There’s an ominous look to the red clay as this highlight
reel begins. The bright midday sun in Madrid has baked it back to its elemental
state; the court appears to be as dry and dusty as a desert, as hostile as the
surface of Mars. It’s a place where you might go out to play a friendly tennis
match and not come back alive. Just ask Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic.

Their semifinal at the Madrid Masters was the third time
they clashed during the clay season. The first two encounters, in the finals in
Monte Carlo and Rome, had been stylishly dramatic affairs. But this one took
the Spaniard and the Serb as far into their reserves—physical,
psychological, spiritual, vocal—as either of them has ever gone. Neither player would be the same afterward. The winner, Nadal, would lose for the first
time in six matches to Roger Federer the next day, suffer an upset at the hands
of Robin Soderling at the French Open two weeks later, withdraw from Wimbledon,
fail to win another tournament, and end the ATP season on an all-time low note
in London. A visibly drained Djokovic would also be upset at the French, and
would go without a title until making a surge at the tail end of the year.
While they were in free fall, Federer, who hadn’t beaten Nadal or Djokovic in
2009 before this event, won in Paris and at Wimbledon without facing either of
them. It may have been only the third-best match of 2009, but the Massacre in Madrid was the season’s
most pivotal. If you want to get an idea of what it did to the guys who played
it, check out this 15-second clip of Djokovic from his press conference
afterward.

I was on vacation in Madrid during this tournament, and the
strong sunlight at the start of the match is enough to bring back very
vivid memories of the trip and the city—I don’t think you can have a memory of
Madrid that isn’t vivid. The sun in that elevated, land-locked metropolis seems
to hang right in the middle of the sky all day. It wasn’t just warm in
spring; the sun felt closer, a part of your daily existence. Under it I ate
stingingly fresh shellfish—how does it get all the way to Madrid in that
state?—at a beloved hole in the wall called Ribeiro de Mino. Everyone orders
one entrée, an intricately and perilously structured mound of prawns, crabs,
barnacles and other gnarled sea creatures; it’s an artwork. Speaking of which,
I also stood in awe at the Goyas and Velazquezes in the Prado and Picasso’s
Guernica across the street at the Sofia. Wandered the regal and immaculately
festive grounds of the city’s central park, the Retiro. Found a cool
Spanish-language poster for the movie Blow Up and an almost-as-cool set of
mustard-colored New Balances. And, on the day of this semifinal, strolled
through the streets of the upscale Salamanca neighborhood, until I noticed Djokovic’s blue shoes dancing around on a
TV set inside a café.

Earlier in the week I’d been out to the tournament site, the
Magic Box, for a day, and I’d planned to go again for the final—this seemed
like the right balance of sight-seeing and tennis-watching. But how many times do you
poke your head into a café and see Nadal and Djokovic on the flat screen? I had
to stop and see how this installment of their rivalry, which has produced so
much jaw-dropping tennis in the last three years, was playing out. This is what
I wrote when I posted about the match in May:

In the back of the café are three fellow tourists from the
U.S., a mother with her teenage son and daughter. The boy was rooting for
Djokovic, the girl for Nadal. We had the place to ourselves for a moment. I was
thinking that I’d yet to find any spot in Madrid—bar, restaurant, shop, you
name it—that was this quiet, that wasn’t vibrating with humanity. Before I
could finish the thought, the noise of laughter and chatter had filled the
room, and a dozen or so young men and women were streaming through the door.

Spanish or not, anyone who has ever been to a wedding would
recognize this group. A marriage ceremony had just ended in a church around the
corner, and this set of friends has escaped for beers and cigarettes. The men
stood a little awkwardly in dark suits and ties; the women sat down around them
on stools, taking the opportunity to get off their feet. Everyone smoked and
smiled and drank, and there was relief in the way they swayed as they faced
each other in a semicircle. The pressure of the formal occasion was off.

They also watched Nadal, their countryman. In the time they
were in the café, his semi with Djokovic went from being one more entertaining
slugfest into a classic. As the third set wound into its fourth hour and toward
an inevitable tiebreaker, their conversation was repeatedly
punctured by an “Ah!” or a “Si!” or a “Vamos!” or any number of involuntary
blurtings that sports fans everywhere recognize as the sounds of impassioned
disbelief. After each one, the whole group stopped talking and turned their
heads to the screen.

There they saw a heavyweight fight on dirt. Through dint of
effort, Nadal had shrugged off his earlier constricted form and was swinging
freely. If anything, Djokovic was even freer; he wasn’t stroking the ball, he
was clubbing it, but his viciousness retained an elegance. The wedding party
may have had a reception to attend, but there was no way they could leave now.

***

Looking at that heavyweight fight again seven months later,
this is what I can add:

—Tennis Channel commentator Jason Goodall says late in the
match, “I’m running out of superlatives.” But the only one we hear, over and
over, is “Brilliant!” Until Robbie Koenig chimes in with an equally
appropriate “Ridiculous!”

—How many times has Djokovic started out on fire against
Nadal only to find that he can’t quite maintain that level long enough? He goes
up 3-0 here, and seems to be making especially good use of his wide serve in
the deuce court. His ability to take a Nadal forehand and send it down the line
with his backhand will always make him a tough match-up for Rafa, no matter
what the surface.

—Late in the first you can see Nadal find his feet. He
starts to build enough confidence to hit down the line with abandon. He’s not
always confident enough to do that.

—It’s a shame Nadal doesn’t make it to the net more. He may
have the best overhead in the game. Not only does he rarely miss it, he rarely
fails to spike it with authority for a clean winner. And if a lob is high and deep, he’s adept
at taking a little off it and slicing the smash into a corner where his opponent can’t
reach it.

—Grunting in men’s matches is less conspicuous than it is
women’s matches. You wouldn’t expect anything else in this one.

—One negative note: As compelling as the rallies were, this
match was played at a very slow pace. It took four hours, but as Federer said,
“those guys take their time.” Long breaks between points don’t usually bother me when I’m in the stadium. But when I’m
watching on TV, without a DVR, it can sap my viewing energy.

—By the third set, Nadal is the one on top of the baseline
and Djokovic is doing the running. With each game, Nadal’s headband moves a
little farther up his forehead while his forehands get slugged with a little
more reckless abandon. Like the clay below these guys’ feet, the match in its later
stages feels like tennis at it most elemental.

—The third-set tiebreaker speaks for itself. The match
reached its peak and reached its end at the same time. So did 2009 for both of
these guys.

***

I’ll finish the same way I finished in May:

The wedding-goers eventually stopped talking and just stared
at the screen. Blue shoes or yellow sleeves, both guys—Djokovic exasperated but
valiant right to the last point, Nadal willing himself to believe the day could
end with a victory and having come too far not to make it happen—commanded our
attention. Nadal’s celebration of this win, which he had manufactured for the home
fans on an off day, could be set in stone and placed in front of the Magic Box.
He landed prone on his back, hands at full stretch above his head, his body
rigid as a statue. No town likes a party more than Madrid, whatever the
occasion, so it’s fitting that in this city we saw a tennis match that was more
than just a thrill or a battle or a spectacle. Nadal-Djokovic was a celebration
of everything we call competition.

Dear Santa,

If you don’t count the month of March, the crazy things I did on that trip in May, those horrible things I said back in July and a few other tiny transgressions and indiscretions, I’ve been an awfully good girl this year. So I’m hoping you’ll get me everything on my Christmas list. Don’t worry… you have plenty of time – all of next year in fact. And lest you think I’m being selfish, Santa, note that these are for women’s tennis players, not for me… not really. Pretty selfless, huh? Now here’s what I want:

#1 A Grand Slam for Elena Dementieva

Dinara Safina and Jelena Jankovic may deserve a Grand Slam, but in my mind Elena Dementieva’s the best player without one. She’s been at the top of women’s tennis for a while and has much to show for it –  Olympic medals, Grand Slam finals, big Fed Cup wins… and have you seen those biceps? She was a favorite at this year’s Australian Open and US Open, but it didn’t happen for her. It nearly did happen at Wimbledon, where she wasn’t a favorite but was one down-the-line shot away from the final.

Dementieva has athleticism, technique and even mental ability. You may disagree, Santa, but this year Dementieva didn’t usually melt down when it mattered. It’s just that others – a Serena Williams here, a Melanie Oudin there – really stepped up. Off court she’s all class. Win or lose nobody gives a more gracious post-match interview.  My favorite thing about her? Whatever the round, whatever the tournament, she plays like she really wants to win. And that’s why I really want her to win the final round at the biggest tournaments.

#2 Wimbledon for Venus Williams (again)

Other champions have won Wimbledon more (Martina Navratilova), younger (her own sister, Serena Williams, in mixed doubles), even taller (Lindsay Davenport). But lately, on the green, green grass of Wimbledon, nobody’s mowed down her opponents quite like Venus.

This decade she made it to final eight times and won five times. Clearly she has the skills: Her speedy serve, pounding ground strokes and explosive movement enable her to “bully” others, as she told Conan O’Brien. She also has the desire, which isn’t as strong or perhaps as obvious elsewhere. Tennis-wise, you sense Wimbledon is why Venus gets out of bed in the morning. With the years and teenagers creeping up on her though, she doesn’t have that many chances left, so once again next year, please put the Venus Rosewater Dish in Venus Williams’s stocking.

#3 Big wins for Justine Henin, Kim Clijsters and Maria Sharapova

Not because they’re my favorites but because the women’s tour will be a more exciting place if the no-longer-retired Belgians and the no-longer-injured Sharapova play the level of tennis that won them a combined dozen Grand Slam titles. With these three back, Serena dominant again, talented youngsters making some noise, and ‘middle-aged’ players like Flavia Pennetta and Sam Stosur playing with poise, things should get good.

#4 More confidence – and joy – for Ana Ivanovic, Dinara Safina and Jelena Jankovic 

What is it with the Number 1 ranking? Except for Serena everyone who gets it these days goes off the tennis deep end soon after (i.e., drops out of the top 20, melts down in Grand Slams). Serena doesn’t handle the top spot better because she’s a better tennis player (though she is that). She handles it better because she’s crazy confident (admittedly with the emphasis occasionally on the ‘crazy’ part). It seems like a small thing, but for elite athletes, who have the strokes down pat, it’s everything. It helped Flavia Pennetta overcome six match points against Vera Zvonareva at the US Open this year, didn’t it?

Sure, Ivanovic could use tips for the yips, but what she needs more is confidence. It might also help her play with more joy. I miss the Ivanovic who looked happy out there, and played like she wanted to win and not like she was afraid to lose.

Ditto for Safina, who played scared, soulless tennis in the latter part of the year. As a fan it’s hard to watch a player who’s so hardworking (and quite endearing) play like “such a chicken” in big matches. Maybe the Number 1 ranking took a toll, and probably the back issues and sour coach didn’t help. Jankovic occasionally has too much confidence, but her sometimes delusional attitude sure beats Safina’s often doubtful one.

What Jankovic lacks these days is joy. She had a tough year on court and off, so it’s understandable… but it’s missed. Remember the player who smiled while receiving Venus’s first serve? That JJ loved tennis, and we loved her for it.

#5 More tennis and titles for Kimiko Date Krumm

She’s ranked 82 at age 39 – that’s 20 years older than the woman ranked just under her. The best part is that she’s playing tennis like it’s meant to be played – like it’s fun and she really wants to. And what about the tour’s other golden oldies? Not counting Amélie Mauresmo, who retired, and Date Krumm, the top 100 still has three thirtysomethings – Jill Craybas, Tathiana Garbin and Patty Schnyder. Can you save them some goodies? At least small stuff like good health and free swinging?

#6 Rising rankings for Caroline Wozniacki, Victoria Azarenka and Agnieszka Radwanska    

These top players are leading the charge for the toddlers of tennis. I root harder for the golden oldies, but it would be nice to see these youngsters and all the others play with fun-to-watch abandon knowing they have little to lose with a great coach – time – on their side. The top 100 has more than a dozen teens and a long list of impressive players who were teens when the year began, including Azarenka and Radwanska as well as Yanina Wickmayer, Sabine Lisicki, Dominika Cibulkova, Alisa Kleybanova and Alexandra Dulgheru. Off court it would be nice to see them continue to grow into the ambassadors women’s tennis will need when Venus and the gang leave the tour.

#7 Fewer injuries for Jelena Dokic

After an emotional return to tennis this year, she suffered from an assortment of health issues, including an Achilles tendon injury, a lower back injury and glandular fever. And she’s not the only one hanging out in hospitals. We all know what happened to Sharapova last year. Now Zvonareva’s recovering from ankle surgery, and Safina withdrew from the year-end championships with a back injury she thought might keep her out of the Australian Open. When you read the now-obligatory medical section of post-match pressers, it’s easy to forget (and sad to remember) that these are twentysomethings.

#8 More respect for all the players

Women’s tennis could use more exposure… especially of the right kind. That means fewer fat jokes. The players don’t all look like Daniela Hantuchova or Gisela Dulko, and that’s ok. That means more coverage of more players, not just the top five, the Americans, the youngest and the prettiest. That means more respectful questions from journalists. It was fine to ask Safina about the Number 1 ranking, but it was downright rude after the 20th time. Heck, that even means more respectful tweets. The tweets of a certain ATP player ranked below 200 questioning the state of women’s tennis within a few minutes of Kim Clijsters winning the US Open? They don’t fall into this category.

We could all work on this one, Santa. Maybe we should occasionally ask ourselves and others if, in the words of one wise woman, we’re “trying to be down on women’s tennis”. Then we could remind ourselves that we shouldn’t “deal with down”. This isn’t too much to ask, is it?

Hugs and kisses to Mrs. Santa!

Love,

– Bobby Chintapalli

“This sport can be so cruel,” Sue Barker said to Andy
Roddick to start her post-match interview with him on Centre Court. Roddick was having none of that sappy nonsense, of course. In the days afterward, however, I
realized that she had a point. Everyone I talked to about the match would shake
their head and mention just one shot out of the hundreds—thousands?—that were
hit that day: Roddick’s botched backhand volley at 6-5 in the second-set
tiebreaker. You play the best match of your life and not only do you lose, but
nobody even remembers a single shot that you hit in the court. That’s cruel.

This is the Wimbledon men’s final we’re talking about, of course, the third straight five-set epic to take place on the last day of the
fortnight. Roger Federer was the common denominator in all three. He won two of
them, and on this day set the record for the most men’s Grand Slam titles. He
assured his tennis immortality, and by all rights should have wrapped up the
title of Athlete of the Decade—if we’d known there was such a title at the
time. At the start of Wimbledon in 2003, Federer had never reached the
semifinal of a major, let alone won one; a scant six years later, not much more than half a decade later, he’d won 15. That’s not good; that’s just
goofy.

—This match looks so sunny and crisp after the storms and
darkness and drama of the final the year before. It’s certainly well played, and these
highlights point up how many different types of shots were on display—deft
half-volleys, perfect passes, awesome serving, a casually parabolic overhead from
the baseline. But for the most part the action happens inside the sidelines;
Federer vs. Nadal was more rip-roaring, and took the players farther afield.

—The first point we see is enough to let us know that
Rodick was playing the match of his life. He extends through his backhand
smoothly, hits a heavy and penetrating ball, and catches Federer a little out
of position, something he hasn’t achieved all that often in the past. It wins him the
set. Later we see Roddick do the same to Federer from his forehand side, from
way out of position. He was matching, even outplaying, Federer during the rallies.

—But that’s been the Federer formula at Wimbledon: Hit aces,
hold serve, and win tiebreakers. It won him the title in 2007 and almost
brought him back in ’08, but it never worked quite as well as it did this year.
Federer hit 50 aces, won the second-set tiebreaker 8-6, the third-set
tiebreaker 7-5, and held 15 straight times to win the final set.

—My cruel friends were right about one thing: The most important
shot was Roddick’s backhand volley at 6-5 in the breaker. He said later that he
thought Federer’s high pass was going long, so he hesitated. But two other
things went wrong with this shot. His approach landed only a foot or so behind the service line,
which gave Federer some time for his pass. And Roddick hit his volley with a
weird grip. His volley grips have never been ideal, and he chops down on the
forehand side. This is the product, in part, of having a two-handed backhand
and a semi-Western grip on the forehand side. The more conservative volley grips
never feel natural. I feel Roddick’s pain. I grew up with a two-handed backhand
and could never learn a proper backhand volley grip. In college, in a dual match against our biggest rivals, our team was
tied at 4-4 in matches. In the deciding match, my doubles partner and I were up 5-4 in the third set, with me serving. We reached match point, I served and came to the net—and sent a makeable
backhand volley long. We eventually lost. Afterward, my coach’s only words about the shot
were, “You had the wrong grip.”

When people talked about Roddick’s miss afterward, they
typically said something like, “All he had to do was get it in the court.”
That’s not true; Federer would have tracked down a lollipop volley.
More than that, though, just because the pros make those types of high volleys
look easy doesn’t mean they’re as easy as they look.

—The second most important shot took place
three points earlier, with Roddick up 6-2 in the breaker. He had four set points,
and he was serving; this was the time to close the door, since Federer would
have the next two serves. But Federer got him on the run and forced Roddick to
go for a forehand winner up the line from a bad position. Roddick hit it well
but Federer came up with a neat crosscourt flick to keep himself alive in the
tiebreaker. That ability to hang around and give his opponent a chance to
self-destruct is classic Federer, but I wonder if Roddick would have gone for
something less risky if the score had been closer in the breaker. He tried
to end it with one swing, and it didn’t work.

—I’d forgotten that Roddick had a break point (two break
points?) at 8-8 in the fifth. Federer served his way out of it, naturally, and
knocked off a perfect swing volley at 30-40. Talk about a shot that’s not as
easy as it looks. I’ve never hit a swing volley in the court in my life;
Federer makes it look like he could do it while juggling two bowling pins with his
other hand.

—Federer said later that in the fifth set he imagined the
two of them playing forever, with long beards hanging down below their
faces—now you don’t need to feel so bad about the crazy, useless thoughts that
pass through your own head during a match. But Roddick lost his way in the 30^th
game. His coach, Larry Stefanki, said that the shadows on the court, which were
made worse by the new roof, bothered Roddick in that game. You can see that the
last ball is on him before he’s ready. The better explanation is this: Somebody had to lose.

—Federer was the winner, and we can only marvel at his
seemingly superhuman consistency. It’s come at the expense of Roddick on many
occasions, but this time those superhuman qualities, that surreal 15-major
record, the tennis nobility watching from the Royal Box, all of it served to make Roddick seem more human, more sympathetic, more dignified, more worthy. Who
was the nobler figure at the end, the Duke of Whatever, or the American guy
shaking his hand while wearing his baseball hat backwards?

When you watch sports, do you love the winner, or do you
love the person? At this year’s Wimbledon final, you didn’t have to choose. Roddick was right: There’s nothing cruel about that.

by Pete Bodo

Larry Ellison, the billionaire co-founder and CEO of Oracle Corporation, is the new owner of the BNP Paribas Open, one of the most valued and prestigious of tennis franchises. The tournament draws more spectators than all but the Grand Slam events (over 330,000 last year alone), and it’s one of the prestigious “dual” events that feature men’s and women’s draws.

You’ ve got to hand it to this tennis nut Ellison – when he jumps in, he goes with both legs. I guess Wimbledon wasn’t up for sale.

This is a terrific bit of news for the game, because while Ellison certainly has a nose for making money, you have to see this acquisition as comparable to Ted Turner’s ventures into ranch ownership. Whatever other issues come into play, we know that Ellison’s aim can’t be speculative, or driven purely by a desire to put another cash cow in his barn (That’s Ellison on the far left in the photo, with his Oracle BMW America’s Cup sailboat racing crew). The Indian Wells tournament will probably figure as a high-profile jewel in the Ellison empire, and you can bet it will be treated accordingly.

Charlie Pasarell and Raymond Moore, the founders and former owners of Indian Wells, held a conference call yesterday. In it, they sometimes referred to the BNP Paribas Open as their “baby.” Cliché as that it is, the description is apt – and accurate.

Pasarell and Moore took the clay, or sand, of the Palm Springs area (their mutual adopted home) and sculpted the event and the place that became their Indian Wells Tennis Garden over decades, navigating some howling sandstorms along the way. For them to have survived even the political wars that tore the ATP apart in the wild and wooly 1980s and ’90s called for shrewd planning, great negotiating abilities, a Rolodex the size of a 60-gallon oil drum, and political skills that would make even a U.S. Senator tip his hat, or blush.

And the funny thing is that the more they grew, the harder they had to work. Thanks to the changing game, the tournament proved to be as demanding and unpredictable as a robust infant. The recent, new demands for dramatically increased prize-money for the women – part of the pay-to-play deal cooked up by former WTA President Larry Scott, and others – was just the most recent example of how the stakes for Pasarell and Moore just kept rising.

The co-founders were quick on their feet, but not invulnerable. Over time, they created a consortium of 32 investors to provide financial backing, and the alliance came with all the expected problems. The first thing an investor in anything looks for is a good return on his money, and that led to high anxiety for Pasarell and Moore, because the rights to the tournament – the right to promote the event, in that calendar slot – is the most valuable component in any tennis franchise.

As Pasarell explained: “Because we’re a privately owned company, some people have taken a run at acquiring us, maybe moving us to another part of the world. It might have been the Middle East, or China, to name a few places that produced backers interested in owning – and moving – this event. We had several offers made on us. Raymond and I, we needed to secure this event and keep it here. We don’t want to have it lured away, have to send this event off to another part of the world.”

But as the figureheads of a private company representing 32 investors, Pasarell and Moore were under constant pressure to respond to those inquiries, no matter how they personally felt about them. And they knew that if an offer were sufficiently attractive, their investors might go to war against them to force a sale. At the same time, over the past few years, Moore very diligently cultivated a new friendship with Ellison. As their relationship matured, Ellison’s interest deepened. In a prepared statement released yesterday, Ellison said:

“Anyone who knows me knows that I love the game of tennis. I play it regularly, watch it frequently, and now look forward to being in Indian Wells every March to host the greatest players in the world. This tournament has an incredibly solid foundation, including one of the best venues and management teams, and I intend to build on that and continue the vision of being one of the greatest international sporting events worldwide.”

The buzz for a long time now has been that Indian Wells was teetering, financially. Yesterday, Pasarell dismissed that as an “incorrect assumption.” The tournament has been successful, financially, but self-interested investors always have one big question in mind, even when profits are rolling in – when’s the right time to cash out?

In Ellison, Pasarell and Moore saw a potential savior – someone who could untie them from this wheel of accountability that had very little to do with tennis, and was often in conflict with their authentic, long-haul passion for growing the game. In paying off the shareholders and consolidating all the authority over the event in the hands of one man (Ellison) who probably won’t be driven primarily by the rate of return on his investment, the co-founders were returning to their original way of doing things – even if they could no longer do it that way themselves.

Pasarell made a touching confession in the conference call when he said, “There’s a little side of us that says, ‘Oh, well, we sold our baby.’”

But it isn’t like they sold it to a Madonna, or Angelina Jolie. Elllison is dedicated to keeping the event right where it is. He’s a confirmed tennis enthusiast. And the co-founders will have comprehensive visitation privileges, because they’ve been retained to head up the management team.

They may no longer own the event, but then what parent actually “owns” his child?

by Pete Bodo

The job of reclaiming his aborted pro career after losing three years to back trouble and two surgeries seemed so daunting a task to Taylor Dent that he found himself reaching for a pencil and paper – not to scrawl a suicide note, but to write down some goals. Not to be No. 20 in the world, or to make the Wimbledon quarters. Not to beat at least three Top 50 players in a tournament. They were small goals. Much smaller goals. The first one was to make it through a long walk around his neighborhood.

One of his first tennis-specific ones was complete a ball-feeding drill – five sets of ten balls apiece, hit back across the net and into the court, off puffballs that Dent could reach at a stroll. “That’s been the trick to this comeback,” Taylor told me when we sat to visit at the IMG Nick Bollettieri Tennis Academy recently. “I had to try to keep from being overwhelmed. That first day I hit I saw how far I’d fallen from the peak of my game. I was just sucking wind, hitting balls terrible. I was on the verge of tears.”

Little by little, one small goal at a time, Dent hobbled back – all the way back to a year-end 2009 ranking of No. 76, a number that seemed stratospheric back in May of 2008, when he played the first match of his comeback at Carson, Calif. That day, he lost to Cecil Mamiit, a battle-scarred veteran who was nearly 32 at the time. Dent didn’t win a tour level match until November, but every match he lost up to that point had been a three-setter. So hope gleamed.

Starting in Brisbane in 2009, Dent began to win matches. He qualified for Wimbledon, but lost a heartbreaking first-rounder to Daniel Gimeno-Traver, 6-4 in the fifth. He broke into the Top 200 in August, and ended up winning two rounds at the U.S. Open, beating Feliciano Lopez and Ivan Navarro (9-7 in a fifth-set tiebreaker) before Andy Murray put him out in straight sets.

“I’m not looking too far ahead,” Taylor told me. “But I’ve had a lot of small highs and a lot of silver linings to some of the losses, and my progress in general. It all culminated at the U.S. Open. I didn’t feel I was playing that well going into the event, but I was able to compete at a pretty high level thanks to my fitness and a lot of hard work. That win over Navarro was great for me,  even though Murray beat me in the next round. I followed up that tournament with wins in Tulsa and Knoxville (Challenger events), and a final in Champaign (Ill.). That was gratifying.”

Dent is an interesting character. His father Phil was a Top 20 Australian pro; his mother, Betty Ann Stuart, was a Top 10 American player. Dent is a strapping, 6’2″ 200-pounder with an atomic serve and daredevil’s volley, but he’s also an intensely cerebral young man man with a taste for abstractions. He prides himself on his abilities as a handyman, and he and a buddy built a Ford Cobra hot-rod from the ground up, from a kit, a project that took two years to complete. He says his “hobbies” include politics and religion. He’s also emotional.

The combination of cerebral and emotional doesn’t always work well in tennis, and it seemed to account for some of the obstacles Dent struggled with in his first incarnation on the tour (he still rose to a career high-ranking of No. 21 shortly before his back troubles laid him low). In that first section of his two-part career, Taylor was known for working himself into a lather and running off the rails, the mental equivalent of tripping over his own two feet. He believes the time he’s spent away from the game has helped him develop a clearer perspective.

“The break really helped, no doubt about it,” he said. “I’ve always been hungry to win – that’s never been a problem. But I was always too emotional about it. It was always my way or the highway. It didn’t matter if someone came to me with a good reason to do something a little differently. I was so emotional about wanting to win, and win my way (with that go-for-broke serve-and-volley style), that it worked against me. I was relying on luck, rather than reason.”

Dent isn’t interested in having a coach, at least not the way he defines the word. “My game is what it is. I’m 28, it’s too late to change now. I’m the foremost expert on my game; it’s hard to imagine by this time that someone would come up with an idea I haven’t already thought about. But I’ll bounce ideas off people like Red Ayme (one of Bollettieri’s right-hand men) or Brad Gilbert, and I ask a lot of questions. What I want, and welcome having, is something more like . . . consultants.”

This form of complex thinking is classic Taylor Dent. Other players wouldn’t even bother to make such distinctions, and would call it over-thinking – definitely not a good habit for a professional athlete.

Dent once was one of the last of the old-school type serve and volley players; if he went down, he went down with his guns blazing. But he’s come to believe that the style is no longer viable as a basic game plan. By the third set of his difficult match with Murray in New York, Dent says he actually “felt better” after missing a first serve. “When I served and volleyed earlier in the match, I felt on the defensive every single point. And that’s a death sentence for a player like me. Knowing that I could – and should – stay back when I missed my first serve made me feel secure.”

That’s one of the more interesting observations I’ve heard recently, and it puts the general style of play in today’s game into perspective. So I framed a situation for Dent, asking what he’d do now when serving against a high-quality player at 30-all.

“Maybe in the past I would have just gone for the big serve and volley play. Now I’m more likely to think: What’s been my winning percentage in serve and volley in the deuce court? How’s his return on the side I’d prefer to serve to? How well am I hitting the big bomb down the T?

“It would be a game-time decision, based on the conditions. But let’s face it, if you win the point, whatever decision you chose will be deemed right, and if you lose the point you were wrong. That’s the nature of the business.

“Let’s be frank – my game is based around hitting the volley. Even during baseline points, my game is set up to get me to the net, and to make it hard for an opponent to keep me off he net. But I’m not coming in behind any old ball. I have my plays that get me to the net advantageously, and that’s what I’d try to implement.”

Dent believes that you need three things to win a match: a sufficient level of execution, relative to the ability of your opponent; fitness, and the mental toughness to maintain that first quality – good execution.

“You can control two of those things going in,” Dent said. “You can be fit, and work hard enough to be able to execute, and know what you can execute, at your best level. Before my surgeries, I believed that if I played well I could beat anyone. So I went out there hoping to play well. But when you’re playing well, everything is pretty easy anyway.

“Now, I go out prepared to deal with the two things that can go wrong. You can play badly, and you can miss opportunities. Those are the only two obstacles you have on the court, although you can still get outplayed and lose, of course. But if I’m mentally prepared to face those problems and deal with them, I won’t beat myself and that’s all a player can hope for. These days, I feel that no matter how many shots I drill into the back fence and no matter how many opportunities I let slip away, I’m going to keep trying to execute at a high level. I’m going to have that focus and mental toughness.”

Dent is optimistic about next year. He said he’d be surprised if he doesn’t surpass his career-high ranking of No. 21 sometime before he set the sticks aside for good. Besides, he’s playing for two people, and soon he’ll be playing for three. His wife, former touring pro Jennny Hopkins (career-high WTA ranking: 52), is expecting a baby boy they plan to call Declan. The baby is due on the same weekend as the Australian Open final.

“When we looked at the calendar, Jenny said, ‘You’re not allowed to come back from the Australian, because if you’re still there when I’m due you’ll be in the semis or final.’” Dent paused to contemplate his dilemma. “That could be a hard decision, you kind of want to be there for the birth of your child. But if I do that well in Australia, I’d be better off staying, just because of what it would enable me to do for Declan’s future.”

Declan will certrainly need shoes; and Taylor can use those ranking points if he’s to make good on his determination to be a Top 20 player again.

Bjorn Borg, the three-time back-to-back French Open and Wimbledon champion, looks ahead to this year’s French Open.

Andre Agassi, Stefi Graf, Tim Henman, Kim Clijsters 2009