MONTREAL — During a rain delay earlier this week, the players’ lounge at the Rogers Cup buzzed with activity — some relaxed, some hurried — as the competition moved inside.
There was Rafael Nadal, reclining on a couch with his shoeless feet propped on a table, holding court with his entourage in Spanish. There was Tony Godsick, the senior vice president of IMG Tennis and the agent to Roger Federer, sipping an espresso.
Inside this elite tennis bubble, away from the thousands of fans in the stands beyond its doors, players spoke French, Russian and English, ate doughnuts, read newspapers, argued politics, napped on couches and checked their e-mail. They left their tennis bags strewn about, separating their on-court jobs from their off-court downtime at the entryway.
“Here, they cover everybody’s interests,” said Max Mirnyi of Belarus, a winner of 36 career doubles titles, including three in Grand Slam events. “Some guys like pool. Some guys like card games. Some guys like the snack table. It’s about convenience.”
Tennis players believe their lounges are distinctive compared with those in other sports: less stodgy than those in golf and different from football locker rooms or baseball clubhouses because they share space with competitors instead of teammates.
“It may sound weird, but it’s not,” said John Isner, an American pro. “The last tournament I played, it was a real tough three-set match. Afterward, my opponent was in the next shower.”
Long recognized as among the most player-friendly tournaments on the ATP World Tour, the Rogers Cup has built a lounge for players that makes rain delays tolerable. Players could actually live in it if the tournament provided beds. While waiting for matches, or waiting out rain delays, players choose from table tennis, Foosball, pool and video games, including an old-school Pac-Man and those oversize arcade racing games played from an actual driver’s seat.
The lounge also has a poker table, complete with a dealer and chips, as if plucked from the Las Vegas Strip. One coach apparently lost a bet on Tuesday, and as he got up from the table, he removed his shirt and flexed for the room.
Norm Hartenstein, the manager of the lounge for the last 23 years, said opponents sometimes took their tennis competitions directly into table tennis during rain delays. When he tells them they have 10 minutes to get back on court, they sometimes shout, “But we’ve got to finish our game.”
This lounge serves more than gaming functions. The wireless Internet and computer stations allow players from around the world to keep in touch with family. The weight room provides space to warm up before matches, or to cool down after. The oversize couches become prime nap space.
In the lounge, players can get suits by a local designer named Yves Jean Lacasse, who gives the top-seeded players free clothes and sells suits to lesser-known players at deep discounts. In the center, behind a black curtain, players receive massages and injury-prevention testing.
The ATP started testing players three years ago, measuring their shoulders, hips and lower backs, looking for small deficits, muscle imbalances and areas of tightness.
“We’re trying to prevent the injuries before they actually need treatment,” said Todd Ellenbecker, chairman of the United States Tennis Association’s Sports Science Committee.
During delays, Isner said he often debated politics with James Blake, a fellow American. On Tuesday, Mirnyi said he filled out travel documents for an approaching tournament in China. Dick Norman, the oldest full-time player on the tour at 38, has seen the lounges evolve.
“Before, you just had a room,” Norman said. “If you were gone for four weeks, you basically had no contact with your family.”
Hartenstein said this lounge was transformed over the years from a small room with folding chairs to the bustling hub players use today. The tour itself has become more businesslike, making efforts to rid lounges of shady characters and hangers-on.
Gambling, in particular, has been a focus because of concerns about match fixing. And Hartenstein, for his part, said he was not a “big fan” of the poker presence in the lounge. No one, in fact, would talk publicly about the table or the bets placed there.
Besides managing the lounge, Hartenstein and his staff double as a concierge service for the players, setting them up with rounds of golf, fishing expeditions and, this week, AC/DC concert tickets.
They operate by a simple motto: no is not an option. They have performed emergency duty through the years, sewing patches on T-shirts, drilling or gluing shoes, or fetching jars of peanut butter for the Russians. Once, when Andre Agassi requested sugar-free Red Bull, Hartenstein said he sent a driver to the United States to buy some.
“We always find a way to make it work,” he said.
Courtesy of ww.nytimes.com
