Tennis Hall of Shame

The WTA has announced that it's to trial

This is a *dreadful* idea. Some players will like it (players who are insecure, have coaches, and are tired of hearing after a loss, "If you'd just..."). Some players will hate it (players who have overbearing parents they can't get to shut up and whose only peace is on-court; players who don't have coaches at all).

Why it's so bad: the most appealing thing about tennis other than the grace of the game itself (often missing in today's biff-bang-bash-wallop) is the fact that players are out there on their own. *They* have to win it. Whatever preparation they've done off-court, with whatever advice, *on* court it's up to them to figure stuff out and make it happen. Coaches have a place on-court in team events such as Fed Cup. But not in tournaments.

A lot of people have said in recent years that the no-coaching rule can't be enforced, therefore it's silly to have it. But in other contexts we often have rules or laws that can't easily be enforced; there is a big difference between encouraging something by making it explicitly legal and discouraging something by making it against the rules. Still, this is the reasoning under which the ATP made appearance fees legal some years back (thereby making it financially extremely difficult for tournaments outside the Masters Series). AFAIAA, no serious attempt has been made to enforce the rule. It isn't, actually, that hard. Assign someone to keep an eye on the coaches -- ideally, part of the umpiring team.

Much has been written lately about on-court coaching, with Pennetta's coach during her match at Wimbledon and Sharapova's father in all her matches the most notable. Are we really just making rules for Sharapova now?

wg

Posted by wendyg at 02:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The whole business of Mariano Puerta's eight-year suspension is frankly incredible to me. The tribunals at the hearings for both his suspensions -- the first for clenbuterol, the second for etilefrene, a kind of blood pressure medicine (more blood flowing? more oxygen?) -- said that he could not have derived any performance benefit in either case. In the first, he had an asthma attack; in the second he may or may not have drunk from his wife's glass.

The discussion of this case is all over the place, trashing everyone from Puerta himself to the anti-doping authorities. The anti-doping tribunal itself opted for whatever leniency it was allowed, giving Puerta "only" an eight-year ban instead of lifetime. But Puerta is 27...and no one's ever successfully come back to the tennis tour after eight years away, at any age. Borg is the only one who's tried it on the men's side, and he quickly concluded he should give up and play the seniors tour.

So Puerta is finished unless he can win an appeal. But so is any pretence that dope-testing has anything to do with protecting athletes, fairness, or ensuring "fair" competition. If the drugs whose traces were found in Puerta's body gave him no performance benefit (as both tribunals said), why are we destroying his career and publicly shaming him? It is graceless and inappropriate for Dick Pound, head of the world anti-dophing authority, to gloat publicly, as he has over this case.

Starting Sunday, dope testing on the men's tour will be taken over by the ITF. It's hard to know if that will improve matters or not. It's always hard to tell what's going on inside tennis because it's such a small, closed world, but after the mess with all those players testing positive for traces of nandrolone and the ATP's decision to exonerate them on the basis that its own trainers had given them contaminated sports drink powderIs is, it seemed as though the pressure was on the ATP to hand testing over to the ITF. The fact is there are too many interested parties in tennis: to whose benefit is it if a Grand Slam winner tests positive? Sponsors, naional federations, the player associations...no one wants it to come out, not really. Even the other players might legitimately fear that their own sponsorshyips might vanish if *other* players test positive. On the other hand, the problem with a single-purpose anti-doping authority is that it must justify its continued existence and expansion by catching players, the higher-profile the better. The ITF owns the Grand Slams. Maybe it's got the right balance of interests, maybe not.

Is it credible to think that individual athletes with millions of dollars at stake don't use performance-enhancing drugs, ever? With the unscrupulous agents and obsessed parents running around the tour? No. I find it extremely difficult to believe that none of them has ever used drugs to speed recovery from injuries at the very least. But punishing people for things that confer no performance benefit just makes the whole thing look like a hypocritical morality play. If Puerta were American he'd be sobbing his redemption on a talk show right now. That's *not* what the purpose of the thing was supposed toi be.

wg

Posted by wendyg at 04:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The whole business of Mariano Puerta's eight-year suspension is frankly incredible to me. The tribunals at the hearings for both his suspensions -- the first for clenbuterol, the second for etilefrene, a kind of blood pressure medicine (more blood flowing? more oxygen?) -- said that he could not have derived any performance benefit in either case. In the first, he had an asthma attack; in the second he may or may not have drunk from his wife's glass.

The discussion of this case is all over the place, trashing everyone from Puerta himself to the anti-doping authorities. The anti-doping tribunal itself opted for whatever leniency it was allowed, giving Puerta "only" an eight-year ban instead of lifetime. But Puerta is 27...and no one's ever successfully come back to the tennis tour after eight years away, at any age. Borg is the only one who's tried it on the men's side, and he quickly concluded he should give up and play the seniors tour.

So Puerta is finished unless he can win an appeal. But so is any pretence that dope-testing has anything to do with protecting athletes, fairness, or ensuring "fair" competition. If the drugs whose traces were found in Puerta's body gave him no performance benefit (as both tribunals said), why are we destroying his career and publicly shaming him? It is graceless and inappropriate for Dick Pound, head of the world anti-dophing authority, to gloat publicly, as he has over this case.

Starting Sunday, dope testing on the men's tour will be taken over by the ITF. It's hard to know if that will improve matters or not. It's always hard to tell what's going on inside tennis because it's such a small, closed world, but after the mess with all those players testing positive for traces of nandrolone and the ATP's decision to exonerate them on the basis that its own trainers had given them contaminated sports drink powderIs is, it seemed as though the pressure was on the ATP to hand testing over to the ITF. The fact is there are too many interested parties in tennis: to whose benefit is it if a Grand Slam winner tests positive? Sponsors, naional federations, the player associations...no one wants it to come out, not really. Even the other players might legitimately fear that their own sponsorshyips might vanish if *other* players test positive. On the other hand, the problem with a single-purpose anti-doping authority is that it must justify its continued existence and expansion by catching players, the higher-profile the better. The ITF owns the Grand Slams. Maybe it's got the right balance of interests, maybe not.

Is it credible to think that individual athletes with millions of dollars at stake don't use performance-enhancing drugs, ever? With the unscrupulous agents and obsessed parents running around the tour? No. I find it extremely difficult to believe that none of them has ever used drugs to speed recovery from injuries at the very least. But punishing people for things that confer no performance benefit just makes the whole thing look like a hypocritical morality play. If Puerta were American he'd be sobbing his redemption on a talk show right now. That's *not* what the purpose of the thing was supposed toi be.

wg

Posted by wendyg at 04:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

As almost nobody knows because the WTA has not issued an official announcement or explanation, the ranking system is about to change for 2006. In brief, quality points (points for who you beat) will be eliminated, and players' rankings willl be based solely on round points (points for the round you reach and the level of the tournament you reach it at -- eg, the quarter-final at a Grand Slam is worth a great deal more than a quarter-final at a small tournment in Bangkok). We do not yet know what the round points table will look like, or exactly how it will affect which players. The players who stand to lose most are people whose rankings depend on a few big wins over high-ranked players rather than going deep into the draw every week at larger tournaments. The consequences in brief are likely to be:

- injured players making a comeback, young players just coming up, and older top players who play a limited schedule are likely to rise more slowly and/or stay lower ranked.

- mid-ranked players will have to balance whether a round or two at a big event (where there are more high-ranked players to beat them in the first round) is likely to be worth more or less to them than, say, a semifinal or final (or title) at a smaller one with a weaker draw.

- it will be possible for players with packed schedules to rise to a high ranking without ever beating anyone of significance.

- it will do nothing to address the most serious problem caused *in part* by the last changes to the rankings system, the escalating number of serious player injuries.

This change is the latest in a series of changes that have progressively made the rankings more and more meaningless. The players have only limited input: the women's tour is governed by a council that is approximately 1/3 tournament promoters, 1/3 WTA people, and roughly 1/3 players. More below to explain why these changes have been and will continue to be destructive to the long-term interests of the sport..

Continue reading "New WTA ranking system for 2006" »

Posted by wendyg at 03:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)