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IPTL 2015 - DUBAI, 14 December 2015 IP: 83.110.248.47 Posted on December 14, 2015 at 08:21:25 PM by David Barnes
INTERNATIONAL PREMIER TENNIS LEAGUE (IPTL)
2015 EDITION
DUBAI, 14 December 2015
Arrived now in Dubai, after Kobe, Manila, and New Delhi, with Singapore still ahead, this second edition of the IPTL franchise is gathering momentum, although not yet gathering the popular support from fans that it surely needs to survive more than another year or so, judging by the paltry attendance in the stadium when this afternoon’s opening session kicked off, and even later as dusk fell, and it drew to its close.
Roger Federer, who has switched teams and this time round is playing - logically since he has a home here - for the OBI UAE Royals, said after the Delhi leg, "Last year when I went to India for the first time, I did not know what to expect. But it turned out that India was special in every way for me. I enjoyed every moment, both on and off the court. It is because of this factor that I felt that India was something I needed to do again”. Well, ‘needed’ may not be the word exactly – the great man is not that short of a rupee, or a Swiss franc, or two. More like ‘wanted to do again for the money since it’s just down the road from where I live for some of the year and everybody else seems to have jumped on the bandwagon’ might be a better phrase.
Players have come and gone over the last couple of weeks; some, like Rafa, because of contractual commitments (or rather the lack of them . . . ), some, like Mark Philippousis - his surname misspelled in the official media briefing - replaced au dernier moment due to injury by James Blake, and some, like Novak Djokovic, long advertised as spearheading the OUE Singapore Slammers team, deciding that his overworked body needs all the rest it can get before engaging fully, as it inevitably will, with the 2016 ATP season.
Federer, initially a sceptic as far as this extra-curricular boondoggle was concerned, went on to say the following in his press conference before leaving India; “I quite like the thinking behind the IPTL. It’s not about just a hit and a giggle tournament. It has an exhibition face to it and at the same time people want to watch some serious tennis as well. In itself, the IPTL is creative. It has new ideas and then there is the team aspect.”. Like a lot about the IPTL, Federer’s language betrays a lack of precision and a muddled thought process that is worrying in its jetlagged inconsistency. ‘Break the Code’ is the IPTL motto; it must be careful not to smash to pieces the contrived, sometimes acerbic, bonhomie and genuine competitiveness of the main ATP and WTA Tours.
The Swiss superstar later referred to 15,000 spectators – the organisers in Dubai would have been grateful for one hundredth of that number here first thing this afternoon. The teams, gathered on either side of the umpire’s chair, seemed more in number than the audience watching from the stands, and, while Agnieska Radwanska, playing under the old Magician Fabrice Santoro for the Micromax Indian Aces, put on something of a class act in beating Mirjana Lucic-Baroni of the Legendari Japanese Warriors, 6-1, there was more interest at times in observing Santoro on the exercise bicycle, installed at one end of the court, than in the tennis.
The exercise worked, since the Frenchman beat Thomas Enqvist 6-0 in a master-class of shrewd timing and tactical brilliance. The Frenchman has engendered a great team spirit within the Aces camp, and is particularly adept, as coach, at knowing when to play the ‘power point’ (after which the next point counts double).
It’s all rather confusing really – the players switch teams promiscuously like whores in a Manila brothel when a new punter with a thicker wallet comes along, while the teams change names with abandon, dropping or adding prefixes to reflect the loss or accretion of different sponsors. “It’s all about the money, stupid”, as Ronald Reagan famously nearly said. Based on the colour of their outfits, a wondrously vibrant orange, the defending champions, the Indian Aces, deserve to win again, but fate, not to mention Andy Murray, who plays tomorrow for the OUE Singapore Slammers, may have other plans.
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David Barnes/Topspin, 2015
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