Jon Henderson TENNIS
Whether to trash or tank? Marat Safin’s progress in the French Open – and there are many who believe the 20-year-old Russian can go all the way to clay-court tennis’s premier title this year – will depend on which of these diametrically opposed options he takes over the next week.
Safin in trashing form – mutilating his rackets by bashing them into the court surface – has become a fairly reliable indicator of his state of competitive commitment (the more numerous the breakages, the greater the commitment).
But he also has a reputation for being one of the game’s most proficient tankers, or losers of matches through lack of interest.
He demonstrated the latter tendency most recently at this year’s Australian Open. Frustrated by the high winds that buffeted his first-round match against the South African Grant Stafford, Safin started thrashing balls into the back fence. But what really convinced the umpire that the Russian was not trying as hard as he might was when he caught one of Stafford’s serves and threw it back to him. After his 7-6 6-4 6-1 defeat, Safin was fined A$2E000 for “lack of effort”, the first time in a Grand Slam history that the penalty has been imposed.
His Australian Open defeat came during the poorest run of form of his short professional career. In the first four- and-a-half months of the new millennium, he won just five matches – and was even talking of walking away from the game.
“Confidence is everything,” he says. “I was afraid. I didn’t know how to play tennis any more, I was missing everything. I was having a difficult time and I said to myself that if I am not doing very well this year, I will quit.”
Fast forward to last month’s German Open in Hamburg, where Safin is contesting his third final in four weeks, having won the other two in Barcelona at the end of April and Mallorca on May 7. Twice in a thrilling final that he will eventually lose in five sets to Gustavo Kuerten he smashes a racket, the second time earning a penalty point that gives the Brazilian a vital break of serve.
Safin, an engaging and telegenic young man of the sort the ATP tour badly needs to counteract all the attractions currently being offered on the women’s tour, is unapologetic. “If I have some anger inside me,” he says, “it has to get out, otherwise it goes up, and I have too many things on the brain. Why do you see so many players showing anger? Because it helps them.”
He warms to his theme of the merits of equipment abuse. “I was watching the Moya-Ferrero match [also in Hamburg]. It was great tennis, and when Moya lost his serve at 5-5 in the third set, he smashed his racket and got a warning.
“Why do chair umpires give a warning then? The crowd wasn’t saying, ‘Eh, get off the court,’ they don’t want to see players who are like a stone; they have something to talk about when a player smashes the racket. We’re not computers, you know.”
So what transformed the tanking Safin in Australia at the start of the year to the racket-trashing, title- winning one in Europe, who is finally starting to fulfil the promise of 1998 when, still only 18, he reached the last 16 of the French Open with wins over Kuerten, the title-holder, and Andre Agassi?
The answer is almost certainly Andrei Chesnokov, a 34-year-old fellow Muscovite who is recognised as a great technician by the other players but had little coaching experience until he teamed up with Safin in the spring.
Chesnokov, a Russian sporting hero after saving nine match points before beating Germany’s Michael Stich in the deciding rubber of the 1995 Davis Cup semi-final in Moscow, takes up the story: “His agent said to me, ‘Marat has won hardly any matches this year and has lost confidence.’ I said, ‘I’m sorry I have never been a coach before. I have only been a player.'”
But he succumbed to persuasion and took Safin on to the practice court for the first time in Barcelona barely a month ago. “He was looking around,” recalls Chesnokov, “and waving at people passing by, saying, ‘Hello Sergio, hello Andre, hello Ericka, hello Monica.’ I said, ‘Come on, man, how can you practise like this?’
“He hit the ball with full power and there were so many mistakes. I said to him, ‘I don’t want to see any power. You have to place each ball deep – and in.'”
Chesnokov’s advice and steadying influence appear to have corralled all the estimable but wayward parts of the 2m Safin’s game – notably the mighty serve and two-fisted backhand – into a disciplined whole that all of a sudden makes him one of the favourites to win in France.
Safin and Chesnokov have an informal agreement to work together until the end of the French Open at Roland Garros. And after that? “I don’t know,” says Safin. “It’s a hard job being a coach – booking the courts, looking at players, being with me for practice. I’m not sure if Andrei wants that. I sure want to work with him, but we have to see what he wants after Roland Garros.”
Kuerten and Sweden’s Magnus Norman were the other in-form players going into the French Open, while Agassi is the impossible-to-discount defending champion, the brooding Chilean Marcelo Rios is returning to the clay-court form that once made him world number one and 20-year-old Juan Carlos Ferrero is the latest young Spaniard to excite the sporting world.
Tim Henman and Greg Rusedski will exceed expectation if either progresses beyond the third round.
How many Safin rackets bite the red dust of Roland Garros may be a key statistic, although Chesnokov has his reservations about his young charge’s bouts of wanton vandalism. “Marat told me he broke 48 rackets last year,” he says. “Sometimes it’s good to throw the racket and break it, but not every week – 48 rackets, that’s quite a lot, isn’t it?”
More than most of us would own in several lifetimes, Andrei.
ENDS