Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} Hard Courts by John Feinstein tennis.quickfound.net. Mary was three days old when the family moved from Brooklyn to Douglaston, Queens. Mary got her first tennis racquet when she was nine--won it in a fishing contest at the Douglaston Pier. She picked the racquet, and old Alex Olmedo model, as her prize because she thought it would be ideal to use for crabbing off the docks. A year later, when she came down with swimmer's ear, she decided to give the prize a try as a tennis racquet, at the Douglaston Club. Once she got through picking the seaweed out of it, she found out she could play pretty well. She began spending hours around the club, looking for people to play with. Most people used the club to swim or to bowl, but there were three clay and two hard tennis courts. She finally found a little runt two years younger than she was who was willing to play with her all day long. His name was John McEnroe. They were both lefties and they both loved Rod Laver. "We played, like, fourteen sets a day, every day," Mary remembers. When Mary was twelve and John was ten, he began to grow a little and catch up to her on the tennis court. One day he beat her 6-0, 6-0, hitting all these weird, wristy touch shots Mary had never seen anyone else hit. After they were done, Mary looked at John and said, "You know something, someday you're going to be the best tennis player in the world." "Shut up," John McEnroe said. "My first foray into tennis commentary," Carillo says now. "And that was what my audience thought of me. I think I scared him. But he was operating in a place no one else was. Even then, he had this crazy touch game." Mary and John both became top junior players. John began entering junior tournaments and urged Mary to do the same. He also encouraged her to start taking lessons at the Port Washington Tennis Academy, where Harry Hopman, the legendary Australian Davis Cup coach, was in charge. "John gets me addicted to the stupid game, convinces me to go to Port, gets me playing there every day of the week, and shows up once a week," Carillo remembers. That was okay, though, because she was hooked on tennis and on Hopman. "If he had been teaching badminton I would have wanted to play it every day." McEnroe fought constantly with Hopman. One Friday night, McEnroe had everyone on his court playing all of his "touchy-feely" shots and Hopman blew up. "You want to play like a girl," he roared, "you go play on the girls' court!" Thirty minutes later, Hopman checked the girls' court and there was McEnroe, showing all the girls how to hit the same shots. Her senior year of high school, Carillo was the No. 1 junior girl in the East and had a scholarship offer to play at Trinity University in Texas. She wasn't sure if she wanted to do that or take a crack a turning pro. When she went to Hopman for advice, he offered a compromise: to work for him in Florida where he was starting a tennis academy. Mary went to Florida to work for Hopman for fifty dollars a week. She worked out and taught for several months. Just as she was getting bored and thinking about going to college, she went to the Bahamas for a tournament at a resort. It was a small, fun event, and Carillo made the semifinals. The next morning, when she went to check out of the hotel, she was told that she had run up a $200 bar bill during the week. Carillo didn't have $200. She walked over to the tournament office. "What's the prize money for making the semifinals?" she asked. "It's two hundred and fifty dollars." "I'm turning pro," she announced. She took the prize money and paid her bar bill. . The following year--1977--the drinking man's pro played the European circuit. At the French Open, she and McEnroe entered the mixed doubles. McEnroe, still an amateur, had just graduated from high school. Glancing at the draw, McEnroe said to Carillo, "No reason why we shouldn't win this thing." He was right. They won, the two kids from Douglaston. . Carillo never reached that emotional high again as a player. She had undergone her first knee operation in 1976, and by the end of 1977 she needed surgery again. She knew her career wasn't going to last long, so she played whenever she could, wherever she could. In 1979 she reached the third round at Wimbledon and climbed to No. 34 in the world. A year later at Wimbledon she could feel things wandering around in her knee again. There are three major management companies in tennis. The International Management Group (IMG) is by far the largest and most powerful. Run by Mark McCormack, it represents everyone from the pope to movie stars to athletes and most of the major names in sports television. It is a colossus, running tournaments all over the world in both golf and tennis, even controlling the computer that assigns worldwide rankings to golfers. ProServ, run by Donald Dell, isn't nearly as large as IMG but it, too, has its tentacles into almost every corner of tennis. ProServ manages players, runs tournaments, produces TV for tournaments, and sells sponsorships for others. At times Dell, one of the great control freaks in all of sports, has found himself doing the TV commentary on matches in which he manages the two players, manages the tournament, and has sold the television time and the sponsorships. It is at those moments, no doubt, that he is happiest. Advantage is, literally, ProServ's cousin, even though it hates that label. It was born in 1983 when Dell and his partners had an irreconcilable falling out over anything and everything. Three partners, Frank Craighill, Lee Fentress, and Dean Smith, left to form Advantage. Legally, two brand new companies were formed out of one, with clients and employees split up between them. Much bitterness still lingers between the partners, although the men who work for them at the two companies tend to get along in their business dealings most of the time. . There isn't an agent alive who hasn't had to beg a tennis player to do something, usually something he or she has already promised to do and then decided at the last minute not to. . Agents had to make excuses when players decided they didn't feel like playing in a tournament or when they decided to skip an exhibition or a corporate appearance. Often, these were paid appearances. The players were often willing to pass up the money, though, if they didn't feel like doing anything. Passing up a $50,000 payday was no big deal anymore, not to the top names. . To the players, the three management groups are not IMG, ProServ, and Advantage, but IMGreedy, ProSwindle and DisAdvantage. Almost to a man or woman, the players will tell you they don't trust agents. Just as quickly, the agents will tell you not to trust players. While the agents often work with one another, putting together tournaments and exhibitions and fighting such groups as the ITF, the ATP, and the WTA for power, they will fight like rabid cats over a player, especially one who is a proven big-money maker. . The standard fee players pay agents when they first turn pro is 10 percent of their prize money and 20 to 25 percent for all other revenue. Superstars usually get their prize-money fee waived and their off-court fees cut to as low as 10 percent, occasionally even lower. Hard Courts by Feinstein, Signed. Hardcover. Condition: Very Good. Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good. 1st Edition. Hardcover with DJ. DJ is glossy and unmarked, with slight bumping on upper spine. Bound in white paper over boards with rose gold lettering on green cloth spine. Title paged dated 1991. Copyright page dated 1991. 457 pages. Signature of author on front free endpaper. Binding is strong. Small smudge on upper edge of book. Pages are clean and unmarked. Book is in very good condition. Signed by Author(s). Hard Courts. Feinstein, John. Published by Villard, 1991. First Edition Signed. Used - Hardcover Condition: Fine. Hard Cover. Condition: Fine. Dust Jacket Condition: Near Fine. First Edition 1st Printing. Signed by the author "Best Wishes John Feinstein" on the page on the other side of the free front endpaper. The book is in fine condition. The jacket is in near fine condition with a quarter inch tear at the top of the spine else fine. First Edition, First Printing. Signed by Author. Monte Carlo 1990: Chesnokov wins the title. When the red clay dust had finally cleared on Friday night, the semifinal matchups were hardly as glamorous as might have been expected. Leconte, building on his victory over Mancini, had become the story of the tournament locally, by beating Andres Gomez and Horst Skoff. He would play Thomas Muster in one semifinal, Muster having beaten Aguilera. Often when a player pulls a huge upset, he has trouble coming back the next day. True to that form Aguilera had been a shadow of himself after the Edberg victory. The other semifinal matched Sanchez against Andrei Chesnokov, the talented Soviet with the great deadpan sense of humor. Chesnokov – Chezzy to everyone on tour – could easily have been a stand-up comic. His English was a good deal better than he liked to let on, although he would occasionally end long speeches in English by looking at his companion and saying, “You understand the language I am speaking?” In any language, Chezzy was funny. But his postmatch interviews in English had become legendary. Chezzy understood English but was not fluent. When someone asked him a question in English he had to translate it to Russian in his head, grasp it, think of the answer in Russian, translate back to English in his head, and then answer. Often this brought on long pauses. He also had developd an instinctive habit of starting his answer to any question with the words “but no … yes.” A year ago, he had announced that he was tired of turning 90 percent of his money over to the Soviet Tennis Federation. By year’s end, after some lenghty negotiations, Chesnokov had been given permission to keep his prize money, as long as he agreed to play Davis Cup and the Olympics for his country. It was similar to Natalia Zvereva‘s deal. That made him happy. Chezzy was never very happy with his tennis, though. He was as fast as anyone in the game and, even though he rarely betrayed emotion on the court, an intense competitor. All week Chezzy had been playing down his chances. After he beat Jaime Yzaga in the third, 6-2 6-1, he said he was happy to be in the quarterfinals but didn’t expect to go any farther. When he then whipped Marc Rosset, the six-foot-six-inch Swiss who could easily pass for Harpo Marx, he said he really wasn’t playing well. Someone asked Chezzy how he would get ready for the semifinals. “But no … yes. I go to disco,” Chezzy answered. “Maybe I loosen up that way.” About the only thing Chezzy loved better than going to a disco was talking about it. If he spent as much time in discos as he claimed, he never would have beaten anyone. On Saturday he beat Sanchez in a strange three-setter. Sanchez dominated the first set, Chezzy the second. When Chezzy went up 5-3 in the third, he looked to be in control. But as he had done against Becker, Sanchez came back, winning three straight games to go up 6-5. Chezzy held serve to force a tiebreak, then surprised Sanchez by playing attacking tennis throughout the tiebreak. He won it 7-2. Chezzy, like most Soviets, is an excellent chess player. He had outthought Sanchez at the end. Chezzy, of course, said he had no chance in the final. Muster had hammered Leconte; Chezzy didn’t think he could beat him. “Thomas is playing very, very well,” he said. “But also I think maybe I take him out tonight. Buy him a vodka at disco.” Chezzy was nowhere near a disco that night. but he played the next day as if he had taken some kind of elixir. Muster dominated the first set, grunting and pounding away on a hot, sunny day made for him. Down 5-3, Chezzy went to the afterburners. He won four straight games to take the set in seventy excruciating minutes, then was flawless the last two sets and won, 7-5 6-3 6-3. When the two-hour-and-forty-minute match ended, Chezzy threw his arms into the air, exhausted and thrilled. The awards ceremony in Monte Carlo is second only to Wimbledon’s in simplicity and dignity. A representative of the royal family, Prince Albert in recent years, comes on court to present the trophies. No speeches, no endless thanking of sponsors. When the trophy has been presented, the flag of the winner’s country is raised above the scoreboard and his anthem is played. During the Soviet anthem, one of the loveliest in the world, Chezzy stood at attention, not rigid or melodramatic, just respectful. He was clearly moved by the moment. He was not alone. 1990 Family Circle Cup: the Queen, the Lege and the Kid. A few weeks after her pro debut, the Capriati mania keeps going on: From Hard courts: real life on the professional tennis tours, by John Feinstein: By the month of April all the indoor tournaments are over. The marking time after the Australian Open is finished. The game moves to the clay courts, and everyone begins looking ahead to the next Grand Slam, the French Open. Clay has always been thought as the surface of Europeans and South Americans. The red clay of Roland Garros, in Paris, and the Foro Italico, in Rome, are part of the sport’s heritage, and players from the Continent and from South America do grow up on, and for the most part, do most of their playing stuff. […] Since the Open left Forest Hills for the hard courts of Flushing Meadow in 1978, there has been no great clay-court tournament in the United States. The US Clay Court Championships, once played in Indianapolis, died there in the mid 1980s when the courts were paved (to induce the men to play there before the US Open). The USTA still runs a US Clay Court Championships in May, but very few players ranked in the top one hundred ever show up. The women still have Hilton Head, though. For the past eighteen years, they have played the Family Circle Cup at the Sea Pines Plantation on Hilton Head, South Carolina. It represents the opening of the clay-court season for the women and has the feel of a big tournament, though it still retains the charm of a small one. The stadium at the Sea Pines Racquet Club seats about five thousand people. It is surrounded by soaring South Carolina pines which give the place a feeling of isolation. The real world seems much farther away than just across a bridge that leads to the honky-tonk towns and paper mills of the South Carolina and Georgia marsh country. The field for this tournament is always strong. The prize money is as high as a non-Grand Slam women’s tournament (other than the Lipton) can be: $500,000 meaning that, under Women’s Tennis association rules, at least one of the top two-, two of the top four-, and four of the top eight- ranked players must be entered. In 1990, Navratilova was there, Arantxa Sanchez was there, Zina Garrison was there, and so was Natalia Zvereva. But they were not the stars of this week. Jennifer Capriati was at Hilton Head, courtesy of Gerry Smith’s string-pulling. The only people pulling harder for her to make it to the weekend than Smith were the ones from NBC. For them a Navratilova-Capriati final would be straight out of Fantasy Island. Not only would they have a classic princess-grand dame matchup, they would have it with the grand dame’s pal and the princess’ hero/mentor – Christine Marie Evert herself – making her network debut in the commentary booth.[…] And so it was that The Queen came to Hilton Head with the network hoping that The Kid would come through. She did – with flying colors. Still unseeded because she didn’t yet have a ranking, Capriati had to play Sanchez in the third round. No problem: 6-1 6-1. In the quarters, Capriati struggled a little against Helen Kelesi, but roared back to win. Now NBC and Gerry Smith had part of their wish – Capriati had made it to Saturday’s telecast. She would play Zvereva in one semifinal. Navratilova would play a lanky young Czech named Regina Rajchrtova, a quarterfinal over Garrison. Naturally, Capriati-Zvereva would be the Saturday TV match. To ensure that the court would be clear for The Princess when NBC came on the air at 2 pm, the other semifinal was scheduled for 11:30. This did not exactly please Navratilova. She didn’t relish the role of second fiddle, so she took her sweet time getting ready to go out and play. It was almost 11:50 before the match – which she won in a romp – actually began. Navratilova may not have been thrilled with all the Capriati mania, but she understood it. “She’s a fresh face, the new kid on the block, everybody loves her,” she said. “I understand that. It’s amazing how young she is, though. I had been on tour three years before she was born.” Navratilova was in the final. And after she destroyed Zvereva, so was Capriati, who by now was joyiding though the whole thing. She had a crew fom HBO (which had reportedly paid the family well into six figures) dogging her for a documentary; she had a million questions on her friendship with Chris, and she had boys and men making eyes at her. When the HBO producer told her that a twenty-three-year-old had described her as “hot”, Capriati rolled her eyes and said, “Oh God, don’t tell my father.” She also confided to friends that she had dreamed about TV star Johnny Depp and had a serious crush on Stefan Edberg. The Kid was growing up fast. But she still sounded like a kid when she talked. When someone asked her about giving Zvereva a crucial point – overruling a call that had gone in her favor – she shrugged. “I just wanted to be fair. The ball was good? I should still have done the other points good.” As for playing Navratilova, well, that was really something. “I mean, it shows I’m up there with the great players, I guess,” she said. “I mean, I always watched her play, and now I’ll be out there on the court with her. To be out there with her will be great, you know, she’s really a lege.” Sunday was something straight out of a fairy tale: gorgeous and sunny, the little stadium sparkling, with the trees rustling in the spring breeze. Andy Mill admitted that the Capriati-Navratilova matchup made his wife a little nervous. “I told Chrissie she shouldn’t try to sugarcoat the situation,” he said. “She and Martina are certainly friends, but she’s closer to Jennifer. One is a friend, the other is a protégée.” […]Evert turned thirty-five in December – three months and eight days before Capriati hit fourteen. Now she sat in the TV booth with Dick Enberg as Capriati raced on court two steps ahead of Navratilova – “I wanted to get my lucky chair,” she said – while Navratilova was nearly knocked over by the NBC cameraman pursuing the teenager. She was not amused. That was Martina’s last bad moment of the day, though. She was still The Lege and played near-perfect tennis to beat The Kid 6-2 6-4 in seventy-five minutes. Capriati hardly seemed bothered by it all. During the awards ceremony she thanked just about everyone on the planet, and when Bud Collins, the master of ceremonies, started to pull the microphone back, thinking she was finished, Capriati grabbed it back. “Wait a minute, I’m not finished.” Collins, who knows a star when he sees one, dutifully handed the mike over. Navratilova was thrilled to win – “God, it was nerve-wracking!” she said – and Capriati was thrilled to be Capriati. NBC got the highest rating it had ever gotten on the Family Circle Cup, and a higher rating than it would get on the Wimbledon final. Evert’s reviews weren’t great, but they weren’t bad. Gerry Smith couldn’t stop grinning. And why not? 1990 US Open SF: Pete Sampras defeats John McEnroe. This was a great day for American tennis. In 1986, one American man, Tim Wilkison, had reached the Open quarterfinals. Four years later, there had been five American quarterfinalists. No American had been in an Open final since McEnroe, in 1985. Now, with Agassi having beaten Becker, the US was assured of having the men’s champion for the first time since 1974. The USTA was taking all sorts of bows for his renaissance, but it had almost nothing to do with it. None of the top young Americans were products of the USTA’s programs. One, Michael Chang, had benefited from some clay-court coaching from José Higueras, but that was it. The rest were products of their families, private coaches, and their own desires. The crowd didn’t care about any of that. It just knew McEnroe was on court. Sampras, who had been the hero Wednesday, against Lendl, was now cast in the role of villain. He was ready for it. “I know they’re all going to be for John,” he had said on Friday morning. “If I was sitting in the stands, I would be for John. I understand it, but I just have to shut it out. I think the match will be decided by who can come closest to keeping his level where it was Wednesday. One of us is bound to have a letdown. I hope it isn’t me.” In truth, it figured to be Sampras. He had played the match of his life on Wednesday to beat Lendl. On Thursday morning, over breakfast at Wolf’s Delicatessen, Blumberg told him that he had concluded a lengthy renegotiation of Sampras’ contract with Sergio Tacchini. The new contract was for five years and would guarantee Sampras at least $4 million, although it could go considerably higher if Sampras continued to improve. Having beaten Lendl, having become extremely rich, Sampras would have been excused if he had a letdown against McEnroe. It never happened, though. He came out bombing untouchable serves, and before McEnroe knew it, the first set was gone, 6-2. In the second set, McEnroe began to creep into the match. down a break, he broke back to 4-all with a miraculous scoop half volley. For the first time all day, the crowd was into the match. If it bothered Sampras, it didn’t show. He hit two perfect returns at McEnroe’s feet to set up a break point. McEnroe , trying to avoid another return like that, went too much on a second serve and double-faulted. Sampras calmly served out the set. What was happening there? How could McEnroe, who had played so superbly in his last two matches, be getting manhandled like this? In a sense, McEnroe was looking across the net and seeing himself, circa 1979: young and brash, supremely confident, and equipped with one weapon – the serve – that could keep any opponent off balance. The difference, of course, was in Sampras’ demeanor. He wasn’t bratty at all. He played one point, then another. No flash, no dash, no whining or crying. “I wasn’t always that way,” he said. “When I was fourteen and I was still playing from the baseline with a two-handed backhand, I was a real whiner. But then I saw some tapes of Rod Laver, and I said, ‘That’s the way I want to be.’ I’ve tried to act that way ever since.” He was succeeding. Much as the crowd wanted to see McEnroe complete his miracle, it couldn’t help but marvel at Sampras. McEnroe did come back and win the third set, but even with the crowd now manic, Sampras didn’t wilt. He started the fourth set with his sixteenth ace of the day, broke McEnroe to go up 4-2, and served the match out, ending it with – what else ? – an ace. McEnroe walked off to one last huge ovation. He was disappointed but not devastated. “I don’t think I played badly,” he said philosophically. “His power really put me off. He served well when he had to. I think he’s really in a groove right now, and that’s a good thing. I think the guy is really good for the game.” “Hope springs eternal. Rosewall played in two Grand Slam finals when he was thirty-nine. I’ll be thirty-two next year. The next time I play Sampras or Agassi, they’ll be favored. The pressure will be on them.” Lendl had said that the key for Sampras was to forget he was playing John McEnroe. He had been able to do just that, largely, he felt, because he had played McEnroe earlier in the summer, in Toronto. Then, it had taken him a set and a half to forget who his opponent was and just play. This time, he had come out firing. He had beaten Muster, Lendl, McEnroe. The question now was, could he do it one more time? HARD COURTS. Of all the ``isms,'' implies this gossipy and savvy rundown on big-time tennis, commercialism may be the most subtly ruinous. Hitherto known as one of college basketball's better Boswells, Feinstein (A Season on the Brink, A Season Inside, Forever's Team) spent 1990 with the young professionals who make often-handsome livings on courts of quite another kind. By his account, few of the men and women on the global circuit (let alone their agents or tournament officials) can be described as sportive. With millions of dollars in prize money and endorsements for corporate sponsors at stake, touring pros and their supporting casts play the game for keeps. The long grind of the season starts in January with the Australian Open, the first of the so-called Grand Slam tournaments on which the author focuses, and ends in December with the Davis Cup final. In between, there are nearly 80 more sanctioned events for men and over 60 for women, plus countless opportunities to participate in lucrative exhibitions. As it happened, 1990 produced eight different Grand Slam champions and some very fine tennis. In covering the major contests, though, Feinstein leaves little doubt that the administrative policies of the game are as anarchic and self-seeking as those of boxing, a situation that helps explain the willful, mercenary bent of many star attractions. The author does not confine himself to muckraking, however. Indeed, he has kind (if blunt) words for such top seeds as Boris Becker, Chris Evert, Ivan Lendl, John McEnroe, and a host of lesser lights who have some appreciation of the cosmopolitan sport's traditions. Feinstein is obviously disturbed, though, by the increasing incidence of ``tanking'' (deliberately losing a match), TV dominance, conflicts of interest, and parental ultimatums. He's also bemused by the game's expedient approach to finance. For example, Zina Garrison (a talented black woman) couldn't buy an endorsement until she made the 1990 Wimbledon final, at which point her agent negotiated a $500,000, five-year deal with Reebok. An unsparing but engrossing audit of a sport that has yet to reckon the price of winning at any cost.