San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Bruce Jenkins: Can’t argue the facts and the greatness of Djokovic.
There are no asterisks in tennis. Whatever you may think of Novak Djokovic or the field he encountered at the U.S. Open, he’s about to enter the record books as the greatest player of all time. What matters Sunday is only the scoreboard, and the numbers are not open to interpretation.
With a victory in the championship match against Daniil Medvedev, Djokovic would win a record 21st major and become only the third man to win all four Grand Slam events in the same year. Once you clutter up the achievement with laments — Where’s Federer? Where’s Nadal? — you’ve lurched into the mire of tennis history and its maddening swirl of “what if ?” confusion. Better to not waste your time.
From the mid-1920s through 1967, many of the game’s greatest players felt the lure of turning professional — and thus ruling themselves out of Wimbledon and the U.S., French and Australian “Championships,” as they were known. Sorry, amateurs only — eliminating the likes of Bill Tilden, Ellsworth Vines and Fred Perry as they cashed in during the 1930s. Don Budge made the switch as well, but not before winning his Grand Slam in 1938. And as the sport gained worldwide popularity in the 1950s, it became difficult to appreciate the results of any major if Pancho Gonzales, Lew Hoad, Jack Kramer and Ken Rosewall were off earning paychecks on the barnstorming pro tours.
This is why a number of seasoned observers will always rate Rod Laver above all. He won the Grand Slam as an amateur in 1962, missed five full Grand Slam seasons after turning pro, then swept through the majors again in 1969 — one year after the Open Era began producing truly world-class fields. (Things always made a lot more sense on the women’s side, at least aesthetically, because they had no professional circuit until 1970. Steffi Graf is the only woman to accomplish the Grand Slam, in 1988, and she added an Olympic gold medal.)
As the aptly labeled “tennis boom” took the U.S. by storm, fans riveted to the spectacle of Bjorn Borg, John McEnroe, Jimmy Connors, Martina Navratilova and Chris Evert, it became almost impossible to win the Grand Slam — due more to inconvenience than talent. Boycotts, travel concerns and rival competition (such as World Team Tennis) came into play, as did a sense of resignation if the surface (clay, grass) didn’t suit one’s talents.
So magnificent as to dominate Wimbledon and the French Open — winning 11 titles between the two from 1974-81, including five straight Wimbledons — Borg played the Australian just once in his career. Connors made the trip twice, while skipping five consecutive French Opens in his twenties. Margaret Court holds the women’s record of 24 majors in singles (Serena Williams remains one short of that goal), but many of them came in her native Australia in the 1960s against watered-down competition. As well as Evert played on clay, she missed three straight French Opens (1976-78). Evert, Navratilova and Billie Jean King all went through lengthy career stretches without traveling to Australia.
What Djokovic has in his favor, until the end of time, is a long career of titanic challenges against two of the all-time greats, Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal, and he gained the upper hand by overcoming obstacles both physical and emotional. He’s not my bestever player, not in matters of the heart and soul. I witnessed too much of Federer’s prime, in person, to place anyone above him — and I’ll never forget the awestruck praise from Laver, Borg, McEnroe and so many others after they’d absorbed a stirring dose of the man’s artistry.
In fact, if I get to watch some kind of dream tennis tournament in a mythical setting, I’ll put Laver, Gonzales, John Newcombe, McEnroe, Connors, Arthur Ashe, Andre Agassi and Nadal in there ahead of Djokovic, as well. My goodness, the spectacle of it all. I’d probably add Yannick Noah, Henri Leconte, Adriano Panatta and Patrick Rafter if nobody’s looking. I’ll leave Djokovic to the record books, where he’s about to state a powerful and unassailable case — based on stonecold facts.
On other fronts:
Quick word on Budge, as his legacy comes into focus: He grew up in Oakland, playing near his home at Bushrod Park, a place frequented by Rickey Henderson, Frank Robinson, Vada Pinson and so many other great athletes. His father, Jack, had been a soccer player in Scotland, and his mom, Pearl Kincaid, was a linotype operator at The Chronicle. Emerging from Cal, where he enrolled in 1933, Budge was known for revolutionizing the backhand with topspin, rather than slice, and when he notched the Australian Championships among his historic titles in 1938, he got there on a three-week ocean cruise from San Francisco. There is much to be learned about Budge, and the climate of global tennis during Adolf Hitler’s rise to power, in Marshall Jon Fisher’s book “A Terrible Splendor,” for which this column offers the highest recommendation.
It was a wonderful two weeks for the sport. American players didn’t have much impact, not when it really counted, but the Open crowds have been as lively and engaged as ever. The level of play was routinely sensational.
And what a stirring conclusion to the women’s draw, with Emma Raducanu carving out a 6-4, 6-3 win over Leylah Fernandez for the title. The score doesn’t reflect the match’s compelling nature, and as it progressed, it was stunning to realize that a qualifier, happy just to get into main draw, could win the whole thing. She deserved it, too, never losing a set or even having to deal with a tiebreaker.
Things didn’t look so promising in the tournament’s early stages. Serena Williams was sidelined by injury and, about to turn 40 this month, pondering a full-time retreat into motherhood. Coco Gauff, representing the best U.S. women’s hope for the future, flamed out in the second round. Naomi Osaka was completely out of sorts: fighting off anxiety, reluctantly addressing her crisis with the media, and acting “like a little kid,” as she admitted, with on-court temper tantrums during her discouraging thirdround exit.
It was left to a couple of teenagers, Fernandez and Raducanu, to lift everyone’s spirits. They talked about the joy of tennis, having fun on court, staying mentally strong, and as they so energetically worked the crowd through one implausible victory after another, they made it clear that whatever lies ahead for Osaka, tennis will move on, sympathetically, without her.
“I would tell her, do whatever makes you happy,” said former touring pro Mardy Fish, who battled anxiety issues in the early 2010s and eventually had to walk away from the sport, said in a New York Times interview. “She doesn’t have to hit another tennis ball the rest of her life, and if that makes her happy, that’s what she should do. I think she would regret that, but it’s whatever makes her want to get up in the morning and be happy. So hopefully she finds peace and comfort.”