He Bores You Into a Defeat

The only thing I know for sure about tennis is, you can always tell a player because one arm is bigger than the other. The shooting arm, so to speak, the one with the racket, looks like Popeye’s; the other one looks like a piano player’s. They look almost deformed.

The other thing I’m beginning to know is, if the final doesn’t have Andre Agassi in it, watch something else.

You don’t have to root for Agassi. You don’t even have to like him. But if I’m running network TV, I’d take out insurance against his getting knocked out before the final. These other guys just don’t cut it.

Agassi--and Michael Chang--are the only two players who look as if they’re playing just as hard when they’re behind two sets as when they’re ahead. The others just seem to droop their shoulders and go quietly to the electric chair. They play like a guy who has to catch a bus. Or is double-parked.

I guess Stefan Edberg is the No. 1 player in the world. But a star, he ain’t.

I’ve never been able to figure out what it is that Edberg does better than anyone else. His forehand is looping, his backhand is formidable but no better than that of half a dozen other players. His serve is so-so, but he follows it with a charge to the net and a volley that looks reckless but isn’t. And it’s intimidating.

I guess what he does is consistent. He always plays the percentage shot.

I would say he doesn’t look it, but his determination has to be higher than that of anyone he plays. It wouldn’t be difficult. We had one player in the U.S. Open last week, Alexander Volkov, who seemed to tank the last two sets and then explained that he was homesick.

It’s hard for me to imagine, say, Sugar Ray Robinson or Rocky Marciano packing it in in the ninth round of a fight because he got homesick. But, that’s tennis. Besides, I thought when a Russian said he was homesick, he meant he was sick of home.

Picture Joe Montana throwing a series of interceptions, then explaining in the locker room that he just wanted to shower and go home. Picture a pitcher throwing gopher balls to speed up his departure from the game. I suspect they do this in tennis all the time.

Edberg doesn’t. To win his second U.S. Open, he had to play 28 sets. His serve had become uncharacteristically erratic, and his path to the top was a trip through lion country.

But Edberg is as boring as his game. He beats you with the kind of mechanical perfection of a classic boxer or a good fielder or the golfer who hits to the middle of the green all the time. He goes for pars, not birdies. But when the ball comes over, he’s like a DiMaggio or Ozzie Smith. He’s right there in front of it, waiting for it.

There is an inexorability to tennis that must make it seem like climbing an endless mountain or swimming against a relentless tide. There are no shortcuts to victory. No long bombs, home runs with the bases loaded, one-round knockouts to take the pressure off. There are only two games in which patience is really a virtue--golf and tennis.

Edberg is as unemotional as a border guard, as matter of fact as a cost accountant. There must be something in tennis that accommodates the Swedes. There are so many top seeded--from a country of only a few million. Bjorn Borg, of course, was the first and best of them, winning five Wimbledons in a row before he unaccountably pleaded burnout and headed for the rocking chair.

But Edberg has now done something--twice--that Borg could never do: win the U.S. Open. He has done something else the great Borg never did: win the Australian Open. Since Edberg also has won Wimbledon, he gets a higher seed in history than his countryman.

He is very apt to be champion for a long time, given the American players’ proclivity to self-destruct.

But he does have maturity on his side--he’s a ripe old 26.

Maturity, it should be noted, was no help to Boris (Don’t Call Me Boom-Boom) Becker, who was supposed to be the next Borg, at least until his heavy-legged play began to make his patented lunge for the deep out-of-reach cross- courts begin to fall short.

You can always tell Becker by the scars on his knees from sliding after drop volleys. You can always tell Agassi because his untucked short shirts come up over his belly button.

You can always tell Edberg because he wins. It’s like getting beat by that statue of Fred Perry they have outside Wimbledon.

It’s hard to describe winning as boring. But Edberg makes a case for it. No one will ever call him “Boom-Boom” or “the Rocket” or “Big Stefan.” If he gets a nickname, it will be “Advantage Edberg.”