I've held out over the last six months from joining Twitter, something plenty of my friends were bent on getting me to join.
Today, however, I finally broke down and got an account. I did so for various reasons, but one important one is so I can share my exciting experience at Wimbledon come later this month!
Follow me at twitter.com/nmccarves :)
For the past year, I've been pretty dormant in the tennis blogosphere. I've made brief appearances on this blog (via video) and others (see: "Billie Jean King Cup"), but my blogging energy has more been focused on the personal since starting The McColumn.
But in a couple weeks, I'll re-enter the tennis blogging world with a frenzy as I attend my first-ever Grand Slam event at The Championships, Wimbledon.
My love affair with tennis has been in full force since the age of five, but I've only had in-person flings with the professional sport on a few, varied occasions: the 2002 Bank of the West Classic and two Williams-sister-fueled exhibitions. Not the resume you were hoping for, right?
In any case, I'll no doubt be completely overwhelmed by the grounds of the All England Club itself, not to mention the high-level tennis that will be going on before my eyes.
Stay tuned here, The McColumn, TennisServedFresh and a few other, yet-to-be-announced locations for my live Wimbledon coverage. Until then, Federer in four for his fourteenth and first French; Safina in straights.
I'm headed outside in scary conditions to brave a night of (indoor) tennis at the Billie Jean King Cup at the Madison Square Garden.
I'll have a post up later this week about my experience there!
Just in case you're wondering, I'm still alive. I'm working on a few new projects while I make it day-to-day as a barista in the Big Apple.
The first of those is my personal blog, which I launched just over a month ago and am calling The McColumn. I'm trying my best to take each post as a column that might appear in an actual newspaper (remember those?) while trudging through each day as freelancer, an individual, a young adult...
Secondarily, I've began working with Erwin Ong over at Tennis Served Fresh. I'll be doing posts for Erwin with some regularity, hopefully contributing a new angle to his already-well written blog.
My first assignment for Erwin is to head over to the Billie Jean King Cup at the Madison Square Garden this coming Monday. It's a huge exhibition event, with Venus, Serena, Ana and Jelena all in attendance. No doubt lots of tennis dignitaries will be in attendance too. Check out TSF all next week to see what I come up with!
And, as usual, I'm contributing at Green for Good with a column on being young and Green. Don't forget to check that out once in a while, too!
Hope all are well!
(I'm even finding some time to release my anger in healthy ways! Photo copyright Matthew Murphy.)
Christmas in Montana is always magical. There's the gathering of my family, the small-town charm, the home cooked meals. It all comes together and feels like magic - which I realize I'm lucky to have. Many people fear and dread the holidays like they're the plague.
Over the last two weeks, I've spent time in Montana driving through the snow, eating too much and writing. Usually my Christmas-time writing includes me writing furiously in my journal about the random frustrations I encounter when moving back home for a flash, but this time I had the opportunity to write freelance for the local paper, and it kept my pen (and my brain) busy in the frigid temperatures of the Rocky Mountains.
After writing for my hometown paper, the Independent Record this summer, I was asked to contribute a few articles while I was in Montana this winter. The first was a simple news story on a high school girls' basketball game, while the second two were features: one on the area ski team and the second on the "Male Athlete of the Year," a 20-year-old boxer named Duran Junior Caferro.
It's great for a young writer like me to get such experience. I was busy calling sources, conducting face-to-face and phone interviews, and digging for facts for my stories while putting together pieces that I was happy with. The experience and resume building are enough to make it worth it, and it's nice to put a little cash in the Survive NYC Fund.
Check out the story on the Great Divide Ski Team here: http://helenair.com/articles/2008/12/28/sports/top/50spl_081228_skiteam.txt
And Junior Caferro here:
http://helenair.com/articles/2008/12/31/sports/top/50spn_081231_caferro.txt
As 2009 begins, I'd like to dive back into the blogging world a bit. I'm excited about the possibilities the tennis season holds, but more than anything else, I'm excited about telling stories and finding new ways to share them. I hope to continue this blog and make it as interesting as possible, but I know myself well enough to realize that it may be touch and go for awhile, as a lot of things in life are.
Growing up, I regularly attended high school basketball games. My four older siblings all played the winter sport, and it was a great distraction from the frighteningly cold winter weather in Montana. My sisters' teams were consistently bad - real bad. Year after year I would watch them have losing seasons, winning just a handful of games in each. I wondered what the problem was: the coaching? The players? The game plans?
As I got older and started to play basketball myself, I began to see that a good team took all of the aforementioned ingredients. You couldn't have a great team without good players, a knowledgeable coach and a solid game plan - it all had to come together at once. Great teams just didn't happen, they had to be carefully orchestrated. But above anything else, the talent had to be there. Talent is the legs that greatness stands on.
As the Tremendous Two has grown into the Ferocious Four, it's safe to say that the ATP has legs to stand on for the next few years - four pairs of sturdy, terribly talented legs.
(Photo by billybuck via flickr.)
Watching Rafael Nadal, Roger Federer, Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray (as they're ranked) each have their own, separate bursts of greatness this year has been nothing short of spectacular. These four men have captured my attention in a way like never before, and I've become interested in men's tennis on a genuine, true-fan level. I'm guessing that they - and I - will be sticking around for a while.
The frightening thing is that there are three more pairs of talented legs - Juan Martin del Potro, Gilles Simon and Jo-Wilfried Tsonga - that are threatening to turn the Ferocious Four into the Scintillating Seven. These are all gentlemen who have shown flashes of their own brilliance this season (throughout the calendar year), and a group that the tour can look to in week two of Grand Slams not as darkhorses or outsiders, but actually as legitimate heavy weights who just haven't had their breakthrough yet.
Last week, I wrote about how increasingly interesting the men's tour was becoming, and how the women's tour was lacking any true rivalries or distinction. The thing is, even if the women's tour was bursting with talent and attracting me with new and different stars, it would take nothing away from the legitimacy of what a great group of men sit atop the ATP rankings.
For tennis to be interesting on both sides is nearly impossible. Very often, in fact, it's difficult for even one tour to be compelling. But we are ending a year on the ATP that showed us what brilliance can do when it's pitted again other brilliance, and that bodes well for 2009, even if their is off-court drama.
You can ask for well-rounded, attractive champions, but it's not often that you get a group of truly talented, just-short-of-spectacular champions all at once. Now that's a talent any season can build on.
Lately, I've felt like a Williams sister. No, I'm not taking New York by storm with incredible fashion, participating in photo shoots, starting my own design line, starring on TV and having paparazzi follow me all over the city (a boy can dream though, right?). Instead, I've been exploring my various interests in this new and different city, dipping my toes into a new cafe, playing volleyball, exploring the arts and getting lost on the subway.
So, as the season has come to an end and Venus captured her first-ever WTA Championships title, I haven't felt like blogging much. I'm wondering if I seek a career like the Williams sisters, where I blog now and then and save the good stuff for meaty, Grand Slam-like posts or that of Jelena Jankovic, where I'm blogging everyday, often times at a lower quality level, stretching my mind and imagination and failing to deliver when it matters most (like during the 5th biggest tournament of the year).
But like tennis, the nature of the blogging world is demanding. If you don't churn out consistent, good stuff, the critics will come calling - or, in this case - the readers will stop reading. It's a Catch 22 if there ever was one, and as much as I think I have good writing skills that can only get better, I'm no Venus or Serena.
In any case, as winter approaches and the tennis tour takes its short vacation, I see myself joining them for the most part. There are certainly a few topics I would like to write on over the next 6 weeks before 2009 begins, and I would like to resurrect the ever-popular video blogging.
I'll try to make that all happen soon, but for now I'm off to a photo shoot... oops, there I go thinking I'm a Williams sister again. Ah, the life!
(WTA Tour photo screen grab.)
As the top women on the WTA Tour converge on Doha for the Season Ending Championships this week, there are a few things that still need to be worked on for some of the girls: their wardrobes.
Let's make this simple:
Jelena Jankovic: Let's bring back the 70s, baby!
Dinara Safina: Wait, this isn't the Wimbledon ball?
Serena Williams: As usual, I look waaaaaaaaay better than everyone else here.
Ana Ivanovic: I love that episode of Seinfeld where Jerry wears the Pirate shirt!
Elena Dementieva: Damn Ana and Serena, their black pants are shinier than mine!
Svetlana Kuznetsova: I'm ready for my first day of 9th grade!
Venus Williams: I save my fashion for the court, ladies.
Vera Zvonareva: I just used my hotel room curtains as an outfit, that's OK right?
A few years ago, when Serena was making her way through the Serena Slam, Jennifer Capriati was still re-surging, the Belgium duo was just making their way up while the likes of Venus, Lindsay and Mary Pierce were a weekly tour of Big Babe tennis and a Swiss Miss named Martina was still a Top 5 power, women's tennis was riding high.
2008 has painted quite a different picture for the WTA: Capriati, Pierce, both Belgium girls and (mostly) Davenport are absent from the game, while the world's Number 1, Jelena Jankovic, has never won a slam, and half-hearted champion Maria Sharapova, topsy-turvy Ana Ivanovic and other newcomers make up what USA Today writer Doug Robson calls "the weakest top-10 ever".
Meanwhile, across the aisle in the Men's Room, the ATP (despite its internal conflicts) is on fire. The Big Two (Roger and Rafa) was extended to the Big Three after Novak Djokovic won the Australian Open to open the year, and rumors are now swirling about "the Big Four" following Andy Murray's run to the US Open final and his win at the Madrid Masters. Perhaps after this week in Paris, it may be considered the Big Five - we'll just have to see what Jo-Wilfried Tsonga does in Shanghai.
The thing is, the tours have done something of a flip-flop. Following 2003, Magnus Norman's career went to the crapper, but as he and other faux champions (see: "Andy Roddick" or "Juan Carlos Ferrero") have been pushed aside, a great wave of bona-fide champions has emerged. Federer has been the foremost of these, while Nadal is on his heels (and ahead of him, in some aspects) and players like Djokovic, Murray, Tsonga and others including Gilles Simon and Juan Martin del Potro are attempting to make this the hay-day of tennis (once again).
While players like Djokovic, Murray and Tsonga have proved their staying power, the WTA has little strength to rest on outside of the House of Williams. Ana Ivanovic was a dismal 5-6 in the four months following her maiden slam win in Paris, and Jankovic has yet to win a slam, herself. Up-and-comers like Nicole Vaidisova, Maria Kirilenko, Marion Bartoli, Sania Mirza and others have been much talked-about, but have yet to come up with the goods. Others like Alize Cornet and Caroline Wozniacki have appealing games, but have yet to prove themselves in the upper echelon of the game.
Recently, I can't help but follow the men a little more than the women. The rivalries are there, the passion is tangible, and the drama is saved for the court. The girls always provide the drama, but perhaps they need to change the scenery to between the lines to make things a little more appealing... or can we just never have the best of both worlds?
There have been plenty of tennis players that I've wished, dreamed and predicted big things of and for.
There was the resilient Mexican Melissa Torres who made noise at her home tournament over 18 months ago. Then there was Michelle Larcher de Brito, the young Portuguese star who was Jennifer Capriati, reincarnated at the Sony Ericcson Open last March.
Or more recently, Marina Erakovic, Laura Robson, Ernests Gulbis and a host of others.
So don't be surprised that I'm writing about a brand-new up-and-comer. And don't be surprised if she doesn't exactly win the US Open in the next two years, either. But the thing about sports writing is this: you must take chances on certain players. There will be future champions, there will be breakthrough stories. Perhaps today's qualifier is tomorrow's champion... you just never know.
The girl is Melanie Oudin. She's not much different from the rest of the players I've written about on here, except one minor detail: she's American. Actually, let's call that detail major, not minor. Why? You ask. This is why: separate from the Williams sisters, there have been zero American grand slam champions in the last five years. Yes, zero.
Oudin may not be Venus or Serena, but this past week she had her first big pro breakthrough, winning two matches at the Tier III Bell Challenge in Quebec City, which comes at the tail-end of a successful year for the 17-year-old.
(Oudin has a powerful baseline game. But what junior player doesn't these day? Photo by kpessa via Flickr.)
Successful may be an understatement, winning 28 matches - mostly at small, American challenger tournaments - and losing in the first round of just two pro events: Miami and the US Open. In this year, she's also won this country's most prestigious junior tournament, the Easter Bowl, and recorded wins over eight Top 200 players.
But what does all mean for Oudin? It means that she, along with US Open junior champion Coco Vandeweghe are the future of American girls tennis, at least for now. ESPN The Magazine made her a part of their NEXT campaign this past year, and she's one of a handful of players that the USTA has put mega bucks behind to help further her individual career.
But considering the Monique Vieles, Ashley Harkleroads, and Bethanie Matteks (who beat her this week) before her, it's unlikely that Oudin will have any sort of a lasting career - much less reach the No. 1 world ranking as she hopes to do. Sans the Williams sisters and Lindsay Davenport, just three Americans stand inside the Top 100 on this week's rankings, and at the US Open, (without the Williams and Davenport) the group of starts and stripes went a dismal 1-12.
So what makes Oudin different? Different than Alexa Glatch or Vania King or Ashe Rolle or Mashona Washington, you might wonder. It's her slow, steady, mature and calculated rise to the pro tennis ranks that gives her an edge. At the age of 17, she hasn't been catapulted onto the international stage, but rather allowed to take on each level of tennis - from regional to national to international - and let her game adjust. It's not a guarantee by any means, but it's an approach that could benefit in the long run.
You might call it the Anti-Williams approach, and though there have been endless critics of what the two sisters have done, they've made it all right. So is Oudin destined for a crash?
Or is she the next big thing?
