Bjorn Bush and the Baseline Strategy

LongLeggedFly ^ | October 15, 2004 | JCEccles

[JCEccles]

I haven’t followed professional tennis for years, but as an aging baby boomer I acutely remember the Bjorn Borg – Jimmy Connors matchups of the late 70s and early 80s. These contests were the stuff of legend showcasing two of the most physically dominating players ever to take the court.

What made the contests particularly watchable and fun was the sharp differences in the styles of play employed by the two men.

Connors was the smaller man but his competitive fires were stoked to white-hot temperature that could blister the tele-ether and make viewers squirm in discomfort. Famous for his ferocious two-fisted backhand Connors would scream-grunt with every swing as if convinced the sound itself would impart an extra five mph oomph to the ball. If a rally continued past three or four returns Connors could be expected to rush the net like Patton invading Sicily. Connors was a gambler, a profligate devourer of risk with every swing.

Borg was a tall, laconic Swede with a barrel chest and impossibly long arms. Borg played his game way beyond the back of the baseline as if he were affixed to a track. Borg had this way of gliding back and forth parallel to the baseline using those long arms to snag hard-angle blasts and pop them back just over the net. Borg was not a risk taker. He played his horizontal glide-swing-glide-swing pattern with little variation, content to let the more aggressive Connors take all the risk of a more complicated vertical rush-the-net style.

Although their matches were typically won very narrowly and often only after continuing into tie-breaker sets, over the full history of this legendary war Borg’s conservatism gave him the edge. Connors won fewer individual battles but spectacularly and more memorably; Borg won more battles, but dully and more forgettably. Because Connors took more risk on offense, he committed more unforced errors. The war overall went to the Swede and the consistent low-risk no-mistakes style.

This year’s presidential election campaign has been waged in a manner eerily similar to the Connors-Borg match-ups, with Kerry playing Connors to Bush’s Borg. The fit is not perfect; Kerry doesn’t grunt much when he swings to score a point. But the essential similarities are striking. Kerry has taken the risks and repeatedly rushed the net—particularly in the debates—in an attempt to intimidate and overwhelm Bush. Bush has remained well back of the baseline, content to make the same prosaic points swing after swing, allowing Kerry, the “great closer,” all the space in the world to screw-up spectacularly in his over-eagerness to annihilate Bush.

Only now in the wake of the “Mary Cheney is a lesbian” fiasco by Kerry is the wisdom of Bush’s more conservative play becoming fully apparent. When Kerry rushed the net in the third debate to make this comment he blew the point spectacularly and threw the set to Bush, who made no memorable mistakes during the debate.

Viewed in retrospect the first debate was won by Bush in the same way. Kerry’s aggressiveness and bombast made him appear to be the overwhelming winner, but Kerry actually lost the set with his astonishing “global test” flub. The more dull Bush won by making no memorable mistakes.

This morning the Reuters-Zogby poll—easily the most Bush unfriendly poll—shows Bush moving to a four point lead over Kerry as the Mary Cheney flap continues into another news cycle.

Expect Bjorn Bush to continue swinging safely on message from the baseline heartland as the campaign goes into its final two weeks. Expect Kerry to continue to aggressively rush the net.

Barring any extraneous uncontrollable events of an Abu Graib quality and impact, expect a Bjorn Bush tie-breaker victory on November 2.

[kingattax]

game......set......match