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Ups and Downs in Big-Time Tennis

by Elliot Berry

The following is part of an excerpt from Elliot Berry's new book, "TopSpin: Ups and Downs in Big-Time Tennis." The excerpt is from the Wimbledon chapter of Berry's book, which describes Berry's personal reaction to the opening day of the 1994 Wimbledon Championships. In this second excerpt from the Wimbledon chapter, Berry provides a fascinating analysis of the first round match between the quirky German player Karsten Braasch and the quintessential fair-haired American athlete, Jonathan Stark. Berry's love of Wimbledon and his knowledge of big-time tennis shine through in every paragraph.

The book (334 pages) is recently released by Henry Holt and Company, and is priced at $27.50 in hardcover. To order the book in the U.S., call 1-800-488-5233. It is also available on the Web at: http://www.books.com/scripts/view.exe?isbn 0805035435.

Part Two: Wimbledon 1994

I stopped in the pressroom for a first cup of hot tea on this blustery English day. I came across my old pressroom friend from India, Commander Kailash N. Bahl, who was having a sweet, milky tea with a buttered roll and strips of jarlsberg cheese from the overflowing press salad bar, and I joined him.

"We have very few grass courts in India," he explained in his very distinct accent. "But our clay plays very much like grass elsewhere. You see, in India, we have principally two red surfaces." He dipped his buttered roll into his tea. "Normally our courts are dirt, but then we whitewash the dirt surface with cow dung. It makes for a very fast surface, much faster than at Roland Garros, for example. The other kind of court in India is comprised of red gravel, finely. It looks a bit like clay, but the problem with gravel is that when you fall on it the scrapes are often very severe. In my opinion, and I have been both a player and a linesman, the cow dung surface is preferable." He put more sugar in his tea and added, "Tennis in my country is still a rich man's game."

Moving on to the topic of Wimbledon, he said, "There are two primary injustices here. Did you know that all Fred Perry got for winning Wimbledon three times in succession was three trophies and three high teas?" The old Indian tennis aficionado grinned broadly as if the depth of the injustice was almost as satisfactory as the French bread, butter, and jarlsberg cheese. "The other injustice is that the women players do not receive the same amount of prize money as the men. Their matches may not last as long, but it is my experience that women make up most of the paying public, here at Wimbledon, especially the first week. Many people like their 'day at Wimbledon' even more than they like the tennis itself. Look at the queues for Pimm's and strawberries and cream: women. If this were football or cricket" - he squinted sourly and waved a dismissive hand at those two sports--"the women would get up and leave. But if it is tennis, they like the atmosphere, the sex appeal." He cracked an ancient Indian smile and nodded. "At Wimbledon, it is the women spectators who come, and the men who follow. Naturally that is why I consider it rank discrimination that women players at Wimbledon no longer receive equal prize money." The Indian reporter rubbed the dark circles under his bright black eyes and nodded again.

"Do you want to come out with me and watch a match?" I asked my pal with a smile when he was finished with his snack. On a warm, sunny day, he would have been outside in a flash. "No, no. You run along," he replied. "I will join you shortly, but I think I will listen to Fred Perry on the BBC for a few sets."

Jonathan Stark was out in the boondocks on Court 8, facing Germany's bearded left-hander, Karsten Braasch. It was the kind of setting and unpredictable match that I loved. Stark's power game could be great on grass, but there was no guarantee that his personality would be up to winning there. I took a seat on the low wooden garden bench up against the railing.

The outer courts at Wimbledon are like regional theater, and they often offer better plays than the dramas on Center Court during the first week. If you can pick the right match--and I thought I could-- back courts are tennis heaven. I wanted to find one match and stay with it until its conclusion like the fisherman in The Old Man and the Sea. Everyone is equal out on Wimbledon's back pastures. It is not a place for prima donnas, and emotions are more likely to be wide-open there than in the Center Court enclosure in front of the royals.

As Stark and Braasch warmed up, I glanced down at the forecast provided the press by the Royal Meteorological Office: It will be a cloudy day with outbreaks of rain. The main band of rain is through this morning, but there will be sporadic outbursts throughout the day. Timing of these outbreaks is difficult to put any precision on. It will be warm and rather muggy, highest temperatures around 19 Celsius. Winds will be southwesterly, becoming fresh to strong.

The winds had already gone from fresh to strong, gusting up from black seas south of Cornwall. The temperature, seventy degrees in the morning, had fallen to about fifty degrees that afternoon. Two Englishwomen seated next to me were already wearing windbreakers, and I soon pulled on my old red Adidas warm-up jacket. I had forgotten all the moods of an English summer, but I would not easily forget this match.

Jonathan Stark wanted the victory badly. The tall, handsome American's eyes were not distracted by the crowd but, rather, by the bouncy, effervescent Karsten Braasch. Stark had the long-legged lope of an American basketball star about to play the big game. Athletically, the American basketball body was about to face a European soccer player's body. Braasch, the shorter man, had had a better clay-court session. As they warmed up in the swirling wind that almost threw their lobs back over the net, Stark half smiled, half winced, knowing he had a much higher toss on his serve. They say the weather is equal for both players but not so--nothing is ever quite equal, at least not in tennis.

Stark and Braasch had met only once before, but as the luck of the draw would have it, that meeting had taken place just the week before, in Halle, Germany, and Stark had won the match 6-3, 6-2, also on grass. I thought that win worked against Stark today. Revenge is great among players. The good ones--the ones who will survive on tour--hate to be beaten twice in a row by the same player. Stark had beaten Cedric Pioline twice in a row on hard courts, but the Frenchman had avenged those losses by winning their third encounter at the Lipton. There was another factor, which I tried to anticipate as I watched Stark net a high practice volley into the wind. Already in his third Wimbledon at twenty-three, Stark had, surprisingly, never won a match here. Stark had lost in five sets to Goran Ivanisevic in the first round the year before. Braasch, a late bloomer at twenty-six, had made it out of the first round before, and he exuded more confidence than Stark. But early confidence does not always hold.

Winning a match at Wimbledon is not like winning a match anywhere else in the world. The emotions run so high because the tradition of playing where Tilden, Laver, Budge, and Kramer played is mind-boggling. The players know not to play against the ghosts and try to lose themselves in the heart of the match itself, but at some point they sense the past in the softness of the grass or a slanting ray of sunlight and realize where they are. The place brings out both humility and fierce pride in the players, and that in itself makes for very fine matches.

Braasch nodded to Stark that he was ready to receive. And when the battle was over, I was not disappointed in my choice. It was a great match.

Jonathan Stark opened with a huge first serve, and Braasch's red-and-yellow racket head, which had been dangling harmlessly between his legs, came ripping upward toward the sky, intersecting the downward thrust of the six-foot-two-inch Stark's 120-mile-per-hour delivery with such timing that Braasch's return passed Stark before he had taken two steps forward to the net. Stark looked over his shoulder at the quirky German with the short shorts and runner's legs. Next, Braasch dumped a backhand return of serve at Stark's feet, just the way John McEnroe used to let the wrist of his left hand go almost limp, deadening the return. This time, Stark's long legs were under him, and he played a drop volley from the top of the net that even the fleet Braasch could not quite reach, though he tried to pull the ball up off the soft grass with topspin and shanked it long by just a few inches

Stark hit such big serves he was already taking divots out of the baseline as he twisted, bent, then reached up into his massive delivery. But before long, with a second serve struck almost as hard as his first, Stark served a double fault that put Braasch immediately at break point. The wind, gusting at twenty-five to thirty miles an hour, was blowing right into Stark's face as he served, plastering his blond hair back. Stark survived one break point, but then Braasch, just barely touching the ball--the way a golfer might float a long downhill putt--used a backhand return of a screaming first serve to send the ball gently up the line and out of Stark's reach. Stark, broken in his first service game, took a deep breath and sat down heavily.

Karsten Braasch was a kind of tennis cult hero. Bearded and wearing wire-rim glasses, he looked like a seminarian from Tubingen about to abandon the church because the prospect of a first date now appealed more to him than God did. Braasch's tennis was like Lenny Bruce's humor, offbeat, a little strange--but cool. Braasch rarely swore on court, except in rapid-fire freaked-out German. Looking far shorter than his reported five feet, eleven inches, with another five inches of leap in his bandy legs, Braasch, quick and very left-handed, curled and sliced everything into the court at unexpected angles until, suddenly, he would pound the ball with his short serve flat up the middle for an ace. I had seen Braasch play before, and he was very competitive but always fair with opponents. He was incredibly fit and fast, but it was his strange unpredictability mixed with doggedness that made him so much fun to watch and so tough to play.

Jonathan Stark cut in front of him around the net post as they changed sides. Stark was that quintessential American athlete, unmistakable in a crowd, more sunny than moody even on a day like this, but scared at that very moment to the point right next to self-knowledge. Stark was a taller, blond version of Paul Newman playing the character Brick, the former football star, in the movie version of Tennessee Williams's Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Stark now seemed to understand that unless he bore down with everything he had, he would lose to Braasch.

The bouncy-legged German was hell to play in bad weather. Unlike Stark, whose service windup was as long and true as a star quarterback throwing deep for a touchdown, Braasch had a short windup consisting of a very quick hop and a left-handed blur that didn't allow the toss time to rise or give Stark time to see the ball coming down at him. Before serving, Braasch seemed to look right in the eyes of his opponent as if to say, "I'm going to hit you right now with a Three Stooges hop on the top of your head." And the German's delivery was so quick it was done before it began. The speed of the windup was not Braasch's only deception. Already off his feet to strike down on his uniquely low toss, Braasch could change directions on his delivery at the last possible moment as if, with eyes nearly shut, he sensed which way Stark was leaning and curved his left wrist to the inside or outside of the ball accordingly. In this way, Braasch aced me in the crowd three times and aced Jonathan Stark twice, holding serve at love. Stark was down 2-0, and the heavy-hipped German woman who had squeezed in near my seat took out her camera and said of Braasch with an admiring smile, "Sehr schnell [very fast]."

Stark began game three with a double fault, but then he hit three unreturnable serves in a row, two on second serves. Up 40-15, Stark cut a big kicker off the forehand-side, catching Braasch by complete surprise. In August 1993 in Indianapolis, Stark had given Pete Sampras a scare, losing 5-7, 7-6, 6-3. But losing to a great player by close scores is always easier than beating a player like Braasch in a maelstrom. Two games later, missing a second serve on ad-out, Stark suddenly trailed 1-4 against Braasch, who, like Luciano Pavarotti, toweled his beard off with a small hand towel.

For a moment, Stark's two-handed backhand seemed to steady him. He hit a return of serve with it that nearly took the racket out of Braasch's hand. But I shook my head. Ultimately, I did not like Stark's two-handed backhand. In a smaller man, a two-hander seemed like a reasonable weapon, but in a player as tall as Stark or David Wheaton, a two-handed backhand seemed an awful waste in terms of reach that was unlikely to be made up for by foot speed. I could not imagine Kramer, Gonzalez, or Alex Olmedo ever hitting a two-hander. One has to be exceptionally fast--like Pancho Segura, Borg, Agassi, Courier, or Chang--to really make a two-hander work at the top level. Except for Borg, Connors, and Agassi, who won Wimbledon in 1992 when an unexpected English summer heat had baked the grass hard, resulting in higher bounces, no one with a two-handed backhand had ever won Wimbledon. Now Stark seemed limited, a West Coast hardcourt player stuck with two hands on the joystick, while the European, Braasch, hit left-handed hook serves and chip backhand approaches at him, making him hit up. Stark frowned and shook his head repeatedly. Braasch seemed just happy to be there at all, and he took the first set 6-1.

The basics are often the key to winning a first-round match anywhere. Braasch kept the ball on the court, whereas Stark kept trying to launch rockets off the glassy grass surface. He had the order backward. At Wimbledon, all players on the grass must start as willing field hands, and greatness may appear later: get that order wrong, and you are soon sent packing.

With Braasch leading 2-0 in the second set, it did not so much rain as begin to spit. The cagey German's reflexes and touch were great to watch. He played three drop-volley winners in a row of returns off his lefty kick serves, then he played a high, dangerously slow backhand floater up Stark's backhand line. A lesser player than Stark would have missed the ball...or watched it bounce and hoped it was out, but Stark swept in like the big bird that he was, stretched fully, held his backhand, shoulder high, and firmly drilled a high backhand volley behind Braasch, who was sneaking into the net to try to cut off Stark's volley with a volley. Down 15-40 but encouraged by his own great shot, Stark saved the two break points with unreturnable serves, only to serve a double fault as the wind blew paper cups across. the court. When the ball boy had collected the toppled stack of cups, the bearded German ripped a forehand up the line. Stark, his serve broken a second time, dropped his head.

"C'mon, Jonathan!" shouted a young woman wearing a Michigan sweatshirt.

Suddenly, Stark played a gorgeous game. Against the chip-and-charge pressure of the clever
Braasch, Stark came into net behind every first and second serve the way players used to in the time of Emerson and Stolle. He played three half-volley winners, bending low and skillfully brushing the skidding balls up the line instead of across the court. Stark could play, really play, and Braasch, very quiet on the changeover, knew it. Braasch again let the American cross in front of him as if the shorter player wanted to leave a Do Not Disturb sign around the neck of the large, awakening American.

In the wind and spitting gray moisture of the afternoon, Braasch's service delivery could have cored an apple. The little German could make the ball hop straight or to either side abruptly from the exact same motion. Even the linespeople could not follow Braasch, and they, too, were aced on several line calls they simply missed.

"Come on, damn it!' Stark shouted up at the chair umpire, who ignored him. Stark proceeded to hit three aces and survive four break points to hold serve. It was a flawed gem, but Stark managed to keep himself together when many could not have. Braasch went up 5-4, 40-15, but Stark now saved four set points. He was hanging by a thread, his will to win. At deuce, Stark stabbed a quick forehand return of serve down the line. The agile Braasch, scrambling like McEnroe, dove for the ball and in the air carved a drop-volley winner just over the net.

Stark winced. On Braasch's fifth set point, Braasch served an ace up the middle. The bearded German led Stark 6-1, 6-4.

Matches at Wimbledon have a tradition of going up and down like a roller coaster. Play long enough in a career, and one day a competitor will come back from any position imaginable.
The wind Stark faced on his serve was now gusting up to thirty-five miles per hour, but Stark began hitting the ball so cleanly on his volleys that it jutted forward, skipped lightly off the grass, and thudded low into the backstop for an outright winner time after time. Stark was a real volleyer; Braasch had to use two or three volleys to find the same opening. They cut the ball in different ways--Braasch on a sharp angle under the ball, so with a firmer, almost vertical cut. "Karsten!" Braasch roared his own name in a sudden fury at what seemed to be unraveling.

Stark began to roll. He held his serve with two massive, flat-struck skidding backhand volleys that froze the fleet Braasch to the ground before he could turn and use his legs. Braasch won points
now only by scrapping. Stark grabbed points now in easy bunches with sudden bursts of complete domination. On the changeovers, Stark sat down, finally in that dreamlike zone, which has the happy, unconscious rhythm of sex and the lingering sensation that the world is good and the ball will always be right there.

Stark went on a beautiful tear. He began to wallop the ball. He was like a ray of California sunshine come to London. "Up, up!' Stark chastised himself quietly when he failed to reach up for his toss. But he got up on top of the next one and then thundered his serves down, having found a perfect inner rhythm.

For the first time in the match, Karsten Braasch looked unhappy. He had the uncanny inner speed and balance to block nearly anything back, but suddenly Stark was serving with such ease yet power that the ball girls and linesmen recoiled from the balls like figures fleeing. Even Braasch seemed to be ducking or getting hit. Braasch roared with tension as he netted yet another return of serve. It was only 3-2 for Stark, but the American so dominated the match now with his serves that all he had to do on his returns was become a little more flexible, a little more European, a little less stubbornly predictable and American. Could Stark adapt and accept, the way Stefan Edberg had so often? It was almost as if to be stronger mentally, Stark had to take a little pace off the return. "You've got him!" I felt like shouting out loud to Stark. "Put the damn return into play!" But, as Dennis Van Der Meer had told me at the Orange Bowl and Stark had told me himself at the Lipton, that was not the way Stark liked to hit his returns. Still, Karsten Braasch suddenly looked vulnerable.

"I tell ya," said a man from Texas, who had been watching Braasch serve for a little over an hour, "any serve that peculiar has to have kinks."

The tennis-loving Texan was right--Braasch owned tennis's most peculiar service motion. Down break point, Braasch turned, his serving hand inside out at the very last moment before contact and aced Stark up the middle, causing the 'f' word to fly out of the American. It was 3-all and getting colder. The English teenage girls in the crowd folded their arms across their chests. Stark held his serve like a god, and the girls applauded. The German spectators, who had unfurled a large German flag much to Braasch's displeasure, went silent. This battle was not nationalistic but personal, at least for the players. Now down 3-4, Braasch let a Stark backhand float by him and land. The ball was in, but Braasch turned and smiled anyway. It was 15-all: a huge point. But Jonathan Stark knocked his forehand return of serve a yard long. "No good!" I scribbled on my index card. "Put that ball in play!"

Suddenly Stark fooled everyone. Braasch lunged across the top of the net to cover a drive down the line that Stark, at the very last moment, whipped up and over Braasch's head with a forehand that
was a dead ringer for John Newcombe's buggy-whip topspin offensive lob. The ball spun slowly backward, just over Braasch's reach, tempting him to hit an overhead until, realizing he could not, Braasch turned and chased after it like a Keystone Cop. He nearly caught up to it, but the topspin lob, frisky as a cat, bounced once and leaped into the backstop, followed by the crashing Braasch.

Stark had to hold his serve for the third set. On set point, he hit a serve that made the ball come in with the deceptive ease of a yo-yo released at a speed of 120 miles per hour. The ball kicked crazily up off the grass and then shot out at a right angle clear over Braasch's head, two speeds and two directions on the same ball. The German's desperation reflex backhand hung the ball up the line like an fruit and fell, just out. The third set was finally Jonathan Stark's 6-4.,

Stark had sped up his feet and slowed down his emotions. He was playing calmly and brutally now, finally finding that devastating inner balance between power and fear. It is fear, not confidence alone, that an athlete wants. In Stark's case, the edge of fear made him move better. Braasch began serving in the fourth set with the wind at his back, and he aced Stark with his short, tomahawk delivery. Braasch broke ahead 1-0, but Stark was still calm inside, still "in the zone." Suddenly Stark seemed to have the German on the edge of the abyss. Braasch missed wildly, laughed at himself derisively at midcourt, and then let out a tremendous bloody yell--"Aaaaaaaagh!"--that was soon swallowed by the wind. Stark silently wiped his racket handle with a towel.

At 2-all in the fourth set it began to rain, splattering the blue ink on my index card. The two men kept playing. Rain worthy of an umbrella in America is often simply ignored in England. I had never seen a chair umpire electrocuted, but I suspected that if this rain did not do it as the umpire sat with his microphone in his right hand, the lightning bursting in the yellow electrical storm down Richmond way might well do the trick. The umpire sat in his chair in a Burberry scarf and a baggy blue winter jacket and a tweed cap. He was dressed more for a quail hunt than a tennis match. The players in their shorts looked at each other and shrugged. I had never been so cold watching a tennis match. I hung on against my bladder's call like Admiral Hornblower fighting a gale at sea. The English umpire glanced at the clouds, nodded as if he had just returned from a rainy week's holiday in Cardiff, and said implacably, "Play on."

"Send for tea," I grumbled to the Englishwoman next to me as the wind howled: "This guy won't vacate his high chair until he gets blown off it."

"That seems like a possibility," said the woman from Nottingham.

Neither player liked playing in rain on grass, but neither one wanted to be the first to concede he wanted to stop. "Hit the ball!" roared Stark, unable to lift a two-handed backhand off the slick grass.

Braasch continued ranting in the rain. But the leap-serving Nijinsky kept hitting aces when he desperately needed them and went up 3-2 in the fourth set.

Suddenly the court seemed to turn a paler shade of green, reflecting a change in the light above. Stark hit a huge, unreturnable serve that Braasch claimed was out. For the first time Braasch seemed to be stalling, hoping a rain delay might save him. Each point now became an isolated, contentious moment. The players became like two chickens fighting over a single kernel of corn. It was great to watch, but very hard tennis to play in terrible conditions.

Stark's serve became flatter and skidded through. The results were immediate and dramatic. The ex-Stanford player and Braasch had a great volley exchange--four volleys with both men at the net. Stark, the French Open doubles champion only two weeks before, won the exchange, flicking away Braasch's best shot with disdain and such power that it elicited a roar of "Scheisse!" from the bearded German dervish.

The match had shifted Stark's way completely. Eighty percent of Stark's serves were unreturnable. Feeling the pressure, Braasch missed a drop volley, then hit a volley long off the throat of his racket frame. Down 15-40, a hole Braasch's had been in and escaped from before, he blasted a serve off Stark's forehand side, and Stark, reacting perfectly, played a reflex cross-court winner at an impossibly sharp angle to break Braasch's serve and go up 4-3. Braasch scrambled back, and Stark fell behind 30-40 on his own serve. Stark stood tall, looked over at Braasch, and served a
winner. Deuce.

The raindrops started to fall faster.

Stark came in behind his first serve and hit a volley that skidded away. Braasch tried to throw his racket at it. On ad-in, Stark hit an ace that almost broke the backstop, and the blond Oregonian let out a lion's roar, part fear, part triumph. He was up 5-3. Braasch nodded disinterestedly and held serve at love, ripping a topspin left-handed cross-court backhand winner on the run that reminded me again of Laver. At 5-4, Stark was serving for the set. Braasch walked in a nervous circle, and the rain continued.

Stark, saying nothing, held his serve at love. He was a real pro. They both were. The fourth set, like the third, was Jonathan Stark's, 6-4. Immediately, the sky split open. The umpire stood up in his chair and waved his arms frantically like a sea captain roused from below decks, and on raced the young grounds crew to cover the court with canvas.

"What's the big emergency?" asked the woman next to me from Bristol. "They could play in this. Oh well. I think I'll go to the loo."

I felt truly happy during that rain delay. Both players were giving it absolutely everything they had. There was a bottleneck on the paths on the way to shelter, and I was forced to remind an American who bumped me three times in the back of the head with the handle of his Bond Street umbrella that he was not going to get inside any faster at all by doing that. I made it to the nearest men's room, then went upstairs to the press dining room to have eggs, sausages, tomatoes, and chips, and a very hot tea. I did not want to talk to anybody for fear of breaking the match's spell. I tried to picture what Stark and Braasch were doing up in the changing rooms. I had seen Stark's coach, Larry Stefanki, across the court, and I wondered what he would be saying to Stark to keep him loose but focused during the break.

Big servers on a roll are like powerful locomotives who get up full heads of steam on the way from London to Paris. Now Stark was being asked to stop over for a couple of hours in Calais.

Did Stark know how he could win? He must know, I thought. But did he know how to actually do it? I wondered who was getting more nervous upstairs, Stark or Braasch? I felt Stark was more nervous because he had beaten Braasch 6-2, 6-3 the week before and was expected to win here. They would both be taking a leak and a shower and changing their clothes. Nervous, pacing, stretching, a few words with the coach (but coaches cannot win matches), then a last soul-searching session on the Thomas Crapper. The blank look down, the game played by memory, the tension of a shared will to win. In a flash, the memory of every very close match they ever played would be rising in their stomachs.

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