Monday, August 9, 2010
Eyes on Doubles This Week in Toronto
A month ago, on July 10th, the yearly induction ceremony into the International Tennis Hall of Fame took place in Newport, Rhode Island. The Australians Mark Woodforde and Todd Woodbridge, otherwise known as the "Woodies," were two of the inductees in 2010 in consideration of their accomplishments in doubles.
So dominant were the Woodies in doubles that they held the record for the most doubles title on the ATP Tour with 61 titles for a decade, until last week when the Bryan brothers won the Farmers Classic in Los Angeles for their 62nd title. Bryan brothers plan on playing for several more years; therefore chances are the final number of titles won by them will be a very hard one to break.
Yet the real question remains: how many people are really aware of these incredible accomplishments? How many casual tennis fans watch a full match of doubles? And the classic and evasive "well, it's never on TV" answer is simply no longer valid; you can watch plenty of doubles on the Tennis Channel, and even major channels are beginning to show portions of doubles matches, if not the full matches, time-permitting. Despite all this, can any casual tennis fan name one other doubles team other than the Bryan brothers?
Over the last couple of decades, it took all the marketing efforts of a few spectacular and "easy-to-nickname" doubles teams (examples: the Jensen brothers, the Woodies, the Bryan brothers) and a recent lawsuit to keep doubles competition surviving as a major event.
There is no denying that a few fans who rigorously read all tennis news and make it a point to watch some big tournaments on TV may perhaps know Daniel Nestor and Nenad Zimonjic, the current number one doubles team in the world. On the other hand, names such as Mark Knowles, Lukas Dlouhy, Laender Paes, and Lukasz Kubot — just to name a few doubles specialists — and even Nestor and Zimonjic themselves, remain obscure to the casual tennis fan, either because they are virtually unknown in singles or because the casual tennis fan simply does not care about doubles unless it's himself/herself playing on the courts of the local tennis club. I always believed that out of the two listed above the reason for the lack of interest is the former and not the latter.
Interestingly enough, this week may provide some partial answers. It will be the first time since the summer of 1976 when Jimmy Connors and Arthur Ashe played as a doubles team twice, once in Washington and once in New Hampshire, that the number one and two singles players in the world, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic, will team together to play doubles in Rogers Cup in Toronto, taking place this week.
I wanted secretly for many years to see Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal play doubles in one major event, believing that it would do wonders for the popularity of doubles, just like the Williams sisters playing together does more for women's doubles than any other ladies team has done for decades since Martina Navratilova and Pam Shriver. I trusted that if fierce enemies (and not only on the court) such as Arthur Ashe and Jimmy Connors could get together for one tournament, good friends such as Federer and Nadal could surely do it one time. It never happened.
However, Djokovic and Nadal is the next best thing, and they are indeed the two top-ranked players in the world after Federer dropped to No. 3 the week following Wimbledon. I hope TV takes the opportunity to show every match of this doubles team. I will come out and say openly that I am rooting for this "unseeded" doubles team of Novak and Rafa, and I seriously hope that they can go all the way, taking out both of the top two doubles seeds Zimonjic and Nestor and the Bryan brothers. I am rooting for them because this type of partnership is exactly what doubles competition needs in order to gain exposure.
If Nadal and Djokovic would win the Rogers Cup, more attention would focus on doubles following this week than any moment following the big news of the past few weeks mentioned in the beginning of the article. And now imagine if Nadal and Djokovic were to decide to play doubles in the U.S. Open following a victory in Rogers Cup. It's true that this last one is unlikely, and that is why I used "imagine," but I don't consider the chances of Djokovic and Nadal winning the doubles this week at Rogers Cup as unlikely. And if they win the title, I guarantee at least one thing: the number of casual tennis fans who know the names of a doubles team other than Bob and Mike Bryan will increase dramatically.