Sexton's game, ATP shambles and inside sport

I realise that it’s most definitely not summer anymore, but I’ll use this for chatting rugby, tennis, cricket…

Wednesday night’s Inside Sport provided a fascinating insight into depression in sport, an issue brought into tragic focus by the recent suicide of German international goalkeeper Robert Enke. Gabby Logan interviewed several high-profile sufferers, posing questions and posting tentative conclusions on how sporting success does not make you invincible against mental illness, and indeed the pressures of the modern game can bring it on.

The analysis of the effect of sport on the mind got me thinking about the more readily tangible effect of sport on the body, after watching a slimmer Rafa Nadal fall to three successive defeats at the ATP World Tour Finals in London. Whilst I do not wish to compare Nadal’s sporting plight to the human tragedy of Robert Enke, the young Spaniard – who has come to epitomise the innate physicality and athleticism of the twenty-first-century tennis player, sportsman even - was a sorry sight this week. It was not so much that Rafa looks ‘a shadow of’ the man who so gloriously beat Roger Federer in the 2008 Wimbledon Final, but rather that the Spaniard’s current frame wouldn’t come close to filling his former shadow.

2009 looked like being Nadal’s year. He began it is as World Number One, holding three of the four Grand slams after winning the Australian Open in January. But then tendinitis in his right knee, a recurring problem which has seen him wearing heavy strapping ever since I can remember, saw Nadal pull out of Wimbledon in June. He returned to London this week, sporting a new sleeved t-shirt that did little to hide the absence of his biceps that used to bulge out of the trademark sleeveless vest. It seems that quite simply, Nadal’s knees – put under enormous pressure by his relentless playing style – can’t hold his weight, and so he’s been forced to shed a great deal of muscle, and with it the power that was his greatest weapon.

Why was Nadal’s body in unnatural shape in the first place? Because, with the ball coming off Andy Roddick’s graphite composite racket at 150mph, such physicality is needed to get it back. Racket and player performance technology have led tennis’ development from a once delicate game into a slugging match. Nadal – and I really hope I am being helplessly premature here – would not be the first tennis player to play their best tennis before hitting 25. Martina Hingis – who won three Grand Slams aged 16 and retired at 22 – springs to my mind, whilst my dad talks of Tracy Austin – who won the US Open aged 16 and was finished as a top player before she turned 21, suffering from recurring back injuries. Switching sports, you find the burn-out of Brazilian striker Ronaldo, and, in a slightly different direction, a number of serious spinal injuries suffered in rugby union.

This is an issue worthy of much broader analysis, but does modern sport demand too much from its competitors? How long can players continue to drive themselves into the ground before something changes?


The ATP World Tour Finals became a shambles on Thursday, thanks to confusion over the rules for progression from the round-robin stage, labelled ‘embarrassing’ by Boris Becker.
Juan Martin del Potro was left waiting on court to see if he had qualified for the semi-finals after beating Roger Federer, eventually learning he had done so by only one game in the ATP’s games won percentage (after del Potro and Murray finished level in terms of matches and sets won). Murray himself had to have it explained to him on court earlier on.
I’d moan about how the final round of matches should have started at the same time, so that del Potro and Federer didn’t have the unfair advantage of going into the final match knowing exactly what they had to do, but in fact it was all so bloody confusing that nobody had a clue.
The maths behind one-day cricket’s Duckworth/Lewis method is complicated, perhaps even unfathomable to the layman, and has resulted in some farcical and comical situations (the South Africans don’t find it so funny). But D/L is there to decide matches whose regular course has been shortened by the weather. The ATP actually set the groups up like this, failing to anticipate a group of four would almost inevitable end up in everyone level on points. Before next year – sort it out!


After a miserable autumn of miserable rugby, Ireland’s victory over South Africa this afternoon was worth waiting for, every second of a 15-10 win at Croke Park thoroughly absorbing. There were a number of interweaving narratives – from the selection of Jonathan Sexton over Ronan O’Gara as Ireland’s fly-half to unfinished business after the Lions tour, and the game was predictably niggly early on. But that was all part of the fun! Bryan Habana getting dumped onto the seat of his pants was a favourite, while Schalk Burger – booed by the home fans after disgracefully gouging Luke Fitzgerald in the summer – celebrated his try by aggressively kicking the ball towards them. It was brutally physical, both teams showed a willingness to run the ball from deep, Ireland ruled the line-out, South Africa exerted pressure at scrum-time, and there were turnovers galore.
Despite the Irish eight going backwards in the scrum, Jamie Heaslip always seemed to be in control. Actually, his performance was nothing short of monumental. My confidence in an early prediction (see July 8th 2009, ‘Lions Tour Review’) of his future captaincy grows. Rob Kearney again proved he played a hell of a lot of catch as a kid.
Brian O’Driscoll had a pretty awful game by his standards, knocking the ball on the few occasions he did get involved. But, in making the tackle and forcing the penalty for holding-on in at the death, he found a way to win the match, again. Class.
The real story, though, was provided by Jonathan Sexton, who kicked all of Ireland’s 15 points in a mature display. It was the first time in six years that a fit Ronan O’Gara had been overlooked at fly-half, and the fact that, even with O’Gara’s huge experience ready from the bench, Sexton stayed on the pitch during a nervy finish added further to the end-of-an-era feel to the occasion.