The King of College Tennis (sort of) Returns
Greetings from the dog days of August. Somewhere in Canada Milos Raonic and Big Foe are still engaged in pitch debated about the esoterica of net portion existence, and I too am lost in a void. My tennis fandom gets pretty degenerate this time of year. I’m just coming out of the stupor.
I’ve been binging grainy Youtube clips from Challengers. I’ve been checking the Kalamazoo draw1. I’m searching the ATP rankings for the youngest players in the top 5002. I’m going through the Ethan Quinn NCAA tournament highlights3 to start predicting how he’ll do with his U.S. Open Wild Card. I know who Dino Prizmic is. Things are getting out of hand.
I was only snapped from my fugue state by my recent brush with virality. I return from the void with major news. Look what happened during last weekend’s Lexington, Kentucky Challenger final. Steve Johnson took the title. That Steve Johnson. The one who’s totally washed and who fell out of the top 200 this year. Yes. Him. It’s actually Steve’s second win on the AAA circuit this summer. He also scored a victory last month in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. It had, up until then, been an absolutely dismal year for the former stalwart of the main tour, who has been slowly (and not so slowly) declining over the last few seasons.
I have complicated feelings about Stevie J. I pity that he’s become, in his late career, something of a punchline among tennis fans. But he is, also, the archetypal American men’s player of the now nearly bygone era between Andy Roddick and the NextGen crop of Tiafoe, Fritz, Opelka, etc. that deserves more than a few punchlines. It was a time of stubbled, white mediocrity. An era that saw the reigns Jack Sock, John Isner, Bradley Klahn, Ryan Harrison, Tennys Sandgren, and (for the real heads in the chat) Rhyne Williams.
Steve Johnson, mustache and all, embodies the distilled essence these guys. He’s a good Christian boy from the suburbs of Orange County. Most likely conservative, although not outspoken about it4. He won some titles, but all four were 250s, three of them in America5. He got up to 21st in the world, but never made it beyond the round of 16 in a slam. Like many of the other guys of his time, he had a huge serve, a monster forehand, soft touch, and he hustled his ass off. But come on, that’s not what we’re here to talk about. We’re here to talk about the backhand.
Steve Johnson’s top spin two-handed backhand was (and is) god awful. To be fair, by the standards of the ATP tour, basically all those other guys had terrible top spin backhands too. Why, for about two generations, did we just not teach American pros6 how to hit backhands? I have no fucking idea. Is Steve Johnson’s topspin backhand dog shit on a completely different level? Absolutely. Steve Johnson may have the worst topspin backhand of any player consistently ranked in the top 100 since wood racquets fell out of fashion. His backhand, really, verges on yips territory. He basically only slices it (he does, to be fair, have one of the better slice backhands of the last decade or so), and when forced to hit over the ball, particularly on passing shots, he often bails out with a one-y instead of attempting the two-hander. Not shockingly, this has limited his success.
So why care about Steve Johnson at all?
For one thing, as tennis leftists we care about history. Sure, Steve Johnson the pro might be everything I’ve laid out above, but what many don’t realize is that before all that Steve Johnson was, arguably, the greatest college tennis player ever. From 2008-2012 he dominated at USC. He won six national championships—four team titles and back to back singles crowns to close out his career.
The Streak however is what elevated Johnson into the realm of legend. On a run that encompassed nearly two full seasons, Stevie won 72 straight singles matches to close out his college career. Unfortunately, the ITA and USC have made the actual match to match data of that streak incredibly difficult to access. The ITA database is blanked that far back and the USC website doesn’t include their fall 2010 tournaments, so I can’t tell you exactly when Steve last lost in college, nor can I tell you who it was to. I also can’t comment on how many matches the streak actually included—it’s often reported at 72, but many college duals, which are played to the clinch in playoff formats, leave matches abandoned and unfinished—so really the count is 72 wins, a handful of “draws.” Semantics aside, The Streak is, genuinely, one of the greatest feats in the history of Division 1 athletics.
You know, sure, maybe someone with a little foresight might have thought, “Okay. I’ll take a couple of losses in college, but I’m going to really figure out how to hit a topspin backhand before I hit the tour full time.” But Steve Johnson said, “Fuck foresight. I’m going to slice my way to 72 wins in a row.” And he did. And that’s what makes Steve Johnson great in a truly American way. He is basically somewhere between tennis J.J. Redick and tennis Tim Tebow. An absolute god at the college level, ultimately just really good at the pro level7, hampered by a stubborn drive to win now that allowed a corrosive technical flaw to stunt his upside8.
And that’s another thing about Steve Johnson. While, yes, his backhand always sucked, it has undoubtedly gotten worse over the years. He used to be able to at least hit it now and then. And that’s what partially blew me away watching his Lexington matches. I think Steve really has turned back the clock. He’s back with Babolat, for one thing, and looking a little beefier too. He’s playing with some college swagger again. Far less fear. I even saw him hit over a few returns.
So, let’s get to the important question. Is Steve Johnson a leftist?
Absolutely not. See you next week.
Learner Tien, a favorite from last year’s Open column, appears poised to win back to back titles
Looking forward to some Gabriel Debru Jakub Mensik showdowns in five years
He was down 7-6, 5-4 40-0 in the final, quadruple match point because college tennis is no-ad.
The only politicians I could find on Johnson’s Instagram were Dan Crenshaw and Donald Trump
The 4th in Nottingham, to keep anglophone exclusivity
with a few exceptions, ahem Mardy Fish
JJ
Tebow