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Talking Points 2003

Thoughts on the premature retirement of Martina Hingis

These days the top touring pros travel with an entourage comprising relatives, boyfriends, girlfriends, physical trainers, sport psychologists, bodyguards, managers, agents and publicists. Nothing is left to chance. And for those who feel they need more, there's a plethora of other specialists offering their services - sports doctors, weight trainers, therapists, nutritionists and so on and so forth. The Association of Tennis Professionals and the Women's Tennis Association also offer services such as the WTA's "Partners for Success" mentoring scheme. With a support infrastructure like that, how can anything go wrong?

Yet this month we hear of the "almost certain" retirement of five-times Grand Slam champion, Martina Hingis. And what was the catalyst for this premature decision? Was it disenchantment with the Tour or loss of motivation after winning too much too soon? Was it frustration with her second serve that just kind of sat up begging to be punished? Or was it disenchantment with the way the women's game has been shifting inexorably towards the power game, demoralising more subtle exponents of tennis strategy?

Surely the fallout from the now-infamous French Open final against Steffi Graf in 1999, when the Parisian crowd turned so remorselessly against her, must also have been a factor, mustn't it? Most performers are motivated by an audience and Hingis must have feared public hostility ever since that incident.

No, ultimately, her Achilles heel was ... well, it was her Achilles heel. Not your run-of-the-mill injury, though. The culprit was allegedly ... a pair of shoes. Hingis's mother and coach Melanie Molitor blamed her daughter's joint damage on the shoes she wore during her teenage years. In fact, her assertions resulted in a $40 million lawsuit against an Italian sportswear manufacturer.

But, a pair of shoes?

Despite all the expertise at Hingis's disposal, here we have potentially one of the greatest careers in tennis history - apparently thwarted by a pair of ill-fitting shoes! I wonder if she has just been too ready to accept her fate. I wonder if she sees this as a kind of manifestation of Chaos Theory and just accepts that this most trivial of causes was capriciously but unavoidably responsible for the catastrophic effect of terminating her career. Well, I guess we'd all be happy to blame our disasters on that confounded butterfly flapping its wings on the other side of the world, but I'm not sure it would really do us any good!

Hingis's confidence has obviously been sapped by her struggle to overcome her injuries, but at 22 she has plenty of time on her hands. If the injuries were to be given time to heal and if she could just be persuaded to address the other problems that have afflicted her career in the last couple of years, Hingis has the tennis brain that could put her back into contention for more Grand Slam titles and the Women's Tour could yet again reap the benefit of her unique brand of "thinking" tennis. I just hope this great champion will take destiny back into her own hands, place her trust in another pair of tennis shoes and resume her captivating career.

D.W.

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Tennis at the speed of light!

 I was gazing up at the night sky with my daughter recently. Explaining the implications of the speed of light to a child can be one of the most rewarding and enchanting things you ever get to do as an adult. You explain that the closest star is 25 trillion miles away and, since light travels at 186,000 miles per second, it takes over 4 years for that light to reach us. The light from more distant stars may take millions of years to arrive! So yes, it's true, you declare - what you see isn't actually there! It's like you're in a time machine and looking right at the past.

If you're lucky enough to get through to the child, the look of awe and bewilderment is unforgettable.

Watching the brightest stars at this year's Australian Open was also like looking into the past. Three of the men's semi-finalists - Younes El Aynaoui, Wayne Ferreira and Andre Agassi - were in their 30s. At the age of 32, Agassi, in particular, spooked everyone by looking fitter and more eager than anyone else in the draw. But hang on, weren't all the commentators telling us that tennis would increasingly become the province of the young? Ever since Bjorn Borg retired at the age of 26 with 11 Grand Slam titles to his name, players had been written off if they hadn't achieved anything by their mid to late twenties.

So much for that theory! Agassi was light years ahead of his nearest rivals. And there was an even stranger phenomenon at Melbourne this year. A legend came back to life before our very eyes in the Mixed Doubles event.

Incredibly, the name on the trophy alongside Leander Paes belongs to none other than 46-year-old Martina Navratilova, who was the singles runner-up way back in 1975 and "retired" in 1994 after collecting 56 Grand Slam titles (including 18 singles titles).

I'm not sure I know how to explain that to my daughter.

D.W.

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Bring in point penalties for cramp (and toilet breaks)!

 At 7-7 in the final set of her 2003 Australian Open fourth round encounter with Lindsay Davenport, Justine Henin-Hardenne collapsed with cramp in her left leg. After a time-out for treatment, she returned to the baseline, served an ace and rattled off the rest of the game - and the next one - to complete her victory.

My thoughts went back to the 2002 Australian Open when Lleyton Hewitt embarked on a furious off-court row with Alberto Martin after the latter disrupted their opening round match with an injury time-out for cramp right in the middle of a fourth set tie-break. Hewitt went on to lose the tie-break and the match.

The point at issue here is not whether the disability was genuine or not. It's whether or not players should be effectively penalised when an opponent suffers a loss of fitness (as opposed to an injury). Prior to 1995, cramp was regarded as loss of condition and, as such, did not warrant a medical time-out. Then, in the first round of the US Open, Japan's Shuzo Matsuoka suffered cramps and was left writhing on the court in pain for quite some time before anyone attended to him. As it happened, he was unable to continue, but at that time he would have been disqualified for receiving treatment. The incident gave rise to the change of rule whereby cramp became included among the medical conditions qualifying for on-court treatment.

Umpires are not qualified to make any kind of medical analysis in respect of a player's distress and it must be quite difficult sometimes to differentiate between cramp and a more serious injury anyway. Indeed, a bout of severe cramp may cause an injury - the sheer strength of a contraction can occasionally tear the muscle fibres. It's therefore imperative that a player is permitted to call for a trainer in these circumstances. After all, no one wants to see a player suffer. But the question remains - how can the unafflicted player be rewarded for his or her superior fitness? There's an element of rough justice about it, but there is an answer.

If the trainer's verdict is a temporary loss of condition such as cramp or exhaustion, a point penalty should be applied. It's only fair that the fitter player should benefit in some way.

Furthermore, I believe the same sanction should apply in respect of toilet breaks.

D.W.

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