The Attitudimeter: It's All Uphill From Here

It looks like the Attitudimeter is malfunctioning this week, because it seems that nothing good happened in pro tennis, except Roger Federer playing tennis in a kilt. Alas, the ATP Finals are this week, so it can only go uphill from here. Unless their draw ceremony also included some light sexism. Anyway, let's do this thing:

Who's down

Victoria Azarenka's ex

Normally, I wouldn't delve into tennis players' personal lives unless it involved winning a Grand Slam while pregnant, but here is exception No. 2. This guy. I mean, fine. It didn't work out. That happens. You both love your child and both of you want custody. What are the levels of petty required to refuse to allow the mother of your child to travel for work because you want custody? You could figure this out in the offseason. You could let your baby mama work so she can afford to support little Leo (and let's be honest, buddy, you too, ex), but no.

The ATP Next Gen Finals

It's a good idea, I guess. Pit the young talent against each other, ATP Real Finals-style. They're good, but not ready for prime time. Sounds good. But what doesn't sound good, given the social climate these days, is doing your draw presentation with female models who have to remove their clothes to reveal the (male) player's group:

The ATP NextGen Milan draw ceremony made players select models to determine their groups. Stunningly uncomfortable, cringeworthy and trashy. pic.twitter.com/g63OfK5IOK

— Ben Rothenberg (@BenRothenberg) November 5, 2017

That was just how it started. This tournament was supposed to be an experiment in making tennis a little less tennis-y. For example, a shot clock between points, no-let, no-ad scoring and four-game sets. Yeah, I'm been here before, so I'm not going to get my blood pressure up ranting about this anymore. I will just simply say that if you don't like tennis, then go watch another sport and let the rest of us who like tennis enjoy tennis. How's that?

The Belarus Fed Cup team

I could only find the Fed Cup final online and they were not speaking English, but I would really like to know what those girls were sniffing on changeovers and if it's legal.

Because that doesn't look legal.
I guess you have to give it up for this team, because they managed to make it to the finals, despite the absence of Victoria Azarenka all year. This is how you know it wasn't an Olympic qualifying year. This one girl, whose name is Aryna Sabalenka, strongly resembles Andy Roddick both in appearance

and in horrific net game. I mean, watch this:



and then this



Having said all of that, they took it the distance and if this girl wasn't such a terrible volleyer, they probably would have won Fed Cup.

The U.S. Fed Cup team

The U.S. Fed Cup team really did go the distance against a team of no-name players from Belarus, even though they brought a Grand Slam champ and a semifinalist. They brought guns to a knife fight and the Americans somehow nearly bled out. I watched the final match in its entirety because I could barely believe how bad it was. The Belarusian girls played their ranking throughout, while Sloane Stephens, who just won the U.S. Open, basically donated her singles matches. Coco Vandeweghe, who is normally one of the cockiest players I've ever seen, looked like she couldn't handle life in the doubles rubber. And then there was Shelby Rogers celebrating an opponent error like she just won the Publisher's Clearinghouse. It was something to behold.
Actually, it wasn't.

Andy Roddick Was Good at Tennis. That's It!

Wimbledon might be over, but the tennis world keeps spinning. Let's talk about some things that have happened in the past week or so:

1. Hall of Fame: Kim Clijsters and Andy Roddick are the newest inductees into the Tennis Hall of Fame. Let me say a few things about Roddick first, because I've spent a significant amount of time on him in this blog over the past decade. Here's one of my favorite old posts about him. Roddick was the shot of personality that tennis needed in the early aughts. There was nothing better for a while there than Andy Roddick playing tennis at night at the U.S. Open. He was the first significant sign of American male tennis life since Pete Sampras and Andre Agassi. He won a major. He was No. 1 in the world for a minute.
He totally does not deserve to be in the Tennis Hall of Fame.
You can't (or should not) get into the Hall of Fame if you came in second a lot. You should be great, and not just good to get into the HOF. Think about this: Chris Evert is in the Tennis Hall of Fame. Sampras. Navratilova. Agassi. Arthur Ashe. I mean, really?!
I was a little pissed about this for a few days, until I finally decided to find out exactly who is in the International Hall of Fame. There are more than 200 members -- and this includes not just players, but broadcasters and others who contributed to the sport in other ways than picking up a racquet. Here's the list. I clicked on the first name I didn't recognize that caught my eye: one Mal Anderson. He actually was never No. 1 in the world, but was No. 2 and he won one major -- the 1957 U.S. Open. He was on two winning Davis Cup teams. So Mal Anderson is not great, but good. Like Roddick.
Then I realized that the Tennis Hall of Fame is a lot like the Hollywood Walk of Fame. I mean, it used to be a big deal for someone to get a star. And then a couple years ago, Paul Rudd got one. Right. Exactly. It's this guy:

Rudd was pretty good in "Clueless," and is an OK Antman, I guess. H'es good, not great. We have a theme.
So now I get it and my mind is de-boggled. It's worth noting at this point that Clijsters is absolutely deserving of this honor. This woman left the tour to have a baby and then came back and won a Slam. She was a force in women's tennis for a long time and hit a clean ball. I loved watching her play. I still remember when she faced off against Jennifer Capriati in the final of the French Open in '01. Tracy Austin was doing on-air commentary before the match and she actually said these words about Clijsters: "She doesn't have anything to hurt Capriati with." That was when I realized that commentators don't necessarily watch tennis until someone pays them to do so.

2. Agz Radwanska got married. Congratulations! Let's work on that serve now!

3. OK. Let's talk about Bernard Tomic. Everyone else is, and it's not for a good reason. Tomic has been taking his pity party on the road lately. It all started at Wimbledon, when he acknowledged that he was bored and couldn't get himself motivated or interested in winning. He also may or may not have entirely bailed on his match. That lost him his Head sponsorship, which takes some doing, especially when you realize that Head is happy to stand behind an admitted drug cheat. But we've had enough tangents here, so let's push through my heavy eye-roll. Tomic last week said he was playing tennis just for the money, but is still trying to find some joy in tennis.
It is super easy to go off on Tomic and point out that he gets paid to play a game. It's probably true that if someone walked into my house and told me I could play tennis for a living for any amount of time, I'd leave a note for the family and hit the road. Here's what else is true: There are an awful lot of people who feel exactly the way Tomic feels about their own jobs. And a good chunk of those people are not afraid to tell you just how much they hate their jobs. Believe me -- I've worked with them. So I really just feel sorry for Tomic if he hates his job so much. I've been there too, and when you get out, it's like getting rid of a heavy weight from your shoulders. Tomic has a varied game that shouldn't bore him, but if it does, I hope he finds something else to do, because if he doesn't want to be out there, no one is really going to want to pay to watch him, either.

4. Davis Cup: A couple of weeks ago, the ITF announced some potential changes to the Davis Cup and Fed Cup formats. One was having men play best-of-three, because who wants to see five sets of tennis when players are representing their country, and not just themselves for once? So silly.
Whatever on that. BUT there is one other thing on the agenda -- having the Cups play their final ties at the same place and time, starting in 2018. It would be called the World Cup of Tennis.
When I saw this, it made me feel like that homeless person in those crisis movies, the one who stands on the street corner holding a "THE END IS NEAR" sign. Except that instead of everyone ignoring me and throwing nasty looks, someone stops, hugs me and says, "You guys we should listen to her because she is totally right and Davis Cup and Fed Cup have been flawed for a long time and gentlemen we can fix it we can give it a structure and give fans a reason to care about it instead of having it be at random times on the calendar which makes it appear to be an afterthought and if even the sport of golf can make it work surely we can because tennis is much more interesting to watch than golf so let's get this new format rolling like now and someone get her a shower because she stinks."
I'm just saying it's a start.