Depleted French Open

The French Open will depleted of talent this year.  On the women’s side, Petra Kvitova, Victoria Azarenka and Serena Williams will all be out of action, and the French federation refused to grant a wild card to 2-time winner of the tournament, Maria Sharapova, who is returning from a drug suspension.  The denial of a wild card to Sharapova was justified on the grounds that she now should earn everything she gets.  The WTA responded that she had complied rigorously with the terms of her suspension and that although wild cards are granted totally at the discretion of the tournament, further punishment of Sharapova was unwarranted.

The controversy surrounding Sharapova will not die down.  Eugenie Bouchard has been quite vocal, calling Sharapova a cheater who should be banned for life.  It’s difficult to understand this point of view, given that all of Sharapova’s grand slam wins were achieved while in full compliance with the substance abuse policy, that the drug she wrongly took, Meldonium, had only been on the banned list for a few days before she played the 2016 Australian Open, and that sanctioning bodies ruled her violation to be unintentional.

Another point worth making here is that the science behind the decision to ban this drug is weak.  I searched the medical literature on Meldonium  and found that it improves ischemia reperfusion in a rat heart model and in other similar experimental paradigms.  When I looked there were no human studies on the effect of this drug on exercise tolerance, endurance through trainings, reflex times, muscle strength, or any other parameter of athletic performance.  As noted in a previous post, the entire system by which drugs are evaluated for acceptability should be carefully reviewed, and players should demand justification for any drug banning decision.  Sharapova is a wealthy woman who doesn’t need to play tennis, but lower ranked players or newcomers who get caught in a ban through error etc. could have their careers destroyed by a drug ban.

As for Bouchard’s opinions, I believe they are inspired at least in part by professional jealousy.  Sharapova  was a young phenom like Bouchard, but didn’t fail.  She won Wimbledon at age 17 and went on to reach the world #1 ranking and to win the career grand slam.  Bouchard, on the other hand, has sunk into the 40’s in rank after her initial success and has manifested significant psychological fragility on the court.  Add to this the fact that Sharapova is not the most gregarious of persons and has few real friends on the tour, and you have all the makings of a very bad tasting stew.  Bouchard can stew as much as she wants, but she would be better off solving her own problems than griping about others. 

All in all, the result is that the French Open will be missing several of the world’s best players. 

On the men’s side, Roger Federer has decided to skip the French Open.  This decision is somewhat surprising, given that he has won the tournament before and has made the finals several times.   Clearly Federer is not worried about the calendar slam, the number one ranking etc.  He appears to be selecting the tournaments he most enjoys playing and that exact the least amount of wear and tear on his aging body.  The decision is unfortunate for the fans, as Roger has been the best player in the world when he has played this year.

            The way looks pretty clear for Nadal to win his 10^th French title.  Andy Murray, Novak Djokovic and Stan Wawrinka have all shown a dip in their play, and Nadal appears back to the form that has made him virtually unbeatable on clay through most of his career.  Federer has beaten Nadal four times in a row, but none of those victories were on clay, and Federer will not be playing anyway.

Perhaps his biggest hurdle for Nadal will be Dominic Thiem, who has played Nadal tough several times this year and who beat him this week in the Italian Open.  The match in Italy was the best clay court encounter I’ve seen this year, with Thiem beating Nadal at his own game.   The challenges Nadal has made of Thiem have made Dominic into a better player.  It’s hard to believe how well he played in his match with Nadal in Italy.

So overall, injuries, personal life decisions and the French Open governing body have depleted the tournament of a lot of talent this year.  Let’s hope some great matches take place despite the circumstances. 

Tennis news

Great tennis returns to both tours

Some great tennis play returned to both tours this week.  Rafa Nadal totally overwhelmed Dominic Thiem, one of the world’s best clay courters, in the final of Barcelona.  Barring injury or some other unpredictable event, he will be a favorite, perhaps the favorite, to win the French Open.  Whatever Nadal’s problems have been over the last year or so, they appear for now to be over. 

In Stuttgart, Maria Sharapova returned to the women’s tour.  My hopes that she would use her suspension to get rid of her grunt (or perhaps we she call it her shriek) were in vain, as she was as noisy as ever.  She made it to the semis with some excellent play, going down in the penultimate round to Kristina Mladenovic, who has been one of Sharapova’s harshest critics.  The tour needs Sharapova right now, with Serena and Azarenka out of action.  As a former French Open champ, Sharapova should add a lot of interest to that tournament, where she is a wild card entrant.

Nastase is too nasty.  Ilie Nastase revealed his true self during the recent Fed Cup encounter between Great Britain and Romania.  He issued a racist remark about Serena Williams’ pregnancy, calling the future baby “chocolate with milk” in reference to the fact that Serena’s fiancé is white.  He also called Johanna Konta a “fucking bitch” for complaining about crowd noise, and publicly asked for the hotel room number of Anne Koethevong, the GB Fed cup captain.

Nastase later apologized for his remarks about Serena, calling them “spontaneous”.  This statement hardly qualifies as an apology, since spontaneity would rather suggest that his remarks reflected his true feelings.   This blog has stated before, and reasserts now, that there should be 0 tolerance for racism anywhere, tennis tours included.  Nastase has been suspended by the ITF, but given his history of bad behavior and this disgusting display of bigotry and sexism, it is my opinion he deserves a lifetime suspension.  At some point someone needs to stand up and say that there is no such thing as an acceptable level of prejudice.  I think Nastase should be suspended indefinitely and not allowed to return unless he can prove he as effectively addressed his mental maladies. 

We now have a president of the United States who was elected despite making remarks that were called “textbook racism” by a member of his own party, Paul Ryan.  The peril exists that the acceptance of racism in people with authority in our society will lead to a more general tolerance of the intolerable. 

The ITF, like the rest of us, should push back against this trend!