Wednesday, January 25, 2006

Pat Cash, Martina Hingis, and delusions

Not that many days ago, former Australian tennis pro Pat Cash said of Martina Hingis's return to tennis: "If Hingis expects to come back and start winning Grand Slam titles again, I am afraid she is deluded."

Well, Hingis just took Australian Open number two seed and world number two Kim Clijsters to three sets in the 2006 quarterfinals. Hingis got off to a dismal start, unable to find any kind of rhythm, and losing 2-6 to the hard-hitting Clijsters. But then, in the second set, she returned to her old ways of forcing errors from her opponent and doing anything to create confusion. She won the second set 6-2, and lost the third 4-6. She actually had a chance to take the match, to the amazement of not only Cash, I'm sure, but all of us: Even her biggest fans--and I'm one of them--didn't think she could do this well her first time back at a Slam with almost no match preparation.

Cash is right about one thing--that Hingis's "old demons are going to re-emerge quickly" if she continues to be outhit by power players. Hingis is definitely hitting harder than she used to, which is helping her a lot in rallies, and which is probably enough to see her through. But her serve is still her greatest problem. She had been getting a lot of first serves in at the Open, so--even though they were not extremely fast--she had achieved an excellent first serve percentage, and the little extra speed she put on them helped her a lot.

But when she played Clijsters, Hingis had trouble getting her first serve in, and her second serve was dismal. Also, her first serve speed slowed down against Clijsters, and was sometimes slower than Clijsters' second serve.

What this means is that Hingis, whose game is probably better than when she retired in 2002--harder hitting, more net play--will still not be able to compete at the very top unless she can do something about that serve. My suggestion would be for her to pay a call on Robert Landsdorp and have him put her through the same ball-hitting grind he put Maria Sharapova through when he was coaching her. She will have to do something, for sure.

But back to Pat Cash. Does he really think the great Hingis would return to the tour if she hadn't prepared herself for the biggest matches of all? To return after 3 1/2 years and push someone like Clijsters to a three-set match is an amazing feat in sports. I hope Cash was watching. Who's deluded now? I wondered, but then, it was Pat Cash who once referred to women's tennis as "two sets of junk." If that's what Hingis was delivering, then take me to the junkyard...please.

10 Comments:

Pat Cash wasn't elected to the Hall of Fame--it was Pat Rafter--a far more genial fellow.
I wonder if some of Hingis's "old demons" that will emerge next her weak serve will be her lovely racist and homophobic inferences in press conferences. She seems to be playing the good girl now but as things get more intense and she has to live up to this admittedly impressive performance will her true colors emerge?
Also--is it problematic that she keeps referring to the other women on the tour as "the girls"?

By Blogger ken, at 11:57 AM  

You're right, and correction made--did that before coffee.

I think Hingis is much mature now than she was when she said a lot of the stupid things she said. She was even more mature in some ways in 2002. It is very unfortunate that she said them, however, though Lindsay Davenport maintains to this day that many of them were taken out of context by the press and were never intended to be malicious.

They all refer to each other as "the girls." Lindsay, Kim, all of them.

By Anonymous Anonymous, at 12:34 PM  

I wonder, Diane, with all the sentiment in feminist circles about such sexist references as 'girls' (no matter how close the group), why aren't they being criticized for it? Is it the same argument that I've heard made for black people calling each other the 'N-word' when referring to each other? It's okay for them in closed circles, but let anyone of the male gender use it and we're considered mysoginistic cretins? Sounds like a double standard to me...

By Anonymous Anonymous, at 1:47 PM  

I'm going to agree with you and disagree with you, Bob.

I totally understand blacks calling each other "nigger" and "niggah" because when they do so, it is in a totally different context than when white people do it. They are using an offensive term ironically to empower themselves. That is a political statement, not a double standard, in my opinion.

And if I say of a friend or acquaintance "She's such a silly girl," or if a woman describes a "night out with the girls," we are using slang.

So I disagree with you there. However, now there is a question: Is the tour members' referring to each other as "girls" a fun, slang thing, or is it a typical female trait of idenifying with the aggressor (as with the 30-something client of mine who said to me, straight-faced, "Oh, I could never think of myself as a woman")?

I really don't know. Sometimes I think it is a fun, slang thing, and other times I think it is a reflection of how women have been taught to see themselves, i.e. internalized sexism. If it's the former, I'm cool with it. If it's the latter, I'm not. But I think you would have to be on the tour to know. And there is an extra factor: Many, many of the tour members are girls--they are 18 and under.

As for the misogynistic use of the term "girl," it's pretty easy to recognize, Bob. If a man refers to a 30-year-old woman as a girl, but in the same context, would never dream of calling a 30-year-old man a boy, that's about as sexist as you can get. And those of us who are female have to put up with it all the time.

When a man says to me "I dated this girl..." or "this girl who works with me..." I always say "She's a tennager?" And he always says "huh?" And I say, "Well, you said she was a girl..." And the man says "oh, you know what I meant..." And I tell him that a girl is a child.

By Anonymous Anonymous, at 2:10 PM  

This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

By Anonymous Anonymous, at 5:39 PM  

Something I meant to add in my response to Ken: If Hingis does return to the truly hurtful trash talk she gave us before, I'll be the first to defect from her camp.

By Anonymous Anonymous, at 5:41 PM  


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