Post by Annie on Jun 13, 2005 19:47:46 GMT 3
Ace Magazine UK
Issue 71 November 2002
Stalking Safin
What's the matter with Marat Safin? Does he even know? Dominic Bliss tracks down the elusive Russian around Tashkent, at last pinning him down for some serious talk.
I'm in town to interview Marat Safin. A President's Cup stalwart, he has won the title for the past couple of years and is here to contest both singles and doubles, and hopefully profit from Russian support in the crowd. I have arranged to speak to Marat for half an hour, but whenever I accost him he gives me the brush off.
It is the Wednesday of the tournament and the Russian No. 1 is through to the second round thanks to a straight sets win over Frenchman Gregory Carraz. I follow him from the practice courts into the players' restaurant, but he wants to eat. He doesn't want to waste precious food time with a journalist.
Sat at a dinner table for four, he is holding court. Opposite him are his coach Alexander Volkov and his coach's good-looking girlfriend. To his left is the tall Swiss player Marc Rosset.
Waitresses hover near his table, ready to attend to his every whim. They nudge one another and giggle, half pointing. Safin is the best thing on the menu all week. Other players and ATP hangers-on regularly approach his table. Safin jokes with them. He seems completely at ease and comfortable to be the centre of attention. Suddenly the restaurant band march in, set up their instruments and strike up a slow but loud tune from the musical My Fair Lady. They position themselves on a little stage just three inches from Satin's right ear. "Time to go", Safin whispers to Rosset. Stuffing the remnants of his dessert into his mouth, he makes for the door, but not before the band's violinist buttonholes him briefly for a few words and a firm handshake. It's not just me who wants a piece of Safin.
Then it is upstairs to the player's lounge. A huge expanse of sofa chairs surround the TV, which is piping through the second match of the day. Safin flops down on a sofa, slings his huge bag on the floor and starts to digest his meal. "Now I've got him", I think, and for the second time that day I request an interview. But he wants to relax. He doesn't want to waste precious rest time with a journalist.
There are other players in the lounge, all of various nationalities. Even Yevgeny Kafelnikove drops by for a few moments. The higher ranked players occupy the seats next to Safin, while lower-ranked, late arrivals lean on the chair backs, conscious that this champion needs his space, but also keen to prove that they're not so in awe of the guy that they can't hang out with him.
Safin is oblivious, though. With one eye on the TV monitor and the other eye catching some sleep before his evening match, he's happy just to be left alone. My interview will have to wait until later.
On the stadium court Safin is battling against Karol Beck. It's one set all and the spectators are strangely mute, worried that the Russian top seed might not actually make it into the quarter-finals.
The 6ft 4in right-hander lopes and mopes around the court, his gain slow and listless, like a Neanderthal with carbohydrates deficiency. If you couldn't see the scoreboard, his body language and downcast face would suggest he was about to lose. He commits a third successive unforced error and slams down his racket onto the surface of the hard court. The umpire tuts, but decides not to give the cantankerous player a warning for racket abuse. The Head i-Prestige lives to see another set. Hundreds of its predecessors have not been so luck.
I finally pin Safin down at lunchtime two days later. After three days of virtually stalking the man, he agrees to be interviewed. And racket abuse is one of the subjects he is happy to talk about.
"On average I break about two rackets a week" "No.....one a week. Maybe when I am playing good I don't break rackets. But when I am playing bad I break lots".
I remind him that in January 2001 he told Ace he had already broken 150 throughout his career. With one week since then that would now put his total at around 230. At 160.00 a racket, his sponsors must surely have started complaining by now.
"But they knew since the beginning of my contract that I am this way " says Safin, obviously quite proud of his trademark habit. "So what can I do? I cannot fight against myself. I think the people at Head watch tennis and they watch TV. So they know how I treat the rackets. But it's OK. I don't think it's a major problem for them"
Nothing much is a problem for Safin. He's a very cool character once off the court and despite the obvious beefed-up security at the tournament, the armed guards patrolling the grounds and the police car escort he and all the other players have from the hotel to stadium, he doesn't feel he's in any danger. He laughs when asked if needs security guards in Tashkent "Of course not", he says. "What for? We are just tennis players. Who cars about us?".
In fact he's something of a fatalist. "Anyway, you don't know what's going to happen tomorrow, so it's OK. One day I will die. I don't mind. I cannot wait for something bad to happen all the time. I cannot be scared in case something's going to happen to me tomorrow. I live my life. I like the way I'm living. I don't need a bodyguard. I 'm not the president. I'm just here in Tashkent to play tennis and make some money. I try to win the tournament. I try to make the people happy and see them smile. That's my job.
Life on the ATP circuit all seems pretty simple. This is a country of complex politics and a population who are struggling to make their way in the world. "I don't know" he says, obviously very reluctant to be involved in local politics. "I don't really care because I don't know what the situation is. Seriously ...... I don't care. I have my own problems to worry about".
But Safin knows that life isn't easy in Uzbekistan's stagnant economy. "They live in a different world, the people here" he observes. "Some people choose to go from here to the US because life is better for them there. But when they will tell you after one day that they want to come back. They like it here. They like the way of living and they enjoy it"
It's hard for Safin to criticise a government - albeit a dictatorship - which has bent over backwards to make his short stay as enjoyable as possible. He knows which side his bread is buttered and he knows it's ineffective and perhaps inappropriate for him to interfere. He just wants to get on with his job.
Outside the tennis he says that he never really has time to do anything but practise, eat and sleep. "Any way, where can I go?. I have not time. Today I woke up at 11. I came here to practise. Then I played a match, I finished the match at 11 o'clock at night. Then what do I do? I go back to the hotel. I have dinner and that's it. I have to go back to sleep. Because another days is coming and I have to wake up and go to practice".
That for many players is the monotony of the ATP tour. But what Safin rarely mentions is his extra-curricular activities with the ladies. He has not steady girlfriend and so if he wishes he is able to enjoy the attention of the numerous female fans who grace the various tournaments on the circuit.
"Of course!" her blurts out, when asked if he considers himself a ladies man. "I am not gay!. Find me one normal guy who doesn't like women's company. I think it is good. It's natural. You cannot fight nature, right?".
That's all he chooses to divulge about his private life. He does agree to talk a bit about his apartment in Monaco, though. "I go there quite often", he says, conscious that it is actually quite unusual for a successful professional player to spend time in his home. "It's a beautiful place, by the sea, I like it very much. It's so relaxing. You can practice, you have courts, you have the gym, whatever you need. You have a beautiful airport at nice, you can fly anywhere you want without any problems. It's the centre of Europe basically". It's also a handy little tax haven. By living there he is, like dozens of other ATP players able to avoid paying tax in his home country.
"I'm not living in Russia, I'm never there. I'm not spending money there. I'm not bringing money there. I'm not making money in Russia. So for the moment, there's no tax." He says, explaining his rather convenient fiscal avoidance. "But one day I will live there. It's actually very good taxes we have in Russia. Only 13 percent.
I tell Safin how much tax we pay in the UK. "Go to Russia," is his immediate retort. "I organize you a Russian passport."
Despite spending his teenage years in Spain and now living in Monaco, Safin is obviously very proud of his Russian roots. He was born into a tennis dynasty. His mother and first coach was a top 10 Russian player, and his father ran the famous Spartak Club in Moscow where she worked. Little Marat first started playing tennis aged three. Ten years later his parents packed him off to a tennis academy in Valencia, in Spain. He has always maintained that having to fend for himself taught him valuable lessons in how to deal with the ATP tour. "I think as a guy you need a little bit to be on your own from an early age," he told journalists a few years ago. "You need to start to live your own life and try to understand what is going on around you. You have to be able to survive."
Safin's 16-year-old sister Dinara Safina has done the opposite and stayed under the tutelage of her mother. Despite that fact that she has already won one WTA tournament (Sopot) and four ITF events, big brother doesn't see the wisdom in this. "I don't think it's good idea. I tell you why. First of all, parents are parents. So you don't treat your mother with respect if she is your coach. She will always be your mother, she will never be your coach. So it never works. Because one day you will fight with her. All the time you fight, fight, fight, fight, fight and that's it. It's finished. Family is family, business is business. You can't put it together because it doesn't work, by nature.
Yet family and business aren't so detached that Safin wouldn't consider playing doubles with his sister. "Yeah, I would love to." he enthuses.
Marat's advice to Dinara is that she should stop trying so hard to win. Easing off the pressure is something that helped in his own game. "I don't think it's good when somebody wants something really badly," he says, "You need to be more relaxed, because if you try too much, you have a lot of pressure. This year I wanted too much from myself. I cannot play tennis like this."
His see-sawing results certainly reflect this inability to perform under pressure. Back in 2000 he won seven tournaments, including the US Open, and finished the year ranked number 2 in the world. This year, with everyone expecting him to achieve great things again, he has reached two finals, but hasn't added any silverware to his trophy cabinet.
"When I was ranked 40 in the world, nobody cared about me," he says, looking back fondly on his days of virtual obscurity. "I started to win matches because I had no pressure. Now everybody's expecting things from me. Every time I have to win, I have to win, Safin has to win, Safin, Safin, Safin, Safin, Safin, Safin! Then one day I sat down and said no, no, no. If it's going to be like this, I cannot play. When I have so much pressure I don't enjoy tennis and I feel bad. So I tried to calm down, tried not to make such a big deal of it, even if I don't win a tournament this year."
Before his marvelous 2000 run began in April that year, Safin considered giving up the game for good. There was a report that he contemplated running a wine bar in Spain, but this seems unlikely.
"I had a little bit of money, so I could have lived for a few months and thought about my future," he says. "But then I decided, where could I work instead of tennis? What could I do? I don't know how to do anything. It's like most tennis players. What are we going to do? We are playing tennis since we are six. When you are aged 20, if you give up tennis, are you going to go back to school? It's really difficult to start from the beginning again and try to make a career."
Tashkent's Yusanabad stadium is again awash with policemen. Most of them are skinny 18 and 19-year-olds in baggy dark green uniforms and kepi hats pushed back on top of their heads. Individually they look about as fierce as the pre-pubescent autograph hunters who have been hounding Safin and Kafelnikov all day. But put them together and you wouldn't mess with them. They, of course, carry guns.
On stadium court, Safin is playing doubles with compatriot Denis Golovanov against the Dutch team of Raemon Sluiter and Martin Verkerk. Things are not going well. Safin and Golovanov win the first set but go down 3-6, 6-7 in the second and third. Just as the umpire is announcing the final score, Safin smashes his racket onto the court.
A loud crack reverberates around the stadium as it splinters apart. There goes racket number 231.
By Dominic Bliss for ACE magazine UK
Typed up by Mags and Ruth.
Issue 71 November 2002
Stalking Safin
What's the matter with Marat Safin? Does he even know? Dominic Bliss tracks down the elusive Russian around Tashkent, at last pinning him down for some serious talk.
I'm in town to interview Marat Safin. A President's Cup stalwart, he has won the title for the past couple of years and is here to contest both singles and doubles, and hopefully profit from Russian support in the crowd. I have arranged to speak to Marat for half an hour, but whenever I accost him he gives me the brush off.
It is the Wednesday of the tournament and the Russian No. 1 is through to the second round thanks to a straight sets win over Frenchman Gregory Carraz. I follow him from the practice courts into the players' restaurant, but he wants to eat. He doesn't want to waste precious food time with a journalist.
Sat at a dinner table for four, he is holding court. Opposite him are his coach Alexander Volkov and his coach's good-looking girlfriend. To his left is the tall Swiss player Marc Rosset.
Waitresses hover near his table, ready to attend to his every whim. They nudge one another and giggle, half pointing. Safin is the best thing on the menu all week. Other players and ATP hangers-on regularly approach his table. Safin jokes with them. He seems completely at ease and comfortable to be the centre of attention. Suddenly the restaurant band march in, set up their instruments and strike up a slow but loud tune from the musical My Fair Lady. They position themselves on a little stage just three inches from Satin's right ear. "Time to go", Safin whispers to Rosset. Stuffing the remnants of his dessert into his mouth, he makes for the door, but not before the band's violinist buttonholes him briefly for a few words and a firm handshake. It's not just me who wants a piece of Safin.
Then it is upstairs to the player's lounge. A huge expanse of sofa chairs surround the TV, which is piping through the second match of the day. Safin flops down on a sofa, slings his huge bag on the floor and starts to digest his meal. "Now I've got him", I think, and for the second time that day I request an interview. But he wants to relax. He doesn't want to waste precious rest time with a journalist.
There are other players in the lounge, all of various nationalities. Even Yevgeny Kafelnikove drops by for a few moments. The higher ranked players occupy the seats next to Safin, while lower-ranked, late arrivals lean on the chair backs, conscious that this champion needs his space, but also keen to prove that they're not so in awe of the guy that they can't hang out with him.
Safin is oblivious, though. With one eye on the TV monitor and the other eye catching some sleep before his evening match, he's happy just to be left alone. My interview will have to wait until later.
On the stadium court Safin is battling against Karol Beck. It's one set all and the spectators are strangely mute, worried that the Russian top seed might not actually make it into the quarter-finals.
The 6ft 4in right-hander lopes and mopes around the court, his gain slow and listless, like a Neanderthal with carbohydrates deficiency. If you couldn't see the scoreboard, his body language and downcast face would suggest he was about to lose. He commits a third successive unforced error and slams down his racket onto the surface of the hard court. The umpire tuts, but decides not to give the cantankerous player a warning for racket abuse. The Head i-Prestige lives to see another set. Hundreds of its predecessors have not been so luck.
I finally pin Safin down at lunchtime two days later. After three days of virtually stalking the man, he agrees to be interviewed. And racket abuse is one of the subjects he is happy to talk about.
"On average I break about two rackets a week" "No.....one a week. Maybe when I am playing good I don't break rackets. But when I am playing bad I break lots".
I remind him that in January 2001 he told Ace he had already broken 150 throughout his career. With one week since then that would now put his total at around 230. At 160.00 a racket, his sponsors must surely have started complaining by now.
"But they knew since the beginning of my contract that I am this way " says Safin, obviously quite proud of his trademark habit. "So what can I do? I cannot fight against myself. I think the people at Head watch tennis and they watch TV. So they know how I treat the rackets. But it's OK. I don't think it's a major problem for them"
Nothing much is a problem for Safin. He's a very cool character once off the court and despite the obvious beefed-up security at the tournament, the armed guards patrolling the grounds and the police car escort he and all the other players have from the hotel to stadium, he doesn't feel he's in any danger. He laughs when asked if needs security guards in Tashkent "Of course not", he says. "What for? We are just tennis players. Who cars about us?".
In fact he's something of a fatalist. "Anyway, you don't know what's going to happen tomorrow, so it's OK. One day I will die. I don't mind. I cannot wait for something bad to happen all the time. I cannot be scared in case something's going to happen to me tomorrow. I live my life. I like the way I'm living. I don't need a bodyguard. I 'm not the president. I'm just here in Tashkent to play tennis and make some money. I try to win the tournament. I try to make the people happy and see them smile. That's my job.
Life on the ATP circuit all seems pretty simple. This is a country of complex politics and a population who are struggling to make their way in the world. "I don't know" he says, obviously very reluctant to be involved in local politics. "I don't really care because I don't know what the situation is. Seriously ...... I don't care. I have my own problems to worry about".
But Safin knows that life isn't easy in Uzbekistan's stagnant economy. "They live in a different world, the people here" he observes. "Some people choose to go from here to the US because life is better for them there. But when they will tell you after one day that they want to come back. They like it here. They like the way of living and they enjoy it"
It's hard for Safin to criticise a government - albeit a dictatorship - which has bent over backwards to make his short stay as enjoyable as possible. He knows which side his bread is buttered and he knows it's ineffective and perhaps inappropriate for him to interfere. He just wants to get on with his job.
Outside the tennis he says that he never really has time to do anything but practise, eat and sleep. "Any way, where can I go?. I have not time. Today I woke up at 11. I came here to practise. Then I played a match, I finished the match at 11 o'clock at night. Then what do I do? I go back to the hotel. I have dinner and that's it. I have to go back to sleep. Because another days is coming and I have to wake up and go to practice".
That for many players is the monotony of the ATP tour. But what Safin rarely mentions is his extra-curricular activities with the ladies. He has not steady girlfriend and so if he wishes he is able to enjoy the attention of the numerous female fans who grace the various tournaments on the circuit.
"Of course!" her blurts out, when asked if he considers himself a ladies man. "I am not gay!. Find me one normal guy who doesn't like women's company. I think it is good. It's natural. You cannot fight nature, right?".
That's all he chooses to divulge about his private life. He does agree to talk a bit about his apartment in Monaco, though. "I go there quite often", he says, conscious that it is actually quite unusual for a successful professional player to spend time in his home. "It's a beautiful place, by the sea, I like it very much. It's so relaxing. You can practice, you have courts, you have the gym, whatever you need. You have a beautiful airport at nice, you can fly anywhere you want without any problems. It's the centre of Europe basically". It's also a handy little tax haven. By living there he is, like dozens of other ATP players able to avoid paying tax in his home country.
"I'm not living in Russia, I'm never there. I'm not spending money there. I'm not bringing money there. I'm not making money in Russia. So for the moment, there's no tax." He says, explaining his rather convenient fiscal avoidance. "But one day I will live there. It's actually very good taxes we have in Russia. Only 13 percent.
I tell Safin how much tax we pay in the UK. "Go to Russia," is his immediate retort. "I organize you a Russian passport."
Despite spending his teenage years in Spain and now living in Monaco, Safin is obviously very proud of his Russian roots. He was born into a tennis dynasty. His mother and first coach was a top 10 Russian player, and his father ran the famous Spartak Club in Moscow where she worked. Little Marat first started playing tennis aged three. Ten years later his parents packed him off to a tennis academy in Valencia, in Spain. He has always maintained that having to fend for himself taught him valuable lessons in how to deal with the ATP tour. "I think as a guy you need a little bit to be on your own from an early age," he told journalists a few years ago. "You need to start to live your own life and try to understand what is going on around you. You have to be able to survive."
Safin's 16-year-old sister Dinara Safina has done the opposite and stayed under the tutelage of her mother. Despite that fact that she has already won one WTA tournament (Sopot) and four ITF events, big brother doesn't see the wisdom in this. "I don't think it's good idea. I tell you why. First of all, parents are parents. So you don't treat your mother with respect if she is your coach. She will always be your mother, she will never be your coach. So it never works. Because one day you will fight with her. All the time you fight, fight, fight, fight, fight and that's it. It's finished. Family is family, business is business. You can't put it together because it doesn't work, by nature.
Yet family and business aren't so detached that Safin wouldn't consider playing doubles with his sister. "Yeah, I would love to." he enthuses.
Marat's advice to Dinara is that she should stop trying so hard to win. Easing off the pressure is something that helped in his own game. "I don't think it's good when somebody wants something really badly," he says, "You need to be more relaxed, because if you try too much, you have a lot of pressure. This year I wanted too much from myself. I cannot play tennis like this."
His see-sawing results certainly reflect this inability to perform under pressure. Back in 2000 he won seven tournaments, including the US Open, and finished the year ranked number 2 in the world. This year, with everyone expecting him to achieve great things again, he has reached two finals, but hasn't added any silverware to his trophy cabinet.
"When I was ranked 40 in the world, nobody cared about me," he says, looking back fondly on his days of virtual obscurity. "I started to win matches because I had no pressure. Now everybody's expecting things from me. Every time I have to win, I have to win, Safin has to win, Safin, Safin, Safin, Safin, Safin, Safin! Then one day I sat down and said no, no, no. If it's going to be like this, I cannot play. When I have so much pressure I don't enjoy tennis and I feel bad. So I tried to calm down, tried not to make such a big deal of it, even if I don't win a tournament this year."
Before his marvelous 2000 run began in April that year, Safin considered giving up the game for good. There was a report that he contemplated running a wine bar in Spain, but this seems unlikely.
"I had a little bit of money, so I could have lived for a few months and thought about my future," he says. "But then I decided, where could I work instead of tennis? What could I do? I don't know how to do anything. It's like most tennis players. What are we going to do? We are playing tennis since we are six. When you are aged 20, if you give up tennis, are you going to go back to school? It's really difficult to start from the beginning again and try to make a career."
Tashkent's Yusanabad stadium is again awash with policemen. Most of them are skinny 18 and 19-year-olds in baggy dark green uniforms and kepi hats pushed back on top of their heads. Individually they look about as fierce as the pre-pubescent autograph hunters who have been hounding Safin and Kafelnikov all day. But put them together and you wouldn't mess with them. They, of course, carry guns.
On stadium court, Safin is playing doubles with compatriot Denis Golovanov against the Dutch team of Raemon Sluiter and Martin Verkerk. Things are not going well. Safin and Golovanov win the first set but go down 3-6, 6-7 in the second and third. Just as the umpire is announcing the final score, Safin smashes his racket onto the court.
A loud crack reverberates around the stadium as it splinters apart. There goes racket number 231.
By Dominic Bliss for ACE magazine UK
Typed up by Mags and Ruth.
