As rain falls, ruining the end of what, right up until Thursday, had been a fabulous US Open, allow me to take issue with a couple of comments on this site’s message boards. Generally, I love the passion and expertise shown by most of the people who post almost daily on Tennis Week.com and I hope the major networks are taking note of the opinions voiced concerning some of their coverage.  Tennis Channel do it best; ESPN are pretty good but CBS have to get their game together if they not going to turn off the real tennis fan.

However — two points. First of all KingArthurUSA hands Wimbledon a backhanded compliment by lauding them for having built a roof. That,however, that seemed to surprise him because he then accused Wimbledon of “not being forward thinkers.”

Excuse me? The All England Club may put on a very traditional sort of tennis tournament that resolutely sticks by all the things that make tennis great but it is precisely their forward thinking that has enabled Wimbledon to keep pace and even outstrip many other sporting institutions in the world. There is nothing backward or old fashioned about the way Wimbledon works. 

They made sure of that under the chairmanship of John Curry when the decision was made to tear down the old No. 1 Court and replace it with a truly magnificent building of modern design that somehow managed to mesh perfectly with the overall “feel” of the All England Club. Apart from spacious areas for players’ and member’s restaurants and patios, The Millennium building also houses a big umpires’ restaurant, interview rooms and state of the art press facilities for the written media. Then, next door, there is another huge building that offers the BBC and other international television companies three floors of studios and high tech productions rooms with a large canteen and bar in the basement.

While all that was being built, so was the new 10,000 seat No. 1 Court. Then, when Tim Phillips replaced Curry as chairman, the modernization continued apace with the installation of the roof — a three year process because the old Centre Court had to be bolstered and strengthened so that it could take the weight. For much of that process, the club was a dusty, chaotic building site but, in 2007 and 2008, no one arriving on the first day of the Championships would have seen anything other than spic and span complex draped with purple and white flowers, the club colors.

It was another sleight of hand which under its two recent CEO’s, the now retired Chris Gorringe and his successor Ian Ritchie, has become the hallmark of how the All England Club manages to change while basically remaining the same.

This year, apart from the translucent roof which worked perfectly on the one day that it was required, there was a new mini-stadium at the back of the grounds which became the new No. 2 court. Next year, the old No. 2 Court, infamously dubbed the Graveyard of Champions because so many big names — John McEnroe amongst them — have lost on it, will be re-built and enlarged.  

So I am afraid trying to accuse the All England Club of not looking to the future; costing it, planning it and executing the necessary changes, is absurd. It’s complete bunk.
 On the second point, I have to take issue with Vinko’s assertion that the Guardian — once the venerable Manchester Guardian and London based for decades now — is “not regarded as a high quality news source …and is basically a gossip sheet.”

Now there a plenty of newspapers in the UK that could be dismissed as gossip sheets but, I can assure you, the Guardian is not one of them. Throughout it’s long and illustrious history, the Guardian has a set a standard for fine writing and accurate reporting that few other news publications in the world can match. I will deflect any hint of bias in this statement by pointing out that, although I have written for the Guardian and its sister paper, the Observer, I have also written for every other paper — many now defunct — published in what used to be known as Fleet Street since 1957. So, hopefully, this is an objective viewpoint.

The Guardian now has a much wide readership internationally because it was one of the first to grasp the importance of the internet and, as a result, has built an on-line readership that attracts nine million hits a day — more than the London Times. It’s unpopularity with some people in America is not hard to fathom because it has always been the standard bearer of the Liberal Party and that, of course, makes it hopelessly left wing by those of a Republic bent who think Gordon Brown is Karl Marx.

Vinko was picking up on an article by the Guardian correspondent currently covering the US Open who wrote a piece about the British press and their relationship with Andy Murray. It was not gossip. It was an opinion. I know opinion is frowned upon if it appears on anything but the op-ed page in most American publications but, with a few shining exceptions, that is the reason so many newspapers in the US are so dull. But that’s just my opinion which, last time I looked, was free.

So carry on posting, folks. It’s great for a rainy day.

Amidst the fun and games of this sun-splashed US Open we should spare a moment to remember two young men who might have been playing here had they not died far too young.

Federico Luzzi of Italy died suddenly from a virulent form of leukemia in 2008 while Frenchman Mathieu Montcourt collapsed and died from apparent heart failure earlier this summer after he had competed at Roland Garros.

Both these deaths are tragic but, to make it worse, by some strange and awful co-incidence both were involved in the ATP’s attempts under the Etienne de Villiers regime to make a big stand against betting on matches. Like many of the former CEO’s decisions, the campaign to stamp out betting in the wake of the unresolved Nikolay Davydenko affair was worthy but ill-conceived.

Like WADA, the anti-doping organization who has proved itself to be far more interested in nailing drug cheats than worrying about ruining an athlete’s career and reputation on the off chance that they might be not guilty, the ATP started handing large fines of up to $50,000 and three month suspensions because a bunch of Italians and other European players had placed 50 euro bets on a few matches for a bit of fun.

Yes, it was against the ATP rules but, back in 2005 when the bets were made, it was in the fine print that few people read. A rap on the knuckles was in order but as soon as the severity of the penalties were made public not only did the game of tennis take an unnecessary rap in the media as a sport ‘mired with betting scandals’ but the word match fixing started to be banded about.

The result is that Luzzi and Montcourt will be forever stigmatized as players who were trying to do something sinister and illegal. And if you want proof, just try checking some of the posts about Luzzi on Google. One I came across read in part: “Luzzi was better known for being involved in a match fixing scandal and was banned for 200 days.”

The scandal is not that Luzzi placed a little, harmless bet but that this should be the legacy of an honorable sporting career. Can you imagine what his family feel about this? It should be actionable because it is simply not true. Neither Luzzi nor Montcourt, who has been tarred with the same brush, were ever guilty of match fixing or anything like it. They were honorable young men who were following a sporting career with some success and deserve far better than this.

Rules and regulations are necessary and there is no question that tennis, as a sport which is highly vulnerable to the real criminals who would like to influence the course of matches, should adopt strict safeguards against the infiltration of undesirable influences. But that, in no way, should mean destroying the reputations of the innocent.

The ATP is probably unable to try and put the record straight until a lawsuit, levied against it by a group of Italian players who, like Luzzi, were fined and suspended, is resolved in a Miami courtroom. 

But when that case is settled, it should be too much to ask the ATP to issue a clear and unequivocal statement to the fact that Luzzi and Montcourt, who are no longer here to defend themselves, were guilty of nothing more than a minor infringement of the ATP Rule Book and were, in no way whatsoever, guilty of match fixing or any action intended to harm the sport they played with such dedication and skill.

We should let them rest in peace and reduce, in any way possible, the pain of their families’ loss.

After reading some of the comments on the TennisWeek.com message boards concerning television commentary from the ATP Masters 1000 Series tournament in Montreal, I would like to offer a few observations about the current team and the commentary business in general from the perspective of someone lucky enough to have been there and done it.

First of all, I think it is time to recognize that Darren Cahill, one-time US Open semifinalist and coach to Lleyton Hewitt and Andre Agassi, is the game’s new star as a television analyst. Not since John McEnroe started bringing his sharp tennis intellect to bear from behind the microphone have we had someone as shrewd, succinct and illuminating to tell us what is going on.

And, unlike radio where everything from the color of the sky to the number of people in the stands needs to be detailed, telling us what is happening on television means revealing those details that are not immediately obvious to the viewer.

Cahill came up with a classic example of this when he began explaining why Andy Murray, one of best returners of serve the game has seen in recent years, was having so much trouble returning Juan Martin del Potro’s serve on the  forehand side.

“It’s his grip,” said Cahill. “He’s been expecting del Potro to serve to his backhand all afternoon so he gets set with his backhand grip for the two hander and isn’t able to switch fast enough when del Potro surprises him by going the other way. Del Potro is just serving too big and too fast.”

Now, I would guess that 90 percent of the audience hadn’t noticed that. Or simply didn’t have a clue that a grip change was even required. But Cahill was simply doing what an analyst is supposed to do — telling the viewers something they didn’t know.

I recognize that many knowledgeable viewers get hugely frustrated by commentators telling them stuff they do know while generally talking too much. And there is no question that some American commentators are guilty of this. But, like the new generation of bloggers, many of who seem to think they are suddenly journalistic experts without ever having had to meet a deadline, the technical business of commentating is not easy. As ever, criticizing from the depths of one’s couch is a pretty lazy game to play.

I grew up in the commentary box alongside such legends as Dan Maskell, who was Fred Perry’s Davis Cup coach before becoming the voice of tennis on the BBC television and Max Robertson, the fastest talker BBC Radio ever employed. Before succeeding Robertson and Gerald Williams on radio, I worked a little with Maskell on TV at Wimbledon and the French Open and he certainly taught one about economy of words. Jack Kramer who formed a great partnership with gentle Dan in the 1960’s at Wimbledon, will tell you that it was one of the most pleasurable experiences of his life. They made a great pair because of the contrast of their voices and terminology but Kramer, being the great pro he is, quickly adapted to the BBC style and became far less voluble than he was when commentating in America.  John McEnroe has made a big effort to do the same.

The BBC rule is strict. Never talk during a point and wait for the umpire to call the score before you comment on what you have just seen. I agree totally with the first point but always found the second frustrating because some umpires take an age — in this instance five seconds is an age — to call the score, thus dampening any spontaneous reaction you may have to a great winner.

Jason Goodall, a former British No. 2, and Robbie Koenig, a top doubles player of quite recent vintage, do a good job of bridging the considerable distance between the BBC and US styles and can be heard frequently now on Tennis Channel and various world feeds that can be picked up on the web. The hours they work can be extremely tiring and, while not as physically exhausting as long stints doing radio play-by-play, the concentration required is considerable.

I am not going to get into the business of rating today’s commentators because I don’t want to lose too many friends but I did like the ESPN team in  Montreal (yes, Cliff, you guys did a good job with the women in Cincinnati, too!) I think Chris Fowler is one of the best non-player commentators because of his pleasant speaking voice and, more importantly, because he does his homework. And the Cahill-Brad Gilbert partnership works well too, not least because you immediately know who’s talking — Cahill with his Aussie accent and Gilbert because no one else talks like Brad. They are both experts and it shows. Gilbert stuck to his guns over making Murray clear favorite to beat del Potro, largely on the grounds of the Argentine’s physical condition, and was vindicated. However, I must admit I was not always as confident of the outcome, having seen the increasingly impressive del Potro outlast Andy Roddick on the first really hot day in Washington DC in the Legg Mason final. But we all knew that Murray’s rigorous training sessions at Miami University under Jez Green’s demanding eye would pay off at some crucial moment and Sunday’s performance by the young, muscular Scot proved to be it.

Finally, a word of explanation for the uninitiated on things Australian. Cahill’s nickname is Killer because, when he first appeared on the tour he looked about ten and had a sweet smile. To help you understand the way the Aussie mind works, Ken Rosewall was called Muscles because he didn’t have any. Fred Stolle was not exactly combustible but they called him Fiery. One name that did fit was Bob “Nailbags” Carmichael. Before become a pro tennis player, he had been a carpenter in Melbourne. And the funny thing is that, once a name sticks, it becomes permanently adopted by the man himself.

I used to get phone calls from my old friend which began, “Huh, Nailbags here.” No further identification needed. It’s an Aussie thing.

Wimbledon’s over; those thousands of television viewers inspired by the sight of Roger Federer or Serena Williams sweeping majestically around the Centre Court have made their annual pilgrimage to whatever tennis court they can find and after discovering the game is not as easy as it looks have  gone back to the golf club — or the couch.

Meanwhile, despite the vast sums of money spent on genuine attempts to increase the national player base, Britain continues to lag behind France, Spain and Germany in the number of players of all levels participating in the sport as well the number of players capable of reaching a top one hundred ranking on the ATP or WTA tours.

Outside of the LTA, you can count on one hand the number of people who have invested time and/or money into providing the kind of facilities required. David Lloyd was obviously one of them as, in a different way was the singer Sir Cliff Richard who funded promotional tours all over the country. But a lesser known tennis devotee is Keith Sohl who built the impressive Sutton indoor tennis facility, just outside London two decades ago and has seen it grow into one of the few places where youngsters can develop career prospects in tennis, either as a pro player or in any of the sports-oriented jobs that are now affiliated to the game.

Sohl and his team, headed by former British No. 1 Jeremy Bates, are doing their best to buck the trend by creating a junior program which is attended by 1,000 kids a week. For 11 to 16 years olds there is a Junior Academy where pupils attend after school on week days and all weekend if they wish. Uniquely, there is a Junior Gym where the weights and equipment are tailored to the strength of the children using it and there is a scholarship program for 12 to 19 year olds who can take school classes in a variety of subjects.

Then there is a High Performance Club for young players who show a real desire to follow a pro career and are thought to have sufficient ability to succeed. The numbers are not large, about twenty at the moment, as Bates is not into creating unrealistic dreams.

The Sutton Academy is one of twenty High Performance centers in Britain to receive funding from the LTA but finds some of the rules laid down by the game’s parent body somewhat restricting. No child under ten, for instance, is allowed to play on a full-sized court unless he or she is approved as “exceptional” by the LTA. So all the kids have to play mini tennis. Is this the way to go? Several experts doubt it. In France they have courts of varying size, increasing in size as they kids grow older.

This particular subject opens up a larger debate over the benefits of youngsters playing with and against adults. During Wimbledon I was chatting to some of the Aussie commentators and Fred Stolle was recounting how he used to play at his local tennis club in Sydney every weekend, joining in doubles matches with his Dad and other adult members.

“That’s how I learned to play,” said Stolle. “You got to learn pretty quick, faced with adults who can hit a ball.”

Bates agreed. “That’s exactly what I did,” said one of Britain’s more successful players. “I was lucky enough to play at a club where they tolerated kids joining in adult matches. But the problem is that, in Britain at least, this is often still not the case.”

Bates is totally frustrated on another front, too. He may have teamed with Anders Jarryd to win the Seniors event at Wimbledon this year but finding any other competitive tennis in his age group in the London area will prove impossible until the annual seniors event at the Royal Albert Hall rolls around in December.

“There just isn’t anything else,” Bates told me. “If I want to play some competitive matches, I would have to go to Germany or France. I could play in leagues there most weekends in the year.”

But not in Britain. The situation has become so frustrating for David Lloyd, whose brother, John, is still the country’s Davis Cup captain, that he has quit his role as leader of  three major centers, insisting that he cannot run them on $146,000 a year. Lloyd has received grants from the LTA totaling $2.28 million so far but his request for an increase has been rejected.

“I asked for a total of $570 million for the three centers instead of the $440,000 I have been getting,” he said. “I’m sorry if I have let people down. I have never quit on anything in my life but dealing with the LTA is impossible. It is like having a communist state in a capitalist world. No business in the world I’ve come across works the way the LTA does. Every area of Britain is different and has to be treated differently.”

There are those say Lloyd, who founded the David Lloyd Clubs in Britain and has real estate interests in Barbados, Australia and other parts of the world, is rich enough to cover any shortfall. His retort is an offer to run British tennis for free but the LTA won’t let him near the place. That is hardly surprising. The LTA CEO Roger Draper would be crazy to let the fox in the chicken coup because he would be the first to lose his feathers but it is difficult to see how any real advances can be made in the current climate.

Dave Sammels, a former British player and coach who now works for the Monte Carlo tennis Academy, told Neil Harman of the London Times, “British tennis is currently low on trust and high on cynicism which is sad because there are so many committed and capable people who love the sport working there.”

Sammels believes throwing money at the problem is one way to go and you can read about his ideas in Harman’s latest Net Post column at www.thetimes.co.uk/sport/tennis. But, in the meantime, as Andy Murray gears up for another assault on the US Open Series with some more training stints at Miami University where Alex Corretja has re-joined his coaching team, Harman and others have observed the results at the Los Angeles Open with a certain amount of frustration.

Doesn’t Britain have a 22-year-old like Carsten Ball who is capable of bursting through a draw and reaching the final of an ATP event? I’m afraid not. There are a few youngsters starting to make some sort of an impression at Challenger level but that is as far as it goes.

In the juniors there were some encouraging results last week, notably from Emma Devine, a 14-year-old Scottish girl who won a Tennis Europe Under 16 event in Brussels. Should the LTA feel pleased about that? Well, sort of….except that Emma has spent the last nine months training at Justine Henin’s 6th Sense Academy in Belgium. Now where was it Murray trained? Ah, yes, Barcelona.

Everyone connected with British tennis should be hoping that, some day soon, a tournament winner emerges, having been raised at the splendid LTA Headquarters opened in 2007 at Roehampton. It was ushered through its growing pains by the then President of the LTA, Stuart Smith, who has just been elected to the ITF Board of Directors. Smith had a vision and at least made the building work. But until Britain starts producing players in numbers to even start matching those of Spain, France and Germany, the criticism will continue. Because you can’t argue with results.

Currently Spain has 14 players in the top one hundred on the ATP ranking list. France has ten and Germany nine. The United States doesn’t have too much to boast about but at least it is competitive with eight.

Britain? Just the Great Scot.

It was Jack Kramer Day in Los Angeles on July 21st and, being on another continent at the time, I nearly missed it! But I can’t let such an occasion pass without comment.

Jack Kramer, apart from being the 1947 Wimbledon champion, is a giant of the game; a legend; a grandfather of professional tennis. In those dark days when the word “professional” was spoken of with disdain by members of country clubs and Federation officials around the world, Kramer bought a professional troupe off Bobby Riggs and, using his great entrepreneurial skills, kept it alive by offering contracts to each Wimbledon champion as their name went up on the honor board at the All England Club.

It didn’t make him popular but it kept up the pressure on the amateur establishment to look long and hard at the absurdity of keeping amateurs and professionals apart. By the time Frank Sedgman, Lew Hoad, Ken Rosewall, Ashley Cooper, Mal Anderson, Alex Olmedo and Rod Laver (all Grand Slam winners even if Rosewall and Anderson missed out at Wimbledon) had signed up, the International Federation was feeling the draft. In the early sixties, Kramer met with Jean Borotra, one of the great Four Musteketeers who was President of the French Federation at the time, at the Hotel Scribe in Paris to try and thrash out a way to bring in Open Tennis. But it was too early. Too many stuffy, prejudiced, blazored buffoons were still in positions of influence for the likes of Borotra  and others to create the necessary revolution.

Only when Herman David, chairman of the All England Club, finally threw open the gates of Wimbledon to anyone qualified to play no matter what their status, did Open Tennis arrive in 1968.

Kramer quickly set about trying to bring about some order to the new circuit and, while Lamar Hunt set the standard with his World Championships Tennis tour administered by former British No. 1 Mike Davies, Jack and Donald Dell created the Grand Prix circuit which, in effect, still exists today in the form of the ATP Tour.

Having been embraced briefly by the establishment, Kramer found himself on the opposite side of the still fractious political divide again when the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) was formed in 1972. He had accepted the players’ offer to become the first ATP Executive Director (a job he took on for no pay) and led the fledgling organization through its game-changing boycott of Wimbledon in 1973 — a contentious move that finally broke the back of the amateur establishment’s control over the careers of professional athletes.

These are the bare bones of Kramer’s influence but, working for him as I did in the mid-seventies, I had a chance to enjoy the full force of this open, charming, tough, no-nonsense character at close quarters. Although I was running the ATP’s European office from Paris, I spent a few weeks working alongside Jack at the offices he had been loaned by the owner of the May Company store on Pico Boulevard just down the road from 20th Century Fox Studios in Los Angeles.

If there was one thing that stood out about Kramer, it was his unbounded enthusiasm for the game and its players. Sometimes, when his secretary was out to lunch, the phone would ring and some rookie pro trying to find out if he had got into the next tournament would find himself talking to the man himself.

“Hiya, kid! How can I help?” Jack would ask. And, as the young man spluttered out his question, Kramer would go into all the details of the player’s ranking and where and how he needed to travel to his next destination. Nothing was too much for Jack and, as a friend and a colleague, I will always treasure what he has brought to our sport.

For the tennis person, Spain’s Costa del Sol — the strip of coastline that runs from Gibraltar in the west and past Malaga to the east — offers a playground of possibilities. There are all manner of places to play, some of which will cost you a couple of bucks and others almost nothing.

But it is not just the availability of courts — clay or hard — but the personalities you are likely to run into that makes it an especially stimulating place to play.

I got to know the area well in the eighties and nineties when I had a small apartment at Lew Hoad’s Campo de Tenis and an equally small dwelling in a fourteenth century castle — fortress, really — high above Sotogrande called El Castillo de Castellar. In a world that was as far removed from the glitz of the over-built coastline as it was possible to imagine, you could look out over Gibraltar to the Riff Mountains in Morocco. At night, the only sound was the tinkling of goat bells. It was built by the Moors and they knew what they were doing. Save for an air strike, it would still be able to defend the place with a few arrows and a good supply of burning oil.

Jenny Hoad still owns one of the village houses inside the walls and although she has sold her late husband’s club down the coast at Mijas she maintains a residence there as well and is to be found on the courts several times a week, as befits a talented left hander who was one of Australia’s leading women players in the fifties.

Returning after an absence of four years, it was to Lew’s that I took my young son to show him around and meet up with old friends. On the terrace, leading off the bar where Hoad was always to be found, beer in hand, greeting members and friends, we lunched with Jenny and Dominique Nastase, a long time local resident and ex-wife of you know who.

Apart from being the greatest player I ever saw until Roger Federer arrived on the scene, Hoad was a wonderful guy and a loyal friend, a man who never traded on his fame and was dismissive of any fawning hangers-on who tried to invade his privacy. His death, just before his sixtieth birthday of an incurable form of leukemia, was a tragedy. Players flocked to the memorial tournament that was held at his club soon after his death during Wimbledon 1993 and the reaction of Rod Laver, who freely admits Hoad was a player he could hardly ever beat, said everything about the esteem in which the great blond Australian was held. Laver had landed back at Los Angeles Airport after a visit to London when he heard of Lew’s death and the tournament that was being held in his honor. So he booked himself straight back on the first flight out to Spain — a lot of flying hours to honor a friend but Laver thought nothing of it. “Lew was my hero,” he said.

Moving along the coast to Marbella, we were billeted in some style at the sumptuous Hotel Puente Romano which is celebrating its thirtieth anniversary this year. It is twinned with the slightly older Marbella Club just down the road where, it was rumored, Ion Tiriac was taking a brief respite from the onerous duties of running a tournament in Madrid and half a dozen businesses in Bucharest.

We were joined at breakfast one morning by Manolo Santana who turned tennis from an exclusive country club sport into a game for the masses by winning Wimbledon in 1966. As the son of a groundsman at a club in Madrid, Santana, who also won the US Championships at Forest Hills on grass in 1965 as well as two Roland Garros titles, proved that a ball boy with a sharp brain if little formal education could go on to achieve great things. And not only on a tennis court. Santana’s charm and business acumen enabled him to work for Philip Morris for many years and, after a long spell as Tennis Director at the Puente Romano, to build his own club in the hills just about the hotel.

Santana enjoyed his time front and center in that row of the Royal Box at Wimbledon, flanked by Pete Sampras on one side and Bjorn Borg and Laver on the other.

“I looked one way and saw Pete with his fourteen Grand Slam titles and then on the other side Bjorn with his six French and five Wimbledons and Rocket with his two Slams and I felt happy that I had at least won four!” Santana laughed. “We had such a good time, talking over old times and admiring Roger Federer for his amazing achievements. But I think we all felt sorry for Andy Roddick. Such a tough one to lose. And he has improved his game so much.”

Santana is a fixture on the coast but it was more of a surprise to run into Richard Krajicek, the big Dutchman who interrupted Sampras’s seven year winning streak at Wimbledon by winning the title in 1996, after beating Pete in the quarter-finals 7-5, 7-6, 6-4 — one of the biggest Wimbledon upsets of the last two decades.

Krajicek and his family have a home on the Costa del Sol where they spend several weeks every year and he had brought his 10-year-old son Alex along to Puente Romano to have a hit with Christopher Cosgrave, the son of an Irish family who have an apartment overlooking the courts. Alex is built like his Dad; has a similarly constructed serve and is already one of the best players for his age in Holland. Cosgrave has talent, too, and is equally nuts about the game. Watch out for their names in international junior events in the years ahead. Ireland could certainly do with a good tennis player!

As we sat on the terrace, watching the kids play, I had the chance to pose a question I had long been wanting to ask Richard. ”

How come you suddenly developed a backhand service return at Wimbledon that year?”

He smiled, knowing full well that the shot had been his weakness, every bit as much as his fantastic serve and huge wingspan on the volley  — shots that had helped him reach the semifinals at the Australian and French Opens as well as four quarterfinals at the US Open — had been his strengths. But on grass, that inability to return serve with any consistency on the backhand had hampered his progress until, out of the blue, it all fell into place in 1996.

“I’m not really sure how it happened,” he said. “I think the main thing was that I just relaxed and took the pressure off myself. Suddenly I found I could hit the shot the same way I had always been able to hit it in practice.”

On that particular occasion, it certainly took care of the mighty Sampras serve and Krajicek, now tournament director of the ATP event in Rotterdam, went on to beat MaliVai Washington in straight sets in the final.

So if you are heading for southern Spain and the adjacent wonders of Granada and Seville, take your racket. If you phone Lew Hoad’s Campo de Tenis on (34) 952 474 908 you can probably arrange temporary membership for a nomimal sum. The Hotel Mijas up the hill offers excellent accommodation for about $100 a night. Five times that will get you a room at the Puente Romano where the tennis center has magnificent spa facilities along with a dozen courts of clay and hard for $30 an hour.

A wide selection of hotels along the coast also have tennis facilities and you will be very unlucky if the weather anything but perfect.

It will be the coached against the coachless in the men’s singles final at Wimbledon. Roger Federer will have his team around him, of course, but they do not include an official coach while the man of the moment — other than Andy Roddick himself — will be sitting in the American player’s box seats, hoping that he can carry out the pre-match plan as expertly as he did against Andy Murray. 

Larry Stefanki, one time mentor to Marcelo Rios, Yevgeny Kafelnikov, Fernando Gonzalez and even John McEnroe,  is not giving away any secrets about how to beat Federer but he was still reflecting on his man’s great semifinal performance after a practice sessions at the All England Club today. 

“After losing to Murray in Doha, when he charged the net the whole match, going in on everything and getting beaten 6-4, 6-2 we threw that plan out the window,” said Stefanki who talks at about the rate Roddick serves. ” ‘You’re not doing that again’, I told him, so we had a different strategy and Andy was able to execute perfectly. Serving more into the body was one thing we agreed on because you have to try something different against someone who returns so well. And not being afraid to wait for the right moment to go in. And mixing it up. The drop shots were great. He’s never used that so effectively before.”

But Stefanki is under no illusions how close it was.

“Listen, two or three points could have changed the whole match, the whole outcome,” he admitted. “That volley on set point in the third — he mis-hit it anyway and it could easily have gone into the net. If Murray had won that set I think he would have won the match. And the three breaks points Andy saved from 0-40 in the first game of the fourth — any one of those to Murray and he could have been through that set in flash — boom, different match.”

Stefanki is a big admirer of Murray and thought seriously about taking up an offer to coach the young Scot when he was still a teenager. Having spent eighteen months helping Tim Henman, he is used to the British environment but the travelling required to have done the job would have taken him away from his southern California base and his young family for too long and he wasn’t prepared to do that. But he feels Murray needs to be listening to those who feel he needs to be more aggressive.

“He doesn’t make the transition from defense to attack often enough or aggressively enough and at this level you have to,” says Stefanki. “Standing that far back on a worn grass court is not going to get the job done.”

It will be fascinating to see how Roddick handles the biggest challenge of his career on Sunday.  He’s been there twice before, in a Wimbledon final with Federer across the net, but there is no question that he is better equipped to handle it now. And, after consulting his coach, he will most certainly have a plan. How the five-time champion deals with it will decide the outcome.

 Last Saturday morning, BBC Radio were asked to broadcast a message from their Wimbledon headquarters: “Please Stay Away — you won’t get in!”

Even people joining the queue at 8 a.m. would have had no chance of gaining admittance to the grounds until 5 p.m. — and even that would have depended on how many people had left, handing in their tickets as they went.
 With the sunny weather, increased capacity on Centre Court and the new 4,000 seat No. 2 in action for the first time, the first week of this year’s Championships produced an increase on 2008 of 24,002 with daily records being broken every day. The first week attendance hit 266,264 and that is on the basis of just one session per day, unlike the US Open and Australian Open where daily and evening sessions are separate ticket sellers.

 So is this just a Wimbledon phenomenon? No. One day the world’s sports media — and especially sports editors in the US — will pick up on the fact that we have entered a new boom time for tennis.

Let’s a tick a few boxes here:

PARTICIPATION: The figures published recently by the Wall Street Journal are staggering. Over the past eight years tennis is the only sport in the US that has seen a participation increase. And not by a small margin. Since 2001, tennis is 43 percent up and every other sport is down apart from basketball which is flat. Golf, which is often considered a competitor of tennis, is 13 percent down. That makes a swing of 56 percent in favor of the sport which takes less time to play and burns off so many more calories. Should the media reflect this, perhaps? One searches for examples of them doing so.

 TOURNAMENT ATTENDANCE: Both Charlie Pasarell and Butch Buchholz were delighted to see that their ATP Masters Series 1000 events at Indian Wells and Miami were only fractionally down on the previous year despite the ravages of the recession. In Europe, crowds have ignored any financial downturn. Monte Carlo, with an increased Center Court capacity, was 8,000 up on 2008 with every ticket sold from first day to last. And, unlike the Formula One Grand Prix which followed, the tennis in Monte Carlo suffered no downturn in corporate  hospitality. The French Open posted record numbers at Roland Garros; the Aegon Championships at the Queen’s Club was also up and we have seen what has been happening at Wimbledon.

UPCOMING EVENTS: Promoters of the ATP World Finals (formerly the ATP Tennis Masters Cup played in Shanghai last year) which has been transferred to the mammoth 02 Arena in London’s Docklands took a deep breath when they decided to go with two sessions per day for eight days — leaving them with the task of selling 250,000 tickets for a new event in November in one of the world’s entertainment centers. To their surprise, 150,000 had been sold or allocated even before the official launch in May. Now that the event has been advertised another 60,000 have been sold. “The response has been amazing,” says assistant tournament director Chris Kermode. “Way above our expectations. It just proves that Londoners want tennis in the winter.”

SPONSORSHIP: On the day that Lehmann Brothers collapsed last September , BNP Paribas nevertheless decided to go ahead with its sponsorship of Indian Wells, offering both more money and a longer contract than the outgoing sponsors Pacific Life. Last year, the LTA secured a massive deal with Aegon to sponsor all British tournaments outside of Wimbledon and Aegon were thrilled by the exposure they got at Queen’s. (Any criticism of the media must exclude the British press during the Wimbledon period where even the most trivial tennis trivia becomes news).

INVESTMENT: The Government of Victoria have agreed to come up with nearly $620 million over the next ten years to re-develop Melbourne Park which is already one of the most modern sports complexes in the world. New entertainment areas and a re-configuration of the courts to take the site of the Australian Open even closer to downtown Melbourne (even now it is only a 10 minute walk) will ensure that talk of the city losing its Grand Slam will be nothing more than hype on the part of Sydney and cities in Asia.

NEW STADIA: The Caja Majica in Madrid may not be everyone’s idea of a magic box but as a statement on the popularity of tennis in Spain it could hardly have been more dramatic. Three stadiums with roofs inside the one massive building as well as outside courts and sleeping quarters for juniors to use year round make it a testament to the vision of impresario Ion Tiriac and the city fathers of Madrid.  Tennis Australia were also in on the act last year with a brand new tennis stadium in Brisbane for the ATP event that was switched from Adelaide while here at Wimbledon the new sunken No. 2 court has created a welcome additional element to the All England Club grounds, quite apart from the roof.

THE STARS: Perhaps no other individual sport has so many stars who are instantly recognizable around the globe.  Venus and Serena do not even need a second name. Maria Sharapova has already burst beyond the confines of merely being known as a tennis player. And for all the promise of Andy Murray, Novak Djokovic and Juan Martin del Potro, it is the classic rivalry that Roger Federer has established with Rafael Nadal which has captured the imagination of sports fans the world over. Ask why tennis is recovering its popularity in Italy and the answer I get is “Federer and Nadal.”

Add another impressive stat — the 720,000 tickets that were sold for last year’s US Open — and it is very difficult to view tennis as anything other than a sport on the rise; a sport that is gaining popularity all over the globe, in major markets and small. That does not mean there is not room for improvements and all the game’s governing bodies need to work hard to create fresh, innovative ideas that will draw even more people to the game. But while the global economy struggles, tennis is riding a wave of renewed popularity that cannot, and should not, be ignored.

The Players Lounge at the Aegon Championships is the most spacious part of the over-crowded nineteenth century clubhouse at the Queen’s Club. Spread over a couple of indoor courts, it enables one to move freely; eat sumptuously; read the papers and go on line.

So I took the opportunity to sit down to chat with Peter Lundgren who had more than a passing interest in the French Open final as well goings on here where his new charge, the 18-year-old Bulgarian Grigor Dimitrov won a round in the main draw as a wild card.

Lundgren, of course, was Roger Federer’s coach when he ascended to the top of the tennis world — a journey you can follow in the revised version of Chris Bowers’ excellent biography of Federer called a Spirit of a Champion. And, as a Swede, he had followed the sudden explosion in Robin Soderling’s fortunes in Paris with interest and no small measure of surprise.

“Yes, I must admit I was surprised at Soderling reaching the final,” said Lundgren. “He’d never passed the third round of a Slam before and to beat Nadal was just something I never expected. But he hit the ball hard and there is no question that, despite the weaknesses in his game, he has the weapons. Whether he can kick on from there is open to debate. If people in Sweden think he is going to reach the final at Wimbledon I think they will be disappointed.”

Lundgren, however, has no doubt about what a terrific effect Soderling’s success will have on Swedish tennis.

“As soon as he beat Nadal, tickets for the ATP tournament in Bastad in July started selling like crazy,” Lundgren said. “People see it on TV and the kids get excited and everyone wants to go to the tennis again. But Soderling alone is not going to save Swedish tennis. At the moment the coaching simply isn’t good enough. There are too many 18-year-olds who didn’t make it as players teaching at clubs and they don’t have enough experience. And the incentives are not big enough. Life is too easy. It’s no co-incidence that so many players are coming out of Eastern Europe. They want to achieve, they want to make something of themselves. They put in the work and find good coaches.”

Federer put in the work and Lundgren, by his side through his late teens when he was struggling to produce the results that people expected of him, never lost faith in Roger’s potential.

“I texted him after he won in Paris and said, ‘I always told you could do it,’ and he texted back saying that he remembered how I was always telling him he could achieve anything.”

Lundgren laughed delightedly. Few people know Federer as intimately and he can track the important moments of his career better than most.

“The real turning point came at that first Tennis Masters Cup in Houston in 2003 when he beat the three players he always had the most trouble with — Andre Agassi, Juan Carlos Ferrero and David Nalbandian,” Lundgren recalled. “He actually beat Agassi twice — in the round robin and then again in straight sets in the final. That was the breakthrough. After that there was no stopping him.”

And even from a distance, Lundgren is still able to predict important moments. He was watching Federer’s first doubles match in Beijing when he set off on a path that would bring him and Stan Warwinka Switzerland’s first gold medal.

“I was interested to see how he would approach it and what sort of form he was in,” Lundgren remembered. “The match was on TV at home and he won his first service game to love. ‘That’s it,’ I said to my wife. ‘They’ll win now.’ She didn’t understand how I could be so sure but I just knew. And I knew it would give him a huge lift for the US Open which he won a few weeks later. Winning with Stan made it all the more special for him because he’s such an emotional guy as people have come to realize. He felt he’d done something great for his partner and his country and that carried over into the US Open.”

Lundgren was not surprised to hear that Soderling had admitted after losing to Federer in the Roland Garros final that he felt the Swiss had not allowed him to play.

“I can play against Nadal but Federer doesn’t let me play,” Soderling had admitted.

“I can see that,” said Lundgren. “Roger has all the shots; he got Soderling out of his hitting zone because he plays fast  but changes pace and uses the court so differently to all the other players. I know from just practicing with him through all those years that it is impossible to find your rhythm. He has you all over the place.”

It comes as no surprise to hear Lundgren wax lyrical about the young man he is now coaching. And he is to be taken seriously when he says he thinks Dimitrov has even more potential now than Federer did at the same age.

“He’s just a better player — especially mentally — than Roger was at this stage,” he said. “He has better volleys and his game has everything. There is something special about him. He is not cocky but very self assured and open — similarities with Roger in that respect.”

Dimitrov was brought up as a player by his father Dimitar, whom Lundgren praises for having done a great job, at the Tennis Club in Haskovo, Bulgaria where he was born. As soon as his talent became apparent, he was sent to the Sanchez-Casal camp in Barcelona to work with Pato Alvarez, the veteran coach who helped Andy Murray in his formative years. By then he had already won the Under 16 Orange Bowl and after going on to become Wimbledon and US Open Junior Champion last year, he switched to the Patrick Mouratoglou Academy in Paris soon after Lundgren joined as a senior coach. 

“I took on Grigor in March and I have been very impressed with him,” said Lundgren. “He is very motivated and I can see he really wants it. And it is fun because I feel I am a better coach now than I was back in the Federer days. You are always learning and I have more experience.”

Dimitrov is getting the results to back up Lundgren’s optimism. In Rotterdam earlier this year he beat Tomas Berdych and then took a set off Nadal before losing 7-5, 3-6, 6-2. Here at Queen’s, where he made a point of thanking tournament director Chris Kermode profusely for his wild card, he accentuated his prowess on grass by defeating the Spaniard Ivan Navarro in the first round and then pushed former top tenner Gilles Simon hard before going down 7-6(7), 7-6(5).

So watch out for young Grigor. Three Maleeva sisters are all Bulgaria has had to offer the tennis world so far. Dimitrov is about to change all that and what if Lundgren is right — what if he is as good as Federer? How exciting that would be.

Three days into Queen’s — now officially the Aegon Championships — and the talk is still of Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal. Neither is playing here — they are not playing anywhere this week, in fact — but they dominate the tennis landscape to such an extent that no one can stop talking or writing about them.

Federer, of course, transcended a mere winning of a Grand Slam title in Paris. By drawing level with Pete Sampras at 14 Slams and adding the missing link of a clay court triumph at Roland Garros, Federer put more smiles on more people’s faces than anyone I can remember since Gustavo Kuerten had everyone doing the samba after winning his first French Open in 1997.

Federer’s decision to pull out of the German grass court event in Halle was only to be expected if one realizes just how much physical and, particularly emotional, toll his performances in Paris had taken out of him. He will be refreshed by Wimbledon and it will be fascinating to see how he plays now that he feels he has nothing left to prove. 

Nadal, suddenly, is the one harboring doubts and problems. The tension in the press room at Queen’s was palpable as we waited for the announcement from Barcelona. Would he play at Wimbledon or not? There was great relief when the news came through as affirmative because it would have been a tremendous shame if the World No. 1 and defending champion had not been able to take his place in the field. Hopefully his knees will be up to the task.

The great thing about men’s tennis at the moment is that, while Nadal and Federer dominate, that domination is being more seriously challenged than ever before by the likes of Andy Murray, Novak Djokovic, Juan Martin del Potro and, on grass certainly, by Andy Roddick. One has to include Robin Soderling in that company now, too, because the Swede, despite his inability to make any impression on Federer in the final, proved that his startling victory over Nadal at Roland Garros was no simple flash of Nordic light.

But it is Federer and Nadal that fascinate — and not just for their on court prowess. In the London Times today, Matthew Syed, a former world class table tennis player and now one of the paper’s columnists, devoted his column to praising Federer and Nadal as men as well as players. He pointed out that everyone who knows them well view the pair as decent, courteous, honest and sensitive human beings and added, “to put it another way, two of the greatest players in history also happen to be men with values, perspective and morality.”

Syed went on to make some interesting points, namely that when he started competing at the top level in the mid eighties, there seemed to be a code out there beyond the confines of sport that, to succeed, you had to step on people’s toes or even their necks. It was called “necessary selfishness.” But Syed adds, “You want to know a funny thing? It never had a scrap of justification, not even as a description of top sportsmen, far less as a justification for dodgy behavior. I have found, swanning around the world of sport, that there is no correlation whatsoever between selfishness and success. No connection between nastiness and accomplishment. Sure, sport is about winning but many of the greatest sportsmen and women I have met never lost sight of the context. It is no good winning if that means forfeiting one’s soul. Winning is not merely about claiming the final point but about expressing a wider philosophy of sport and life. Nadal and Federer demonstrate a deep and implicit understanding of this truth in almost everything they do.”

I find those words uplifting, not merely because I believe them to be true but because Nadal and Federer present the game of professional tennis in the best possible light and the article pays tribute to the two men who are enhancing its popularity and setting the best possible examples for the generations to come. Champions have considerable influence in the locker rooms of their sports. If they are intelligent, all the young players coming onto the tour now will take a look at Rafa and Roger and think, “so that’s how it should be done.”  

As a tournament, the Queen’s Club has always presented itself as a model on how to run a highly successful second tier event. Its position on the calendar ensures that it always gets its fair share of top players seeking much needed grass court match play before Wimbledon but the marketing skills of Frank Lowe and Ian Wight also inserted it firmly into the sporting calendar of the English summer — part of a social scene that encompasses Henley for rowing, Ascot for horse racing, the Lords Test Match for cricket, the British Open golf and, of course, Wimbledon. More so than those to be found at the All England Club, the crowd at Queens has always been heavily tilted towards the well-heeled residents of neighboring boroughs of Kensington and Chelsea even though, this year, there might be just a little less Pimms being sipped on the clubhouse terrace by young men in old school ties.

Having taken over from Wight a couple of years ago, Chris Kermode has succeeded in turning the place blue, the favored color of Aegon, from the trademark red of Stella Artois, the departing sponsor, while retaining the overall feel of a traditional Queen’s Club tournament — a tradition that dates back to the club’s founding in 1886. It’s been raining, too, so everyone feels right at home. 

And the Andys, so far, are doing just fine. Roddick admitted to be overjoyed at being back on grass and played like it as he defeated Belgium’s Kristof Vliegen 6-1, 6-4 while Murray was no less impressive against Italy’s Andreas Seppi, winning by an identical score. James Blake is also through to the third round, having disposed of Ivan Ljubicic in a tougher battle, 6-2, 7-6(4) thus ensuring an American quarterfinalist as he plays Sam Querrey tomorrow. In a battle of giants, Querrey beat South Africa’s Kevin Anderson 7-5, 6-3 yesterday.