Wimbledon and Bias

@engineer,

Quote:

THE ONE HANDED BACKHAND IS THE GOLD STANDARD OF BACKHANDS!!! Ok, got that off my chest.

That particular kind of one hander which both Sampras and Federer hit became outmoded somewhere towards the final third of Sampras' career and was the main reason Sampras was not able to compete any better than he did for those last three or four years.

The two hander at least has some degree of leverage in that you're trading a small amount of wrist motion for a larger amount of racquet head motion but the one hander you're talking about has no leverage at all; you're bringing the arm to shoulder height to produce topspin and you're needing to move your arm one foot to move the racquet head one foot.

That's absolutely one to one. It amounts to the same thing as lifting a stone instead of using a lever to lift it, or arm-punching in boxing.

You can always tell the arm puncher in a professional prize fight; he's the guy being carried out in a wheel barrow.

Sampras and Federer can generate power on backhands from the service line and possibly from five or six feet back from the service line, but they cannot generate power from the baseline or from behind the baseline, and the guys with the two handers can. At that level of tennis, that is too much to give away.

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About Nadal, I'll say that yes, I notice that his play is not as often credited with skill and strategy as much as with superior athletic prowess. Does anyone not notice that he, too, is NOT a white European? Just sayin...since y'all brought up Nadal.

To make the point you were trying to make by bringing up Nadal, and to negate my assertion that the William sisters are critiqued differently by announcers, it would have been most effective to mention one white male they more often credit with raw animal prowess than with strategizing and outwitting opponents. If they don't do it to Roddick (I say they don't), they ain't gonna do it to anyone white.

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@gungasnake,

Quote:

That particular kind of one hander which both Sampras and Federer hit became outmoded somewhere towards the final third of Sampras' career and was the main reason Sampras was not able to compete any better than he did for those last three or four years.

I wonder if that is the same reason McEnroe and Borg didn't compete any better in their last 3 or 4 years of competition....

Whudyathink gunga?

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@snood,

snood wrote:

Does anyone not notice that he, too, is NOT a white European?

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll88/guthobla/A2K/federer-nadal.jpg

Here is a picture of Nadal (right), a Spaniard from Mallorca, with Roger Federer (left), an Austrian you would classify as a white European. I made sure to get them both on the same picture; it controls for light, exposure, and other variables affecting the apparent tone of their skin. I fail to see how either of them is any more or less "white" than the other. I do, however, see that Nadal appears more athletic because his biceps are larger.

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@snood,

snood wrote:

Does anyone not notice that he, too, is NOT a white European?

No, I don't try to split hairs over people's skin color and I think Nadal's ripped arms are why the athletic observation is made, not his very slight difference in color from whiter northern Europeans.

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Okay. So, I think that there is a bias toward White Europeans that shows in glimpses in the commentary at Wimbledon. And several of you don't. Simple difference of opinions...

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@snood,

snood wrote:

If they don't do it to Roddick (I say they don't), they ain't gonna do it to anyone white.

But they do do it to Roddick. I read him described as a one shot wonder, serve and little else, etc all the time. Even those more charitably inclined credit him with doing a lot with what is an essentially limited power game. Were Roddick to again ascend to number one, you'd hear a lot more about it, but no one bothers to spend a lot of ink on a mere top ten player. A quote from a review of the first week of Wimbledon

Quote:

Hard as he fights, as much pride as he displays, as much mileage as he's gotten out of fairly limited tools, Roddick has become tennis' Heartbreak Kid. At four of the last five Slams, he's lost in five sets. Part of the disappointment Monday was in losing to a player Roddick had owned in the past, ranked outside the top 50 and unaccustomed to the big stage. But it's compounded by context. With both Federer and Rafael Nadal looking vulnerable during the first week, there was a buzz that Roddick had a real chance to win this tournament and bag that elusive second Slam. While that might have been a stretch, so was the notion that he would fall so woefully short.

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@gungasnake,

gungasnake wrote:

That particular kind of one hander which both Sampras and Federer hit became outmoded somewhere towards the final third of Sampras' career and was the main reason Sampras was not able to compete any better than he did for those last three or four years.

I think his significant back issues had more to do with it, but how can you say that is became outmoded only to have Federer completely dominate men's tennis is a way previously unheard of using the same stroke?

gungasnake wrote:

The two hander at least has some degree of leverage in that you're trading a small amount of wrist motion for a larger amount of racquet head motion but the one hander you're talking about has no leverage at all; you're bringing the arm to shoulder height to produce topspin and you're needing to move your arm one foot to move the racquet head one foot.

All the real power from both one and two handed backhands come from rotation of the torso. If you draw a line from the abdomen out to the racket head, you can see that there is a signifcant length improvement from the one handed shot so that the same rotational speed in the torse generates much more head speed. The challenge for the one handed player is to control that much head speed to strike the ball accurately. A well hit one handed backhand can move as fast as a forehand. That's not true of the two hander.

gungasnake wrote:

You can always tell the arm puncher in a professional prize fight; he's the guy being carried out in a wheel barrow.

But you should never power a tennis shot with just your arm. There is no where never enough strength. Groundstrokes are whole body shots.

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More on up and coming power players, male in this instance, though the article talks first about the Williams sisters. Juan Martin del Potro, an argentinian, is the fellow I was trying to remember the name of, re extreme power vs extreme finesse, earlier in the thread...

http://www.sportinglife.com/tennis/news/story_get.cgi?STORY_NAME=tennis/10/07/13/manual_134039.html

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@ossobuco,

On those guys, Marin Cilic is Croatian -

http://cornedbeefhash.files.wordpress.com/2008/03/marin-cilic-iw08.jpg

Tomas Beyrdch is from Czech Republic -

http://aigopen.jp/07/images/player_l/tomas_berdych_l.jpg

Robin Soderling from Sweden -

http://i.telegraph.co.uk/telegraph/multimedia/archive/01530/robin-soderling_1530889c.jpg

Juan Martin del Portro - from Argentina

http://worldtennischampion.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/juan-martin-del-potro.jpg

So, I did agree with you, Snood, about the carping about another player's Rightful Place - but not really about the rest of it. There has been a push pull about power and finesse, and power versus finesse, ever since Borg, and probably before that...

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Osso:

Quote:

So, I did agree with you, Snood, about the carping about another player's Rightful Place - but not really about the rest of it.

duly noted

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@snood,

It's just racism. If you had watched the Wimbledon 2010 Final, same thing happened. Even though Nadal was the "defending champion", even though he had reached 4 straight finals, and is current the #1 player in the world. When Berdych hit a winner, "Wow, that's a beauty..., HELLO!" When Nadal did something extraordinary, their comments turned technical. I am a man of color, and I am as saddened by it as you... that they ALWAYS prefer the white tennis player to win.

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@engineer,

Quote:

All the real power from both one and two handed backhands come from rotation of the torso

Only so much of it. If you're not using your wrist on a backhand, you've got no real way to get any serious power on it.

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@asiankobe,

I'll have to say that my comments are from my reading - and I read a fair amount about tennis. I don't watch the tv matches and commentaries, and might agree with you, asiankobe, and you, Snood, if I were hearing them. I just don't know, but I think comments about power or finesse are a reasonable part of game calling.

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@asiankobe,

Hello! Nadal is not a man of color!How can you cry racism?

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@panzade,

True. I think it's still all about power vs finesse, or is most of the time. I just admit I'm not hearing tones of voice.

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@panzade,

panzade wrote:

Hello! Nadal is not a man of color!How can you cry racism?

Depends on your definition of "people of color". I think it's pretty common to consider all folks not anglo-saxon white as "of color". What, do you think it just applies to all shades darker than caramel?

Definitions of person of color on the Web:

•(formal) any non-European non-white person
wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

•Person of color (plural: people of color; Commonwealth English: person of colour) is a term used, primarily in the United States and Germany, to describe all people who are not white. The term is meant to be inclusive among non-white groups, emphasizing common experiences of racism. ...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Person_of_color

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@panzade,

panzade wrote:

Hello! Nadal is not a man of color!How can you cry racism?

Hello?

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@snood,

I'm not Panzade, but I will say that the term 'person of color' is asinine and shouldn't be used.

Like I'm not a ******* color or something... everyone's a color. And lumping all so-called 'white' people together is equally bad.

Cycloptichorn

1 Reply

@snood,

snood wrote:

I think it's pretty common to consider all folks not anglo-saxon white as "of color".

that's a pretty broad brush to use - not many Europeans fall into the Angl0-Saxon category. Using that definition, you've got people of Swedish/Italian/French/etc etc etc backgrounds as not being "white" - not that I've met more than 3 or 4 people with truly white skin.

I think you've even managed to pull Walter H, Calamity Jane, urs and Thomas into your definition of folks "of color"

~~~

Separately, Mr. Nadal is Spanish. Spain is in Europe.

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