TennisOne Lessons
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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