Ernests Gulbis: The player we should all get to know

The pace of play was unreal. At one point, after missing a first serve, Ernests Gulbis got back in position to hit his second so quickly that the ballboy, despite scampering around as if he was on wheels, still wasn’t back in his position by the time the serve thudded across the turf. Tomas Berdych, who was naturally distracted, couldn’t move out of the way of the serve, and the ball hit him smack on his shoulder. Berdych glared at the ballboy, who looked around sheepishly, Gulbis got back in position to hit another second serve within a millisecond, and tennis watchers everywhere burst out into uncontrollable laughter. Gulbis, with his speed of play, was making Roger Federer and Kim Clijsters, two players who are known to race ahead with their service games, look like laggards by comparison.

And that’s how it has always been with Gulbis. The comparisons, the expectations, the inevitable disappointments – all of the unavoidable baggage that comes with being ridiculously talented. The Latvian has failed to live up to his potential in his short career so  far – that much is clear. At the age of 23, he is yet to reach a Grand Slam semifinal, has reached the quarters just once (back in 2008), and he actually made first-round exits at 8 out of his last 9 Majors. But then there are days like yesterday, when, for about two hours, Gulbis belted the ball around with so much authority and nonchalance that it seemed like he owned the game of tennis, that make us go back to the well of comparisons with legendary players. Three years ago we compared him with freakishly gifted prodigies. Now we want to compare him with ultra-skilled late bloomers. Can Gulbis ever win a match against a Top-10 player without it seeming like a momentous coming of age, a match that is destined to change the future of tennis? Not with those kind of tennis chops, no.

Gulbis, as is well-documented, comes from an incredibly wealthy family. And his family’s fortunes have often been cited as the reason why he looks so disinterested in toughing it out on the tennis court. So he loses one match, then two, then three. What’s the big deal? He can always go back to his daddy’s mansion and lord it over his servants. Even the way he sits on the chair during a change-over suggests an air of imperiousness. He’ll cross his legs, take a few sips from his bottle, and then stare into space as if he was just plain bored by the vulgarity of it all.

Then there are the unusual (for lack of a better word) comments that he makes to the press after his matches. Once when he strung together a series of good wins and was asked what had caused the turnaround, he said, “I woke up one morning with a hangover, I clicked my fingers, and decided, ‘right, now I go for it’”. When he defeated Roger Federer at the 2010 Rome Masters after wasting 6 match points, he was asked what happened on those 6 points. “Well, I shit my pants a little bit, excuse my language” was Gulbis’s response. He was asked by a reporter what his thoughts were about playing Mardy Fish, who was then the top-ranked American player, and he said, “Well, I’m ranked No. 1 in Lativa”. Gulbis’s crowning glory, though, came after he spent a day in jail on charges of soliciting prostitutes in Stockholm (yes, you read that right). His take on the affair? “It was very funny. I think every person should go to jail once, as it’s interesting. It’s really interesting, as they are very strict. I was in jail for one night, about six hours. I slept a bit. Then the prosecutor came and he asked me what happened, and then he said, ‘Sorry, we didn’t know that it was this’”. Who can be blamed for thinking that Gulbis plays the game just because the tennis court seems like a giant version of the playroom his dad built for him when he was a little kid?

While we may have been guilty of prematurely comparing Gulbis with the superstars of the sport (I remember thinking after his quarterfinal loss to Novak Djokovic at the 2008 French Open that he would eventually eclipse Djokovic, who was just 21 at that time, and become the next dominant player), there’s one comparison that is simply too irresistible: Marat Safin. Safin could generate effortless, casual power off his groundstrokes like nobody’s business; Gulbis can nonchalantly swat winners from any position on the court as though it is the easiest thing in the world. Safin had his tantrums, Gulbis has his. Safin had his bevy of supermodels sitting in the player’s box, Gulbis has his prostitutes. Safin had his hilarious one-liners; Gulbis never fails to regale us with his (yesterday, when quizzed how he had managed to clinch the match despite wasting 3 match points, Gulbis said, with a perfectly straight face, “I’m well known for my mental strength, ask around”). Even the way they make ridiculous Hawk-eye challenges is eerily similar. Safin once challenged a Roger Federer serve that was so clearly in that both Federer and the chair umpire couldn’t stop from laughing; yesterday, Gulbis challenged a forehand that was so clearly out that it made the commentators guffaw their hearts out. But when you strip down the cosmetics, this is what we are left with – Safin, despite all his shenanigans, still became No. 1 in the world and won two Majors, while Gulbis hasn’t even broken into the top 20, and is as far away from winning a Major as Himesh Reshammiya is from winning a Grammy.

Is that really such a big deal, though? If you’re as gifted as Gulbis, then yes, it is. If he goes his entire career without ever winning a Major, it will be nothing short of criminal. And you’d know what I’m talking about here if you’ve ever seen Gulbis in full flow, the way he was yesterday. When the kid is on his game, no shot looks impossible. Huge first serves of his opponent (Berdych came up with plenty of them yesterday) are returned with explosive precision. That swatted, short-backswing forehand unleashes winners from every part of the court. Those delicate drop shots bamboozle the best movers around. And that serve looks untouchable no matter what the opponent tries. Gulbis plays tennis with a relentless first-strike mentality that is, pure and simple, unbeatable on a good day. He literally launches himself into almost every one of his shots, and his footwork and balance are so good that even if the opponent gets the ball back he can usually recover and set up to blast another shot. He’s not unlike Petra Kvitova in that respect: they both know just one way to play, and when it’s working, it makes for spectacular viewing. The problem arises, of course, when it’s not working. Kvitova has, so far, done a decent job of fighting out matches even when she’s not at her best. Gulbis, on the other hand, has shown no indication yet that he’ll ever learn to get his hands dirty and grind out wins when his strokes desert him.

The history of tennis is littered with stories of prodigious players who never made it big despite having all the talent in the world. At this point, I very strongly doubt that the Gulbis story will end up as anything other than a lamentable tale of how indiscipline and disinterest can bring even the most spectacular talent to naught. But I also strongly feel that the tennis world would do well to acquaint itself with the kid. Put him on a court, and on his day (which will likely come along only once in a blue moon), he can bring the house down with his fiery play; get him off the court and into the press room, and he can give you some much-needed entertainment through his dry, inimitable sense of self-deprecating humor. In the midst of all that, there will be the occasional madcap antics in his personal life that will either make you laugh uproariously or cringe with disgust, depending on your viewpoint. One thing’s for sure – with Gulbis in the thick of things, we will always have something to talk about. Tennis has lacked a genuine ‘rock star’ ever since Safin retired, and Gulbis is as good a candidate as any to fill that void.