|
August 16, 2007
Many happy returns
For many local teenagers, ballboy job at tournament is a labor of love
By Joshua Rey, Cincinnati Post
Not many teenagers look for a summer job that requires 12-hour days in the sweltering heat and pays in clothing, not currency. Yet
year after year hundreds of middle and high school students apply for
the unpaid and underappreciated position of being a ballboy at the
region's biggest tennis tournament, the Western & Southern
Financial Group Masters in Mason. When the world's
top tennis player, Roger Federer, plays on Center Court at the Lindner
Family Tennis Center this afternoon, six of the lucky 100 who've been
hired will have the best view of the action in the 10,500-seat stadium. "It's
something I always look forward to," said Cory Richardson, an
18-year-old from Mason back for his seventh year as a ballboy. "When
you're down there on the court, you're closer to it than anybody else
down there, which is really cool." Richardson is one
of many ballkids in Mason this week who are tennis players themselves,
eager for each chance they get to watch the world's greatest up close
and personal. "It helps you get motivated - oh, my
gosh - so much," said Heather Pasek of Villa Hills, a 17-year-old
tennis player at Notre Dame Academy. "After you see something like
this, you just want to go out and hit for a couple of hours and slam
that ball as hard as they can. You probably can't, but it's good that
you can try." Pasek, in her third year as a
ballgirl, hopes to work one of Federer's matches for the first time
this week. He has, after all, been the top-ranked tennis player in the
world for a record 185 consecutive weeks. Federer also gets high marks
for his courtesy toward the often-ignored ballboys. "Normally,
when you work for somebody that's really good like him, they like to be
in their own little world and think everyone needs to bow down to
them," said Richardson. "But he likes to work with everybody. He always
says, 'Thank you,' when you give him his towel and he'll say, 'Please,'
if he wants his water. It's really nice to see how down-to-earth he is." That
may be because Federer was once in Richardson's shoes. The World No. 1
is one of six pros in this week's singles draw who were ballkids
themselves, rolling tennis balls years before they received them. Federer
may be cool and collected when he steps onto a tennis court now, but
his debut as a ballboy at the 1994 Davidoff Swiss Indoors tournament in
Basel was a different story. "I remember being
really nervous the first time I went out," said Federer, the champion
in Mason two years ago. "I was in the corner and I was so stiff at the
end of the day from just standing there - it was incredible - because
my body was so tense, trying not to make a mistake." Joining
Federer as ballboys-turned-pro at the Mason tournament are Americans
James Blake and Robby Ginepri; Russians Mikhail Youzhny and Marat
Safin; and Croatian Mario Ancic - a ballboy all-star team if there were
such a thing. "When I was out there, I took in the
full experience. It was a lot of fun," said Ginepri, a semifinalist
here two years ago. "I was even saying to myself, 'Hopefully, I can be
out there playing against these guys.' Sure enough, I was." Ginepri,
then 15, was a ballboy for an April 1998 Davis Cup tie between the U.S.
and Russia in Atlanta, Ga. He shared the court with one of his heroes,
Jim Courier, as the American star made a stirring comeback against an
18-year-old upstart named Marat Safin. Ginepri remembers the lessons he
learned then. "It definitely made me look at what it
took to up the tempo and the pace a lot more," said Ginepri, who is 2-0
lifetime against Safin. "I saw how hard the guys were hitting and the
variation of the height and the slice and coming into the net. That was
good for me to see at that age." The ballkids
generally go unnoticed throughout the tournament. They'll glide to pick
up any scattered tennis balls, roll them - sometimes two at a time - to
the server's side of the court and toss them to the pros on one bounce,
never more. During each changeover, two ballkids
positioned alongside the net posts provide the players with water and
Powerade. The other four kids are at the backdrops, where they have
just fractions of a second to determine whether a player wants a tennis
ball or his towel when he looks their way. At the end of each set, a
new crew of six ballkids arrives. For their hard
work this week, they won't earn a dollar. But they do get to keep their
Adidas uniforms and have the opportunity to return next year and do it
all over again. Many of them will. It's not as thankless a job as it
seems, as anyone who's been a ballkid for James Blake can attest to. "He
says, 'Thank you,' to every ballboy at least once,'' said ballboy
Michael Cole, a 16-year-old state doubles champion at Middletown High.
"He's a really good guy and I like watching him play too." Blake
takes courtesy to unprecedented levels for professional tennis players.
Fans who sit in the first few rows - or listen closely to their
television sets - can hear Blake thank ballkids as they toss him balls
before each point when he's serving, at every tournament where he's
playing. That includes events in Rome, Hamburg, Stockholm and Shanghai. "Earlier
in the my career, I tried to say it in the language of the country but
that just confused me, so I just say, 'Thanks,' said Blake, the No. 8
player in the world. "I hope they understand that I am saying thanks
instead of something else." Most professionals on
the ATP Tour don't say much to the ballkids except, "ball," "towel," or
"water". So when they do, the ballkids remember it. Richardson
recalls working at the backdrop a few years back when Ginepri walked
toward him for a ball and advised him, "Watch this ace out wide." Ginepri's
heavily-spun serve to his opponent's forehand is one of his favorite
shots. During a practice session with Mikhail Youzhny on Sunday, he hit
it five times for an ace. Like Ginepri, Youzhny used
his experience as a ballboy as inspiration. He spent three years as a
ballboy at the Kremlin Cup in Moscow and worked two Russian Davis Cup
ties in 1995. He went from Davis Cup ballboy to Davis Cup hero in 2002
when he defeated Paul-Henri Mathieu of France to clinch the title for
Russia. He remembers his experience as a ballboy just as vividly, especially a match between Andrei Chesnokov and Michael Stich. "Chesnokov
saved nine match points and won 14-12 (in the fifth set)," said
Youzhny, now the 10th-ranked player in the world. "After, I received
the shoes of Chesnokov when he went out of the locker room. He put down
his shoes and I just took them. I still have his shoes in my apartment." When
Youzhny reached the quarterfinals here in 2005, he played an exciting
three-setter under the lights against two-time champion Andy Roddick.
Cole worked the third set of that match, which he said remains his most
memorable experience on the court. "The crowd was so
loud and so into it," said Cole. "That was just the best atmosphere I'd
ever seen for a tennis match. It was great being on the court and
watching it because they were both playing amazing tennis. Everyone was
sitting on the edge of their seats the entire time." Everyone
but the ballkids, who stand at the backdrops and kneel at the net. When
Cole isn't running around the court to pick up balls, he said that he
studies the shot selection and footwork of the pros. That's got Federer
a little worried. "I try to be nice to them because
you never know, eventually, they may play you and they'll want to beat
you because you weren't nice," said Federer. With more and more tennis
players turning pro as teenagers, odds are that there isn't a future
World No. 1 rolling balls this week in Mason. But who in Basel,
Switzerland, could have known that 13-year-old ballboy Roger Federer
would become 13-time Grand Slam finalist Roger Federer? "Maybe
some of my friends who are here right now could be at that level," said
Pasek. "Someday I could be sitting there watching TV and my son or
daughter will be throwing one of my old friends a ball. Everybody
envisions that. They want that royal treatment."
|
