As I crashed through the cyber-gate to the grounds this morning, I was most looking forward to the Nalbandian/Baghdatis match, the Hewitt/Canas match, and the Davydenko/Monfils match on the men's side, and then watching Venus and Serena on the ladies side. I'm hungry for some matches. I have been writing a lot about the tournament for how much tennis has been played, but truth be told I have not watched nearly as much of the play as I did during the French because the schedule and the coverage have been downright unpredictable.
I chalk that up to Mother Nature's tab but there is another force at work in the equation. ESPN, whose coverage I was suspicious of
when Chris Fowler showed up , has had to adapt to the slow pace of the tournament in its first year of coverage. In typically American fashion, they have decided to embrace the new project-covering the world's most whimsical sporting event-either without learning from the history of past Wimbledon coverage or determined to re-interpret that history.
History says that when it starts to rain you show the best matches from the last rounds of play and when you run out of them you let McEnroe-Borg 1980 run. Your announcers pool together into shifts, talk about what they know so far, while the rest of the crew goes to the pubs to get plowed, thereby pollinating the championship so that its aura might flower in the last weekend of play.
But ESPN can't do that, because it's committed to showing its dominance over all other forms of sports coverage. It's the same old gang announcing, but they appear in weird permutation. Dick Enberg, a very corny guy whose voice you associate with the semis and finals, and Mary Jo Fernandez seem to be the top team. The studio team is led by sportsguy Fowler, the Aussie gentleman Darren Cahill, and Brad "The Hammer" Gilbert.
The coverage contains more video montages of players at commercial breaks. More interviews from the press room, which is good. A lot more speculation about what will happen in matches where everyone pretty much knows what's going to happen. A certain amount of dumbing down the discussion in which Fowler plays the straight man to Gilbert's clown and Cahill's expert. There's way too much Enberg, who is prone to waxing lyrical at the smallest instigation.
In addition to tennis coverage, ESPN offers interludes from the grounds of the All England Club during which Pam Shriver ambushes English people with corny questions. That part is pretty fun, too.
My main complaint about the whole venture, other than the lack of Mac and Martina, is that the coverage has been so centered on the players ESPN thinks earn the highest ratings, which means you see a few of the same people over and over again playing very boring matches. At least so far in the tournament.
The good news today was that the Baghdatis blew out Nalbandian, so I didn't witness then end of Marcos and it's pretty easy to tell Nalbandian was his evil twin version since he lost the third set 6-0.
Between the rain delays and the coverage philosophy-don't show pieces of matches you can replay later-I was only able to catch Venus' match against Morigami in two time schemes. I watched a replay of the first set. I watched the second set live. And then came back later to see the third set playing on tape as it rained some more. And while it was a close and, I suppose, dramatic match, it was kind of a gifted pusher playing a big hitter who can't hit the court. But Venus came back and won the last four games to eek it out, and the story is she's surviving but she's not playing well at all going into her highly anticipated clash with Sharapova, who is playing well.
It rained some more. Davydenko was laying a beating on Gale Monfils. Which is a good thing for the third-seeded Russian who called Wimbledon the most boring tennis tournament in the world yesterday. Dayvdenko was in the process of proving that a returner who is playing well beats a server, Monfils, playing like a rookie. Davydenko was up two sets and a break, but after the first delay they couldn't get the court dry again. The match was played on an outer court, and they have to come back tomorrow to finish. Maybe Monfils will show up tomorrow. He is down 3-0 and two sets.
Berdych and Bjorkman won cool straight set victories. Hewitt and Canas split sets and Hewitt was up a break in the third when that match was called. Could I see that? No.
And then Rafa, it turns out, far from stomping another victim, was involved in a slug fest with Robin Soderling, the talented young Swede with a game meant for grass. Could I see that? No.
Because I could see about five hours of Serena's match being played, re-played, discussed and re-discussed. Why? Because people like to see the Williams sisters? Or because Hantuchova is a potential Maxim fetish item? Which is gross because she is so young and so skinny that you have to wonder about how she's coping with it all.
Whatever the reason for the extreme amount of coverage, the match did produce high drama if not great tennis. Serene came out and stomped Hantuchova, who looked very intimidated, in the firs set. She was simply too strong and Hantuchova was not hitting out. In the second set the young Slovak began to hit out and hit well. Serena did not raise her game and Hantuchova went up a break at 5-2. Then tightened up. Serena charged back, ratcheting up her play and pumping her fists, and squared the thing at 5-5. At which point Hantuchova caught her free fall and lifted her game one more time. At 6-6 the drama really began. Serena went down at the end of a point, grabbing her calf. It looked like a cramp, such was the temporary agony on her face. But she stayed down writhing. The Serena had consulted the tour trainer at the prior changeover, but it didn't look like anything serious. Anyway Serena writhed around in such apparent agony that the match stopped and Hantuchova even looked worried. Everyone looked worried. No one had ever seen anything like it.
The trainer helped Serena to her seat. She took a full injury time out, and then took a warning. It looked like Serena wouldn't continue. And then the rain came. A stroke of divine luck.
Serena received treatment. There was a lot of speculation about her condition. The skies cleared and the players came back out. Serena wore sweats and walked gingerly. She lost the tiebreak. The third set began. Serena played a new strategy. She hit out and tried to end points. It started to work. With every winning shot, Serena pumped her fist and screamed. Father Richard stood in the front row and pumped his fist. Venus and Mom bit their nails and clapped. Hantuchova unraveled. She looked totally intimidated and could only muster tentative tennis. Serena blew her off the court in the third.
The question is: was she really hurt? Because it was either a cramp or a tear. If it was a tear, she wouldn't have played so well when she came back. If it was a cramp, then why didn't she just say so in the press conference after and why was she so defensive about it all.
It was a moment when we needed Mac and Martina to say, as they would have, if she's hurt she's hurt. If she's not we just witnessed some extreme gamesmanship. I generally stand behind the Williams clan in their quest to be black in a very white world that is, even when it thinks it isn't, hostile to the way they do things. But there is something fishy about the way Serena went down and how little explanation there was afterward. The worst part of it is that she probably won't
play the doubles with her sis, and they'll both probably lose their next matches.
So I spent the day embroiled in Serena-gate. It was great tennis for a stretch in the middle of the second when Hantuchova stepped up, but not so great that they shouldn't have switched back and forth to Nadal/Soderling or Hewitt/Canas. I guess those guys don't bring in the ratings huh?
The most positive take-away is that now I know what it feels like to be a woman watching the Olympics and really want to see an event and have the network keep showing the guys...
ESPN2, listen to a guy who cares. Play as many matches as you can and then stick with the one that develops best. Or is it all about the live web video stream at $4/match? Boo. Boo. Boo.
Saturday's men's matches were rained out because, as was proven again, it always rains in England, even for the two weeks it's not supposed to rain in England. Sunday was Wimbledon's traditional day of rest, and club officials deemed that the schedule backup was not so severe as to necessitate an alteration to its esteemed calendar. And then Monday came, with lots of hope and anticipation as the grounds opened up, as accords tradition, to a long queue of the adoring masses.
