Maniacs in sports

Maniac ... that is the first word that comes to mind when I think of Marat Safin. On his day, hardly anyone in the world can challenge him. He gave ample evidence of that at this year's Australian Open, where he finally gave the rest of the world some hope by beating Federer. After he streamrolled Hewitt in the final, things seemed all set for a few Federer-Safin spectacles. Instead, what's happened is pretty unbelievable. While Federer resumed his usual routine and went off on a 25 match winning streak, in the five tournaments that Safin has played in following the Australian Open, he has won just four matches! However bad form one might be in, surely one expects the world No. 4 to do better.

Safin's temperament has always been questionable. His problems with Wimbledon are well known, where in his own words he "just gets bored". I think there was even an instance where after losing the match, he admitted in the post-match conference that he lost on purpose! (Imagine what would happen to an Indian cricketer if he issues such a statement :P) If Safin had been able to keep his ship afloat at all times, we might have seen a great rivalry being played out between him and Federer. Instead, with Safin throwing up his hand to be counted once in a blue moon, the responsibility of challenging Federer falls on Hewitt (I don't even consider Roddick in the scheme of things; I'm amazed how he manages to stay in the top 4, he's pathetic!), who sadly just doesn't have the game to challenge the world No. 1. So, we get to see Federer winning tournament after tournament, until some unheard of player called Richard Gasquet gets the better of him (maybe because Federer too is getting "bored"? ;))

Talking of temperamental sportsmen, I just remembered the interesting piece on Bobby Fischer that I saw on Sportscenter on Sunday. For those of you haven't heard of him, Fischer was the World Champion in Chess sometime in the 70s. According to the Sportscenter piece, Fischer's crowning as world champion was a really great event at that time as he crushed the then champion from Russia, Boris Spassky. In the times of the Cold War, I guess the event must have really filled with tension (I'm guessing primarily because I have never had much of a sense for how intense the Cold War was). After taking over the title, Fischer went into isolation and supposedly got involved with some cult. He then went against the wishes of the US and played a rematch with Spassky in Yugoslavia, at the time when the country was under sanctions. So, the US termed him an exile and he spent almost a decade in hiding, running around in South-East Asia. He was finally nabbed in Japan a few years back. I don't remember what exactly happened after that, but somehow he's now in Iceland, who have given him honorary citizenship as that is where he had beaten Spassky to become World Champion.

Anyway, the main point of this segment on Sportscenter was that during his heydays, Fischer had a mentor-like figure called Dick Schapp, who was his public face. And now, Dick's son Jeremy was the ESPN reporter covering Fischer's return to the public scene. After Fischer went into isolation, Dick had apparently issued a statement that "Bobby does not have a single sane bone in his whole body". Fischer was pretty pissed off with that and a good part of this Sportscenter snippet showed the verbal tussle between Fischer and Dick's son Jeremy. With Kasparov retiring from the sport, might be there's still time for Fischer to make a comeback now :P And, it's time Safin woke up from his slumber too!

That's it for today folks.

Cheers,
Harsha