer from the Mouratoglou Academy, where he has more than two hours a day on court and an hour with a physical trainer. "Silvai is always smiling and laughing on court," said Scott, who is planning to cut down on media promotion and concentrate on tennis.
...[Tracy]Austin has been impressed. "Obviously, his forehand is beautiful. But it's the backhand that's phenomenal," she said. Andy Murray's mother and former coach, Judy, has seen footage of Silva, but said it is tricky to make accurate predictions about a child's future at such an age. "Andy was probably about 16 when I thought he could become a professional," she said. "But Silva certainly has a natural, fluent and consistent swing on the forehand side, and is light on his feet. He looks to be very well co-ordinated, has excellent control of the racket and his body for a five-year-old. He also looks like he's enjoying himself. But it is difficult to make predictions at this stage, as who knows how he will develop physically, and more importantly, mentally.["]
Pete Sampras may have dubbed Santoro "the magician", and the years have not staled the variety of his double-fisted forehand and backhand, but the legs are not what they were, and one is swathed in support bandages after he tore a muscle in Lyon last week....Djokovic, who with Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, Nikolay Davydenko, Andy Roddick and David Ferrer has qualified for the Masters Cup, entered the arena wearing a Halloween mask then blamed his defeat on a wisdom tooth extraction, though it hardly took the wisdom of Solomon to figure out he had not put heart and soul into the match against Santoro. The 20-year-old Serbian let the cat out of the bag when he revealed he would be leaving for China on Sunday "so I will have five or six days' preparation in Shanghai".
Santoro, who has never played Murray but has practised with him, has a lot of admiration for the Scot. "He's a great player. He has good hands and knows the game pretty well for a young player. He always plays the right shots. I remember the first time I practised with him in Melbourne I was very surprised how much time he had to hit every shot. And that's a very important quality."
The world No 26 held on, however, and started to get the upper hand towards the end of the first set. In the tie-break Nieminen made the first mini-break to lead 5-3 after Murray fluffed an attempted drop shot, but the Scot played the next four points faultlessly. Nieminen broke to lead 3-1 in the second set as Murray's level briefly dipped, but the world No 12 then reeled off five games in a row to take the match. Murray said it felt odd having to worry about the results of his Shanghai rivals as much as his own. "It's almost like the last game of a football season and you know you just need to draw and hope that the other teams lose," he said. "It's tough just to focus on your own matches."
For all that the qualification process is long and drawn out – and despite the fact that he missed a sizeable chunk of the year with a wrist injury – Murray has a sneaking suspicion he is bound for China come what may.Just in case, he already has his Chinese visa and work has started on the terracotta model of Dunblane’s finest son. Each of the eight qualifiers for Shanghai will be depicted as one of the warriors discovered in Xian 30 years ago.
“I guess it is a sign of confidence, yeah,” said Murray. “Better to have everything prepared to go than not believe you’ve got a chance of doing it. I definitely think I’ve got a chance. If I play like I did today, keep it up for the tournament, I think I’ll go.”
There is also a rumour doing the rounds that Andy Roddick will not appear in Shanghai. He qualified two weeks ago in fifth place but he has played only one match since September.
AUSTRALIAN PRESS
TENNIS's governing body in Australia has hired a corporate security company headed by a former Victoria policeman in the fight to ensure January's Australian Open is free of any illegal betting or match fixing.
Ranked 1109th in the world, Philippoussis has successfully applied for a protected ranking of 112th in the world.
INTERNATIONAL PRESS
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You don't find TMF's genius by breaking down the components of his game (or, perhaps more accurately, his success). You find his genius by adding them together and regarding the final result. More than any tennis player I can name, Federer illustrates the idea that a whole can be far more than a sum of the parts. In fact, the difference between the sum of his parts and the whole is his genius....The second factor, the emergence of medium-speed surfaces as the new norm in tennis (and the change has been most profound at the most important tournaments), has really helped TMF shine. Just as- best-of-5 set tennis helps favorites avoid upsets, medium speed surfaces enhance the chances of players who do many things well. Just as importantly, they blunt the chances of players who rely on one or two strokes that they execute exceptionally well, because opponents of such players have more time (and time equals opportunity) on such courts to find ways to avoid those dangerous weapons.
Maybe Murray, because he's fresh and likely would have already qualified had he not spent months off the tour due to a wrist injury, but you can't convince me that any other guy does. So what's to get excited about this week? A Robredo-Youzhny semi for the seventh Shanghai spot on one end of the draw, or a Blake v. Murray quarter to face Federer in the semis and the loser snaring the eighth spot? Not too bad, but for general sporting fans, there isn't a lot to grab on to.
Tennis fans are closely following the races because outside of the sickening gambling revelations, that's all they have to focus on this week, but I can guarantee that once Madrid starts next week and when Shanghai kicks off in two weeks, their attention will be on who can actually win the event, not who snuck in at the last minute.
...What's really absurd about the Sony Ericsson WTA Points Race is that no results are discarded like they do on the men's side, so a player like Hantuchova can play 14 more tournaments than Sharapova and tie her, even though the quality of many of her results aren't that high. The tour needs to change the system next year and cap it at the best 19 results (two more results than the rankings allow), which will encourage a little more play, but not too much. How about Marion Bartoli finishing as the first alternate with 30 tournaments on the board?
The high-flying brothers recently clinched their 43rd doubles title with a win in Basel and are now fifth on the all-time wins list, just one behind Sergio Casal and Emilio Sanchez and 18 behind all-time leaders Todd Woodbridge and Mark Woodforde (the Woodies), who own 61...."We're starting to think about the Woodies' record," Mike told FOXSports.com. "If we have the same year we had this year for the next two years (winning 10 titles or more), it's realistic. We're still pretty young (29 years old ) and we feel like we're still improving. We're so much better than we were coming out of Stanford. Our communication has always been good, but now we serve bigger, return better, poach more effectively, play the big points well. We know what to eat, how much to sleep, how to play different types of opponents, what our schedule should be."
Mike Bryan says that Roddick is "50-50" to make the trip to China.
"I know that a lot of people want him to play — his sponsors do and so does the tour and fans, but he's not sure yet," said Mike, who spoke to Roddick a few days ago. "He doesn't care if he finishes the year ranked No. 2 or No. 6. It's been his dream to win Davis Cup, and that's what he's thinking about and working toward. Maybe it would be good for him to go to Shanghai and gets some matches in and maybe get a win over Federer. The top guys — Federer, Nadal and Djokovic — have kind of distanced themselves from him this year and Andy doesn't want them to pull away any further, but Davis Cup is what's getting him going right now."
But we got a lot of Davydenko questions -- anyone else nostalgic for the days when no one knew the guy? -- so here's my riff.Last week's fine for dubious effort was, even by tennis' vertigo-inducing standards, beyond bizarre.
He claimed he had never heard of the rule. "What [does it] mean?" he demanded at one point. He looked reluctant to continue, muttering, "You scare me now," but eventually did plod back to the baseline....Prior to the St. Petersburg dustup, the most famous invocation of the deadbeat rule was a code violation called against Davydenko's fellow Russian Marat Safin in the first round of the 2000 Australian Open. Safin's slacker behavior in a loss to South African qualifier Grant Stafford earned him four separate warnings from chair umpire Norm Chryst. After the last one, Safin defiantly caught one of Stafford's serves in his hand. He was fined $2,000.
The ATP does not keep track of "best effort" violations, but we know of at least one other instance involving a certain cherubic-faced Swiss prodigy in 1998. Then-17-year-old Roger Federer was still bouncing between the junior and pro circuits late that year and had just earned some of his first significant ATP results when he slogged off to Kublis, Switzerland, to play a lower-level pro event.
...ATP spokesman Kris Dent said Tuesday that tour officials "strenuously deny" Davydenko was treated differently than any other player would have been. But could we reasonably expect Dercq to exclude the backstory from his thought process as he watched Davydenko? And in general, wouldn't a player's stature, playing style, normal on-court manner and recent record have to figure into this call, which turns umpires into mind readers?
In a four-year deal, IMG Media has been appointed as the exclusive sales agent to represent the television rights to women’s tennis matches from the Sony Ericsson WTA Tour throughout the Asia Pacific, Africa, the Middle East (excluding countries in the EBU zone) and Latin America.The four-year deal, beginning in 2008, covers all television media rights (including satellite, cable and terrestrial), closed circuit, in-flight and ship-at-sea. Under the terms of the agreement, IMG Media will distribute all Tier I and Tier II tournaments along with the season ending Sony Ericsson Championships in 2008, and the Tour’s 20 premier events. The company also has the rights to the Sony Ericsson Championships in 2009 and 2010.
Wires
"I was in my hotel room and somebody called to ask me not to try too hard the next day," Llodra told French radio. "That was four years ago. I said 'no' and hung up. Now, with what has happened since, I think maybe I was one of the first players to have been approached."Llodra won his Wimbledon title this year with his fellow Frenchman Arnaud Clément, a former top-10 singles player who said on Monday he had been approached to throw a match. "We have the feeling a lot of people have been approached; there's a lot of talk about it on the circuit," Llodra said. "Wherever there is money you have crooks. It's difficult to stop because there is a powerful ring behind it."
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