À la clinique du geste

De plus en plus de joueurs et de joueuses font appel à la biomécanique pour optimiser leur jeu. Une approche scientifique du geste, qui ouvre de nouvelles perspectives techniques, avec des résultats parfois spectaculaires.

 

Pour débuter, une devinette : outre le fait d’appartenir au top 5 mondial, quel est le point commun entre Aryna Sabalenka, Ons Jabeur et Caroline Garcia ? Ces trois championnes ont récemment consulté des spécialistes de la biomécanique, un mot compliqué pour désigner une discipline scientifique qui nous concerne tous, celle de l’étude du mouvement humain. Du lever de tasse de café à la descente de canapé, les principes de la biomécanique sont partout, dans chacune de nos actions du quotidien sans que l’on en soit conscient. « Tout ce que l’on a appris en sciences physiques s’applique au corps humain », rappelle Cyril Genevois, entraîneur, docteur en Sciences du Sport et spécialiste de cette discipline. Mais si les joueurs s’intéressent à cette science, ce n’est pas pour réviser les lois de Newton, ni pour perfectionner leur lever de coude. Le tennis, sous l’impulsion de scientifiques australiens, est devenu un objet d’étude de la biomécanique à la fin des années 90, donnant la possibilité aux techniciens d’explorer une nouvelle approche dans la quête infinie du geste parfait. « On a toujours fait de l’analyse technique. Mais la biomécanique essaie d’aller un peu plus loin en cherchant les causes et les conséquences du mouvement. Avant, on était plus sur une analyse technique descriptive un peu figée, où l’on essayait de reproduire un modèle », explique Caroline Martin, qui dirige depuis 2010 le laboratoire M2S (Mouvement Sport Santé) de Rennes, reconnu mondialement pour ses publications sur la biomécanique du service.

 

Du magnétoscope aux caméras opto-électroniques

La boucle de coup droit, la prise marteau, les appuis en ligne… c’est un tennis très dogmatique et un peu rigide qui a été enseigné pendant des années à des milliers de joueurs. Facile à dire a posteriori, car à l’époque, les entraîneurs disposaient d’outils limités et du genre encombrants : « J’ai voulu analyser en vidéo les retours de service de Yannick parce que c’était une faiblesse chez lui », se souvient en rigolant Patrice Hagelauer, l’entraîneur de Yannick Noah lors de sa victoire à Roland-Garros en 1983. « Je ne vous raconte pas le matos… Il y avait un chariot de supermarché sur lequel on avait une télévision avec un magnétoscope, relié à une grosse caméra. Dès qu’on faisait un ralenti, l’image se brouillait. On a réussi à voir des trucs, mais ce n’était pas simple. » 40 ans plus tard, au laboratoire M2S de Rennes, les joueurs bénéficient d’une analyse du mouvement en trois dimensions et in situ, avec une technologie de pointe. « Notre gymnase est équipé d’une vingtaine de caméras opto-électroniques qui permettent d’enregistrer la position de marqueurs réfléchissants sur le corps des joueurs. Elles sont synchronisées pour reconstituer le mouvement du joueur en 3D. En une seconde la caméra va prendre 300 images. On a aussi un radar, des plateformes pour mesurer les forces de réaction au sol et de l’électromyographie pour les muscles en cas de blessure », énumère Caroline Martin. En 2018, cette ancienne -15 a vu débarquer à la gare de Rennes l’atypique duo formé par Daniil Medvedev et Gilles Cervara. À cette époque, le Russe est aux alentours de la 60^e place mondiale et son nouvel entraîneur français hésite à entamer un chantier technique d’envergure. « J’étais dans une dynamique de réflexion par rapport au service de Daniil. Avec la biomécanique, je voulais valider mes impressions et lui permettre de constater par un moyen plus scientifique ce que je pensais distinguer », a témoigné Gilles Cervara dans l’Equipe. Convaincu par les résultats de l’analyse biomécanique, le duo a finalement opté pour une modification technique, avec le succès que l’on connaît. 

Les chiffres ne mentent pas et c’est pour cette honnêteté sans faille que plus de 150 joueurs de haut niveau sont venus alimenter la base de données de Caroline Martin. « Cela permet au joueur d’être vraiment acteur de sa progression technique. On a aussi parfois l’impression de jouer sur l’aspect mental en les confortant, en leur disant : c’est bon, tu sers bien ! », se félicite-elle. L’autre atout de l’approche biomécanique, et pas des moindres, c’est d’identifier les facteurs de blessure et donc de les prévenir. « Si je sers à 200 km/h, je suis efficace. Mais si je sers à la même vitesse avec un coût énergétique moindre, avec moins de contrainte sur l’épaule, je suis plus efficient. Il y a de très grands serveurs, comme Patrick Rafter, qui ont été très efficaces mais qui en ont payé le prix, avec plusieurs opérations de l’épaule. Grâce au recul des études, on sait comment éviter des rotations trop précoces qui peuvent entraîner des blessures aux abdominaux ou à l’épaule », ajoute Cyril Genevois, qui intervient régulièrement auprès de la fédération internationale pour sensibiliser les entraîneurs à la biomécanique.  

 

La reine de la double faute déchue

La vainqueur de l’Open d’Australie Aryna Sabalenka, elle, a eu recours à la biomécanique pour soigner un mal qui ne touche pas que les joueurs du dimanche : la crise de double faute aiguë. À l’été 2022, elle commet 23… doubles fautes lors de son premier tour (qu’elle remporte quand même !) au tournoi de San José. Découragée, celle qui s’est surnommée avec auto-dérision « la reine de la double faute » décide de faire appel à Gavin MacMillan, un spécialiste américain de la gestuelle, plutôt branché « sports US » (football américain, basket, baseball…). C’est d’ailleurs son expérience du geste du lancer au baseball qui l’a aidé à identifier le problème. « Son bras de lancer s’effondrait après le lancer. Elle aurait pu travailler avec un psychologue pendant 10 ans, ça n’aurait rien changé et je peux le prouver ! », a-t-il affirmé, sûr de lui, dans le podcast « On the line ». En tout cas, la guérison semble en bonne voie : la Biélorusse a remporté 92 % de ses jeux de service lors de son parcours victorieux à Melbourne contre 67 % en moyenne sur la saison 2022. 

 

« On arrive à rentrer dans le subconscient pour modifier le geste »

Si la biomécanique aide à poser un diagnostic, elle n’épargne pas aux joueurs un long travail de répétition à l’entraînement pour intégrer définitivement la modification du geste. Mais là encore, des méthodes innovantes permettent de raccourcir les délais. La technologie « Allyane Sport » intervient auprès des sportifs pour modifier leur gestuelle en quelques séances, grâce à la reprogrammation neuromotrice, une association de sons de basse fréquence et de visualisation. « Avec ces outils, on arrive à rentrer dans le subconscient des gens et à modifier des gestes qui sont automatiques. Nous avons modifié le départ de course de Christine Arron, ou la course du footballeur Ivan Rakitić », se félicite Paul Dorochenko qui fut, entre autres, l’ostéopathe de Roger Federer, avant de se consacrer à cette méthode. En 2021, il a rendu visite à Caroline Garcia dans son camp de base espagnol, près d’Alicante. « Caroline a un court de tennis juste à côté de son appartement, donc c’était très pratique. On décidait avec son père Louis-Paul d’un ajustement technique. Ensuite on allait dans son appartement, je lui mettais le casque avec les sons de basse fréquence pour faire passer son cerveau en mode alpha et je lui parlais en l’aidant à visualiser la modification, à ancrer le geste. Puis on repartait sur le court et on voyait si ça marchait. On avait notamment travaillé sur le coup droit. Je lui ai fait marquer la balle avec son bras gauche pour augmenter et stabiliser la rotation des épaules », nous raconte Paul Dorochenko, fier d’avoir apporté sa petite contribution aux bons résultats de la n°1 française.

La biomécanique peut-elle amener le tennis dans une nouvelle dimension ? Les progrès technologiques devraient bientôt permettre d’analyser le mouvement des joueurs en compétition, si le règlement l’autorise. Et donc de mesurer les effets de la fatigue sur la performance gestuelle. Imaginer des joueurs ayant accès à leurs propres data biomécaniques en plein match n’a rien de la science-fiction. Une perspective qui n’enchante guère les puristes et qui interroge sur les conséquences d’un tennis « augmenté ». Toujours plus loin, toujours plus fort, le progrès scientifique est-il la condition du bonheur tennistique ?
Vous avez quatre heures… 

Caroline Martin : « Le service a atteint une sorte d’optimal technique. »

Spécialiste de la biomécanique du service, Caroline Martin n’imagine pas une nouvelle révolution technique de ce geste. 

 

Courts : Peut-on imaginer l’invention d’une nouvelle technique révolutionnaire au service ? 

C.M : Honnêtement, pour le service, avec ce règlement et ce matériel, on a atteint une sorte d’optimal technique. S’il y avait un changement réglementaire, comme une seule balle au service ou un filet plus haut, cela pourrait engendrer un changement de technique. La seule révolution qu’on voit actuellement, c’est le service à la cuillère, qui est utilisé de temps en temps contre des joueurs qui se mettent très loin en retour.

 

C : Quid du service façon volleyball, avec prise d’élan et saut en extension ?

C.M : Il y a un joueur américain qui le faisait, Brian Battistone (88^e mondial en double en 2010) avec une raquette double manche. Est-ce l’avenir du tennis ? Je ne pense pas, car les joueurs sont déjà assez grands pour ne pas avoir besoin de décoller aussi haut. C’est un service très énergivore. Ce sont de grosses impulsions et il faut enchaîner derrière. Le rapport coût – bénéfice n’est pas forcément positif.  Si ça avait dû être le futur du tennis, beaucoup de joueurs s’en seraient emparés. 

 

C : Si tous les joueurs consultent des bioméca- niciens, peut-on craindre une uniformisation de la gestuelle ? 

C.M : Non, il n’y a pas d’uniformisation du geste, car on n’essaie pas d’appliquer le même modèle de service à tous les joueurs. Les conseils sont personnalisés, cela dépend des gabarits, des sensations. Il n’y a pas deux services identiques. 

 

Article publié dans COURTS n° 14, printemps 2023.

Un genre de journaliste dans le tennis

Attentif à vos élégantes exigences de lecteurs éclairés, il m’aurait plu, pour satisfaire à la coutume, de commencer ce portrait par la description enlevée du bar d’hôtel où j’aurais rencontré Max Zamora, dorures, moulures et garçons pressés sous leur nœud papillon, m’attardant longuement sur les choix de boisson et autres attributs vestimentaires censés dévoiler par signaux faibles la personnalité du podcasteur attitré de Tennis Legend. Las ! Max vit dans le pays basque, j’étais à Paris dans mon appartement dont l’aménagement intérieur, en plus de ne pas vous intéresser, ne regarde que moi (sachez toutefois que j’ai une appétence pour le formica), je buvais du café passable dans une tasse quelconque et l’entretien d’une heure s’est fait par téléphone, de telle sorte que je n’ai pas la moindre information sur ce que portait ou buvait mon interlocuteur en cette matinée grise, ni d’ailleurs si, chez lui aussi, la matinée était grise. Vous ne me tiendrez – je l’espère – pas rigueur de ces manquements à la mienne, de rigueur, étant entendu que Max s’étant fait un nom dans le monde du tennis par la voie du podcast, il semblait approprié de rendre hommage à son art en procédant de la sorte.

Sa tête, on la connaît, celle d’un jeune trentenaire à barbe de trois semaines et air sympa qu’on pourrait croiser dans un bar du 11^e ou dans un coworking. Sa voix aussi, on la connaît, puisqu’en trois ans il a réalisé pour Tennis Legend 372 entretiens avec des joueurs, des joueuses, d’anciens joueurs et d’anciennes joueuses, des entraîneurs, des préparateurs physiques, des journalistes, des statisticiens, bref avec tout l’écosystème tennis ou presque. 

À tel point qu’il est devenu, pour les fans de tennis que nous sommes (je présume, je présume, mais je doute que vous vous farciriez ces lignes et toutes les digressions dont je me rends coupable si vous n’aviez pas au fond de vous un petit cœur qui bat tennis), la figure incontournable de l’interview tennistique français, une sorte de Nelson Monfort sans oreillette et épargné par la langue de bois d’après match. 

Max Zamora se présente aux autres comme un « genre de journaliste tennis ». Généralement, on lui demande : « Ça veut dire quoi, un genre de journaliste tennis ? », ce à quoi il répond : « Bah, je fais depuis trois ans un podcast dans lequel j’interviewe des joueurs de tennis », et la conclusion naturelle tombe : « Ah ouais, en fait t’es un journaliste tennis. » Si Max a tant de mal à se présenter comme journaliste, c’est qu’il s’interroge encore sur sa légitimité faute d’avoir fait une école dédiée. C’est la passion qui l’a amené où il est. 

Max et moi avons à peu près le même âge. Nous avons vu les mêmes matchs, été marqués enfants par les mêmes joueurs, Coria, Gaudio, Clément, Roddick, Safin, Kuerten… Mais lui, quand il était jeune, s’imaginait d’abord à leur place. Son rêve aurait été d’être pro, mais il s’est réveillé zéro à 20 ans. Toute son adolescence, il était habité. Son plus grand traumatisme a été l’arrêt de la publication du DVD de Roland-Garros commenté par Lionel Chamoulaud. Habité, je vous dis. 

Et une page se tourna. Selon Max, le Big Three était trop bourratif pour le maintenir en appétit, ce à quoi j’ajouterais (rappelons qu’on a le même âge) qu’il en est de Star Wars, des Lego et du tennis comme de toutes les passions d’enfance : on a tendance à s’en défaire au sortir de l’adolescence pour mieux y revenir plus tard. Et comme l’appli Livescore traîne toujours en tâche de fond, ce n’est pas bien difficile de raccrocher les wagons. Encore que, pendant des années, le tennis a été le parent pauvre de l’information sportive. So Foot existe depuis 2003, les Cahiers du football n’en parlons pas, j’en passe et des meilleurs. Mais pour des infos tennis, il fallait attendre la période de Roland-Garros pour voir les médias faire caisse de résonance. 

Jusqu’à ce qu’en 2009, Johan Le Mestre et Alexandre Sokolowski décident de créer un blog, Tennis Legend, pour faire vivre leur passion et puis la partager un peu. Le blog est devenu page Facebook, a engrangé des visiteurs, s’est petit à petit fait un nom. En 2014, Max contacte Johan pour lui proposer de réaliser des interviews sur le tournoi de Marseille. Johan fait preuve d’un grand enthousiasme : « Bah, envoie et on verra bien ». Max se motive, réalise ses interviews, trouve le contenu nul et n’envoie rien. Acte 1 d’une rencontre avortée. 

L’acte 2 aura lieu six ans plus tard, en 2020. Occupé à s’ennuyer dans la gestion d’une conciergerie Airbnb, Max écoute le podcast Échange d’Antoine Benneteau et se dit qu’il y a quelque chose à faire. Il écrit à Johan qui lui propose d’aller déjeuner, on se met d’accord sur le format, tout va bien, puis un laborantin chinois mange un pangolin à la panure de chauve-souris (je n’ai pas le détail des dernières infos sur le processus exact) et on se retrouve avec une épidémie mondiale qui permettra la création de l’auto-autorisation de sortie. Des tennismen coincés chez eux, du temps à revendre : l’occasion rêvée de faire des interviews. 

Et Max s’y met sérieusement. Première interviewée, Ons Jabeur, alors 46^e mondiale et dont la gentillesse lui permettra de nouer énormément de contacts supplémentaires. Max interviewe, Max réécoute, Max monte et Max envoie à Johan. Qui ne répond pas. Toujours pas ? Toujours pas. Tant pis, Max se lance. 

En trois mois, à raison de deux ou trois entretiens par jour et d’un confinement, Max prépare, réalise et monte 107 interviews. Quand il écoute le premier épisode, trois mois après l’avoir reçu, Johan est formel : c’est pas mal. Ouf.

Côté interview, Max apprend sur le tas. D’abord groupie, il s’aguerrit, se paie sans CPF et à la sueur de son front une formation express de journaliste. Car Max est un bosseur. Aujourd’hui encore, il s’astreint à travailler 9 ou 10 heures par jour, ne s’imposant qu’un répit d’une demi-heure pour aller voir l’océan et ainsi éviter de mener une vie par écran interposé. Et comme souvent, le travail paie. 

En quelques mois, l’exposition médiatique de Tennis Legend permet au podcast de trouver son public. Les chiffres d’écoute augmentent, l’audience s’élargit, des badauds se mettent à reconnaître Max dans la rue et le petit miracle du Do it yourself est à l’œuvre. À ceci près que cette activité hautement chronophage et tout aussi édifiante ne rapporte pas un centime. Et que Max n’a pas le chômage.

« Il n’y a pas de problème, il n’y a que des solutions », disait quelqu’un qui n’était manifestement pas confronté à un tigre affamé en pleine jungle. Zoologie sauvage mise à part, l’adage a du bon. Max se creuse la tête et cherche, dans l’éventail des points abordés au cours de son podcast, ceux qui pourraient avoir de la valeur pour les auditeurs. Or, s’il est une chose commune à tous les joueurs, quel que soit leur niveau, quel que soit leur désir de progresser et quelle que soit leur raquette, c’est bien d’être frustrés par leur incapacité chronique à reproduire en match ce qu’ils produisent à l’entraînement. Bingo.

Car au fil des entretiens que Max mène, c’est un petit traité de préparation mentale qui se compose. Santoro, Sam Sumyk, Fabrice Sbarro : tous apportent des réponses qui, mises bout à bout, peuvent aider l’intégralité des joueurs. En s’appuyant sur son carnet d’adresse et sur la convivialité créée avec celles et ceux qu’il interviewe, Max se met à proposer des master class payantes. Et comme on a rarement deux fois l’opportunité de recevoir des conseils personnalisés de Sam Sumyk, les gens s’inscrivent.

Un peu d’air financier et de quoi se détendre sur le court. Invité par Stéphane Houdet à découvrir le tennis fauteuil sur le court devant une caméra, Max réalise que le format pourrait se décliner en vidéo avec d’autres joueurs et d’autres joueuses. J’irai jouer avec est né et, là encore, c’est en se rappelant au (bon) souvenir de celles et ceux avec qui il s’est entretenu que Max lance le format. Leconte, Santoro, Clément, Bahrami répondent présents : et voilà Max, redescendu honnête joueur de troisième série, qui croise le fer avec les stars de son enfance. 

Le format vidéo attire les marques et, peu à peu, Max réussit à nouer des partenariats avec elles pour compléter ses revenus. La boutique tourne. La balle aussi. 

Mais pour faire tourner la balle, encore faut-il s’entretenir. De peur d’être ridicule, Max se remet à jouer régulièrement, puis goûte à nouveau à la compétition, jusqu’à remonter deuxième série. Le but n’est pas d’aller plus loin, déjà parce qu’à chacun son métier, mais aussi parce que d’anciens joueurs à court de forme pourraient être effrayés d’aller jouer avec un négatif. Ne pas trop la ramener, mettre les autres en valeur : si ce n’est pas du journalisme, ça ! 

Une chose en amenant une autre, les pros, en plus de répondre à ses questions et de lui renvoyer la balle, écoutent son podcast. De quoi, comme Max plus souvent qu’à son tour, dire « yes » ou « vamos » ? 

Devenu incontournable dans un milieu qu’il rêvait de pénétrer depuis l’enfance, Max Zamora ne prend pour autant pas le temps de respirer et de profiter. Suivant un conseil de Benoît Maylin, il veut encore pousser les curseurs, aller plus loin. Plus loin, à 17’000 kilomètres ? C’est ce qu’il a parcouru pour rejoindre Melbourne en début d’année, où il a suivi et exposé les jeunes joueurs et joueuses de l’écurie Edge. Une chance inouïe, bien sûr, qu’il doit aussi à sa capacité hors-norme à donner de la visibilité à un sport souvent décrit en perte de vitesse. 

Car Max est un vrai passionné de tennis. Le doux bruit d’une frappe de mule dans les allées des courts annexes de l’Open d’Australie suffit à lui donner le sourire. Et c’est encore mieux quand, par son partenariat avec Edge, il connaît les filles à l’origine des frappes et vit avec elles, auprès de leurs proches et de leur famille, leur ascension vers les sommets. 

À chacun les siens. Max, lui, se rêverait commentateur à Roland ou à Bercy. Il couvrira cette année Roland-Garros pour France Bleu. Pas mal, pour « un genre de journaliste dans le tennis ». 

 

Article publié dans COURTS n° 14, printemps 2023.

Let Kids Be Kids

Translated by Marc-Woodward-Services.ch

According to Marvel and my 9-year-old nephew, who never misses a Spiderman adventure, we live in a multiverse, a constellation of overlapping universes in which we hobble around without being aware of our parallel lives and without thinking that there are better versions of ourselves in other, happier dimensions. In this infinity of possibilities, there is undoubtedly a planet on which Grigor Dimitrov has reached his full potential; I would even go so far as to say that there is a planet not far from our own on which French tennis players did actually win Grand Slam tournaments. And while I’m at it, I’ll bet my anti-sweat Lycra polo shirt that in some universes, all future tennis champions benefit from a framework that matches their potential from a very young age, with benevolence, commitment and the family environment necessary for the realization of a professional project that seems a bit crazy when you’re still only a child.

In this regard, it’s clear that the only planet whose gravity can be measured on a scale isn’t quite living up to expectations. Regular readers of COURTS Magazine are now familiar with Edge, which allows us to show you the behind-the-scenes of the tennis world and whose cross-functional support model is starting to pay off, as evidenced by the impressive results of the agency’s protégés in the junior category over the years and in the professional ranks today. And guess what, without waiting for the hypothetical convergence of the multiverse, the agency has begun to support young teens and intends to do so until they reach their full potential. When we talk about children, we are talking about families. When we talk about families, we are talking about thoughtfulness. And when we talk about thoughtfulness, it seems we are talking about Edge. 

Detecting Differently

Guillaume Ducruet, agent and manager at Edge on top of being the father of a promising young player, sums up the difficulty inherent in detecting young players: “When recruiting their future players, tennis federations often tend to make their choice based on results. However, at the age of 13 or 14, there are considerable biological differences between young players, especially among boys. Clearly, a 14-year-old boy who is over 6 feet tall and has completed his growth spurt will do very well at his age. However, children with other characteristics who won’t reach their full athletic potential until later shouldn’t be overlooked . Without the expert eye of some technicians, such thinking could have seriously hampered the careers of young players with slow physical maturity, like David Goffin or even Pierre-Hugues Herbert, who took advantage of doubles to climb the rankings as a teenager.”

In Europe, it takes up to 50,000 euros per year to initiate and maintain a path to a serious professional career, a sum that covers travel, equipment and training. It’s therefore necessary to find an entity capable of supporting the family behind the project – a role traditionally assumed by tennis federations, while in Eastern European countries, so-called “private patrons” are often the only solution at hand. The latter, however, expect a return on their investment and don’t hesitate to play hardball to get it. 

The result is three types of profiles among the budding champions and their families: the privileged, like Gulbis, who can afford to finance a crazy project with no certainty of return on investment; the resourceful, like Herbert, who rely on their network to find money from companies, sponsors and communities; and the rest, doomed to give up or forced more or less at gunpoint to pay back the advances they received.

And then, there is Edge: “Our agency works on a long-term basis. We follow the kids from tournament to tournament, we look at all aspects of their game, their fighting spirit, their will, their mental attitude, their technique, their physical characteristics, their behavior off the court, and we meet with the parents… Our willingness to invest financial and human resources as long-term partners is based (if the parents share the same view) on strong convictions. Several experts from the agency, including Rick Macci, are involved in the recruitment process, which can sometimes take over a year. Interestingly, the physical shortcomings of certain young players can lead them to develop eye, motor and endurance skills that they’ll retain even after they have finished growing.”

Unlike other agencies, Edge offers flexible support, much like a foundation. Families aren’t required to pay back the money invested until their children reach their full potential. For example, if a player decides to attend a US College instead of turning Pro, the family doesn’t owe the agency anything. Given the variety of offers, this format, combined with the various support options proposed by Edge, is often very attractive to players and their families alike.

 

Full Accompaniment

The services offered by Edge don’t need to be detailed: Training sessions with Rick Macci in Florida, customized rackets with Dieter Calle, access to statistics with Fabrice Sbarro, accommodation solutions, dedicated fitness trainers, partnerships with tennis federations, training centers around the world, assistance in obtaining visas and wild cards… What makes Edge unique is that all these services are offered to players at a young age, so that they don’t waste time maximizing their potential. The overall concept of the agency is to help these young enthusiasts become strong, very strong indeed. So much so that Rick Macci, after seeing 11-year-old Sofiia Bielinska play and starting to coach her, is now convinced that he hasn’t seen a girl with such potential since the Williams sisters 30 years ago. So let’s have a look at some of her tennis achievements to date…

Family Ties

Sofiia is Ukrainian and the daughter of a former player with a modest professional career. After a promising debut, which included a participation at the age of 10 in the IMG Futures Stars 2021 tournament, where she played Alcaraz in mixed doubles and won in singles against several older competitors, she was offered a typical traditional agency contract. In this case, she would have had to move to the US without speaking a word of English and cut her ties with her mother Olga, a tall order for her. A couple months after turning down that offer, Sofiia had to flee Ukraine to Latvia with her mother, grandmother and dog (only the queen and the little prince were missing) shortly after the Russian invasion, almost destitute.

When Edge was informed of the situation, it agreed to help the family so that the child could continue to practice. Over time, a relationship of friendship and trust developed between the family and the agency, which eventually led to the signing of a partnership with long-term commitments. Last November, Sofiia and her family traveled to Florida, where the little girl participated in the Orange Bowl. Since then, she has been coached daily by Rick Macci himself.

From the end of April, the whole family will be back on the old continent for a few months, to enable Sofiia to participate in the major Tennis Europe tournaments. For reasons of convenience, they’ll stay all together near Bordeaux, on the property of one of Edge’s founding partners.

This family functioning is especially important because caring for young children also means interacting with the families and creating a common bond with them. Daniel-Sacha Fradkoff, co-founder of Edge, explains: “We spend a lot of time with families before making decisions, because we need to be sure that we are working with people who are rational, realistic, reasonable and respectful, whom we call the “ra-re people”. This is a necessity for us as partners, for whom the human aspect of the project is paramount, and for the young players, as it’s a guarantee that they’ll have a balanced life.” 

Of course, it’s in everyone’s interest that parents “behave”. But the idea goes even further as those values should also create a “team spirit” (copyright LinkedIn!). In Florida, Sofiia and her family have shared an apartment with a young Romanian prodigy named David Cercel and his mother Alina, a former professional player herself, current Billy Jean King “Fed” Cup captain and Edge convert. The language barrier and broken English on the Ukrainian side didn’t stop the two families from bonding and the young children from baking together a cake for Rick Macci’s birthday – it seems that sugar is a universal language, even more so than music. This logic of mutual aid is at the heart of the project. It’s of course also about values, but not only. The life of a future professional tennis player is a nomadic one: no fixed school, no real anchor points, friends always far away. Camaraderie is therefore crucial to the well-being of the children, as is the knowledge that their parents are involved in the project.

And the same goes for the parents. This is the case for Theo, the father of little David, who was Simona Halep’s physical trainer for a dozen years until the arrival of Patrick Mouratoglou last summer and who doesn’t hesitate to volunteer to help other young players at Edge each time the opportunity arises.

 

Preventing Parental Loneliness

Accompanying a child on the path to a professional career is sometimes difficult for parents, as it can isolate them socially. When you have to get up early on Sunday morning to take your child to a tournament that’s not close to your home, you cannot accept dinner invitations the night before. Most importantly, it’s a project that you have to have lived through to be able to imagine it, and most people have a misconception about it. Between those who think it’s a parental whim that the child has to put up with and those who see the desire to accompany a passionate child as a sign of pretentiousness, parents can feel cut off. This is why it’s so important to have a strong family unit and to be able to share with others.

This logic of mutual aid is sometimes very evident, as when another young Edge player, 12-year-old Daniil Valter, a Russian living in Serbia, traveled to Romania to participate in a junior tournament. Arriving ten days earlier than planned, he was greeted by the family of his Romanian peer David, with whom he also shares a passion for Lego. Doubles matches, training together with one of the coaches sent by Edge for the occasion, a family life far from his close ones and probably many buildings made of plastic bricks: a certain idea of normalcy and well-being.

Needless to say, for parents and the world climate, there is no Planet B. Coaches come and go, but their child is unique. Once you’ve agreed on a plan, it’s hard to back out without creating the disappointing impression that you’re giving up. But once you know you are part of a community, you see things differently.

A community that rallies around the values of mutual aid and knows that at the end of the day, these children won’t be quite like the others. By traveling, by expressing themselves in different languages, by carrying on their shoulders the success of a project in which their parents have invested time, money and energy, these young players acquire skills that schools don’t offer as part of their civic studies. They learn languages, discover early on the strength of resilience and the taste for effort, determination, detachment, and resourcefulness. These are all adult qualities that are useful in the working world, and that open the doors to some of the most renowned US Colleges and give access to scholarships.

To ensure that the qualities developed early on in life are appropriate for each child, it’s important to involve their respective parents in the process.

Especially since parents are the ones with the Disney+ codes, thanks to which their kids can have fun in the Spiderverse after a hard workout or a winning game. 

And even though they would probably crush any of us on the court, we should never forget that when all is said and done, they are kids after all! Let kids be kids!

1 Editor’s note: COURTS Magazine published an interesting article on this subject using the iconic example of Julien Maigret.

All IN

Translated by Marc Woodward

Like most of you reading these lines, I didn’t embark on a professional tennis career. The reasons? An inability to raise my game, a predisposition to defeat attributable to a faulty mindset and a taste for sauce dishes incompatible with performance. Even in an alternative world, where my rage to win would have prevailed over an attraction for Béarnaise Sauce and where my forehand stance would have been nourished by Prime Rib, nothing says that I would have succeeded in breaking through. This is because, even if you have that little extra something, places are so hard to come by in an increasingly competitive tennis world where only the top 10% benefit from adequate coaching and preparation. Tennis is a struggle for recognition. 

 

The Top Level, an Impossible Equation 

In the same way that it’s difficult to find a home without a job and a job without a home, the professional circuit – because of its international nature – is like an equation with fourteen unknowns for newcomers. How can they manage to earn enough money to finance a strong structure when they precisely need that structure to hopefully join the Top 100 and finally earn money? Twenty Nobel Prize winners in economics, brainstorming behind closed doors, wouldn’t be able to answer this riddle. 

The message regularly heard from tennis connoisseurs is that, at a time when the level is becoming more homogenous than ever, it’s the little streams that make the big rivers. Adequate physical preparation, access to statistics, professional advice on rackets and strings (including the presence of a professional stringer at major events), the possibility of participating in competitions via wild cards, the presence of a coach and a sparring partner during matches, media preparation: so many seemingly insignificant elements that, when put together, make it possible to gain confidence, to participate in more tournaments and, incidentally, to make oneself known and earn a better living. 

So far, only a happy few have been able to benefit from such support. This is especially true in women’s tennis, which is suffering from a lack of appeal that is felt in terms of financial manna. Admittedly, the prize money for the Grand Slams and Masters 1000 tournaments has gradually been brought into line with what the men earn, but it is the tree that hides the forest: aside from the great champions supported by federations or private projects, hunger looms. 

It was time for things to change. And the good news is… they’re changing! 

 Player Incubator 

A new form of player support is emerging. As mentioned in a previous issue of this magazine, the pioneering EDGE agency was born out of an encounter between two entrepreneurial friends, Daniel-Sacha Fradkoff and Clément Ducasse, both tennis enthusiasts, and coach Rick Macci, who is now considered by the viewers who’ve seen King Richard as the greatest American coach “they had never heard of”. 

Macci has always regretted not having a real follow-up in his relationship with the players he helped shape, from the Williams sisters to Kenin, Capriati or Roddick, because he couldn’t leave his Academy to coach in tournaments. Daniel-Sacha and Clément worked with him on a new “all-inclusive” model for player support in which a limited number of young players benefit from all the tools and know-how – both sporting and extra-sporting – they need to reach their full potential. Rick Macci would take care of the tennis side of things, while Daniel-Sacha and Clément would manage the overall structure. The EDGE agency was born. 

 

The Best, Anywhere, Anytime 

Imagine you had to hire an agent to manage the image and sponsorship issues of your players. Imagine you wanted them to be well represented and sign profitable contracts. 2 

Imagine you knew an American lawyer who acted on behalf of the star running back of the Dallas Cowboys, for whom he negotiated a $100 million contract, as well as of Conor McGregor, Mike Tyson and various female stars from Hollywood. It’s likely that you would choose him. That’s what EDGE did when it secured Frank Salzano at the company’s inception in 2018. 

Franck Salzano’s legal expertise and US sponsorship (outside of tennis), combined with Rick Macci’s extensive technical know-how, were a prelude to the arrival as investor and partner of Luca Bassi, Managing Director at Bain Capital in London and one of the best connoisseurs of the sports, technology and media fields. To meet the growing demands of professional tennis, EDGE also on-boarded Fabrice Sbarro, a pioneer in tennis statistics who has been accompanying several ATP and WTA Top 10 players for years. Today, he heads EDGE’s analytics department, which includes two experts in physical preparation. 

The agency also called on Guillaume Ducruet, a former Global Marketing Director of Tecnifibre-Lacoste for over a decade, who brings to the players his technical expertise in rackets and strings, his knowledge of sponsorship and his network in the tennis world. The same goes for Dieter Calle, a racket specialist who adapts the tools of the trade for the players represented by the agency to optimize their racket feel and performance. 

EDGE has also set up an exclusive partnership with one of Europe’s most prestigious clubs, run by a former WTA Top 50 player and her husband (a lawyer who is also serving as Vice President of the German Tennis Federation), to offer players on the Old Continent the equivalent of what the agency proposes in Florida at Rick Macci’s Academy. Not to leave anything to chance, EDGE is even involved in the construction of real-grass courts (similar to those found at Wimbledon) so that its players can prepare for the grass season in the best possible conditions. 

It would be unimaginable for an individual player, a traditional agency or an investor to bring under the same roof all these specific skills. While women’s tennis is becoming more and more professional, it usually boils down to a player-coach hydra where the latter is often the father. But for all his qualities, a father is unlikely to know about the specific physical work involved in tennis, the intricacies of equipment and strings, player and match preparation statistics, and the potential benefits that adapting rackets can bring. Add to that horoscopic views peppered with approximations gleaned here and there, and you can be sure that the player will end up in a dead end where the chances of success are slim. 

This is precisely what makes EDGE so appealing: The agency reinforces the tailor-made package available to players by adding experts whose skills cannot be questioned. No witchcraft, just expertise. And it’s all for nothing – or almost nothing. 

A New Business Model 

EDGE doesn’t charge for these services. On the contrary, the agency provides financial means for each of its players to travel to tournaments and pay their own private coaches, hoping for a potential return on investment by partnering with them. If the agency is successful in helping players get to the top level, it receives a limited share of their earnings when they reach the finals of the biggest tournaments. But not right away, and not if the prize money doesn’t cover the players’ career-related expenses. A business model that is poles apart from the classic representation contracts in which players are only worth what they bring in immediately. A deeply human philosophy. 

For the female players, whose horizons have long been marked by their families, it’s necessary to create the conditions that will allow them to progress by combining human warmth, proximity and excellence. This is another feature of the agency: the managers and experts are dedicated to the players, they know them and take good care of them. 3 

During a tournament where a girl was wearing the wrong shoes because the surface looked to her more like grass than clay, one of EDGE’s founding partners didn’t hesitate to drive hours to bring her one of his own pairs (a miracle of matching sizes). This anecdote speaks volumes about the relationship between the staff and the players. It isn’t uncommon for the latter, and sometimes even their entourage, to spend a few days at the home of one of the managers when the location of a tournament lends itself to such an arrangement. 

Another sign that EDGE is like an ideal family is the absence of any conflict of interest in the players’ results. No misplaced competition, no favoritism. One player’s success benefits everyone by drawing attention to the overall structure. In selecting the players to whom it offers its services, EDGE is of course betting on the future, which is inherently uncertain. Although some players won’t reach the highest level, either because of a change in career path or due to poor results, they won’t have to pay back anything to the agency. 

Paradoxically, this risk doesn’t weaken the overall concept. On the contrary, it strengthens it by allowing each of the champions to flourish in their private and professional lives, at their own pace, without the added pressure of having to return the favor (and the money) if things don’t go as planned. 

 

Statistics and Customization: the Future Is Built on Hard Facts 

Fabrice Sbarro explains it best: 15 years ago, when he started his company as a tennis statistician, his proposal looked a bit like a UFO. Since 2017, things have changed. Today, nearly 25% of all Top 100 players take advantage of analytical tools, which are used both to better understand the opponent’s game and to identify one’s own strengths and weaknesses, away from preconceived notions and magical thinking. 

The strength of data lies in the fact that what they say is “true”, even if analyzing the raw numbers in detail remains essential. Although such tools aren’t yet able to measure the physical effects suffered by the opponent during repeated low-slice hits, they can tell whether these hits have won or lost points. They’re great in helping players get to know themselves better, talk about tactics and progress. Sadly, coaches often neglect this tactical approach and, worse still, base their advice on impressions which numbers could easily contradict. Hence the need to work hand in hand with them, not against them. 

At several hundred dollars for a personalized report, not to mention the cost of an annual subscription, few female players can afford such a service. Yet, EDGE’s young guard can use it for free. A definite advantage over the competition, both in the short and long term. Statistics provide valuable information about each opponent and thus increase the chances of winning; at the same time, they allow for better training and lead to improvement. Like all the other tools, statistics are made available to the players and their coaches to help them better prepare training sessions and matches. A virtuous circle. 

Similarly, the small lead circle that Dieter Calle places on the frame of the EDGE players’ rackets is also virtuous. It’s fascinating to see how a mere tweaking can change the balance of a racket, the resulting ball strike and ultimately the feel of the player. Again, this helps to improve performance and to dispel the magical thoughts that become truths when repeated often enough. 

As Guillaume Ducruet explains, you don’t get more top spin with a head-weighted racket; to get more top spin, the wrist must be able to rotate; and for the wrist to rotate, it must have enough strength to do so quickly. With a heavy frame, the maneuver is more complex. Here, elementary physics is hit hard by biomechanics. 

This customized work on the equipment isn’t just a whim, nor is it simply about optimizing rackets: it allows for physiological and biomechanical work to be done and in turn identifies areas of work that will benefit the players and improve their performance. Not to mention the self-confidence that comes with it. 

Making the Women’s Circuit Attractive Again 

Whether or not people agree on the current level of play in the WTA, the fact remains that Świątek and Sabalenka attract fewer spectators than Alcaraz and Tsitsipas, despite similar rankings. This is due to many factors that have little to do with each other, from media coverage to a style of play which often lacks fantasy and variety, latent sexism, tour leadership… and double faults. 

A global problem which is all the more heartbreaking because the average level today compares favorably with the great hours of Williams-Henin or Graf-Hingis who moved the crowds in the late 1990s, early 2000s. Recently, Sorana Cîrstea confided to a Eurosport journalist that her equipment supplier had said to her that, to “succeed” as a tennis player, it was better to be pretty and ranked #20 in the world than ugly and ranked #1… 

But let’s talk about tennis! The EDGE model is based on the idea of striking the right balance in the 360-degree support it provides. First of all, the diversity of profiles: The players who’ve joined EDGE come from all walks of life and all countries. This obviously implies working on their image, without any concealment, by emphasizing their story and background, and by providing more interesting date than those dished out during the traditional macho-plastic presentations. It’s also necessary to work on the players’ specific game, so that their personalities can express themselves on and off the court. 

With this in mind, EDGE has set up a partnership with the Tennis Legend media and Max Zamora, whose podcast is well-known to tennis fans, to allow them to follow the behind-the-scenes careers of their idols. This challenges the cliché of the successful Eastern European player who just plays hard without thinking. It’s a comprehensive effort to prepare for long-term careers, which encompasses the entire life of the player and requires both care and respect. 

To promote women’s tennis in general and its protégées in particular, EDGE has also joined forces with Noah Media, an award-winning production company specialized in sports documentaries (including 14 Peaks, Arsène Wenger: Invincible and others on Manchester United or Formula 1, produced for Netflix, Amazon, the BBC, Canal+, FIFA or the IOC). Noah Media has been following several of the agency’s players on and off the court since early 2022 as part of a documentary series for one of the biggest streaming platforms. 

While costly, all this cocooning yields undeniable results, as EDGE can attest. Elli Mandlik, the daughter of Hana Mandlíková (a Grand Slam laureate as a player and then as a coach), has progressed from WTA #500 to #120 in 2022, beating Top 25 players at major tournaments and coming within two points of victory against the world #3. Petra Marčinko, who became the world #1 junior at age 15 towards the end of 2021, was the first-ever player to win the Orange Bowl in both singles and doubles. She followed that up with an Australian Open junior title and victories against Top 100 players, before winning the Poitiers ITF in late 2022. She was the first girl to be victorious in an ITF 80k tournament in her age bracket for over four years. 

Kristina Dmitruk was the world #2 junior at the end of 2021 and won Wimbledon in the girls’ doubles, before reaching the US Open final in singles. Alycia Parks, who claimed her first WTA 500 doubles title, is now ranked in the Top 75 in singles after beating Karolina Plíšková (former world #1) and Sakkari in consecutive rounds, prior to winning two of the last three WTA tournaments of 2022 in a row. 

Although many other examples of success could be quoted here, it’s important to mention that the fifteen girls backed by EDGE (aged between 15 and 21) have all made steady progress since joining the team. 

In the NBA, the Los Angeles Lakers won everything in sight during their “showtime” era. It would seem that history is repeating itself. 

Machine Maintenance

To be in good health, it is necessary not only to eat 5 fruit and vegetables a day, but it is also necessary to exercise. Tennis players, used to forehands blasted into the fence netting, know it and suffer from it—gasping for breath after a rally of at least four hits; but even those who always hit the line and are not in favour of the recovery position, those who watch their ranking live from the FFT or LTA website, those who dream of the Futures tour while preventing themselves from dreaming beyond, all these also feel that sport, which is meant to keep them in shape, paradoxically erodes their machine. Any body submerged in a liquid undergoes a vertical surge towards the height equal to the weight of the volume of liquid displaced. To expand on Archimedes, I will add that a body submerged more often than its built for in a streaming sweat undergoes a surge of ageing that it could do without.

For an athlete, the first phase of preparation consists of sculpting their body by mixing proteins and vitamins which build up muscle mass. But during all their preparation, athletes, even amateurs, need to increase their nutriments for maintaining the cogs of their machine. Without health, no performance. And without performance, hello broken rackets.

Because they breathe, athletes oxidize. Because they oxidize, tennis players damage their joints, their muscles, their tendons, their ligaments. Even their intestines are harmed when the ordeal of training is prolonged.

Whether it displeases grizzled actors or not being invited to rake over their careers in tell-all interviews, no one enjoys ageing, especially when before even taking a step on court you already ache all over. To protect oneself against the dreadful effects of intensive sport, it is necessary to arm yourself with tools other than perseverance. Hence the interest in turning to dietary supplements in order to look after one’s body and improve one’s performances without stuffing oneself with fatty acids.

The Aminoscience range from NHCO Nutrition has been created with this in mind. These dietary supplements are easily worked into a tennis player’s day to day and permit them to concentrate on their backhand slice and kick serve without compromising their future. There are four supplements with differing benefits—the object is to improve the immunity of the athlete and to deliver all of the nutriments, vitamins and antioxidants required by the perpetual demands of physical intensity.

Defending oneself against oxidation

It was once custom to guarantee the quality of antioxidants by always selecting the same ones. Now when fruit and vegetables contain less antioxidants than in the past, it is advised to diversify one’s input in order to counter the oxidative stress. With its 25 active ingredients, the NucléOx brings the equivalent in primary and secondary antioxidants of more than two portions of fresh fruit and vegetables. It has the ability to help repair microlesions and to support optimal cellular protection. The NucléOx contains in addition a patented ingredient, Polyphenox, which contains numerous polyphenols.

It is recommended to consume NucléOx in courses of two months, especially during periods when the athlete is training and competing heavily.

 

Stockpiling energy

The image of a tennis player consuming a plate of pasta before the match and a banana when switching ends won’t disappear soon, but one can’t extrapolate a healthy regime from this picture. Slow release sugars don’t do everything in the struggle to maintain performance. Given that athletes sweat heavily, more or less, they release through their pores numerous micronutrients. One realises the importance of what one has when it is gone: a super tie break, without micronutrients, is a super tie-break that one is likely to lose.

It is here that Orthosamine intervenes. A cocktail composed of 31 active ingredients, which boasts minerals, essential amino acids and natural vitamins, all guarantee a supply of energy during the match, even when forced to battle far from the baseline. Orthosamine can be taken for a maximum of two months, including while the athlete does not compete.

Looking after the joints, tendons and ligaments

Let’s confess, if one removes the racket and the ball from a tennis player on a court, they will appear a little silly, repeatedly doing short but strenuous runs, repetitive forehands and backhands, forcing an invisible ball to rebound before serving twice. Our joints, though, hate the repetition and brutality. There are those joints which suffer the most from tennis practice, those which are the most likely to halt our play, more so than our muscles that we look after with a lot of warming up and massage, done more or less intuitively to soothe our aches.

In order to give back to our joints, our tendons, our cartilages and our ligaments, the support that they deserve, the NHCO nutrition laboratories propose Collax-Sil, a formula containing notably collagen and its precursors, which is taken over a period of up to three months to prepare for tournaments. In all likelihood, your joints will thank you. Nevertheless, if you hear your joints literally thanking you—your knee bursting into heartfelt gratitude, for example—then please consult your doctor.

 

After effort, comfort

Athletes tend to fall into self-soothing routines, after all their effort, which then tend to ignore the part of the system that suffers. Because the body is tired, it is more likely to fall ill just after a match. In order to avoid illness, one must support the immune system and defence cells. Endomune, created by the NHCO Nutrition Laboratories, acts in this way via four targeted effects. The first stimulates the immune system mostly thanks to echinacea. The second effect restores energy and vitality, which is down to ginseng and eleuthero. The third makes it possible to bolster the immune system through green tea. Finally the last effect of Engimune acts on tiredness through the help of vitamin C.

NHCO Nutrition Laboratories recommend taking Endomune to support one’s immune defence system 15 days a month during winter. From the first symptoms, whatever they are, Endomune will go to work by supporting health and fitness. 

In the same way that a jammed ball machine is not very useful, a body, tired by sport, will not return balls satisfactorily. Outside physical health, there is also mental health—the susceptibility to frustration—which one can protect by taking dietary supplements. This will prolong the life of rackets. In a sport where there is always a winner and a loser, here is an opportunity to win on all fronts.

Stan Smith

The Tennis Ambassador

On tour with Arthur Ashe in the 1960s, Smith advocated for tennis in Africa and beyond.
A new film highlights his role in ground-breaking social and athletic change.

A picture is worth 1,000 words, or so say most filmmakers. In this case, one particular 1968 photograph by renowned sports photojournalist John Zimmerman explains many things about the renowned tennis champion Stan Smith.

Smith and his close friend, Arthur Ashe had just arrived in Las Vegas, Nevada and while both waited by the Hertz Rental Car stand with their luggage, a porter appeared. Off to the side, the ramrod straight, towering Army-Lieutenant-turned-unlikely-activist-icon dressed in a porkpie hat and sport coat holds four or five wooden tennis racquets for Ashe. But the porter — and most  of the other people the pair came across in the countries they visited for a U.S. State Department tour — thought that Smith, by then a US Open and Wimbledon champion, had come along as Ashe’s “caddie.”

“When we went to Africa, I was the other guy who played against Ashe in all these exhibitions,” said Smith, who was ranked No. 1 in the U.S. at the time. “They would introduce him as Arthur Ashe, No. 1 player in the U.S., No. 1 in the world, one of the greatest players to ever play the game … and Stan Smith, his opponent.

“Arthur came up to me and said, ‘I’m sorry about that. If we do a tour of Alabama, I’ll carry your rackets for you,’” Smith added. “He was in tune with everything.”

Even though Horst Dassler, the founding chairman of Adidas, had a vision of Smith as the ultimate player — and less the sidekick (pardon the shoe pun) — few really know Smith, the man the classic green-and-white shoes forever bearing his face and name. A new documentary, “Who is Stan Smith?” produced by Lebron James and Maverick Carter’s Spring Hill Company, aims to delve into the long, illustrious life of the famously understated, unassuming “regular guy” from Pasadena, California, who somehow found himself on the front lines of the Civil Rights movement with Ashe, the Vietnam War through this work with the United Service Organizations (USO) and lastly, the players movement to found the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) — also known as the modern pro tour. 

“I always had an interest in trying to improve mankind,” Smith said via Zoom interview from his home near Hilton Head, South Carolina. “And it’s always been an interest of mine to get people playing — the World Cup is on right now, and many people don’t realize that tennis is right behind soccer in global popularity. 

“All you need is a court to play on and a few balls —Arthur and I did those tours as a way of proving that. But going to Africa and to China and to Vietnam was an eye-opener for me, and I really came to appreciate all people there, from the military to the civilians to the aid workers and I wanted to do more.”

Directed by Danny Lee, “Who is Stan Smith?” premiered at the IFC Center in New York in November and will turn up on ESPN sometime this spring. Interviews with Smith, along with his family and friends, as well as never-before-seen footage follow the tennis journeyman from youth to college tennis, to the Grand Slams to the International Tennis Hall of Fame — as an inductee and later president — and his “retirement” at the Smith Stearns Tennis Academy in North Carolina, which has turned out sectional, national, and international and college tennis title-holders since TK. The film also touches on Smith’s previously unknown humanitarian efforts, including his family’s adoption of Mark Mathabane, a young student and tennis player whom Smith and his wife, Marjory Gengler Smith, helped escape from apartheid in South Africa.

“During the pandemic, I had picked up tennis right away, so when I was offered the chance to direct the film, my eyes popped out of my head” says Lee, whose previous documentaries delve into subcultures, such as electronic music, skateboarding and former NBA players who become fathers to NBA players. “My take very simple: unpack the mythology — his is the name on the sneaker but what is the story behind it?

“It was initiation going to be just a sports biopic, like who is Jordan behind his shoe? But it became a story about this obsessive athlete determined to be the best in the world and in the course of that, stumbled upon his own humanity and the lesson he learned: being the best is great and but doing good leaves a more lasting legacy.” 

But first, the story of the shoe. After coaching Smith at University of Southern California and helming the U.S. Davis Cup team on which Smith played, Donald Dell became the agent of Smith and a number of his contemporaries, including Ashe, Jimmy Connors, and Ivan Lendl. Eager to expand Adidas “beyond France, especially to the United States,” according to Smith, Dassler snagged Dell during the 1971 French Open and the three men met at a Parisian nightclub, Elle et Lui in Montparnasse. Among cabaret singers and women dressed as male waiters, Dassler suggested that Smith wear the now classic shoe, only that, at the time, it carried the name of Robert Haillet, a very popular former French No. 1. “Horst suggested that I start wearing the shoe while they initiated a slow change. Robert’s name would remain on the heel while mine would be on the side.” Smith agreed, but the deal wouldn’t do for Dell. Within the year, Smith’s face and signature was added to the tongue of the shoe and Haillet’s connection to it was completely dropped. 

By the mid-1970s, the Stan Smiths had arrived on courts, in sporting goods stores around the world and on the feet of celebrities such as David Bowie, John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Damon Albarn, the members of New Order and Naomi Campbell.  “One of the few disappointments in my tennis career were my big size 13 feet — yet the shoe I eventually wrapped around them enabled me to become better known than I have ever envisaged,” wrote smith in his 2018 book, Some People Think I’m a Shoe.  While for Smith, the shoe has been a definitely been a blessing, sometimes it could be a bit of a curse. Billie Jean King had a shoe — a royal blue suede Adidas flat sole — as did Arthur Ashe (as version of the Stan Smith), but none have ever been as popular or immortal as the Stan Smiths. “I had a racquet for about 10 years with my name on it, then the non-wood racquet came along…,” Smith mused. “The shoe was a great opportunity for me at the time, but first of all, when you do these things, you have to realize that whatever comes of it, you are not in control. Whatever happens, happens. Maybe people remember you, maybe they just remember your shoes.

“A few years back, I was doing a clinic for some 12- to 13-year-old kids  and used Bjorn Borg, as an example as a player. At the time ,I thought people who know who he was, but unless a young person was into tennis history, they wouldn’t necessarily know Borg was or I was or anyone else of that era. It doesn’t bother me anymore: I don’t have a huge ego. I just try to do as much as I can to help people.” 

Now the story of the first “Stan the man” (hint: not Stanislas Wawrinka). Although Smith’s father worked as a tennis coach in the LA suburb of Pasadena, he “did not take to tennis immediately,” Smith said. Rather, he played basketball. Makes sense. Smith is still six feet, four inches tall, even at age 78. But after switching gears, he volunteered as a ball boy at the LA Tennis Club for a Davis Cup match and… was rejected. “I was, apparently, too awkward and  clumsy,” he said. So smith started jumping rope for ten minutes a day and out of the blue, won a sanctioned tournament and caught the eye of the Pasadena Tennis Patrons, a community tennis organization that helped promising juniors with coaching from Pancho Segura travel fees, kits and other expenses. After winning the U.S. National Junior title in Kalamazoo, Michigan, Smith was on his way.

Wikipedia can provide the titles the details, but after four years at USC, Smith hit the tour. “I heard Ken Rosewall… saying in an interview (during the 1970 Tokyo Masters) that he considered me one of the favorites for the title,” Smith recalled in Some People Think I’m a Shoe. “That gave me a big boost and I went out and proved him right by beating him.” That, and ten thousand Japanese people singing Happy Birthday put Smith, but “less gratifying” was the notice he received to report for the draft in LA the next day. “I played a lot of tennis in the Army and was given special dispensation to represent the United States in the Davis Cup.” 

Smith beat the combustible Ilie Nastase — nicknamed “Nasty” by the U.S. coterie — for a Wimbledon singles title in 1972, and he and former USC teammate Bob Lutz dominated the storied tournament in doubles, winning in 1972, ’74, ’80 and ’81.In 1973, he came to Wimbledon as the defending champion, yet he joined 80 other men in boycotting the event to stand in solidarity with Niki Pilic, who had been banned by the Yugoslavian Tennis Association — and subsequently the AELTC — for not playing Davis Cup. And while he could play the straight man — the guy who never rumbled the status quo — Smith eventually broke with his brothers in arms to change the way tennis was played in the late 1960s.

But two seminal events changed Smith’s life: his tour of Africa with Arthur Ashe and Ashe’s death in 1994. In June 1968 at the Queens Club outside London, Arthur Ashe attended a meeting of top players to discuss the formation of the ATP. There, Cliff Drysdale mentioned that Johannesburg wanted to host a “South African Open”. He then turned to Ashe and stated, “They’d never let you play,” meaning that the apartheid government would never grant Ashe a visa. Ashe nonetheless mailed in South African visa applications for 1969 and 1970, which South African Prime Minister John Vorster promptly rejected. In response, Ashe hit the road. For 18 days in 1971, he and Smith went on a 2,500-mile tennis expedition of six African countries — Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia, Uganda, Nigeria and Ghana — giving tennis clinics, granting interviews and playing exhibition matches. 

On a return trip in 1977, Stan and his wife, Margie, met Mark Mathabane, a young tennis player born to a life of poverty, racism, abuse and little hope in apartheid  South Africa. At age six, Mathabane joined his first gang and by ten, he was on the brink of suicide. The Smiths took in Mathabane and helped him gain a tennis scholarship to Limestone College in South Carolina. “When I met Stan… I was filled with hatred for white people because of the life I had led under racism and oppression,” Mathabane said.  “Stan had the uncanny ability to spontaneously relate to anyone… his sneaker was the perfect metaphor for enabling those to walk in the shoes of anyone they met .” Mathabane went on to be a successful author writing his first book, Kaffir Boy, an autobiography in 1986. He and his wife had three children — the youngest one named Stanley — all of whom attended Margie’s alma mater, Princeton University. 

Losing Ashe to AIDS in 1993, however, probably had the greatest effect on Smith’s own life. “I keep thinking what would it be like if Arthur was here today. He had strong opinions and he had to walk a tightrope; he could be considered an Uncle Tom by the public, but he was always well-respected and popular with tennis players,” Smith said.  “In his last years, Arthur has a t-shirt that said “Citizen of the World” and he was campaigning until the end. 

“I think that if his heart problems ad happened just a bit later and even if he would have contracted HIV, he would be able to handle it — there would be some medicines that could have helped and he would have done some amazing things.” 

But Ashe’s death has given Smith a mandate to live to the fullest, the filmmaker said. “Stan’s storyline is chock full of events and condensing the timeline and tracking the shoe inside the career then making them converge was a challenge,” Lee said. “But his humanitarian efforts were never a checkbox or talking point, but rather an organic pillar to his story.

The shoes reflect that, as well. In 50 years, Stan Smiths have come in a LGBT version, a vegan edition, a Paul Smith—Manchester United specialty shoe, Stella McCartney and Moana (for the kids) styles. Smith is often game to go to a Ballenciaga or a Gucci or a Pharrell Williams runway show, but he doesn’t collect them like some fans.

“A friend of mine called the other day and told me he had just picked up his 350^th pair,” Smith said. “I only have about 130.”

Breaking Barriers

Beyond Tennis’ Color Line

An exhibit highlights the association that helped make Arthur and Althea household names

In 1944, two Black physicians, Dr. R. Walter Johnson and Dr. Hubert Eaton, watched a street-wise Althea Gibson lose the junior Girls ATA (American Tennis Association) championship title to another young Black girl named Matilda Peters. The score was 6-4, 7-9, 6-3. Matilda, who with her sister, Margaret, were affectionately known as D.C. dynamic duo “Pete” and “Repeat” Peters, had taken Black women’s tennis to new heights from their local Georgetown courts. 

But after the match, the doctors, who would go on to train and elevate the career of Arthur Ashe, offered Gibson a chance to train in Wilmington, NC during the school year and tour the ATA tournaments in the summer. Three years later, Gibson won the ATA Women’s Singles Championship — the first of her 10 consecutive ATA National titles, which she gained alongside her Grand Slams. Meanwhile, the Peters sisters were recruited by the Tuskegee Institute to play basketball and tennis. 

After graduating with degrees in physical education, both sisters went on to New York University for graduate school. The continued to compete in ATA tournaments. But by the time Gibson integrated tennis, the Peters were considered too old to compete. Each sister contributed to the advancement of Black advancement of tennis, however, in her own way, especially Matilda, who taught physical education at Howard University in the 1950s and tennis to underprivileged children through the D.C. Department of Recreation.

“”I knew that Venus and Serena were not the first successful Black female tennis players,” said Camille Riggs Mosley. “They stand on the shoulders of great people…Althea Gibson and Arthur Ashe were great because somebody enabled them to be there. They didn’t create the game; they stood on the shoulders of others.”

Although Althea Gibson officially integrated tennis at the U.S. National Championships at the West Side Tennis Club in 1950, just as every institution in post-Reconstruction/Jim Crow America, the United States Lawn Tennis Association (USLTA) — the precursor to the USTA — had a parallel Black organization: the American Tennis Association (ATA). Set up in 1916 with the union of three smaller Black tennis clubs, the ATA held its first ATA National Championships in 1917 and since then, it has been the premiere institution for promoting the sport to minorities in the U.S. The online exhibit Breaking Boundaries in Black Tennis at the International Tennis Hall of Fame (ITHF) in Newport, Rhode Island, tells the story of the ATA, as well as the worldwide effort of Blacks to play tennis, with a focus on the individual stories and successes of the first Black athletes who blazed a trail for the champions of today. 

Battling for Acceptance

In post-Reconstruction, if freedmen and former slaves playing wasn’t lampooned, it was generally ignored. Prior to the Open Era, local and state ATA tournaments results went largely unreported in the white press. Rather, the Black newspapers, such as the Pittsburgh Courier, the New York Amsterdam News and the Chicago Defender put tennis tournament results on their front pages — a section that might place an article detailing lynchings, burnings and the activities of the Ku Klux Klan alongside such achievements.

Blacks also still took significant abuse from the white public for trying to play tennis, considered an elite spot. In 1885, Currier & Ives, a high-end printmaking business, distributed lithographs that perpetuated racial stereotypes regarding Blacks plating tennis: that Blacks possessed speed and strength, but lacked the coordination and intelligence to master the “skill” sports. 

Yet, Blacks kept coming to Black tennis clubs, such as the Chautauqua Tennis Club in Philadelphia (established in 1890), and others throughout the Northeast, and they excelled at the sport. At the inaugural ATA Tournament in Baltimore’s Druid Hill Park in 1917, 39 competitors came from thirty-three different Black clubs across the country to rally, volley, chip and charge for the title. Tally Holmes, a 1910 graduate of Dartmouth College, became the first ATA Men’s Singles Champion and teamed with Sylvester Smith to win the Men’s Doubles title. A native of Washington, D.C., Holmes would win the championship four times and claim the doubles crown eight more times. That same year, Lucy Diggs Slowe at age 32 captured the Women’s Singles event, thereby becoming the first Black woman to hold a national championship in any sport. 

The ATA’s Wunderkind

The first steps toward the integration of tennis took place in 1929, when Reginald Weir, the tennis captain at City College of New York, and Gerald Norman, Jr., a high school champion, paid to enter the 1929 USLTA Junior Indoor Championships at the Park Avenue Armory on New York’s Upper East Side. When they showed up, the USLTA denied them spots in the draw, giving the NAACP a chance to file a formal grievance against the USLTA. The governing body of tennis was forced to publicly defend its policy of denying Black players the opportunity to compete in its tournaments.

But that didn’t stop Black players from setting world records. One of the ATA’s early female standouts, Ora Washington, had the height and reach to tame opponents into submission, and could chip and chop at the ball until it landed where she aimed. After starting her athletic career as a center for the Philadelphia Tribunes basketball team, Washington won more than 20 ATA titles during her two-decade career on the court, even beating Althea Gibson’s record. “She was nice, but she was mean on the courts,” said fellow player Robert Ryland, the first Black man to play professional tennis and coach Arthur Ashe. He claimed that Washington was one of the best players who ever lived,

Likewise, before Arthur Ashe, there was Bob Ryland. Learning tennis at an early age from and “Mother” Seames, as the matron of  Chicago’s all-Black Prairie Tennis Club was known, Ryland won the Illinois state high school championship in 1939, beating Jimmy Evert, Chris Evert’s father. He went on to Wayne State University in Detroit where he and Delbert Russell, would become the first Black men to play in the NCAA tournament, advancing to the quarterfinals in 1945. Ryland turned pro in 1959, joining Jack March’s professional tour which included Pancho Gonzalez, Lew Hoad, Bobby Riggs, Pancho Segura and Don Budge.

Finally, after 23 years of “separate but equal” tennis tournaments, on July 29, 1940, at Harlem’s Cosmopolitan Club — the new ATA headquarters — U.S. National and Wimbledon champion Don Budge played an exhibition singles match against Jimmie McDaniel, the ATA champion and possibly the best Black player at the time, in front of a crowd of 2,000 people. Budge ultimately won (6-1, 6-2), but the tennis world would be forever transformed. “Jimmie is a very good player. I’d say he’d rank in the first 10 of our white players,” Budge said. “And with some more practice against players like me, maybe someday he could beat all of them.”

Four years later, two Black physicians, Dr. R. Walter Johnson and Dr. Hubert Eaton, set their aim on Budge’s divination. Although they watched Gibson lose the junior Girls ATA championship title to Matilda Peters, they offered Althea Gibson a chance to train with Eaton in Wilmington, NC during the school year and tour the ATA tournaments with Johnson in the summer. Three years later, Gibson won the ATA Women’s Singles Championship — the first of her 10 consecutive ATA National titles, which she gained alongside her Grand Slams.

One of the ATA’s early female standouts, Ora Washington, had the height and reach to beat Gibson and all of her opponents, but had to choose between an athletic career in tennis or in basketball. Despite playing as center for the Philadelphia Tribunes basketball team,  Washington won more than 20 ATA titles during her two-decade career on the court. Yet, in 1956, Gibson turned up at the French National Women’s Singles Championships and made history by becoming the first Black person to win a Grand Slam. A month later, Gibson teamed with Angela Buxton to become the first Black person to win a Wimbledon Championship title in women’s doubles. She reached the U.S. National Women’s Singles Championship at the West Side Tennis Club in Forest Hills in the fall, but fell to Shirley Fry. However, Gibson left Forest Hills, increased her training and came back the following year to dominates the U.S. National Championships, taking home both a Women’s Singles and Mixed Doubles trophy. She would ultimately win five Grand Slam singles titles and five women’s doubles titles.

Gibson, who was born in 1927, had her entire career before her, while Washington —28 years Gibson’s senior — was winding down hers. Before leaving the game, Washington reportedly challenged Helen Wills Moody to a historic exhibition match. Moody never replied. History left undone, Washington spent her post-tennis life working as a maid in Germantown, Pennsylvania, leaving Gibson to take up the Black mantle. Their memorials reflect the historic weight given to each: Gibson has a statue outside Ashe Stadium at the USTA Billie Jean King Tennis Center in New York, while a statue inspired by Washington went up in Philadelphia’s Fairmount Park in 2019.

By the early 60s, another named would dominate Black tennis: Arthur Ashe. By 1960, Ashe had climbed his way to the top of the ATA and won a scholarship to UCLA thanks to the patronage of Althea Gibson’s own benefactor, Dr. R. Walter Johnson. The “it” factor for Johnson: Ashe’s coolness in the face of defeat. Routinely trounced on “Dr. J”’s backyard court by older players, Ashe would come out of each encounter losing by a lesser margin than before. His body soon caught up with his mental game and at UCLA, Ashe became the first Black man to join the U.S. Davis Cup team. In 1965, he won both the NCAA singles and doubles titles, while leading UCLA to the NCAA team championship. Ashe would win three Grand Slam singles titles and two doubles titles in his career.

Tennis’ Civil Rights Movement

Through the 1970s, Ashe continued to blaze a trail through the tennis world, integrating the South African Open and attempting to set up a professional tennis tour in sub-Saharan Africa. While touring on an exhibition in 1971, he also discovered 11-year-old Yannick Noah who would become a French Grand Slam champion. By then, Gibson had long left the tennis scene. In 1958, she realized that “when I looked around me, I saw that white tennis players, some of whom I had thrashed on the court, were picking up offers and invitations,” she wrote in her first memoir, I Always Wanted to Be Somebody. “Suddenly it dawned on me that my triumphs had not destroyed the racial barriers once and for all, as I had — perhaps naively — hoped. Or if I did destroy them, they had been erected behind me again,” Gibson repeatedly applied for membership in the All-England Club, based on her status as a Wimbledon champion, but was never accepted.

It would be 20 years before another Black female player to follow in Gibson’s footsteps. In 1981, Leslie Allen, an ATA champion from Cleveland, Ohio, joined the University of Southern California’s (USC) tennis team as a walk-on in her junior year and played No. 6 on its 1976 championship team. She went on to reach a career high ranking of No. 17 in the world in February 1981 and became the first Black woman to win a significant pro tennis tournament since Althea Gibson.

In 1986 Lori McNeil and Zina Garrison made tennis history during the Eckerd Tennis Open when they become the first two Black players to meet in the championship match of a major professional tennis tournament. McNeil prevailed 2-6, 7-5, 6-2, but Black women in the U.S. had already become a force. Garrison and McNeil — joined by Katrina Adams and Chandra Rubin — would spend the next four years trading historical milestones on the women’s tour, with Garrison becoming the first Black woman since Gibson to reach the finals at Wimbledon. On the way, she notched wins over Monica Seles and Steffie Graf, but fell to eight-time winner Martina Navratilova in the Championship match.

On the men’s end, in 1992 Bryan Shelton, a graduate of the tennis program at Georgia Tech, won the Miller Lite Hall of Fame Tennis Championships and became the first Black man to win a professional singles title since Arthur Ashe in 1978. Shelton seemed on the verge of a significant breakthrough at the 1994 Wimbledon, where, as a qualifier, he upset Michael Stich, the 1991 Wimbledon champion, in the first round and advanced to the fourth round, his career best result.

MaliVai Washington would surpass Shelton’s accomplishment in 1996 by reaching the Wimbledon men’s singles finals. In the same year, Washington, a native of Jacksonville, Florida became the first Black tennis player named to the U.S. Olympic Tennis Team. A recurrent knee injury ended his professional career in 1999, but following Ashe’s example of giving back, Washington established the Malivai Washington Youth Foundation, which provides academic assistance, mentoring and tennis instruction to low-income youth in his hometown.“What I took from Arthur (Ashe) over the years is, as human beings and certainly as athletes, we have a responsibility to do more than just hit a tennis ball,” Washington said. “In one of his books, (Ashe) said, and I’m paraphrasing, ‘If I’m just remembered as a tennis player, I failed.’”

 

The Future of Black Players in Tennis

During the last 20 years, the reigning surname in tennis has been Williams. But to illustrate the efforts made before Venus and Serena took over, in 2008, a group of players, coaches and supporters established the Black Tennis Hall of Fame on the grounds of the Historically Black College and University (HBCU) Virginia Union. Inductees include all the aforementioned players, in addition to ATA champions throughout the past 100 years. Future inductees are sure to be James Blake, Donald Young, Madison Keys, Sloane Stephens, Frances Tiafoe, Naomi Osaka and Coco Gauff, among others, if or when the organization gets funding for a permanent facility.

In 2018, the 100th ATA National Championships took place in Orlando, Florida. Rodney Carey, from the Bahamas, won the Men’s Singles title while Isabelle Porter, a native of Fairbanks, Alaska who currently plays for Division II Stonehill College, in Massachusetts, brought home the Women’s Singles title, as well as the Mixed Doubles trophy. Aysha and Azaria Hayes, high-schoolers in the tradition of Pete and Repeat Peters won the Women’s Doubles title.

The year 2020 and the global upheaval over the unfair treatment of Black people in society have the tennis world pause over the need to bring more diversity and equity to the sport. After 104 years of operation, the ATA now works hand-in-hand with the USTA and other governing bodies of tennis and has called 4,700 people members and hosted 95,000 players in its various tournaments. Boundaries still exist — mainly financial — but tennis is well-poised to enter the next decade with fewer milestones to reach. 

Break Point

Comme dans Drive to Survive, les caméras du docu-série Break Point sont pointées sur les athlètes et le scénario suivi explore leurs pressions quotidiennes, leurs faiblesses, mais aussi leurs motivations et leurs forces à travers certains tournois majeurs de l’année 2022.

Il ne faut pas s’attendre à du arty façon The French ou du consistant à la HBO, la série est évidemment formatée à la Netflix. Rythme filmique soutenu, séquences au ralenti façon blockbusters et mécanique bien huilée basée sur un algorithme savamment étudié. Le ton est introspectif et légèrement romancé, axé sur les joueurs/ses et leurs ressentis et non pas sur le jeu. Le docu flirte parfois avec les codes de la télé-réalité. Ce qui ne fait que confirmer que la cible principale des producteurs est le jeune public plus ou moins néophytes.

L’angle adopté est effectivement celui de l’intime et de la vulnérabilité. On est, de façon très privilégié, plongé dans les coulisses du monde tennistique. Alors que ce genre d’images se font rares, nous avons droit, ici, à des discussions et des moments très privés d’avant ou d’après-match. Des moments de doutes extrêmes très touchants, c.f. Ajla Tomljanovic qui, complètement dépitée après une lourde défaite, confie à son équipe que ce sport la fait tellement souffrir qu’elle en arrive à remettre toute sa carrière en question au point de songer à l’arrêter.

La santé mentale, longtemps tabou dans le monde du tennis, est de plus en plus ouvertement abordée. Sans être aussi doctement disséquée que dans l’excellent Breaking Point, le documentaire Netflix sur l’Américain Mardy Fish, elle est évoquée ici à plusieurs reprises. Notamment dans le premier épisode centré sur Nick Kyrgios mais aussi celui avec Paula Badosa. La joueuse espagnole, bouleversée, nous révèle au cours d’une réunion avec sa team qu’elle se bat contre des états dépressifs depuis de longues années.

L’épisode 2 est mon préféré. On en apprend davantage sur Matteo Berrettini, son histoire et sa personnalité. Son humilité, sa timidité, son charme et son naturel illuminent l’écran et émeuvent, d’autant plus lorsqu’on le voit en Italie avec sa famille. Beaucoup de tendresse.

On y suit en parallèle le parcours de sa petite amie de l’époque, Ajla Tomljanovic, lors de l’Open d’Australue. Chose intéressante puisqu’on y apprend davantage sur les avantages et les inconvénients d’une relation amoureuse entre tennisman et tenniswoman.

Le court passage sur Rafael Nadal dans le même épisode est à mon sens le moment de grâce du documentaire. Introduit par Kyrgios (lol) qui le compare à un dieu, magnifier par le choix des images, les angles avantageux et les ralentis… On croirait voir une apparition divine – chargée d’histoire et d’un fort pouvoir orgasmique. Plus globalement, le charisme et la pertinence des champions apparaissant furtivement apportent du relief, avec tout particulièrement les passages “punchlinesques” de Maria Sharapova.

« Même les champions qui quittent le court après une défaite se demandent s’ils sont assez bons, lâche, par exemple, la Tsarine. Mais il faut affronter ce sentiment. C’est l’intérêt de ce sport. Une recherche constante. On veut savoir qui on est, jusqu’où on peut aller. »

Les créateurs ont intelligemment utilisé les différents acteurs secondaires : Maria Sharapova et Andy Roddick, les vieux sages. Rafa Nadal, personnage mystique, mi homme, mi dieu, dans l’ombre, il finit par prendre toute la lumière et devenir un personnage central. Même l’entraîneur Patrick Mouratoglou qui n’apparaît que trente secondes dans l’épisode 5 fait mouche (en la prenant) en taclant sans vergogne tonton Toni Nadal (pour changer). Sûrement la séquence la plus piquante de la série.

Le mordant (et la polémique) est indéniablement ce qui avait le plus contribué au succès de Drive to Survive avec la mise en avant des tensions entres pilotes et leurs (parfois exagérées) rivalités. En manque-t-il généralement dans le tennis pour en jouer ou n’ont-ils pas voulu en jouer ? Ou peut-être s’agit-il simplement de paresse scénaristique ?

Il y a évidemment quelques défauts, notamment le travail de contextualisation qui est un peu fainéant : on ne parle pas de la blessure de Nadal lors de la finale d’Indian Wells, on n’explique pas les nuances essentielles sur la question de l’égalité salariale… Ou encore, dans l’épisode 2 sur Ajla Tomljanovic, quand on présente Paula Badosa, sa future adversaire, on nous informe que l’Espagnole vient de gagner le tournoi précédent sans nous préciser qu’elle a éliminé l’Australienne dans la foulée.

Autre bémol : la mauvaise traduction des sous-titres. Un fait assez symptomatique de la plateforme Netflix. Ça aurait pu être anecdotique s’il s’agissait seulement de quelques fautes de frappe, malheureusement elles sont bien plus problématiques. « Roland » écrit avec deux « l », le nom des joueurs est écorché, on confond parfois également quelques  règles du jeu essentielles du tennis. Des petits détails qui peuvent embrouiller le public peu connaisseur qu’on veut initier à ce sport – détails qu’on espère réglés dans les prochains épisodes.

Malgré ça et le caractère parfois monotone et répétitif de certaines séquences, je trouve le résultat plutôt satisfaisant mais aussi intéressant et novateur dans l’angle d’approche et dans le traitement égalitaire hommes/femmes. Conclusion : même si la série est construite et calibrée pour séduire les néophytes, je conseille aussi Break Point aux adeptes du tennis, ne serait-ce que pour découvrir un bon nombre de révélations inédites d’athlètes qui ne sont habituellement pas mis en avant.

The Kazakh Phenomenon

The Australian Open final pit a Belarusian against a Kazakh in name only, either way, Russia came out on top

The Russian Tennis Federation (Russian: Федерация тенниса России) has a long history in the storied country. Under it patron, Arthur Davidovich McPherson (1870–1919), the heir to a family of Glaswegian ship-builders who was born and raised in St. Petersburg — and who was awarded the Order of Saint Stanislaus by Tsar Nicholas II for introducing football and tennis to the country —tennis thrived. By 1903, St. Petersburg had its first tennis championship and ten years later, the Russian championship was on the international tour. 

During the Soviet era, however, the racquet  sport barely survived. A non-Olympic competition that was both expensive and branded with an affiliation to the Romanov dynasty, the Tennis Federation of the USSR boycotted all the international competitions, except for the Davis Cup. Local men’s tennis players were bullied by the other Soviet sportspersons for competing in a “girlie” sport, and about 80 percent of tennis coaches in the USSR were women. But under Mikhail Gorbachev’s “perestroika” and “glasnost (openness)”  reforms, other former-Soviet countries built economies, and Russia strengthened its athletic prowess, especially in tennis. The former Russian president Boris Yeltsin —a man who liked his tennis racquet as much as his vodka — was credited with making it acceptable to participate in tennis once more. So much so, that the national academies, already busy with the Kuznetsovas, Safins, and Kournikovas, started to fill up. 

“He is like a grandfather to us… He knows everything about tennis,” French Open champion Anastasia Myskina said to The Independent of Yeltsin. “We discussed the matches and he was telling us how to play. He told me to play more shots down the line and to improve my serve.”

But Boris died, Vladimir Putin won the presidency and over the years, Russia has encroached on the independence of Chechnya, Georgia and lastly, Ukraine. Facing a shortage of sponsorship and training, tennis players had already begun to decamp to former Soviet strongholds, such as Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and especially, Kazakhstan. “As hurtful as it may sound, nobody cared about me in Russia. And now people care about me. And they do everything for my career to be successful,” said ATP No. 36 Alexander Bublik, who decamped to Kazakhstan in 2016. “Tennis Federation of Kazakhstan — they really look after me. They help, work, create the conditions for me to play well. It was impossible in Russia.”

Now, many current Kazakh players, including Australian Open finalist and Wimbledon champion Elena Rybakina, who left for the country long before the Ukrainian invasion, not only benefit from the money, but also a conflict-free government.  In retaliation for Ukraine, the International Tennis Federation (ITF) suspended the Russian Tennis Federation, as did Tennis Europe from all international competition, including the European Junior Tennis Championships, as well as the Davis Cup and Billie Jean Cup. Moreover any Russian player who wanted to play on either the WTA or ATP tours could not compete under the Russian flag. And players that represented Russia and Belarus were banned from the 2022 Wimbledon Championships, as well as other events in the United Kingdom.

Russian players under the turquoise banner the sports a 32-ray gold sun above a soaring golden steppe eagle now play wherever they want, whenever they want without any repercussions. 

In exchange for paying a bit more money, Kazakhstan has become a tennis cluster on the rise. The small, mountainous, mostly Islamic country of 19 million people now has seven players in the ATP top 1,000 and five in the WTA Top 500. On the WTA tour, these including No. 10, Rybakina, No. 44 Yulia Putintseva and No. 543 Anna Danilina.  On the ATP tour, the country boasts No. 129 Timofey Skatov, No. 214 Mikhail Kukushkin, who has notched victories over Tommy Haas, Stan Wawrinka and Gael Monfils, and No. 384 Dmitry Popko. Bublik, who once only played moneyed events, even joined the country’s Olympic team in 2020. 

And who is the man behind the country’s campaign for tennis dominance, providing “unbelievable support,” according to Rybakina: Bulat Utemuratov, a billionaire banker who owns the Burger King franchise in Kazakhstan, as well as holdings in the hotel sector, an airport and the mobile phone companies Kar-tel and Kyrgyzstan’s Sky Mobile. Besides putting Kazakhstan on the tennis map a dozen years ago with the Astana Open, Utemuratov, who is also a Kazakh diplomat,  has essentially designed  a blueprint for other nations that want to improve their tennis on the world stage. “I liked it from the beginning,” Utemuratov, 64, said of tennis after Rybakina’s Wimbledon title? 

To Utemuratov, who boxed and played soccer and table tennis in his youth, tennis was a revelation — a physical version of chess that requires versatility, intellect and supreme athleticism. After the collapse of the Soviet Union — and about the time Utemuratov started playing — he was serving as both an economic envoy for Kazakhstan to Europe and the United Nations, and a special aide to then-President Nursultan Nazarbayev, who was modernizing and nationalizing the country’s vast oil reserves.

By 2007, however, the country’s tennis federation was nearly bankrupt. Utemuratov, “a big fan of Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer,” offered his services. The Kazakhstan Tennis Federation started building, spending roughly $200 million to construct 38 tennis centers in all 17 regions of the country. Next, the federation trained hundreds of coaches and instructors, including quite a few from Europe, while subsidizing lessons for adolescents and granting the best juniors $50,000 to pay for training and travel. In 2007, there were just 1,800 registered players in Kazakhstan; there are now 33,000. A staff of 32 at the federation’s headquarters maintain constant contact with coaches across the country to track promising juniors.

But the key to Kazakhstan’s success has always been Russia. Utemuratov made a simple offer to any disgruntled Russian player whom he believed needed more support: Play for Kazakhstan, which shares a language and a history with Russia, and the country will fund your career. Yaroslava Shvedova was an early success,  reaching a career-high ranking of No. 25 in 2012. She made the quarterfinals in the singles of three Grand Slam tournaments and won doubles titles at Wimbledon and the U.S. Open. Yuri Schukin, who never cracked the Top 100, became one of the country’s top coaches. 

For Bublik, the transition was easy. After he made the quarterfinals of a second-tier tournament with barely any help from Russia, he thought about receiving funding from an individual sponsor who treats the player like an investment and takes a share of the player’s winnings. But Utemuratov  approached, and a little more than a year later, Bublik cracked the top 100.

“Yes, I was born in Russia and have lived there for most of my life… Of course, I do feel Russian with my whole family being from Russia. But being a player who represents Kazakhstan in the world arenas is a pleasure for me and I feel very proud,” said Bublik, a native of Gatchina, Russia who now lives in Monte Carlo. “I don’t know how to describe it in words. But it’s awesome. Since we have already made a decision to play for Kazakhstan, I am never going back to the Russian team.” 

Rybakina has a similar story. Born in Moscow and trained at the Spartak Club, she represented her home country throughout her childhood. Despite reaching a junior career high of No. 3, she did not receive help from the Russian Federation. As her family shouldered the significant costs of her career, they considered alternative paths , including college in the United States. Then Utemuratov quashed her uncertainty, making her the same offer than Bublik couldn’t refuse. In 2018, aged 19, she started playing for Kazakhstan. “I think it was very good timing because they were looking for the player. I was looking for some help,” Rybakina told The Guardian after winning Wimbledon last year, while her fellow Russians were forced to sit out the tournament. “They believed in me. So I think it was very good combination. We just find each other.

“I think I’m also bringing some results, which are very good for the sport in Kazakhstan. For me it’s tough question just to say exactly what I feel.”

For now, Utemuratov and the Kazak Tennis Federation assert they are done recruiting in Russia, but as long as the war wages on the Ukraine, Russia still has 12 WTA players in the Top 100, and six ATP players in the Top 100 — all of them playing flagless and struggling for funds that are going to an endless war.