Bruce Emond, The Jakarta Post, Nusa Dua, Bali
Tennis journalist Barry Wood has spent his birthday in many unusual places during his 21-year career, only to be expected in the nomadic if-it's-Monday-it-must-be-Doha nature of covering the men's and women's tours.
One year, he found himself perched alone in the aerie of a press box, watching a marathon men's match that dragged on until the wee hours of the next morning.
On Sunday, the Englishman turned 58 in the more idyllic setting of Nusa Dua, Bali, where he is covering the Wismilak International women's tournament. From spending about nine months a year on the tour during the 1980s, he now travels and reports about six months a year.
""I'm a tennis groupie who found a way to get paid for it,"" he said Sunday of his long-standing love of the game.
He has no formal journalistic training, and freely admits he came to the job by accident. In 1978 the Londoner read an ad in a local newspaper from a hospital radio station looking for reporters; one fortuitous acquaintance led to another, and before long he was covering tennis with a trip to the Brighton tournament.
He remembers his first interview -- the American serve and volleyer Betsy Nagelsen, later to marry IMG chairman Mark McCormack. He worked part-time, covering three or four tournaments a year, mostly in Europe. The rest of the time was the drudgery of paying the bills, working for British Telecom and listening to customers' excuses about why they were not paying their bills.
In 1986 he took the plunge, devoting himself to freelance work as a print and radio journalist for the sport. Wood, the perennial front-row presence at news conferences, has known most of the great names of recent years -- Navratilova, Evert, Graf, Davenport and also Indonesia's former top 20 star Yayuk Basuki.
""He's an iconic figure on the tour,"" says men's doubles great Todd Woodbridge. ""Players can tell the difference between journalists who love the game, and those who are just doing it because it's their job. Barry belongs in the former category.""
For the first few years, he only covered the women's game, but now covers men's too (he has also written for the Raket sports tabloid and Kompas daily in Indonesia). He still prefers the approachability of the women's stars, even with the more cloistered environment of today's tour.
""Everybody loves flattery, and it's easier to flatter a woman,"" he said. ""I can tell Amelie Mauresmo that I love her voice, and would like to make a CD of it, and she knows that I really like her.""
Wood said there was no danger of getting too close to the source. ""Trust is very important, and the longer you know them, the better relationship you have. But they are the ones who draw the line.""
He also has been around to witness the massive changes in the women's tour, both in celebrity status and sponsorship. There was US$6.2 million in total prize money available in 1979; today, the figure is $57.8 million.
It's changed the face of the game into big business, where it's the bottom line that counts.
""People like Evonne Goolagong would win Wimbledon and go to someone's house for dinner. Everything was much more intimate and friendly,"" said Wood, who remembers the Australian Anne Minter calling him up after winning a title in Taipei in 1987 to have a celebratory dinner.
""That would never happen today.""
Wood, who met his Thai wife in Bangkok during a stale period when he needed time away from the game, is enthusiastic about some of the recent technological changes, less so about others.
He fully supports instant replay, especially in getting the crowd involved, although he does not think it should be limited to just two or three calls a set. Although he acknowledges technological advances have made the baseline game dominant, Wood said: ""But would you like to go back to the slow-motion game that we see in the recordings of Wimbledon during rain delays. Everybody plays the same kind of game, but there's enough variety to make it interesting.""
He does not understand the debate about equal prize money; to him it's a given that women should receive the same pay as men.
""Do we pay them based on entertainment, and get the crowd to vote with buttons on their seats? It's silly -- there are good men's matches, and good women's matches.""
Although Wood believes that many Asians lack the raw aggression needed to reach the big time -- ""you've got to be a real bastard on court"" -- he was impressed by the talent of the young Yayuk when he saw her play Britain in the then Federation Cup.
""She's a player whose talent comes along once every 10 years, (Evonne) Goolagong is the only player I can compare her to,"" he commented, high praise indeed from a man who has observed all the greats of recent years.
""She could have been top 10 instead of top 20 ... but sometimes number one isn't everything, number two is OK, too. She was in control of her life, while other players hang on and on because they have nothing else to do.""
His reminiscences about the stars could fill a book, which he might write when he retires to his country home in northern Thailand in the next few years.
He never liked Evert, describing her as ""hard"", very different from her public persona of America's sweetheart. Navratilova, despite her tendency to sound off and trample on fragile egos, is the greatest player ever, he believes, for changing the way women played, and also pioneering sports nutrition for tennis.
He describes Jennifer Capriati as not very bright, ""but we clicked. She always gave me very good interviews"".
His most memorable moment of his career was the April 1993 day in Hamburg, when Monica Seles was stabbed in the back by a deranged fan of Graf. He can still hear the sound of the ambulance siren as Seles was whisked away to the hospital.
It irrevocably changed the face of the game, from the intimate, friendly setting he described to today's strict separation of players from fans and the media.
But he is not one to try to rewrite history, or ponder the ""what ifs?"" of the Seles stabbing.
""A lot is made of that, but we don't know,"" he said of whether the Yugoslav-born American would have won more Grand Slams. ""She could have been hit by a car the next week and broken her leg. Players drop in form. Things happen.
