Dorks And Losers

Wim­ble­don, the his­toric tour­na­ment at the All Eng­land Club, is already upon us and in full swing. The world’s favorite player and the one player whom every­one wants to see win one last time with­drew from the tour­na­ment a week ago — Andre Agassi is still recov­er­ing from the back pains that caused him to lose in the first round of last month’s French Open. This is the sec­ond year in a row that Agassi has with­drawn from Wimbledon.

The clear favorite to win this year is none other than No. 1 Roger Fed­erer. This man is amaz­ing. His style of play is rem­i­nis­cent of pre-metal rac­quet play­ers like John McEn­roe and Pete Sam­pras. It’s no won­der why he is so dom­i­nant, and it’s sur­pris­ing that more play­ers don’t adopt his stan­dard of play. Roger Fed­erer has won this Grand Slam two years in a row, and is look­ing to three-peat.

The No. 2 Andy Rod­dick is look­ing to add a sec­ond Grand Slam title to his 2003 U.S. Open crown. His 150+ mph serve works the best on grass, as does his pow­er­ful fore­hand. But he almost refuses to vol­ley, which works the best on this court sur­face. Just ask Sam­pras who won this cham­pi­onship a record seven times. The last time a serve-and-volleyer didn’t win Wim­ble­don was 2002 when Lley­ton Hewitt dom­i­nated the tour­na­ment and 1992 before that when Agassi won his first Grand Slam title.

You might be see­ing the last of clas­sic serve-and-volleyers with the way that ten­nis has evolved. Before today’s ultra mod­ern alu­minum rac­quets, matches were played with wooden rac­quets. Vol­ley­ing was a nat­ural thing to do when balls weren’t trav­el­ing at 100+. Most of the play­ers on the ATP and the WTA are base­line play­ers who rarely vol­ley. Even a clas­sic base­liner like Agassi was play­ing against the norm dur­ing the early 90s. It’s become incred­i­bly dif­fi­cult to vol­ley shots when the rac­quets can hit them to serv­ing speeds. McEn­roe and Mar­tina Navri­talova both called for a return of wooden rac­quets to pro­fes­sional ten­nis a few years ago, but to no avail.

England’s last great hope for a men’s Wim­ble­don cham­pion is Tim Hen­man who barely sur­vived his first round match against Jarkko Niem­i­nen by win­ning in five sets. The last British man to win the cham­pi­onship was Fred Perry in 1936. Tim Hen­man has reached the Wim­ble­don semi­fi­nals four times, the quar­ter­fi­nals four times, never reach­ing the finals and has had over­whelm­ing pres­sure on him to win the title for his home coun­try for the past decade.

My man Marat Safin is on his way to the sec­ond round after his win over for­mer top 25 ranked Paradorn Srichaphan in three sets. Nadal proved in the French Open that there is another man on the tour other than Safin who can beat Fed­erer. But Nadal isn’t as strong on grass as he is on clay. And my pre­dic­tion is this year’s Wim­ble­don title will be Safin’s third Grand Slam title. I hope.

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