Tennis players make up five of the U.S.’s Top 10 favorite female sports stars, according to a poll by Harris Media.

The book club returns this week, as freelance tennis writer Kamakshi Tandon and I talk about Patrick McEnroe’s “Hardcourt Confidential,” written with Tennis Magazine’s Peter Bodo.

Hi Steve,

I know you haven’t yet read Andre Agassi’s book because of all the hoopla that surrounded its release, so it’s interesting that both the Pete Sampras and Agassi anecdotes you picked out have a lot of resonance with what’s in Agassi’s book, Open.

Sampras’ bad tipping has been throughly hashed by this point, but the tales of how Agassi destroyed the Davis Cup team atmosphere in the 2005 quarterfinals are fresher and very entertaining — definitely the best section of the book, and a must-read for anyone who watched that infamous loss. As McEnroe relates, Agassi spent a lot of time haranguing Bob Bryan about his “actress chick.” It clearly wasn’t a one-off thing — in “Open,” Agassi makes a similar crack about actresses when Sampras tells him about his relationship with Bridgette Wilson. Brooke Shields really scarred him, apparently.

I did enjoy Hardcourt Confidential — Pete Bodo kindly let me cajole his copy and I read it in snatches during the French Open. And why not? This is essentially an industry book, and not too many of those come our way.
 
It’s chatter about pro tennis — players’ games, their personalities, matches, tournaments, player development, Hawyeye, strings, trends — the kind of shop talk we have ourselves, and the kind of things that are interesting if you’re interested in tennis. And because Patrick is a thoughtful guy with
well-considered views, it’s a good conversation. There’s some generic filler, but you’re always going to get that unless the person writing is utterly unconcerned about sales.

The theory in the book I found most compelling — and embedded immediately – relates to Sampras’ and Roger Federer’s Grand Slam tallies. Roy Emerson’s record of 12 Slams stood for three decades before Sampras broke it with 14 Slams the early 2000s. Then Federer came along and moved the bar up to 16 just a few years later.

The way McEnroe looks at it, it’s not that Sampras and Federer’s totals are outsize — everyone else in between was too low. We often talk about how players didn’t play this Slam or that Slam in the past, and so their totals are lower than they might have been. But the flip side of that is
that players now play every Slam, and build their whole season around the majors. It’s only natural that they’ll rack up more. (You could say the same for the Masters events, where both Rafael Nadal and Federer caught up relatively quickly to Agassi, who set his record at a time when the events didn’t have the same participation they do now.)

“Emmo’s record would have fallen more quickly, and new records would have been established on more of a steady curve, had the Australian Open evolved as a “can’t miss” Grand Slam event along with the other three. The truth is that for almost two decades we were living in a world with just three majors.”

McEnroe definitely doesn’t bare everything. He keeps his own family life largely private and has mostly praise for his current employers. (Though there is a description of the frazzled debate at ESPN during the U.S. Open over whether to ask Serena about the ‘foot default’ in the doubles trophy presentation the next day.)

But he also says a lot of things he doesn’t have to, either. Given how demure Patrick has been in the past, there are a surprising amount of shots at his brother John (they really don’t seem to be getting along these days, do they? Maybe Patrick is less inclined to be a doormat for the sake of keeping the peace). On two occasions he also sharply criticizes one of his Davis Cup stalwarts, James Blake. These aren’t entirely new sentiments — he’s called John difficult and Blake stubbon before — but here we get some examples of what’s been driving those earlier comments.

“There was only one problem [with his father recommending him for a job on Don Imus' radio show]. When my brother John got wind of the idea, he blew his stack. ‘Why didn’t you throw my name out there,’ he complained.

‘Maybe you’re right. Maybe it would be a good thing for Patrick.’”
…

“I learned quickly that James needed to be handled with kid gloves, and tried to remember it in every subsequent tie. Some time later, we finally got James to drop down to a compromise 64 pounds of string tension. We almost threw a party to celebrate.”

So there’s quite a bit of substance here, but skillfully packaged so as not to be too noticeable. A bit like Patrick himself.

However, as you said, there’s a lot of Pete Bodo in the book too. That was one of my side amusements — going through the book thinking, ‘That’s pure Pete,’ then, ‘This is Patrick’…’and Pete again’…’Patrick.’

The comments about Cincinnati and Monte Carlo you quoted are prefect examples of Pete’s fingerprints showing through, and I wonder whether its content Patrick actively or passively accepted. There’s a section on Toni Nadal that seems to draw directly from Pete and Jon Wertheim’s interesting interview with him at Wimbledon a couple of years ago, and a part on anti-doping that also has familiar ehoes (including a couple of errors about technical details, unfortunately).

Of course, it could cut both ways. They say that couples become more alike over time — I don’t know if that applies to writer-ghostwriter combos, but that’s what I found myself thinking when I saw Pete write a piece a few days ago on revamping Davis Cup format. He’s always been a staunch Davis Cup traditionalist (I’m one too), but Davis Cup captain Patrick advocates reform
because it’s a challenge to get the top players to play all the time. So who knows, maybe Patrick sees the appeal of a plain, simple life with limited cultural amenities in Cincinnati.

Some will be annoyed by the way the book jumps from one topic to another without much of an overarching structure. I don’t entirely understand it myself, though it does add to ther eminscing, memoir feel. As long as it’s an honest attempt to communicate the person’s thoughts and experiences, I’m pretty easygoing about the structure and content of such accounts.

My earlier reservations about the Patrick-Pete interweaving aside, these kind of books are appetizing because you get to go back and fill in pieces of the historical puzzle, adding knowledge about new details of matches you saw and players you remember.

We’ve already had books from three of the fab four of U.S. tennis — Sampras, Agassi and Chang (his was a while back), with Jim Courier the only holdout. (Come on, Jim, we want to hear your Bollettieri stories, too.) Now here’s Patrick McEnroe’s, which adds another set of memories, another career (his own), and also kicks off the process of looking at the next generation — Andy Roddick, Blake, etc. Interestingly, Pete Bodo has ghostwritten two out of these four chronicles — Sampras and PMac — ironic perhaps, because as I understand he was focused on thigns other than tennis for part of this period.

The result of this literary influx, though, is that we’ve gotten a lot of added background on this era — their early memories, what was going on in their personal lives at various times and their feelings towards one another.

Agassi’s book was full of these little new details, often rather memorable
ones. ‘A wig? A wig?!!’ ‘No underwear?!!!’ ‘Tanking the AO semifinal against Chang?!’

PMac’s book won’t rock your preconceptions about him or his brother John or anyone else in quite the same way, but it adds a little gleams of color to most of the big names he discusses, as well as the nature of his own varied work in the field.
 
“In my role as head of USTA player development, I run into dozens of guys who were good players, even name players; a number of them were so talented it could take your breath away. And now they’re working at clubs, feeding balls to little kids, looking for a way to get back into the action. Some of them are now living with their parents. They hit me up for jobs, and it hurts a little to say no to them.”
…
“The Bryans are technical, like golfers. Mike likes to have some little thing every week, especially if you can pack it into a neat slogan: Stay down on the return, like you’re sitting in a chair… Most Davis Cup weeks, Mike likes to take a day off. I’d gladly give it to him, too, only he never comes right out and asks. He find something wrong, some that needs fixing instead… [he] always tries to sneak his girlfriends into the hotel for the week, even though my ‘official’ policy always was no wives or girlfriends until the tie is about to begin. Mike tries to hide his girls, so they end up stuck in his room, watching TV, while we have a good time at our team dinners… What makes it doubly funny is that Andy Roddick, even after all these years, and after getting engaged, still called me before the team dinner on Saturday night in Birmingham and asked, “Is it okay if (my fiancee) Brooklyn comes along?”
…
“Brazil won the doubles, so the tie was still live on Sunday. Like an idiot, I decided to wear a nice blue shirt to work. Within minutes of arriving on site and just as I was about to go on air, I started to get those black sweat stains on my shirt. I put on my jacket, tugged it this way and that, but it was no use; I couldn’t disguise the stains… Suddenly, I had a brainstrom. I asked for a bottle of water. I took jacket off, unscewed the cap and dumped the water all down the front of my shirt.”
…
“He told me Roger didn’t have anyone to warm up with for the final. Would I mind hitting with him?… I was eager to “feel” what his shots were like. It may be hard for a spectator to tell, but every player’s game is like a fingerprint… I wanted to touch his genius, even if it was at racket’s length… He works at the ball, it’s like the thing has different properties every time he addresses it. One moment, it’s shaped like an egg from topsping; the next, it’s got so much backspin you can almost hear it purring. What I felt, mostly, was his control; the ball seemed to follow a different command with each shot… It felt like my side of the court was twice the size of his.”

What anecdotes did you mine for your memory bank, Steve?

Kamakshi

The book club returns this week, as freelance tennis writer Kamakshi Tandon and I talk about Patrick McEnroe’s “Hardcourt Confidential,” written with Tennis Magazine’s Peter Bodo. 

Kamakshi,

“The smaller the ball, the better the writing.” That was
George Plimpton’s theory of sports journalism, anyway. There’s a snobbish ring
to the phrase, which isn’t surprising considering the source. And I’m not sure
it’s technically true. I haven’t read a whole lot of memorable ping-pong
literature, have you?

But, relatively speaking, tennis uses a small ball, and it
has produced some great writing, journalists and observers who stand with the
best—Deford, Forbes, Bodo, Rex Bellamy. What it seems to do as
well as any other sport these days, though, is the memoir, both from its stars
and its second-tier players. In the past few years, we’ve had Andre Agassi’s confessional blockbuster, James Blake’s personal history, Vince Spadea’s edgy tour diary,
and now Hardcourt Confidential. For a niche sport, that seems
like a pretty high story output.

McEnroe’s stories mix the personal with the observational;
the most memorable feature him as a witness to the whims and quirks of
the more talented players around him. McEnroe and his ghostwriter, Pete Bodo,
chose to build it as a series of non-chronological vignettes, which was a
smart move. It gives the book a breezy feel; you aren’t forced, the way you are
with the standard autobiography, to slog through his early days before you get
to the “confidential” stuff. This approach also fits with the youngest McEnroe’s
personality, which has always been to play the friendly, rational kid brother
to the more self-absorbed genius of Johnny Mac.

Speaking of Pete, knowing him far better than I know
Patrick, I can see a lot of his worldview in these pages. For example: The ATP’s Cincinnati
tournament inspires this musing about Europeans’ misapprehension of Midwestern
values: “They don’t understand how we actually like a plain, comfortable life, even if it lacks many of the cultural amenities they’re used to.” Contrast that with a description of the Monte Carlo event: “The Monte Carlo Country Club is
an enclave of the rich, royal, and powerful. Patrons and club members regularly
have lunch on the terrace while watching the players—or is that peons?—grunting
and sweating on the main stadium court.” Remind you of anyone?

It’s hardly a surprise that there would be a lot of Pete
in the book—he wrote the sentences, and he and Patrick share a down-to-earth
sensibility. Pete also brings his biggest strength, that is, his
perceptiveness about people’s characters, and the ways those characters can be
contradictory. Early on, McEnroe’s doubles partner, Richey Reneberg, is
described as a “calm, nice guy who had a rebellious streak,” someone who, under
his friendly veneer, liked to invent nicknames for his opponents. It took Patrick’s memory and Pete’s storytelling skill to put that mini-portrait of Reneberg together.

From there Patrick and Pete move on to the bigger fish—Sampras, Agassi, Blake, Roddick, etc. These stories will be the highlight of the
book for most fans, and Patrick, while respectful as always, isn’t afraid to
shed a little negative, human light on each star.

He says that one part of Sampras enjoys being a jerk, a hard a—. He’s
had to learn to say no to people, and he’s come to relish the role a little. We knew
he was cheap, but I don’t think I understood how deep that streak ran until I
read McEnroe’s story about how Sampras, when they were teammates at the Word
Team Cup one year, called Patrick afterward, claiming he had “gotten too much money” for what he’d contributed.

But the best section of the book belongs to Agassi, and how he helped wreck the U.S. Davis Cup team’s camaraderie and mojo during their
loss to Croatia in 2005. Agassi, high maintenance, high-strung, and controlling,
hates the courts Patrick has selected. (“I can’t get any progress!” he shouts to
his coach, Darren Cahill; meaning, in Agassi-speak, that he can’t get the ball
to penetrate.) He comes unglued in his loss to Ljubicic and screams in agony at
Cahill. He insists on ordering for everyone at dinner and having a lengthy group wine
tasting at the table, while the rest of the team, who are essentially college
kids, just wants to get the hell out of there. And he rides Bob Bryan so hard about
his actress girlfriend (“when are you going to dump that actress chick?”) that
Bob loses confidence on court, he and his brother go down in the doubles, and Croatia
walks away with the upset.

While the book isn’t exactly a “confidential” in the sexy sense—though we do learn that Patrick had a fling with a swimsuit model in Paris (nice work!)—the Sampras and Agassi stuff is worth the price of
admission. Patrick, through Pete, plays the role of the normal guy who has to deal with the quirks of genius. He’s the right guy for
this job, since he’s had to learn to live with the quirkiest tennis genius of
all, his older brother. Still, what he’s willing to reveal about that brother
seems to have its limits. I was ready for more crazy, and maybe ugly, Johnny
Mac stories, and also for some insight into the difficulties that must come
with living in such a colossal sibling shadow. Patrick does acknowledge being called, insultingly, a “professional brother” at one point, but we don’t get much
soul-searching on the subject. That’s not the book he chose to write, and
it’s really not his or Pete’s style.

The most vivid McEnroes are the parents. John Sr., drives both of his boys crazy with his mania for family, and
for tennis. A child of Irish immigrants, he became a partner at a prestigious New York law firm and built a family compound on Long Island—he’s
the Joe Kennedy of tennis, and his pride in his boys’ accomplishments is
touching. But it’s Kay, Patrick’s mother, who seems to have had the more lasting influence on her youngest son. She labelled him a “plugger” when he was a kid—he wasn’t overly talented,
but he kept pushing. Patrick seems to have lived
that concept of himself out every day of his life. And it’s worked: It’s given him the level-headed perspective needed to live inside his brother’s shadow, and make the most of it.

OK, Kamakshi, I know you were enjoying this book as you read
it. Was there anything that surprised you, about Patrick or the people he
describes? Was it confidential enough for you?

Steve

Mornin’. This one will be quick, so I can get out of your road before the matches get underway. The big events of yesterday obscured a significant result, the loss by Venus and Serena Williams in the doubles. The sisters, and the calendar year Grand Slam they hoped to produce in 2010, have gone down the tubes. The American girls were put out in the quarterfinals, in three sets (6-4 in the decider) by Elena Vesnina and Vera Zvonareva.

Which makes me fear for Zvonareva’s life, should she win her singles semifinal today and find herself opposite Serena in the final on Saturday.

This was a hurtful loss for the sisters, who skipped out of the All-England Club without doing a press conference—not that the pressers are de rigeur for doubles quarterfinalists, but some journalists had put in a request for the meeting. Turns out they might be fined for blowing off the presser. That doesn’t particularly trouble me, although it would have been nice to see the transcript for this post. But it’s worth noting that a gold-standard doubles Grand Slam (meaning, winning all four majors in the same calendar year with the same partner) is even more rare than a singles Slam.

Who woulda thunk it?

Only one male team has ever competed a Grand Slam, Frank Sedgman and Ken McGregor, and that was way back in 1951—almost two decades before the dawn of the Open era.

And only one team of women has accomplished a Grand Slam—Martina Navratilova and Pam Shriver, in 1984—at which time their Grand Slam was part of a winning streak that would include eight consecutive Grand Slam titles.

Maria Bueno, Martina, and the other Martina (Hingis) also completed calendar-year Grand Slams, but with different partners (a grand total of four) for at least one leg of each Slam. But the Sedgman/McGregor Grand Slam stands alone; nobody—not the Bryan brothers, John McEnroe, Mahesh Bhupathi or the Woodys—had even a partial taste of Grand Slam glory.

I hope the Williamses come back and try again next year. One thing I had hoped to do at this tournament was to watch one of their doubles matches and write a post about it, but I guess I’ll have to wait until the U.S. Open.

Enjoy the tennis. Feel free to post  your comments on the women’s singles semifinals below.  I hope those self-inflicted sores some of you suffered plucking at your flesh after Roger Federer’s loss yesterday are healing up nicely.  Don’t forget to feed the children and change the water in the dog’s bowl.

– Pete

WIMBLEDON, England (AP)—American twins Bob and Mike Bryan were upset in the Wimbledon quarterfinals Wednesday by 39-year-old Dick Norman of Belgium and Wesley Moodie of South Africa.

The second-seeded Bryans, the 2006 champions at the All England Club, lost to the seventh-seeded pairing of Norman and Moodie 7-6 (4), 7-6 (5), 6-7 (3), 7-5.

The Bryans, of Wesley Chapel, Fla., were bidding for their ninth Grand Slam title; they won No. 8 at the Australian Open in January. They were the runners-up at Wimbledon last year.

“It’s a tough defeat, you know. You always look forward to Wimbledon every year, and everyone tries to peak here,” Mike Bryan said.

“Unfortunately, we ran up against a couple of big servers, and it really kind of limits what you can do,” he added. “The points are really short and that court is playing really quick and the guys were serving well. We felt like we couldn’t really use our skill against them.”

The brothers are still seeking their record 62nd title as a team. They tied the Open era mark of 61 men’s doubles titles—set by the retired Australian pair of Todd Woodbridge and Mark Woodforde—by winning at Madrid in May.

“Every week’s a new opportunity. We’re not that disappointed,” Bob Bryan said. “Obviously, it would have been good to get it here, but we’re happy that we’re tied with it. And if we don’t win another title, at least we’re tied with the Woodies.”

WIMBLEDON, England (AP)—Returning to Wimbledon gave Lindsay Davenport a slight case of stage fright.

The three-time Grand Slam champion overcame her butterflies and teamed with Bob Bryan to win in the first round of mixed doubles Friday, beating Aisam-ul-Haq Qureshi and Alla Kudryavtseva 7-6 (3), 6-3.

The tournament is Davenport’s first since the 2008 U.S. Open, when she reached the third round in singles and doubles.

“I’m a little nervous and stressed out,” she said with a laugh. “I was getting sick to my stomach before we went out there, like, ‘What are we doing?’ But I miss having a purpose at home on some days, so it was fun getting up to practice for this.”

Davenport, 34, is the mother of two. She won the singles title at Wimbledon in 1999.

“It’s a comeback, but it’s not like a full-on comeback,” she said. “It’s doubles.”

“Double dipping,” Bryan said.

Davenport plans to play women’s doubles in two tournaments this summer in her native California, but has no tour events on her schedule beyond that. She said she definitely won’t play at the U.S. Open.

Bryan and Davenport are unseeded at Wimbledon and low-key about their chances.

“We have low expectations,” Bryan said. “No pressure.”

But he gave Davenport a rave review for her first-round performance.

“She played great,” he said. “You can’t take away the ball striking, and that is what has always impressed me about Lindsay—the way the ball comes off her racket, and the sound. It was a pleasure to be on the court with her.”

Bryan said he may play mixed doubles with Venus Williams at the 2012 Olympics in London.

Today, Pat McEnroe, U.S. Davis Cup captain, ESPN color commentator, and author of Hardcourt Confidential (with an assist from yours truly) is going to share some of his thoughts and experiences in that Inner Sanctum, the ATP locker room. This passage is preceded by a lengthy one on Jimmy Connors (if you remember, Connors’ storied run in 1991 began with a remarkable comeback win over Patrick), which is why the material below begins with him. 

– Pete

Jimmy was adept at mind games. He was so keen to keep himself
distant from the pack that he would often avoid the locker room altogether, changing and killing time conspicuously apart from his peers. Top players often have what you might call a “locker room strategy,” from aggressively dominating the inner sanctum of the athlete to avoiding it altogether. One of my brother John’s big beefs was that tennis is the only sport where you share the locker room with not just the guy you’re going to engage in intense, one- on- onecombat, but also with someone to whom you might have a deep,genuine aversion. I guess golf is the same way— but then it’s a stretch to call golf a sport.

John disliked Ivan Lendl, and you could feel the tension when they had to inhabit the same locker room. Granted, John liked to strut around, scowling, his body language demanding that you give him wide berth. That could be intimidating. But he didn’t engage guys in the same way as Lendl, who actually talked trash and needled people— sometimes mercilessly. When John Fitzgerald (who was actually a friend of Lendl’s) came into the Australian Open locker room shortly after having his first child, a daughter, Lendl said in his mechanical, clipped Eastern European accent: “Congratulations, John. Maybe next time you vill be man enough to make a son.”

In conclusive proof that there is a God, Lendl ended up having five children of his own— all lovely daughters.

I watched as Brad Gilbert and Ivan Lendl almost came to blows in the locker room in Tokyo one year. Now a lot of guys found Brad’s endless prattling (usually about sports) irritating. But even more glowered at the way Ivan Lendl was constantly razzing and putting others down.

Somehow, the two of them got started on a game of one- upmanship. Brad suggested that he would clean Ivan’s clock in a game of one-on-one basketball. Not to be outdone, Lendl said he could skate rings around Brad in a hockey rink.

“Oh, yeah,” Brad shot back, sticking out that Sgt. Rock jaw of his, “You want a piece of me in a batting cage?”

I could hardly believe my ears, these guys were taking it to another level, like a couple of kids in the schoolyard, until some other players intervened to talk both guys off the ledge before it came to fisticuffs. It was idiotic; clearly, it had nothing to do with either guys’s skill at bowling or beer pong. They just had their backs up and neither was going to back down.

Wimbledon has two locker rooms, a spacious, well- appointed one for seeded players, and a more bare bones one for everyone else.Yet, Andy Roddick, a three-time finalist at the event, insists on hanging out in the B locker room, so he can be with buddies like Sam Querrey, the Bryan Brothers, Mardy Fish, and James Blake. He just feels more comfortable in there.

Of course, you can’t have individual locker rooms for all 128 players at a major. But at those events, as well as smaller ones, the locker room during the early stages of an event is like a cross between a crowded train station at rush hour and a class reunion. The camaraderie level is high. When whoever won the last tournament walks in, almost everyone slaps him on the back or drops by in front of his locker to say “Well done.”

Friends who haven’t seen each other in weeks say hi and catch up when they meet. At the 2009 US Open, Roger Federer watched the scoreboard as Marsel Ilhan, the first Turkish player (although he’s originally from Uzbekistan) to compete at an Open-era major, won his first- round match. Later, Federer went up to Ilhan in the locker room to congratulate the young player and introduce himself. The journeyman couldn’t believe it.

Carl, the locker room attendant at the US Open, doles out the assignments at the start of the tournament. Over time, he knows which guys like to be near each other, and he generally groups them by nations. It works out well, although the tone in the temple of Ben- Gay changes dramatically later in the event. When it’s down to the finals, the atmosphere in the locker room is almost oppressive.

You’ve got one guy huddled with his team in one corner, his opponent and friends in the other. The tones are hushed. You can almost cut the tension with a knife. It wouldn’t be such a bad idea for tournaments to give the finalists different spaces on that last, critical day. Roger Federer is probably the most relaxed guy I’ve ever seen in the locker room; he’s nothing less than a prince— it’s like he owns the place, but in a good way, like the proud proprietor of a Swiss fondue restaurant.

Rafael Nadal, as nice a kid and good a sportsman as he is, gets into the mind games a bit, wittingly or not. He makes his opponents wait on him, not just between points (for which he gets criticized) but in the locker room and on the sidelines as well. When the tournament officials call Nadal’s match, he goes to take another piss, making his opponent stand there, waiting. When the umpire calls them out to the center of the court for the coin toss, Rafa will often stay in his chair, fiddling with towels or his bottles while the other guy walks right out— and has to wait.

I can understand how Toni Nadal, Rafa’s coach and uncle, tried to drill it into the young, impressionable eighteen- year old of a few years ago that it was important for him to take his time, not feel rushed or obligated to do anything until he was comfortable and well- organized. But you have to grow out of that.

Rafa’s foot- dragging was behind that bad- blood incident at Wimbledon between Rafa and the Swedish player Robin Soderling. Ticked off by the way Rafa had the habit of making an opponent wait, Soderling did some conspicuous stalling of his own, and he even mimicked Rafa’s compulsive habit of plucking at the back of his shorts. It wasn’t a smart thing for Soderling to do, and it didn’t make his life any easier— Rafa is genuinely liked and respected by everyone. Soderling ultimately was cast as a boorish gamesman, but many players felt that his was a point worth making, if not exactly in the way Robin chose.