Novak Djokovic Proves It Takes A Real Man To Whine Like A Little Girl

It is possible that when Novak Djokovic quit against Andy Roddick earlier in the week, it was the most courageous act of the young 2009 sports year.

Djokovic has a bit of history with retiring early from matches, at least 4 times in Grand Slams. He actually has the highest percentage of retirements to career losses among the top 10- nearly 10% of the time he loses because he quits. Perhaps he retired each time because of injury. Or perhaps he retired because he was losing.

He also has a history of calling the trainer out to get treatment during matches, something other players have expressed annoyance with. There is nothing illegal or unsportsmanlike about getting treatment, but it just seems like he happens to need it far more often than most guys.

So last year during the U.S. Open, Roddick came out and called Djokovic on all of this and said that Djokovic "is either quick to call the trainer, or he's the most courageous guy of all time," joking with the press that it could be any number of ailments, from shoulder, knee, ankle and back injuries, to SARS, anthrax or a commong cold. This after Djokovic said in an on-court, post match interview ealier in the tournament that he needed to stand next to the next so he wouldn't fall down. When Djokovic later beat Roddick in that tournament, he spoke live on the air and over the stadium P.A. and whined that Roddick had said those mean things and said that crushing Roddick as he had just done proves he didn't have those fake injuries. He was soundly booed by the New York crowd and ripped by the general media.

The irony of course, is that by playing "hurt" in one match and then playing brilliantly with no sign of injury the next match (like he had done here), it kinda proves that he was faking, right?

Then before this latest Grand Slam, Djokovic bristled at the (truly absurd) idea that Brit Andy Murray belonged on tennis' current Mount Rushmore alongside Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Djokovic. Let's be honest, Djokovic doesn't even belong there, and Murray sure as hell doesn't...the guy hasn't won anything yet. Murray has been in one Grand Slam final and he got crushed in straight sets. All of this is fine for me to say because I am not one of his opponents, and no one is reading this anyway.

But Djokovic couldn't resist and came out before the Australian Open and whined how offended he was that Murray was being called a favorite alongside himself, Federer and Nadal. Of course, Djokovic has won one Grand Slam (against a patsy in the final when Nadal and Federer had both been upset earlier) and his only other Grand Slam final looked a lot like Murray's: a straight-set crushing by Federer.

Anyway, after all of this, you would never think that Djokovic would ever have the guts to fake injury, ask for extra treatment, or certainly not retire early against Roddick again! And not in a Grand Slam where the true champions show their mettle!

This week Djokovic and Roddick faced each other in a Grand Slam for the first time since that U.S. Open match and the conditions were brutal. By the end of the match, the on-court thermometer showed about 136 degrees Fahrenheit (the air was actually about 95).

Djokovic came out well early and won the first set. Roddick took an early lead in the second and almost instantly Djokovic looked like the walking dead. I understand that it was hot, but it was hot on Roddick's side of the court as well. And it was hot on every other player who had been playing that day and that week. And these are supposed to be some of the finest athletes in the world!

So Roddick jumped all over Djokovic, winning the next two sets, with the Serb dragging himself around the court like he'd been shot for most of the time. He had a few extended breaks with the trainers coming out and putting ice on his neck and stretching his legs and shoulder. Roddick even drove the "you're a whiny girl" point home by standing in the sun, running place and keeping loose during one of Djokovic's "injury breaks." Then finally when the match was about to get out of hand, Roddick up 2-1 in the fourth and 2 sets to 1, Djokovic summoned all the courage he had in himself and disregarded that what he would do in the next 30 seconds would characterize himself for his entire career: he quit.

Federer, who is about as prone to smack talk as the Pope said after the match, "Well you know, it's not the guy who's never given up before...he gave up against me in Monaco last year because of a sore throat." After that sore throat match, Djokovic said in an on-court interview that he felt a little dizzy too. He said that he'd been checked by a doctor the day before and cleared, but that he thought the doctor's diagnosis was wrong, "obviously." He was booed off the court.

Federer went on to say, "If Novak were up two sets to love I don't think he would have retired 4-0 down in the fourth."

So the book is closed on this one. He may go on to one of the great champions of all time (once Federer and Nadal retire), or he may succumb to all these unnamed maladies. But either way, Novak Djokovic will very likely go down as one of the biggest whiners and quitters the sports has ever seen.

Stay tuned (in the middle of the night) Saturday for what is bound to be an epic final between two acutal champions, Nadal and Federer.

White Collar Sports Take Center Stage

[I wrote the following post on Thursday, expecting to post it on Friday before the events that I wrote about. However, this page got screwed up and I was unable to until Sunday. Thus, I added *’s in a few places with updated news on various things.]

With the NBA Finals in the midst of its second sabbatical (only having played one game, which is amazing!), and the Stanley Cup Finals over, and baseball being 100 games from the postseason, and my school knocked out of the College World Series, the only things to watch this weekend will be the French Open finals and the Belmont Stakes.

The French Open will pit Ana Ivanovic and Dinara Safina in the women’s and Roger Federer and Rafa Nadal in the men’s. Both should be great matches (Ivanovic* and Nadal** will win), but both will air live very early in the morning and there is a really good chance I will miss both. After all, I have an ultimate game and my parents’ Senior Olympic*** meet to go to on Saturday.

But the Belmont Stakes sits right in the middle of the afternoon on Saturday and that is most definitely the big sports story of the day. Big Brown will attempt to do what blah blah blah. It's on tv for like 12 hours on Saturday. Just wait till they start and watch the race for two-and-a-half minutes. Also note that there are only two ways this event can be worth watching: Big Brown wins, or someone goes under 2:24. Otherwise, it is barely worth the 2:28 that it will take (except the overhead-blimp replay which is always awesome).****

Horse racing is a sport, if you call it a sport, designed entirely for betting. Sure, there are the people who enjoy it because the horsies are pretty – the kind of people who donate to racehorse retirement charities. To me giving money to ensure the happiness and comfort of retired racehorses is absolutely insane, but this became big news when Barbaro was injured and on Death Row.

It is not as though after their careers are over, they are forced to go back to the ghetto with their fortunes and entourages lost, and they have to take crappy jobs because they never went finished college because the Game came first. These are animals bought and raised by millionaires, pampered for the first few years of their lives, who are then retired and sent to farms where they spend their lives eating and having sex with the finest physical specimens in their species.

So realistically, the sport is truly a business, even more so than baseball and the rest because the players don’t even know they are playing. The only purpose of the races is for owners to win prize money, and bettors can try and get rich while the tracks take all of their money. There is no personal drive in the horses, or pride or glory. They just know want to get dinner and to stop getting whipped and kicked. With that in mind, Big Brown will go for history this weekend on three good hooves and I see only three possible outcomes to this race.

1) Big Brown does not win. Horse racing will slip further down the totem pole of the collective sports fan’s consciousness and legislation to protect the horses from cruelty (no more steroids and no more whips) will make it far more humane, but far less impressive in the future.*****

2) Big Brown wins. Horse racing leaps into public consciousness in a big way, like it has not seen in decades and then quickly fades away sine there is no other event worth watching for 47 weeks and none of the players we’ve come to know will be around then anyway. The same legislation is enacted and the sport is never the same.

3) Big Brown reinjures his hoof and is euthanized on the track (win or lose). Horse racing’s public image devolves further as the second high profile horse is put down in about a month, the third in as many years. People learn more and more about the treatment of the horses and how many actually are euthanized week in and week out. PETA grows even more self-righteous than ever before. If trainers and owners are lucky, the sport is eventually seen the way we look at dog racing; if they are not lucky history views it the way it sees bear bating, dog fighting and cock fighting.

Frankly, I think that the first option is the most likely. If the trainers think he can run, his hoof is clearly in decent shape because he is worth too much in the baby-making business to run him on a cracked hoof that will wind up forcing him to be put down on the track. Then again, is he worth anything if he has the stigma of weak genes and couldn’t even run the Belmont?

Notes:
* and ** - Ivanovic and Nadal did win.
*** - Mom and dad took home four medals though neither was thrilled with their performances. Such prima donnas.
**** - The winning time was a somewhat slow 2:29.65 and there was no blimp cam, which is a total disaster as far as I am concerned.
***** - He didn’t win and wasn’t euthanized. The trainer is throwing the jockey under the bus blaming the last place finish on him. Who’s really at fault? Who cares. See you next May, Horse Racing.

Hard To Keep My Eyes Open For The French Open

I have been working for the Tennis Channel on their coverage of the French Open, so I have seen a lot of tennis. During this time, I have not really been all that entertained...of course our live coverage starts at 2 a.m. because France is stupid and doesn't go by Pacific Standard Time, so that may be contributing to my sleepiness.

Maybe it is the same old generational bias thing (even though these players are my generation), but only one of the matches has been very interesting. Granted, we are not even to the quarterfinals yet, but there are no players who are really all that captivating. There is no must-see player. Roger Federer is great, but he is like a surgeon - it is a science out there and he just methodically puts his opponents to bed. Rafa Nadal is much more fiery, but I can't watch him and his clothes for two hours. He also plays at a slower pace than John Kruk working his way through a buffet line. Nikolay Davydenko is pretty fun to watch, and Novak Djokovic is very entertaining, but then there is no one else really.

The Americans are just depressing. Andy Roddick is unwatchable. James Blake, Robby Ginepri and Mardy Fish are just never going to get over the hump. Watching them play and thinking about how 10 years ago we had Pete Sampras and Andre Agassi makes it even sadder.

And the women are just as bad. This is supposedly a great time for women's tennis and while I could have watched Sunday's Ana Ivanovic-Petra Cetkovska match all day long, it isn't necessarily for the tennis. Justin Henin, one of the more graceful athletes and champions you will ever see retired at the ripe old age of 26 last month. Maria Sharapova is a fantastic player but listening to her is like hearing a puppy rolled down a hill in a bag. To say the least, I was not sad to see her lose today, and actually you can say the same of most players on tour (men and women). The Williams sisters are just as implosive as always, but they are not as good as they used to be. Venus is whithering away and will soon look more like Pluto (get it? Cuz Pluto is small?) and Serena looks like she is on the same diet as Andruw Jones. I cannot distinguish (or easily pronounce) all of the -Ovas and while there is some good talent spread around, the fact that the average fan can't remember who any of them are is telling. None of them is all that interesting (the exception being Ivanovic or course). After all, the biggest news in tennis this week was that American Ashley Harkleroad is posing for Playboy, not anything that happened on the clay.

That said, there is nothing better than the meltdowns that occur regularly on tennis courts. Tennis, like most sports, is very mental. But unlike many sports, the players are completely on their own and there is no helmet to hide behind. There is a lot of dead time and there are a lot of cameras. Dinara Safina almost went supernova this morning in her match against Sharapova when she lost four straight games after they returned to the court after an hour-and-a-half rain delay. Safina (famed for her emotions being very clear, to say the least) had already taken a warning for "racket abuse" because she had slammed her racket to ground, breaking it during the first set tie-breaker.

In a stunning turn of events, Safina composed herself, stormed back into the match, defended a match point in the second set to come back and win a tiebreaker, and then bull-rushed Sharapova in the third set to win 6-3. If Safina can keep from erupting and turn it all that emotion into whatever she turned it into today, she is a sure-fire Grand Slam champion.

All that said, tennis still makes for spectacular drama and wonderful television. It is easy to choose sides because you always wind up not liking one of the players even if you'd never heard of them before. For instance, the French men with their mediocre play but constant fist pumps make them eminently hate-able, to say nothing of their whining or frequent surrenders.