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I know, it’s been a while. Things have been a little hectic plus, to be honest, there hasn’t been any one thing happening in sports the last 10 days or so that has made me want to jump to the keyboard and write.
The New York Times does a great job of covering the U.S. Open tennis tournament. There was a really good piece Tuesday morning written by Greg Bishop on exactly where American tennis is right now. Four American men reached the round of 16 for the first time since 2003—which is the last time an American man won a major title. (Andy Roddick).
Fine.
And Serena Williams is almost certain to win the women’s title, an amazing comeback after being out for almost a year following her foot surgery and the serious scare she got last spring when she ended up in the hospital because of blood clots.
I wish I could get more excited.
I think Serena is an amazing player. God knows how many majors she might have won if she had decided to stay focused on tennis. I don’t fault her for not doing that—she’s got a zillion dollars, she can do whatever she wants—but I have always been bothered by the way she and her sister never give their opponents credit on the rare occasions when they lose a match. And the entire foot-fault incident two years ago was disgusting on every level from Serena’s non-apologies to half-apologies; to her agent literally putting a hand on a TV camera after the match; to the Grand Slam Committee letting her off the hook; to ESPN basically covering up for her at every turn since the incident.
So, if Serena goes on to win as I suspect she will, I will take note of her greatness. But I really won’t care.
Once upon a time I liked Roddick. I especially admired his grace in defeat after his epic loss to Roger Federer at Wimbledon in 2009. Lately though, as his tennis has slipped, he’s become a pill. The way he behaved during HIS foot-fault incident last year wasn’t as bad as Serena’s but it wasn’t pretty. And he’s now taken to lecturing the media on what it should and should not think and say and write about the state of American tennis.
You want to shut the media up Andy? Win something.
I did make my annual trip to the Open last Wednesday. I got lucky—especially given the weather now—by being there on an absolutely perfect day. I wandered the backcourts for a while and only got into one brief tussle with security people. I was walking into what I thought was an entrance to the new court 17 to take a look at it when a guard—after I was several yards past him—said, ‘hey, this is an exit.’
I turned around and said, “there’s no ‘exit-only,’ sign.”
“Yeah well, I’m telling you it’s an exit.”
I walked out but couldn’t resist another comment. (Hey, it’s who I am). “Tell the USTA to spend 10 bucks on a sign. It will make everyone’s life a little easier.”
All of a sudden a guy in a jacket with a walkie-talkie came hustling over.
“Is there a problem sir?” he said.
“No problem,” I said. “You guys just need to spring for 10 bucks for an exit sign.”
“We don’t need one.”
“Apparently you do.”
I was tempted to stay and jaw with the guy for a while but decided it was too nice a day and I’d made my point. Sort of.
I made my way over to court seven and almost burst out laughing when I saw who was playing.
Ryan Sweeting.
For at least the last three years, maybe four, whenever I have been at the Open, regardless of the day, Ryan Sweeting has been playing on an outside court. I know his game almost as well as I once knew John McEnroe’s game although I’ve never seen him win a match. At least this year he got into the draw on his own and not through a wildcard.
Since it’s become a tradition I sat and watched Sweeting play for a while. He was playing someone named Daniel Istomin, who is from Uzbekistan and looked a lot like a young Miloslav Mecir—minus the beard and the almost mystical softball ground game that players found so baffling. Sweeting actually won the first set but then lost his serve at 4-all in the second and went down quickly after that. I look forward to seeing him again next year.
The highlight of the day—as always—was the chance to see my two favorite tennis people, Bud Collins and Mary Carillo. Bud is 82 now but the pants are loud as ever and he is still cranking out columns for The Boston Globe. He still gets fired up when he sees a young American player flash potential. His only concession to age is sitting in an aisle seat in the press room so he doesn’t have to climb over people getting to and from his seat.
Carillo is, well, Carillo. All kidding aside she should be the commissioner of tennis. She’s smarter than everyone running the game and cares about it more than any of them too. There was a story in The Times today about the fact that there are fewer top umpires at the U.S. Open than at any of the other majors because the USTA pay less than the other majors do.
The USTA’s response was to hide: The only person allowed to speak on the subject was the PR guy who basically said, “we’ve got enough good umpires here.”
Sure, because it’s okay to have second-rate umpires working the matches that aren’t at night or on TV right? It’s okay for Ryan Sweeting and Daniel Istomin to have second-rate umpires because they’re on court seven where I’m the only one guaranteed to show up and watch.
If Carillo had been in charge I promise you she would have answered the questions herself and probably would have said, “If that’s the case we need to fix it. We make millions on this tournament every year, we can re-invest a few extra bucks to make the umpiring as high class as possible for EVERY player—not just the glamour guys.
And I guarantee you she’d invest in an exit sign.
Oh, one more thing: For all the talk among the tennis apologists about how wonderful the game is, the only sessions of the Open that sold out were the weekends. The USTA was all but giving away tickets for the weekday and weeknight sessions. This is NOT The Legg Mason Classic, this is a MAJOR championship and they can’t sell it out most days. Not good.
******
Stephen Strasburg came back to pitch for The Washington Nationals on Tuesday a little more than a year after he had Tommy John surgery. Clearly, he hasn’t missed a beat. He was consistently throwing in the high 90s with control—40 strikes in 56 pitches. The kid is a freak. I just wish the Nats weren’t babying him so much on the mound (hell, they babied him last year and he got hurt anyway) and in the clubhouse where one pretty much needs a court order to say ‘hello,’ to Strasburg in anything but a formal press conference setting. He’s 23-years-old and he’s making millions of dollars. Time to start acting like an adult…
I’m going to be writing a weekly football column for The Washington Post this fall on Mondays. Looking forward to seeing all sorts of different games—NOT just the big name teams although I’ll obviously do some of that. This Saturday night I’m going to see Georgetown-Lafayette. (Hey, Patriot League stuff!). Georgetown’s an interesting story: It was forced to upgrade to Division 1-AA a few years back because you can’t have a D-1 basketball team and a D-3 football team. That’s made it tough. Two years ago the Hoyas were winless. Last year they were 4-7. I’m interested to see how much progress they’ve made since a year ago…
You may (or may not) have noticed that I’ve tried to resist the urge to take shots at ESPN lately, only because I think people roll their eyes when I do it all the time—not because they don’t deserve it. But I have to ask this question: If Sunday Night Baseball is, as ESPN claims, “baseball’s biggest stage,” just what exactly is The World Series?
Showing posts with label Bud Collins. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bud Collins. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 7, 2011
Monday, May 3, 2010
Rory McIlroy’s bravura performance; Tennis schedule reminds me of a player in the past
I’m not sure who to write about this morning: Rory McIlroy or Andrei Chesnokov.
Andrei Chesnokov?
Let me come back to him in a minute. It is impossible to ignore McIlroy this morning given his performance on Sunday at The Quail Hollow Club in Charlotte. Looking up at a leaderboard that included Phil Mickelson, Davis Love III, Angel Cabrera and Jim Furyk—to name a few—McIlroy went out on Sunday and shot 62—finishing his round with six straight 3’s—to win The Quail Hollow Championship by four shots over Mickelson and five over Cabrera.
It was a bravura performance, climaxing with a 40-foot birdie putt on 18 that was never going anywhere but the middle of the hole almost from the moment it left his putter. I just finished writing my weekly Golf Channel essay and the thing I kept coming back to wasn’t so much the brilliant golf but the absolute joy McIlroy clearly brings to the golf course.
The kid turns 21 on Tuesday, which means he’s about the same age that Tiger Woods and Mickelson were when they burst onto the scene—Mickelson by winning a tournament while still a junior in college; Woods by winning twice on tour at the end of 1996 a few months before his 21st birthday.
Woods was always a golf prodigy, a genius on the golf course—and still is in spite of his performance this past week—but one thing he never was going to be was fun. Mickelson tried a little harder. He’s always made a point of signing autographs and smiling back at people but it has never been something that has come naturally to him.
This kid has a little Arnold Palmer in him. He’s got all the shots but he’s also got a natural way of connecting with the fans that you rarely see on the golf course. A lot of players complain that it is unfair for fans to expect them to smile or acknowledge them when they’re working—which is what they’re doing on the golf course. I get that. But when a player is naturally inclined to be that way it is all the better for him, for the fans and for the game.
McIlroy walking up 18 on Sunday applauding for the fans was cool. It also was natural, not concocted in any way. Fans like him; other players like him; the media likes him and he can flat out play. If Tom Watson doesn’t win the U.S. Open at Pebble Beach next month, a McIlroy victory might be the next best thing. That’s no knock on Mickelson by the way, it would just be a fresh new story line.
Okay, onto Chesnokov. Unless you are a real tennis geek you have no idea who I’m talking about. In fact, unless you are a real tennis geek you are probably wondering why in the world tennis would be on my mind at all right now. I do keep up with the tour, at least enough to know who is winning week-to-week. This past week, the men were in Rome for what was once known as The Italian Open. Now, thanks to some marketing silliness it is called The Rome Masters or some such thing. Rafael Nadal won for, I think the sixth time.
When I was a kid, NBC used to televise The Italian Open, The French Open and Wimbledon. Only Wimbledon was actually on live, but I watched raptly anyway. Bud Collins called it, “The Old World Triple.” I still remember Vitas Gerulaitis winning The Italian one year and how big a deal it was back then.
I dreamed back then of someday doing the “Old World Triple,” in the same year. Not only did I get to do it in 1990 when I was researching, “Hard Courts,” I got to do it while hanging out with Bud a lot of the time which only made it about 1,000 times more fun. Bud believes he is part-Italian and traveling around Rome with him was a little bit like being with Vito Corleone at Connie’s wedding—except Luca Brasi was nowhere in sight.
My fondest memories of that week in Rome though center on Chesnokov—who liked to be called Chezzy. He was then a solid clay court player, the first really good player to come out of the Soviet Union in years. He liked to pretend he didn’t speak much English but in truth he spoke it about as well as I did. He and Natalia Zvereva were in a battle back then with the Soviet Tennis Federation about purses. The federation was getting about 90 percent of the money they were making on tour. Chezzy and Zvereva didn’t see that as fair.
It took a while for me to get Chezzy to trust me—which was understandable. At first when I told him I was writing a book on life on the tennis tour, he was suspicious. “Why do you want to talk to me?” he asked. “I never win anything important.”
He never did win a major, but he had beaten Mats Wilander at The French in 1986—the first time I encountered him—and had been in the French semis in 1989, losing in four sets to Michael Chang. He won at Monte Carlo in 1990 and made it to the Italian final a couple of weeks later. What was amazing was HOW he made it to the final. He kept losing the first set, falling behind in the second and then rallying—somehow—to win. The matches took longer and longer--Chezzy was a classic stay-back clay-courter who simply wore you down—but he kept winning.
Every time he was asked in a press conference what he was going to do to get ready for his next match he would smile and say, “I go to disco.”
He was joking. He was very serious about his tennis, but not about much else. When I finally got him to sit down and talk to me over a long breakfast that week, he talked in detail about how he had fallen in love with the game as a kid and had known early on that it was his ticket out of a rudimentary job in Moscow.
“I know this because of the Olympics,” he said. “Once they say tennis will be in Olympics (1988) I know the government will put serious money into the tennis programs and I will have a chance. If not for the Olympics, they don’t let us travel to compete.”
I like to think that Chezzy and I found common ground that year. He became one of the non-star stars of “Hard Courts,” much the same way Paul Goydos did in “A Good Walk Spoiled.” Unlike with Goydos, who I am still friends with and see all the time on tour, I haven’t seen Chezzy for years. There aren’t that many people I’d like to sit down with at length again from my years covering tennis, but Chezzy would be right near the top of that short list.
He was a very good player. And a better guy, though I doubt he ever did see the inside of a disco.
Andrei Chesnokov?
Let me come back to him in a minute. It is impossible to ignore McIlroy this morning given his performance on Sunday at The Quail Hollow Club in Charlotte. Looking up at a leaderboard that included Phil Mickelson, Davis Love III, Angel Cabrera and Jim Furyk—to name a few—McIlroy went out on Sunday and shot 62—finishing his round with six straight 3’s—to win The Quail Hollow Championship by four shots over Mickelson and five over Cabrera.
It was a bravura performance, climaxing with a 40-foot birdie putt on 18 that was never going anywhere but the middle of the hole almost from the moment it left his putter. I just finished writing my weekly Golf Channel essay and the thing I kept coming back to wasn’t so much the brilliant golf but the absolute joy McIlroy clearly brings to the golf course.
The kid turns 21 on Tuesday, which means he’s about the same age that Tiger Woods and Mickelson were when they burst onto the scene—Mickelson by winning a tournament while still a junior in college; Woods by winning twice on tour at the end of 1996 a few months before his 21st birthday.
Woods was always a golf prodigy, a genius on the golf course—and still is in spite of his performance this past week—but one thing he never was going to be was fun. Mickelson tried a little harder. He’s always made a point of signing autographs and smiling back at people but it has never been something that has come naturally to him.
This kid has a little Arnold Palmer in him. He’s got all the shots but he’s also got a natural way of connecting with the fans that you rarely see on the golf course. A lot of players complain that it is unfair for fans to expect them to smile or acknowledge them when they’re working—which is what they’re doing on the golf course. I get that. But when a player is naturally inclined to be that way it is all the better for him, for the fans and for the game.
McIlroy walking up 18 on Sunday applauding for the fans was cool. It also was natural, not concocted in any way. Fans like him; other players like him; the media likes him and he can flat out play. If Tom Watson doesn’t win the U.S. Open at Pebble Beach next month, a McIlroy victory might be the next best thing. That’s no knock on Mickelson by the way, it would just be a fresh new story line.
Okay, onto Chesnokov. Unless you are a real tennis geek you have no idea who I’m talking about. In fact, unless you are a real tennis geek you are probably wondering why in the world tennis would be on my mind at all right now. I do keep up with the tour, at least enough to know who is winning week-to-week. This past week, the men were in Rome for what was once known as The Italian Open. Now, thanks to some marketing silliness it is called The Rome Masters or some such thing. Rafael Nadal won for, I think the sixth time.
When I was a kid, NBC used to televise The Italian Open, The French Open and Wimbledon. Only Wimbledon was actually on live, but I watched raptly anyway. Bud Collins called it, “The Old World Triple.” I still remember Vitas Gerulaitis winning The Italian one year and how big a deal it was back then.
I dreamed back then of someday doing the “Old World Triple,” in the same year. Not only did I get to do it in 1990 when I was researching, “Hard Courts,” I got to do it while hanging out with Bud a lot of the time which only made it about 1,000 times more fun. Bud believes he is part-Italian and traveling around Rome with him was a little bit like being with Vito Corleone at Connie’s wedding—except Luca Brasi was nowhere in sight.
My fondest memories of that week in Rome though center on Chesnokov—who liked to be called Chezzy. He was then a solid clay court player, the first really good player to come out of the Soviet Union in years. He liked to pretend he didn’t speak much English but in truth he spoke it about as well as I did. He and Natalia Zvereva were in a battle back then with the Soviet Tennis Federation about purses. The federation was getting about 90 percent of the money they were making on tour. Chezzy and Zvereva didn’t see that as fair.
It took a while for me to get Chezzy to trust me—which was understandable. At first when I told him I was writing a book on life on the tennis tour, he was suspicious. “Why do you want to talk to me?” he asked. “I never win anything important.”
He never did win a major, but he had beaten Mats Wilander at The French in 1986—the first time I encountered him—and had been in the French semis in 1989, losing in four sets to Michael Chang. He won at Monte Carlo in 1990 and made it to the Italian final a couple of weeks later. What was amazing was HOW he made it to the final. He kept losing the first set, falling behind in the second and then rallying—somehow—to win. The matches took longer and longer--Chezzy was a classic stay-back clay-courter who simply wore you down—but he kept winning.
Every time he was asked in a press conference what he was going to do to get ready for his next match he would smile and say, “I go to disco.”
He was joking. He was very serious about his tennis, but not about much else. When I finally got him to sit down and talk to me over a long breakfast that week, he talked in detail about how he had fallen in love with the game as a kid and had known early on that it was his ticket out of a rudimentary job in Moscow.
“I know this because of the Olympics,” he said. “Once they say tennis will be in Olympics (1988) I know the government will put serious money into the tennis programs and I will have a chance. If not for the Olympics, they don’t let us travel to compete.”
I like to think that Chezzy and I found common ground that year. He became one of the non-star stars of “Hard Courts,” much the same way Paul Goydos did in “A Good Walk Spoiled.” Unlike with Goydos, who I am still friends with and see all the time on tour, I haven’t seen Chezzy for years. There aren’t that many people I’d like to sit down with at length again from my years covering tennis, but Chezzy would be right near the top of that short list.
He was a very good player. And a better guy, though I doubt he ever did see the inside of a disco.
Friday, October 30, 2009
Discussing Andre Agassi
In the last couple of days I have been asked repeatedly about Andre Agassi’s revelation that he used crystal meth back in 1997 when his tennis career was spiraling downward. I’m not completely sure why this story doesn’t interest me more. It might be because the revelation is clearly an attempt to hype Agassi’s memoir (not that I would ever knock someone for trying to sell books) or it might be because I don’t find it that shocking.
I’m not downplaying the dangers of crystal meth. I know a little about methamphetamines because that’s the drug Paul Goydos’s wife Wendy got hooked on years ago that was almost undoubtedly responsible for her death earlier this year. From what I’ve heard and read there are few--if any--drugs more addictive. Agassi apparently got lucky because he never got hooked. He is part of a very small minority.
What DID jump out at me in reading Agassi’s version of all this, was his tale of testing positive for the crystal-meth during an ATP Tour drug test. He describes making up a lie—that he had accidentally gotten it into his system because his assistant frequently spiked his sodas with the stuff—and the tour buying the story.
This is the kind of story that ranks up there with the dog ate my homework or I was kidnapped by gypsies as an excuse. And yet, the tour apparently accepted it without any follow up questions and Agassi (and his image) skated.
To me this is far more an indictment of the people at The ATP Tour than it is of Agassi. When a drug-user gets caught, especially if he is a public figure, the first thing he does is think up a lie. If the people in charge are paying any attention at all they should know he’s going to lie. First question: Have you fired the assistant yet? Second question: Clearly you must have understood you had been drugged when this happened, did you see a doctor? Did you think to tell us about this before your drug test?
Oh well, that’s tennis. If Martina Hingis had still been a big star when she tested positive for cocaine at Wimbledon a couple years ago my guess is the powers-that-be would have found a way to accept her explanation too.
To be honest, I was never a big Agassi fan. Part of that, no doubt, is that I first encountered him early in his career when he was still a coddled, immature, jerk. I’ve told the story here about the incident in Vienna in 1990 when he first tried to embarrass Bud Collins by getting him to hit with him after a pre-Davis Cup practice session and then, when it became apparent that Bud, even giving away 40 years, could keep the ball in play quite comfortably, he tried to hit a ball right at Bud’s head.
There was also the spitting incident in New York
And then there was the Wimbledon-ducking. For three straight years when he was a ranked, rising star, Agassi skipped Wimbledon so he could take a break before returning to Europe post-Wimbledon to play on clay for big appearance fees. His list of excuses—and that of the yes-men he was surrounded with—was comical. I remember him playing an exhibition here in Washington in 1990 with John McEnroe, one of those deals where they agreed to split sets and then Agassi won the third. After the match, Harold Solomon, who had organized the event, interviewed both players on court. At one point he said, “So Andre, when are we going to see you play Wimbledon again. (Agassi had played it once, losing in the first round).
“Let me answer that this way,” Agassi said. “How many here think Wimbledon is the most important tournament?” Quite a few fans cheered. Then he added, “okay now, FOR AMERICA, how many think the U.S. Open is the most important?” Some cheers, hardly overwhelming. “You see,” Agassi said, turning to Solomon. “I told you.”
I was standing at that moment with McEnroe, who shook his head and said, “that may be the most absurd thing I’ve ever heard. Does he really think anyone is buying that crap?”
No one was. Agassi took big guarantees overseas, then often tanked matches and flew home. He blatantly gave up in a Davis Cup match in 1989 against Carl Uwe-Steeb (yeah, THAT Carl Uwe-Steeb) and became kind of a joke in the locker room in spite of his remarkable talent. He did finally go and play Wimbledon and won it in 1992, creating the famous scene where Nick Bollitieri, his long-time coach could be seen signaling him from the friends box to “stay down,” on his knees to play to the crowd.
After the 1997 flameout when his marriage to Brooke Shields fell apart and he got completely out of shape and dropped to No. 141 in the world, Agassi made a remarkable comeback. He worked himself back into shape, became No. 1 in the world again, completed the career Grand Slam and became—remarkably—a beloved figure in tennis.
I wasn’t around the sport much during the last few years of his career but people I respect like Mary Carillo and Sally Jenkins said he did mature a good bit. Marrying Steffi Graf was clearly good for him, he got far more involved in his charity work and acted like an adult, especially (as often happens) when he became a father. That said, when he broke down after his final match at the U.S. Open in 2006, someone who knows him well said to me, “It’s written in the script—‘cry now.’” Okay, so the guy was always a showman, I’ll give him that one.
The crystal meth admission may seem strange to some because it could affect his new-found, ‘good guy,’ image. I don’t think it will. I think people will say, ‘that was a while ago, he made a mistake, he’s fessed up to it.’
And maybe that’s as it should be. He’s certainly not the first athlete to cover up drug-usage and if that was the only drug he used, as dangerous and dumb as it was, he wasn’t trying to cheat his sport like all the steroid users, many of whom are still lying about what they did.
So, I’m not going to buy Agassi’s book because I don’t have much interest in reading it. And I don’t expect my autographed copy to arrive in the mail anytime soon. That’s fine too.
I’ll end this on a story I told in, "Hard Courts,” the tennis book I wrote in 1991. In August of 1990 Agassi and his entourage—which in those days consisted of his agent, his agent’s assistant, his masseuse, his racquet stringer, his religious guru (who he once fired after losing a match) his workout guru, his equipment rep and his brother, who was apparently paid to be his brother—flew into the Cincinnati airport late one night for the tournament played there.
The airport, as anyone who has been there knows, is actually across the river in Covington , Kentucky
The woman, who told me the story later that week, looked at Agassi and said: “Andre, it’s 11:30 at night. We’re in Kentucky
There are some stories you just can’t make up.
Thursday, September 3, 2009
Athletes Saying Hello as its Time to Say Goodbye; Covering Tennis with Bud Collins
During my annual visit to the U.S. Open on Wednesday I encountered an old friend who asked if I had seen any of the ceremony honoring Andre Agassi or had watched during the telecast when he spent some time in the booth talking about his career and the state of the game today.
I said I hadn't done either but that someone had told me Agassi had been critical of today's players for not being more media and fan friendly. Needless to say I found that ironic since Agassi spent a good deal of his career ducking the media at every turn. It was only when his Image is Everything image started to lose some of it's luster that he started inviting reporters to visit him in Las Vegas and letting them drive one of his cars so they would think he was a good guy. (It wasn't me, it was a colleague at the old National Sports Daily.)
I bring this up not to rip Agassi, who did grow gracefully into tennis old age and was probably as popular with fans--in large part because of the work done by his image-makers--as anyone. I do remember his tearful farewell speech after he lost at the Open three years ago during which someone who knew him well turned to me and said, "I guarantee you the place where he starts to cry is written into the script."
Okay, maybe I am bashing him a little, I have too many memories of him refusing to be interviewed by Mary Carillo because she asked 'tough,' questions (he insisted on Cliff Drysdale who thought, 'great playing today Andre,' was a tough question) or of the day in Vienna when he was practicing for a Davis Cup match and asked Bud Collins to hit with him for a while. "You're the tennis expert, let's see how you play," Agassi said. Bud had not, in the view of Team Andre, exalted him the way he expected to be exalted. Bud, in case you don't know it, was a very good player once upon a time, won a national mixed doubles title in the 60s. He was 62 on the day in question and facing hip replacement surgery. Agassi was 21.
Agassi hit a few easy balls at Bud and was surprised when they came right back at him. It's easy to tell someone who knows how to play the game very quickly, there's a fluidity to the way they swing the racquet.
Agassi picked up the pace and Bud stayed with him. Finally, clearly frustrated that he hadn't been able to humiliate Bud, Agassi took a short ball and hit it as hard as he could right AT Bud. Bad hip and all, Bud managed to dodge it. He put down the racquet and said quietly, "I think that's enough for today Andre."
Actually I started out to write this about athletes who want to say hello when it's time to say goodbye. All of a sudden, as their careers come to a close, they decide the media isn't so bad--in fact, they decide that being IN the media is a pretty good idea. Agassi hasn't done that, he's done a lot of very good charitable work along with his wife Steffi Graf, but he still loves the spotlight--which is fine. Having said that, I think I'd rather write more about Bud Collins than about people like Steve Carlton who talked to no one when he was winning Cy Young Awards and then held press conferences when his ERA with the Twins was well over five runs a game. Or about Sterling Sharpe, who never talked to the media as a player but was happy to take ESPN's money when he retired. Not to mention my old pal Mr. Television, Bob Knight.
You see, Bud Collins is one of the great men in the history of the planet. More than 40 years ago he was the first newspaper guy to crossover and do TV and he did both so well for so long that he is still writing for The Boston Globe today. Wednesday, he was scurrying around at The Open (at 81) doing a spot for ESPN, checking out various matches and--as always--taking time to answer questions from young reporters.
I first met Bud at the 1980 U.S. Open when I was sent up the last four days to write sidebars and caddy for the late, great Barry Lorge, who was then The Washington Post's tennis writer. Barry introduced me to Bud, who instantly told me he was fan of my work--stealing what was supposed to be my line. I had first watched Bud do tennis on TV in the late 1960s when the local PBS TV station in Boston began televising what was then the U.S. Pro Championships from Longwood. I'd been reading him whenever I could get a Globe for as long as I could remember.
On Friday afternoon, I was writing a story about Chris Evert's upset--and it was an upset at the time--of defending champion Tracy Austin. The men's doubles finals was going on (in those days they played the doubles in-between the women's semis) and I heard The Globe's phone ringing. Bud was outside the press box watching the doubles, so I picked up the phone to take a message.
When I told the guy that Bud wasn't there and I'd take a message, he said, 'look, is there anyway you can find him, this is Abby Hoffman calling."
Yeah right, I thought. Abby Hoffman had just gotten out of jail, which was front page news. This was only twelve years after the Chicago Seven became famous and his name was still a notorious one. "I'm serious," the guy said. "Please try to find him."
For some reason, I believed him just enough to put the phone down and go find Bud. "There's a guy on your phone claiming to be Abby Hoffman," I said.
"Oh he probably wants tickets," Bud said as if I had told him his next door neighbor was on the phone.
He was right. Free from jail, Hoffman wanted to come to the Open that weekend. It was only later that I found out Bud had coached Hoffman at Brandeis.
Bud has lived an extraordinary life. He has traveled the world and made more friends and helped more journalists than you can count. He has twice lost wives to cancer and his sister and brother-in-law, who ran a drug rehab center, were murdered in their sleep by a former patient who had come back to try and 'free' his girlfriend. Through all that tragedy he has never lost his zest for life or his willingness to help out or his love of tennis or people. Even Dick Enberg, who partnered with Bud on NBC for years, once expressed amazement at his patience with the people in tennis.
"How in the world do you stay so enthusiastic when you have to deal with these guys every single day?" he asked.
When I first started covering tennis, it was Bud who introduced me to people, Bud who sneaked me into the off-limits players tea room at Wimbledon and Bud who kept telling me that I needed to hang in there and cover the sport no matter how frustrating it became. I still remember him cheering me up when one of my first tennis interviews went horribly wrong in 1985.
Gabriela Sabatini was a rising star back then, just 15, but quite beautiful and ranked in the top ten in the world. I jumped through about 47 hoops at The French Open and was finally granted a 20 minute interview with her in the player's lounge following a match. I knew she didn't speak a lot of English and I didn't speak very much Spanish so I needed an icebreaker question, something to relax her a little bit. Finally, I hit on it; Sabatini had made her pro debut the previous fall at the U.S. Open and had reached the third round. The USTA had brought her into the interview room after her loss and she had been shy and sweet. Someone asked what she would do with the $8,000 she had won for making the third round.
"My parents just bought me a little dog," she said. "I will buy him a present."
Aha, I thought, I'll ask what she bought the dog.
So I did. The minute the question was out of my mouth, I knew I'd made a horrible mistake. Sabatini burst into tears. "The dog," she said, choking out the words, "the dog died."
So there I sat with this 15-year-old kid with people scurrying over demanding to know what I had done to make her cry. It was all I could to keep from crying myself.
When I told Bud the story he laughed and said it was time to go get a glass of wine--which wasn't hard to do in Paris.
On Wednesday I reminded him that I often said he liked people so much that he would have found something good to say about Mussolini.
Bud shrugged. "Well," he said. "The guy did play tennis."
I said I hadn't done either but that someone had told me Agassi had been critical of today's players for not being more media and fan friendly. Needless to say I found that ironic since Agassi spent a good deal of his career ducking the media at every turn. It was only when his Image is Everything image started to lose some of it's luster that he started inviting reporters to visit him in Las Vegas and letting them drive one of his cars so they would think he was a good guy. (It wasn't me, it was a colleague at the old National Sports Daily.)
I bring this up not to rip Agassi, who did grow gracefully into tennis old age and was probably as popular with fans--in large part because of the work done by his image-makers--as anyone. I do remember his tearful farewell speech after he lost at the Open three years ago during which someone who knew him well turned to me and said, "I guarantee you the place where he starts to cry is written into the script."
Okay, maybe I am bashing him a little, I have too many memories of him refusing to be interviewed by Mary Carillo because she asked 'tough,' questions (he insisted on Cliff Drysdale who thought, 'great playing today Andre,' was a tough question) or of the day in Vienna when he was practicing for a Davis Cup match and asked Bud Collins to hit with him for a while. "You're the tennis expert, let's see how you play," Agassi said. Bud had not, in the view of Team Andre, exalted him the way he expected to be exalted. Bud, in case you don't know it, was a very good player once upon a time, won a national mixed doubles title in the 60s. He was 62 on the day in question and facing hip replacement surgery. Agassi was 21.
Agassi hit a few easy balls at Bud and was surprised when they came right back at him. It's easy to tell someone who knows how to play the game very quickly, there's a fluidity to the way they swing the racquet.
Agassi picked up the pace and Bud stayed with him. Finally, clearly frustrated that he hadn't been able to humiliate Bud, Agassi took a short ball and hit it as hard as he could right AT Bud. Bad hip and all, Bud managed to dodge it. He put down the racquet and said quietly, "I think that's enough for today Andre."
Actually I started out to write this about athletes who want to say hello when it's time to say goodbye. All of a sudden, as their careers come to a close, they decide the media isn't so bad--in fact, they decide that being IN the media is a pretty good idea. Agassi hasn't done that, he's done a lot of very good charitable work along with his wife Steffi Graf, but he still loves the spotlight--which is fine. Having said that, I think I'd rather write more about Bud Collins than about people like Steve Carlton who talked to no one when he was winning Cy Young Awards and then held press conferences when his ERA with the Twins was well over five runs a game. Or about Sterling Sharpe, who never talked to the media as a player but was happy to take ESPN's money when he retired. Not to mention my old pal Mr. Television, Bob Knight.
You see, Bud Collins is one of the great men in the history of the planet. More than 40 years ago he was the first newspaper guy to crossover and do TV and he did both so well for so long that he is still writing for The Boston Globe today. Wednesday, he was scurrying around at The Open (at 81) doing a spot for ESPN, checking out various matches and--as always--taking time to answer questions from young reporters.
I first met Bud at the 1980 U.S. Open when I was sent up the last four days to write sidebars and caddy for the late, great Barry Lorge, who was then The Washington Post's tennis writer. Barry introduced me to Bud, who instantly told me he was fan of my work--stealing what was supposed to be my line. I had first watched Bud do tennis on TV in the late 1960s when the local PBS TV station in Boston began televising what was then the U.S. Pro Championships from Longwood. I'd been reading him whenever I could get a Globe for as long as I could remember.
On Friday afternoon, I was writing a story about Chris Evert's upset--and it was an upset at the time--of defending champion Tracy Austin. The men's doubles finals was going on (in those days they played the doubles in-between the women's semis) and I heard The Globe's phone ringing. Bud was outside the press box watching the doubles, so I picked up the phone to take a message.
When I told the guy that Bud wasn't there and I'd take a message, he said, 'look, is there anyway you can find him, this is Abby Hoffman calling."
Yeah right, I thought. Abby Hoffman had just gotten out of jail, which was front page news. This was only twelve years after the Chicago Seven became famous and his name was still a notorious one. "I'm serious," the guy said. "Please try to find him."
For some reason, I believed him just enough to put the phone down and go find Bud. "There's a guy on your phone claiming to be Abby Hoffman," I said.
"Oh he probably wants tickets," Bud said as if I had told him his next door neighbor was on the phone.
He was right. Free from jail, Hoffman wanted to come to the Open that weekend. It was only later that I found out Bud had coached Hoffman at Brandeis.
Bud has lived an extraordinary life. He has traveled the world and made more friends and helped more journalists than you can count. He has twice lost wives to cancer and his sister and brother-in-law, who ran a drug rehab center, were murdered in their sleep by a former patient who had come back to try and 'free' his girlfriend. Through all that tragedy he has never lost his zest for life or his willingness to help out or his love of tennis or people. Even Dick Enberg, who partnered with Bud on NBC for years, once expressed amazement at his patience with the people in tennis.
"How in the world do you stay so enthusiastic when you have to deal with these guys every single day?" he asked.
When I first started covering tennis, it was Bud who introduced me to people, Bud who sneaked me into the off-limits players tea room at Wimbledon and Bud who kept telling me that I needed to hang in there and cover the sport no matter how frustrating it became. I still remember him cheering me up when one of my first tennis interviews went horribly wrong in 1985.
Gabriela Sabatini was a rising star back then, just 15, but quite beautiful and ranked in the top ten in the world. I jumped through about 47 hoops at The French Open and was finally granted a 20 minute interview with her in the player's lounge following a match. I knew she didn't speak a lot of English and I didn't speak very much Spanish so I needed an icebreaker question, something to relax her a little bit. Finally, I hit on it; Sabatini had made her pro debut the previous fall at the U.S. Open and had reached the third round. The USTA had brought her into the interview room after her loss and she had been shy and sweet. Someone asked what she would do with the $8,000 she had won for making the third round.
"My parents just bought me a little dog," she said. "I will buy him a present."
Aha, I thought, I'll ask what she bought the dog.
So I did. The minute the question was out of my mouth, I knew I'd made a horrible mistake. Sabatini burst into tears. "The dog," she said, choking out the words, "the dog died."
So there I sat with this 15-year-old kid with people scurrying over demanding to know what I had done to make her cry. It was all I could to keep from crying myself.
When I told Bud the story he laughed and said it was time to go get a glass of wine--which wasn't hard to do in Paris.
On Wednesday I reminded him that I often said he liked people so much that he would have found something good to say about Mussolini.
Bud shrugged. "Well," he said. "The guy did play tennis."
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