Johan Kriek Reviews “Battle of the Sexes” Film

nice review, the BJK tennis double was Katilyn Christian who graduated from USC and is playing futures tournaments now, she is apparently a serve and volley player which is why she was selected (but who knows)

Barty is impressive. Funny, Spadea hitting one handed backhand slices. He probably never hit one his whole career.

What about Rubin getting blitzed by Mmoh 1 and 2 and then Mmoh taking out Kamke! Groth has really fallen off the cliff after doing so well 2-3 years ago.

Hartt – just posted that below – if Ashleigh continues like this she’ll be in top 10 !

Thanks for this post on Mandlikova.I always feel sorry for the introverted players. It is difficult enough to win big tennis matches, but to have to deal with so much media attention, plus other attention, must be extremely tough, especially if you are not an extrovert.

Along with all his other gifts, Federer was blessed with an outgoing personality, which must have made being in the public eye so much easier to handle. Just having to do press in 3 or 4 different languages after a match would be a strain for most people.

Scoop – you’re right – I often wondered how much Hana really enjoyed playing and yet when she beat Martina at the US Open her joy was clearly genuine and a pleasure to see.
Hana also played a lot of doubles and actually teamed up with Martina to win the USO doubles I think – can’t remember what year. I think they got along ok later in Hana’s career.

Hartt – yes I had a bad feeling when I read she was complaining about her wrist in Wuhan. Wrist problems have indeed derailed several careers in tennis. It’s a complicated joint.

Dan – I think Mandlikova liked tennis allright once she’d stopped playing tournaments – she was involved for a while in Czech tennis with their Fed Cup team and as we know coached Jana Novotna. It was the stress and strain of the tournament circuit which got to her – she was also never a robust player and had a number of injuries. So retirement was probably a bit of a relief.

Scoop – As I mentioned above Hana certainly showed joy when she beat Martina at the US Open and I think she enjoyed doubles, since she played quite a lot and the stress wasn’t there for her as it was in singles. But no, she didn’t exude Pollyanna happiness on court. Tennis was a serious business for her. Maybe too serious.

Dan, Callum is fortunate to be good at two sports (even if it means double the driving for you!). It probably keeps each sport fresher for him than he if spent all his time on one. Do you think he will make a career in one of them?

I love the stories of how some of the top players started playing tennis. So many picked up a racquet when it was nearly as big as they were. Federer’s mother talks about how he hit not just against the garage door but even against the kitchen cupboards. I am surprised she put up with that – she said it was an incessant whack, whack.

Several tennis players have had children who played tennis but I can’t think of any offspring who went on to achieve much in the sport. Some sports seem to run in families but not tennis.
I wonder if Steffi and Agassi’s children had shown interest and talent in the game they would have been positively dissuaded from pursuing it ? Seems a bit hard to me, although you can understand the parents’ point of view.

Vijay’s son was a top 150 player. Stan Smith’s son was no 1 at Duke. Tracy Austin’s son plays for USC I think. Pat Cash’s son played at SMU I think. Fritz Buehning says his son is now training for a pro career. So there are actually a lot of kids who’s parents were famous players who play the game. Casper Ruud, Michael Mmoh, I’m sure there are more.

We’ve never seen an offspring surpass his father/mother the way a Ken Griffey Jr. did in baseball or Al Horford or Andrew Wiggins in basketball. And I think it’s because for a kid to do really well in tennis, a parent has to bust his/her butt, and for a former pro player, they’ve mostly had enough with non-stop tennis.

But it helps to have a parent who can play. My son’s hitting partner just called in sick for this morning, so guess who hits with Cal? He hates it because I don’t hit rally balls, even now I chip and charge off second serves and hit much bigger serves than he’s used to seeing. But I also make him hit swinging volleys, overheads, approach shots, two-volley sequences, slice and kick serves and droppers that not even his coaches mostly do or have the time to do with him.

Getting back, ahem, to the genesis of this post, “The Battle of the Sexes,” here’s my friend Fleur’s review of the movie. Fleur’s daughter is on the pro golf tour and she’s originally from New Zealand, but she spent most of her life in Australia and she’s a good tennis player herself.

“…is absolutely brilliant, I hope you’ve seen it.
Notice your mate Vince Spadea had a pretty big hand in it. I loved it. I was only vaguely aware of the whole circus- what a brave trailblazer BJK was and is.
We have a lot to thank her for.

Alan Cumming, who played teddy tinling, is one of my favourite actors, so it ticked a lot of boxes. Very topical too, as Australia is voting on marriage equality at the moment and Margaret Court can’t keep her mouth shut. I’m sure Australians will vote emphatically yes and then it will only be a matter of time before they change their archaic laws.”

I’m going tonight to see the movie and hope to enjoy it as much as Fleur.

Norrie might be the big story now in UK since Konta dumped out of Beijing in humiliating fashion by Nicolescu of all people and will probably fail to reach the end of year Finals.

Re: lack of fans at Chinese sporting events —

Note that China is still very much into the “work above all, putting food on the table” mentality, as the “rich Chinese”, as numerous as they are, are a very small percentage of the total Chinese poplulation of 1.38 BILLION (emphasis mine). 100 million Chinese that would be considered “middle class” is a huge number, like around 30% of the US population, but pales before that Great Wall of 1.38 billion …

Taking time off from work during a weekday to watch a strictly leisurely (bordering on frivolous, in their cultural understanding) “sport” is practically unheard of in China; not even for basketball (which is the most popular sport over there). Weekends might be justifiable, depending on job position. There are people who can take any day off to watch sports live, but they are in a place where they can afford to do so (money, Party connections, strong guanxi).

Yes, Benneteau is the prennial bridesmaid in ATP finals. Denis Istomin was, as well, but for his win on grass in 2015 Nottingham and earlier today in Chengdu (via retirement) over the injured Baghdatis.

As for famous father-son pairs, Dolgopolov Alexander and Alexander Senior as well as Dent Phil and Taylor are worth mentioning. Alexander’s father was only ATP 500 so son is far higher than father, in case of Dents, Taylor was ATP no. 21 and Taylor no. 17, so quite similarily.

Are you talking about the Chinese commies or the television commentators.

Yes, Krzysztof, that’s a good one, Taylor and Phil Dent would have to be the no 1 father and son tandem. I don’t remember Dolgo’s father as a top player.

Here’s my review of “The Battle of the Sexes.” I didn’t love it and yet I wasn’t totally bored by it. I felt the directors/writers made a tactical error by focusing so much on Billie Jean’s flourishing love affair with her female hairdresser, which I thought was kind of rote stuff even though the two actresses, Emma Stone, and the woman who plays the hairdresser, Andrea Riseborough, are both very good.

In every movie, one person is the star, it’s essentially their story, and in this movie it’s Billie Jean and Emma Stone. To me, I think the match should’ve been the star, but instead the actual match while it was technically done well (and it was interesting to see Vince Spadea body-doubling for Steve Carrell and Bobby Riggs), was not dramatic at all. Billie Jean won in straight sets (none of this best-of- three sets but rather best-of-five that was over in three) and the tennis while period correct, was not particularly compelling or exciting to watch. The die was cast early and you could tell from the start that Bobby was going to be no match for Billie.

And maybe that’s why the movie producers put the emphasis on Billie and her sexual awakening just as women’s tennis was breaking through and out on its own to start the WTA Tour and fight for equal prize money. I had no idea that the great Jack Kramer played such a formidable role in trying to stop the women from achieving equal footing with the men players. He’s played by Bill Pullman in the movie and Billie Jean and Kramer knock heads a couple of major times in the movie and I learned that Billie Jean refused to play the match if Kramer was one of the ABC broadcasters along with Howard Cosell and Rosie Casals.

(I also learned that Billie Jean defaulted her third round match in the US Nationals only two weeks before the match, mostly because of the pressure of the upcoming Riggs match).

So historically the movie was very illuminating and correct and does a good job in recreating characters like Gladys Heldman played by a sterling Sarah Silverman (the cast has some big names in smaller roles like Elizabeth Shue, Alan Cummings and Fred Armisen) and showing the gutsy quality of the pioneering young women players and how they highlighted their attractiveness to offset what Kramer pointed out was their lack of speed, athleticism and strength compared to the men, and I’m a big Steve Carrell fan and thought he did a great job portraying the chauvinistic and pompous, but colorful, Riggs; but the movie didn’t have anything major at stake. We already knew the match would be a trouncing and Riggs’s easy defeat of Margaret Court (1 and 2), the movie seems to say, made him over-confident and he didn’t train and went on a crazy vitamin-filled quest for the King match. There were also some interesting historical cameos like seeing the very young Chris Evert predicting that Riggs would beat King because a woman couldn’t compete with a man.

Some real tension was avoided or negated when Larry King in the movie finds out about the lesbian affair Billie Jean is carrying on with the tour’s hairdresser and instead of confronting her or fighting for her, he just tapes her knees with ice and departs, but before doing so he tells the hairdresser that Billie Jean will leave her too because nothing gets in the way of her tennis, her true love, which is also a bit trite.

Everyone was better looking than the real people in the movie, for example, Emma Stone is far better looking than Billie Jean (although there we also hear Cosell saying that BJK if she took her glasses off is very pretty or something of that content) and BJK’s husband, Larry King, is incredibly handsome in the movie when in real life I remember him to be a kind of mousy dude. Another thing that sort of ruined it for me was a shot of Emma Stone running in training for the match, and she runs in the ramrod straight form that no true athlete would ever run like.

So, as a tennis fan and someone who remembers the match pretty well, I was compelled to see the movie and would recommend it to other tennis fans and people who want to see a well-acted period piece (there’s even a taping of President Richard Nixon congratulating Billie Jean as a fellow Californian of achieving the no. 1 ranking), but it just didn’t light an imaginative fire in me and like any great work of art, I didn’t feel myself get swept away with the story.

I give it three out of five stars.

Dan – Rosie Casals was the only player among the other women who knew BJ would win. She bet on it and probably cleaned up.

The women, BTW, still have their attractiveness and ‘glamour’ highlighted to make up for their perceived inferiority to the men players. The WTA does that now. I don’t know if we’ve progressed or gone backwards. Or just stayed in the same place.

I can understand you weren’t swept away by the story – there really was no story. It was just about money.

Yes – even in Beijing which is a Premier Mandatory I don’t get the feeling some players are going all out. Either they’re getting viruses or they’re just losing. There seems to be a problem with scheduling the end of the year but I’m not sure what it is or if it can be resolved. Goes for ATP too. If you’re not in the Finals you might as well take a break. Back in the day I always felt the year ended with the USO and after that there were only a few tournaments and DC. Not possible now with more sponsors, more money etc etc.
Kerber looked sluggish losing to Cornet – came out in a tracksuit and played with a long sleeved top. Konta seemed quite uninterested, unless she had a virus too.
I think Radwanska made some comment on this topic.

Dan, thanks for your review of “Battle of the Sexes.” The part of the story I find interesting is the women players having the guts to strike out on their own, instead of continuing to put up with discrimination, so I hope that part is highlighted.

In terms of Margaret Court, I remember reading a long time ago BJK’s comments. She thought that Court did not take her match with Riggs seriously and did not really train for it. She thought that Court was excited about the $ involved, but did not understand the broader ramifications of the match.