Martina On Top

The first week of the US Open was all about Agassi. After twenty years on the tour, Agassi was going to retire. Unlike Sampras, who managed to win the US Open, despite not being a top seed, and not playing good tennis heading in, Agassi came into the US Open with a bad back, and little hope of winning. Even had he been in tip-top shape, closer to last year, he'd have problems with Federer and even a resurgent Roddick.

In the midst of the hoopla, Martina announced that she, too, was ready to retire. Except far fewer people seemed to care. Even when she was critical of the tennis powers that be's inability to regulate tennis racquets, and therefore, making serve and volley tennis seemingly obsolete, it drew far less attention than Agassi's flashier retirement.

After all, Martina had already retired once, over ten years ago in 1994.

And let's face it, ever since McEnroe and Martina were no longer dominating, doubles has lost a lot of interest. Once upon a time, tennis broadcasts would show doubles. But not enough people cared. When players like the Bryan brothers and Paes/Bhupathi are at the top, players most people barely know, then there's no reason for tennis broadcasts to care.

The only way Martina would make a splash was to win. To coax her nearly fifty year old body to make a few volleys and hold her end of the bargain with one of the top American doubles players, Bob Bryan.

They beat unseeded Kueta Peschke and veteran Martin Damm convincingly in straight sets, 6-2, 6-3, making her, I'd imagine, one of the oldest players to win a Grand Slam title in the main event.

Mixed doubles has become practically irrelevant, it seems. They only play best of three, and even then, early rounds (I think) play a weird form of a tiebreak, if they split the first two sets. Something like first to ten points with a lead of two, mostly, I assume, to speed up the game.

It's nice to see Martina playing well as she edges to 50. Although some may dispute whether she's the greatest to ever play (Billie Jean King is happy to crown her thus), especially with Steffi Graf having won a Grand Slam (though Martina did win 6 in a row), she certainly has to be mentioned as among the best ever, and certainly, she's been awfully durable.

She did reasonably well in women's doubles, and won the mixed (though mixed is often predicated on strong play by the male, and a female that won't lose it for you). It's too bad that her endurance mostly came in doubles, because it meant you saw a lot less of her than you could have.

Martina was at least the last great volleyer in women's tennis. You can hardly recall any great serve and volleyers among the women. Pam Shriver had to play serve and volley, her backcourt game hardly suited to rushing the net. There was Jo Durie and Helena Sukova and Hana Mandlikova. But turn the clock to the nineties, and they're mostly gone.

Even the great Steffi Graf, a master on grass, simply couldn't pull the Lendlian task of making herself learn how to serve and volley. She just didn't need to. She felt comfortable playing tennis the way she played, which means even against players she'd beat handily, she wouldn't come over with topspin (yes, her slice was awfully effective, but even so, she should have tried to improve her shots).

Martina, along with Ivan Lendl, made tennis into a sport which you had to train for. Most people kept in tennis shape by playing tennis. Martina got herself ultra-fit, and soon, others did too. It seems like such a silly idea that tennis didn't do this sooner, but people had odd ideas back then (such as muscles decreasing flexibility).

Martina was "Smartina" armed with diet guru Robert Haas, and she used to dominate everyone much like Steffi Graf and Monica Seles dominated in the late eighties and early nineties. Women have always had a huge disparity with the very top and everyone else.

Martina became the second lesbian to come out in tennis (well, it's debatable how out Billie Jean King was in her career). Tennis has had its share of top players that were/are lesbians (Gigi Fernandez, Conchita Martinex, Amelie Mauresmo). Too bad there's not a top male player that's out (back in the day, it was Big Bill Tilden).

While team sports still shun the idea of an out player (no one I know of is out in the WNBA, but I hardly follow the league), at least tennis blazes a trail. Indeed, other than the fact that Mauresmo is a barely known quantity, her sexuality is not even mentioned (as it was when Martina was number one--at least, by casual sports fans).

While this retirement is likely to make a lot less noise than her first, it reminds us of all the accomplishments Martina has made. It may get drowned out with the lack of top American players in the game today, but it shouldn't. Martina may not have been universally liked (though people admired her more as she got older, much as Connors also was more admired as he got older), she did accomplish a lot for tennis, and a lot for women's sports, and a lot for gays and lesbians.

And for that, she should be a more important figure in tennis than Agassi was, even if fans feel the importance of Agassi's retirement more now.