Tennis Prose




Sep/16

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Strange But True Tennis Tales: Episode 2

Here’s another strange but true tennis story involving an ATP world no 1 who once pulled a gun at a tourney!!
Tennis_&_Cars[1] “I saw (star player) play at least 20 times. I ran the court crews in Indian Wells for fifteen years and since Stadium was mine, I got to watch a lot of the greats in action. But he was always a favorite. What a game he had. He could flip a switch and change the course of a match like no other. I could tell you some crazy off court stories about him too. For instance, I was once watching a Mike Tyson fight in the Hall of Champions at the old Hyatt resort during Indian Wells, when in walked (star player) with five hookers wearing minis skirts and stilettos. It was really quite the scene. The appalled volunteers in the room immediately cleared out. The rest of us just stared in amazement. I’m not sure he even watched one second of the fight… He was just there with his girls… Another time, after being kicked out of the UCLA event for berating and saying F*** You to an umpire, a few of us in the Operations Crew were ‘lucky’ enough to escort him to his car. As soon as we got there, (star player) went straight for the trunk where he pulled out a gigantic shotgun and started waving it around, pointing it at signs and cars and whatever else was in plain view. His lawyer (who apparently traveled with him due to the amount of trouble he got himself into) immediately wrestled the gun out of (star player)’s hands and put it back in the trunk. They had some conversation about ‘the trouble at customs’ then went on their way. The public really only got to see his on-court persona, but his off court antics were just as incredible.” [Photo by Henk Abbink]

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13 comments

  • Thomas Tung · September 28, 2016 at 1:21 am

    Hehe … this one’s easy — only one possible contender for this mystery player 😀

  • catherine bell · September 28, 2016 at 2:45 am

    Are we ever going to be told who these characters are or do the laws of libel preclude such revelations ? 🙂

  • Scoop malinowski · September 28, 2016 at 7:44 am

    Will give you very obvious clues dear Catherine but wont give it away straight away. But in the meantime keep exerting your brainpower.

  • Scoop malinowski · September 28, 2016 at 7:49 am

    Good job Thomas. Not as easy as it seems but those who knew how wild this menace could be get it instantly. This player was one of a kind. By far. He came from far away and disappeared just as far away off the tennis radar. But thats how he always liked it.

  • Dan Markowitz · September 28, 2016 at 8:46 am

    Marcelo Rios or Marat Safin.

  • catherine bell · September 28, 2016 at 10:54 am

    Rios.

  • Scoop malinowski · September 28, 2016 at 1:32 pm

    We have a w……

  • catherine bell · September 28, 2016 at 2:04 pm

    Is it me ? 🙂

  • Dan Markowitz · September 30, 2016 at 4:03 am

    Watching a little late night Mischa Zverev and I like his game so much. What a backhand volley. Gimel and Leif compared it to Rafter’s and Tony Roche’s. The guy is all chip and charge, serve and volley, great anticipation and movement at the net. So good to see this style employed. Mischa also has the weirdest but very effective backswing on his forehand, where he holds it out to his side until the very last moment, tracking the ball, and then he takes it straight back Spadea-teaching style and then sticks it pretty flat. Gasquet is sick too. The whip he gets on his shots, even the forehand with his Continental grip, is sick.

    Gimel said something very off during the match when he intoned it’s nice to see both players hitting backhands so well when the game today is dominated by forehands. What? I’d say the 4 best players in the world today: Djoko, Wawa, Murray and Kei all have better backhands than their forehands. They’re throwbacks to when Borg, Connors and Mac all had better backhands than forehands. Of course, the top 4 today have pretty solid forehands too.
    Gimel said something

  • catherine bell · September 30, 2016 at 9:27 am

    Dan –

    It was always a tennis truism when I was around that many top players had better backhands because the physical action is mechanically fluent – swinging away from the body. Especially the OHB.
    Don’t know if you’d agree.

  • Scoop Malinowski · September 30, 2016 at 10:07 am

    Catherine: I was told that also by a coach I used to hit with about the BH having the better natural flow than the FH – and feel it also as a OHB using player – Dan uses a OHB too so I would expect he would agree –

  • Dan Markowitz · September 30, 2016 at 11:41 am

    Scoop has a very good one handed backhand and that wasn’t always the case as he has worked on it, particularly coming over the ball and disguising where he’s going to hit it. Is the one hander mechanically more fluent, yes, I think so but very few players can snap the one hander the way a two hander can power it.

    Gasquet’s is very interesting and exquisite as he has a continental grip on forehand so he doesn’t have to change his grip as much as Wawa. I like Sela’s one hander and he’s about the smallest guy (I think Bjorn Phau had a one hander too and was a small guy, built like a brickhouse though) to hit a one hander, but then again, didn’t Ollie also hit a one hander? He did.

    Spadea had a money backhand and it’s funny, I asked him he developed it, who taught him the form, and he said his father who was like not even a good rec player. But I remember watching Vince play Santoro in the semis of Newport one year and Vince hit Santoro off the court with the backhand, but he couldn’t hook it x-court the way Fabrice could and after a tough first set, Santoro schooled Vince.

    But of course, when we think of Fed, Nadal, Lendl and so many other champs, certainly Sampras , their forehands were by far their money shots.

  • Scoop Malinowski · September 30, 2016 at 12:52 pm

    Thanks Dan but I just kept hitting backhands for years and years and it just evolved and got more confident through facing tough players in tourneys – Like they say to get better in tennis you just have to keep at it and keep hitting balls – Tsitsipas has a beauty of a one hander – I can see it being universally praised as the nicest most aesthetic one hander in the ATP someday – BTW a person at the US Open from California told me Pete Fischer still coaches and he was at the US Open last year – he’d be an interesting person to interview about tennis –

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