From: clin@eng.umd.edu (Charles Lin)
Newsgroups: rec.sport.tennis
Subject: Martina vs. Jimmy
Date: 26 Sep 92 20:46:57 GMT
Organization: College of Engineering, University of Maryland, College Park
Originator: clin@harmonic.eng.umd.edu


   Ok, I broke down and paid the outlandish fee for watching Jimmy Connors
and Martina Navratilova play each other.   I was just too curious to
see what would happen.

   The coverage started at 9 pm EST (basically, New York, Washington DC, Boston
time) but it was being held in Las Vegas, (about 7 pm) at Caesar's Palace
a hotel and gambling casino which typically sponsors boxing events.
The initial game was a celebrity doubles match between Dick Van Patten
and Sugar Ray Leonard (actor and boxer), and Cathy Lee Crosby with
Donna Mills (both actresses).   It was a bit embarassing to watch this
when you are used to championship tennis.   Dick Van Patten is actually
quite an enthusiast of the game, and his son, Vince, played on the
tour (beating McEnroe and Borg), but has since been out due to injuries.
Cathy Lee played in the juniors, but I guess acting has taken precendence
since then, and she doesn't play so well.

   The match started off with two or so double faults, maybe more, and
both teams broke each other several times.   A lot of lobs, and a lot of
missed shots.   Van Patten chopped quite a bit.  Anyway, the men won.
Something like 8-4 (it was a pro set, first to eight games win).  This
lasted an hour.

   The feature match had Connors vs. Navratilova.  The announcers included
Bobby Riggs and Betsy Nagelsen, both former world tour players (though Riggs
played much earlier when there was no real "tour", in the modern sense).
The surprising aspect of the commentary was that they didn't try to really
hype it up.  They said it wasn't quite the same as when Riggs played
Billie Jean King, and that it was mostly for the money.  It was even announced
that both were receiving an appearance fee, though it wasn't stated how
much.

   While Connors could have come out, rushing to net, and pressuring Martina,
he seemed rather content to trade rallies with Martina.   This was something
of a bizarre match since Martina had to play a lot of baseline rallies.
She wasn't faring too bad, but I think she had a tough time getting to
net.  It was interesting watching the two trade rallies since it seemed
that Martina was keeping up though Connors was probably not attempting
to go for winners, or come to the net, as he usually does.  Martina
actually started off breaking Connors, but eventually got broken.  Connors
seemed to have trouble returning Martina's serve, netting a lot of returns.

    Still, Martina made plenty of errors, and Connors was more of less 
content to "bunt the ball",   Connors wasn't exactly softballing it,
nor was he going for broke, but playing solid rallies.  He may have
felt that if he demolished Martina, then there qould be no further
showdowns such as this.  Whenever there was a bit of danger, Connors
took to the net.   It was actually quite interesting to note that
Connors is really quite accurate in his passing shots.  He often
preffered the looping soft wide pasing shot vs. a hard shot, and 
lobbed pretty well throughout.

   In the end, Martina couldn't keep her errors down, and Connors
was able to win the key points.  It was fun to watch, though I wonder
how he would have fared with a truer baseliner like Graf or Seles.
The matchup I would really like to see is Seles and Vitas Gerulaitis.
Connors is still pretty good.  Vitas, on the other hand, has more or less
retired, and can let his nerves get to him.

    So, was it worh the twenty five dollars I paid?  Not really.  It was worth
five dollars.   It was fun,  I'd like to see more of it, but I hope
not to pay the same kind of cost.

    Oh yes, Connors won 7-5. 6-2.   Connors tried to be nice at the end,
giving credit to Martina and saying this would help tennis.  Martina
was a bit more self critical, basically saying she didn't play well,
and she had her chances, but she tried to stay nice by saying that
it was hard to play the ball instead of Jimmy.   

--
Charles Lin
clin@eng.umd.edu
Newsgroups: rec.sport.tennis