The vast majority of the time, we feel like we’ll never see anything new under the sun. Or the clouds. Or the bright blue sky.
Rock is dead, it’s politics as usual, tennis has no new personalities—on any given day, all of these clichés are likely to seem true. But just when you’re about to give up on the future, you might notice a disturbance in the force. The last time I can remember this in music or movies or politics was the early 90s. We’d all thrown in the towel and resigned ourselves to a lifetime of hair metal, Richard Gere, and Barbara Bush. Then over the course of what seemed like one weekend in the middle of 1992, they were all vanquished. The world was, however briefly, an edgier and smarter place. In their place was Nirvana, there was Bill Clinton, there was, coming soon to a theatre near you, Pulp Fiction.
When you read that list of what we actually got in the 90s, you realize that not much changed in the end. Nirvana offed itself, leaving us with the horrifying Stone Temple Pilots—I guess we were fools to think we deserved better. Clinton was as embarrassing as he was inspiring. Pulp Fiction retains its deadpan brilliance, but now looks as dated as any other 15-year-old flick. After 9/11, the previous decade’s cartoonish movie violence and grunge angst seems pretty naïve.
The last revolutionary, star-aligning moment in tennis came in the spring of 2005. At Key Biscayne, Rafael Nadal had announced himself as not just an exciting newcomer, but a contender to the throne when he nearly beat Roger Federer in a five-set final. But before we could learn to do a flying fist-pump and scream "Vamos!", there was an even fresher face on the scene named Richard Gasquet.
The French teen was not an unknown quantity. He was on a magazine cover at 9 and the No. 1 junior in the world at 16. But behavioral and confidence issues had kept him from lighting up the tour until that point. Then he arrived in Monte Carlo, the tournament off the coast of France where he’d been given a wild card three years earlier and become the youngest player to compete in a Masters event.
His first upset in '05 came over Nikolay Davydenko in the round of 16. That set up a quarterfinal against Roger Federer, who was making one of his periodic runs at invincibility with a 25-match win streak. Gasquet ended it 10-8 in a third-set tiebreaker. He'd lose in the semis in three grueling sets to Nadal, who would go on to win his first Masters title.
It wasn’t the fact that Gasquet beat Federer and challenged the new challenger, Nadal. It was the way he did it that shocked. He jumped into his shots. He showed touch and goods instincts around the net. He had a glorious flyaway backhand. He hit effortless bullets. Does that last term make any kind of sense? It’s the best way I can describe how the ball came off Gasquet’s racquet. When he got hot, as he did in the second-set against Federer and the first set against Nadal, it seemed like he could have hit those winners blindfolded. I loved Nadal’s style, but I was thrilled by Gasquet’s game, to the point where two nicknames immediately seemed appropriate: “The Microwave” and, to the eternal disparagement of my friend Peter Bodo, “Baby Federer.” I thought I had seen two futures of tennis arrive over the course of one week, in the forms of Nadal and Gasquet.
Only one future had arrived, and it was Nadal. He foreshadowed events to come by taking the best Gasquet had to offer and slowly dissolving it in the red dirt, where it could do no harm. For Gasquet, that weekend, like Nirvana’s moment in 1992, remains both his summit and a symbol of his unfulfilled potential. Today I watched him get dismantled by the much more earth-bound David Ferrer 6-2, 6-2 in Dubai. I thought I was noticing a little more fight in the Gasquet game this year, and it may still come. But as Ferrer showed, the Frenchman has never found a way to consistently beat top players without going into Microwave mode. Unlike Federer, he hasn’t learned to dictate points routinely. Most of the time, his flair goes for nought. Like his countrywoman Amelie Mauresmo, his style will only win him points when it's backed up with a dull but reliable weapon.
But we still have Monte Carlo 2005, and a few key points of his win over Federer live today on YouTube. Here’s how that non-turning-point in history looks today.
—The sight of this famous court above the sea makes me think of spring, and even feel a little of its blustery warmth. Cannot wait.
—Neither guy looks too different now. Federer has improved his hair, but Gasquet persists with the abominable backwards cap. French journalist Philippe Bouin said last year that this atrocity was a symptom of Gasquet’s wish to remain a coddled child and never accept the responsibilities of manhood. Gasquet replied, according to one translation, that that was “hogwash.” I didn’t know the French had a word for hogwash.
—Gasquet’s father, a teaching pro, is sitting next to Richard’s old coach, Eric Deblicker. You don’t see his dad much these days. He’s got the same facial twitches as his son.
—As I remembered, Gasquet launches himself into the ball and into the court. It’s almost as thrilling to see now, but I wish there were clips of the second set. That was jaw-dropping. You can see a little more of the match, from an odd angle and with a screwed up soundtrack, in the clip below. Check out the snap Federer overhead. It also gives you a good view of the aggressiveness of his footwork—he launches himself around the court as well.
—Mirka more smiley and playful back then. Does she distract Federer before the 8-7 point?
—Federer’s backhand looks stronger here, especially down the line. Or maybe I’m just remembering how he hit it in the fifth set against Nadal in Melbourne.
—It’s surprising that Gasquet could give away match points and still survive the two that Federer has. You’d think the world No. 1 would have closed the door. But Federer seems slightly peeved by the atmosphere in general. I’m guessing he wasn’t the crowd favorite this day.
—Gasquet is letting it rip and looking to come in. Today against Ferrer he was more passive. He couldn’t figure out a way to make a dent in the Spaniard’s game; I’ve seen him lose to Ferrer in a similarly despondent way before. But like I said, I don’t think going Microwave is a viable tactic. Playing the world No. 1 as an 18-year-old is one thing; winning matches on an everyday basis all year is another. You’re not going to generate that kind of energy at will.
—Who’s the announcer with Leif Shiras? He seems a little overconfident that Gasquet will end the match at 9-8. I have a hard time imagining Gasquet telling Federer in his head, “You’re history now, pal.” It might help if he did.
—The final running backhand bullet pass up the line: The best match-ending shot of consquence ever? It’s hard to beat for athletic pizazz. It’s also no way to plan to win a point. Those two sentences pretty much sum up Richard Gasquet’s career four years later. We really did see the future that day in April.
It didn’t take long for the widely anticipated “bump” to happen. By that I mean, it didn’t take long for Andy Roddick’s results to improve under the watch of a new coach. When he hired Brad Gilbert, he won the U.S. Open. When he hired Jimmy Connors, he reached the Open final and put the heat on Roger Federer when he got there. Now, a couple months after hiring Larry Stefanki, he has won . . . the Regions Morgan Keegan Championships in Memphis.
OK, that doesn’t have the quite the same ring as “U.S. Open." Regions Morgan Keegan sounds more like a teenage TV star than a tennis tournament. And rather than being played in Arthur Ashe Stadium, the event is held in a racquet club with a low, triangular roof and wooden, high-school-basketball-style bleachers. Nevertheless, Memphis is a 500-level tournament, and to take home his 27th career title Roddick had to avenge a loss from the previous week against the always-tricky Radek Stepanek in the final. As Stefanki said afterward, “He’s done this 26 times before, so he knows how to win. But it feels good.”
We can assume that a major part of these bumps in Roddick’s play come not from any technical changes that his coaches make, but from the fresh energy and belief they instill in him. Unlike Federer, Roddick likes and needs mentors—he’s a younger brother at heart. But Stefanki did come in with definite technical and tactical ideas about how Roddick could get better—has he made a difference on that front?
The first thing I remember Stefanki mentioning when he got the job was Roddick’s return of serve. It was hardly a secret that this was a weakness; no less an authority than Andre Agassi had called Roddick out on it while commentating for ESPN at the Aussie Open in 2007. He said that Roddick simply didn’t do enough with the ball, particularly on second serves, and this allowed his opponents to take control of points right away. It appears that Stefanki has been addressing this. Against Stepanek, Roddick was taking his returns earlier and hitting them farther out in front of his body on both sides. More crucially, he was “cutting off the angle,” as tennis coaches like to say. Rather than waiting for the serve to reach him, he was moving on a diagonal to meet it earlier and get his body moving forward.
It may seem counterintuitive, but it’s easier to return aggressively against a serve-and-volleyer like Stepanek. You have a target, you have a reason to keep the ball low, and you don’t have to worry about the depth of your shot. All these elements help focus a returner, and it was true for Roddick on Sunday. Even when he missed, he punched back with more conviction and forward motion on his return. Doing that requires shortening your normal backswing, which isn’t easy; Roddick was most successful on his backhand side, where his two-handed swing is naturally shorter. At 6-5, 30-30, he reflexed an inside-out return pass winner by Stepanek to get to set point. In the past couple of years, outright, head-turning winners like that have been rare from his racquet.
Stefanki believes in the power of practice and repetition, and in Memphis this seemed to have paid off on Roddick’s backhand side. He was hitting the ball a little more crisply, especially when Stepanek pressured him; the American knocked off a few down the line passes on key points. On the forehand side, Roddick has added a little extra whip upward for topspin. I don’t know if this is intentional, but my first reaction is that it will only encourage him to keep pulling off the ball on that side, which has already robbed that shot of power for years. The biggest weakness in Roddick’s game is his crosscourt forehand, particularly when he uses it as an approach shot. It already has too much topspin, which makes it sit up in his opponent’s strike zone—it’s a shot that has helped make Roger Federer look like an athletic genius for years.
Compare Roddick's game to Stepanek’s. The Czech is a more natural shot-maker; his strokes take less time to happen but produce more penetration through the court—his timing is better. Stepanek also peppered this match with unlikely winners, such as a running shoe-top crosscourt forehand volley. Only a natural talent can improvise like that on a regular basis. Besides that, he made me laugh with one of his usual stagy antics: After winning a point on a lucky let cord, he held his racquet out for a few seconds in apology, then, in the same motion, began to shake the racquet in a “come on!” gesture. Finally, an honest reaction to a lucky winner.
But while Stepanek was the better shotmaker and entertainer, Roddick won the match. We may complain that he doesn’t do enough with the ball, but is his safety-first approach the smarter way to go? Roddick spends most of his time spinning his forehand down the middle and blandly chopping his backhand far from any line. While this has made him a whipping boy for Federer, it’s worked against virtually everyone else—as I mentioned, he has won 27 ATP tournaments. At some point, you can’t disconnect his safe style from his consistent success. In this sense, Roddick, despite Connors’ attempt to make him more aggressive, remains a product of Gilbert’s coaching—take away Andy’s serve and his game starts to look a little like Brad’s. The results do as well—Gilbert won 20 tournaments but never went deep at a major. I get the feeling Stefanki realizes this and will work around the edges of Roddick’s game without trying to make him into anything fancier than he is.
I can’t say Roddick’s game itself thrills me, but I have always found him interesting to watch, in part because his personality is much roomier and more contradictory than most athletes’. Cocky, crestfallen, deferential, smart, down-to-earth, funny, fratty, rude—like a little brother, he’s always out to prove himself, which is what makes him such an enthusiastic competitor after all the years and all the Grand Slam disappointments and all the drubbings by his old rival Federer. If the mantra of this country in the Obama era is going to be, “We’re not quitters,” it would be hard to find a better role model than Andy Roddick.
“Nobody knows anything” was a pithy description of Hollywood coined by screenwriter William Goldman in the 1980s. What he meant was, if anyone said they had a clue as to what had made a movie a hit or what had made it a bomb, that person was lying. Reading and watching the financial news over the last few months, I think it’s time we expanded Goldman’s mantra to cover more than just the movie industry. In fact, I’m predicting that “nobody knows anything” will be the defining philosophy of every aspect of life in the coming century—to answer any question, all you’ll have to do is raise your hand and say, very quickly, “NKA." Goldman himself will be looked on as a modern-day Aristotle.
With that in mind, make what you will of these 10 thoughts.
1. Andy Roddick
His withdrawal from Dubai hardly had the ring of righteous anger to it—“I don’t know if it’s the best thing to mix politics and sports, that was probably a big part of it. It’s just disappointing because that reflects on a tournament that didn’t have much to do with the decision. Nevertheless, I don’t feel there’s need for that in a sporting event.” But Roddick did say something and do something in light of the Shahar Peer situation.
He also won his 27th tournament this weekend, in Memphis. Roddick has taken more criticism than virtually any perennial Top 10 pro I can remember, and even his fans concede he isn’t the prettiest player in the world to watch. But while he hasn’t continued the tradition of No. 1 U.S. male players, his doggedness over the years has helped him build a quietly impressive résumé. By the time he retires, it will likely stack up well against the careers of many more talented and celebrated men.
As for Roddick’s game right now, I should have more on that after I watch the Memphis final on tape tonight.
2. Venus Williams
Are you disappointed by her and her tourmates’ measured reaction to the Peer affair? On the one hand I am—firebrand speeches and boycotts are better copy, better publicity for the tour, and more satisfying all around. Venus, with little time to react to the situation, didn’t argue for this choice. She said she supported her colleague, but that the tour had to consider its sponsors and couldn’t simply boycott the event. Then she obliquely mentioned Peer at the trophy presentation. "I felt like I had to talk about her. I thought it was brave of her to come here and try and play despite knowing that it is not going to be easy for her.”
Second question: Is there a conflict between Venus' reaction in Dubai and her and her sister's continued boycott of Indian Wells after they were booed and allegedly subject to racial taunts there in 2001? By that standard, she should support other players' right to be welcomed everywhere. But I don't know if not boycotting Dubai amounts to hypocrisy, honestly—what do you think? I’m guessing that Venus feels like the world is fragile as it is, and messed with only when necessary. She has consistently said that tennis and politics shouldn’t mix; it’s just that in this case that stance came off sounding compromised and corporate. But I also felt like Venus addressed the situation honestly, that her calm approach might be the right one in the long run, and that there is a leader, rather than just a player, inside her. Maybe she’ll take more chances next time. Maybe she’ll realize that taking a riskier stand is more satisfying, whatever the consequences. Maybe she’ll trust that she has some real say in how the tour is run, not just how she does on the court.
3. Jo-Wilfried Tsonga
A second title for Jo-Willie this weekend, in Marseille, and a win over Novak Djokovic. I didn’t see this tournament—was he doing anything differently? I like that he’s kept up his momentum after a good run in Oz, but I can’t help but hear his injury clock ticking—when’s it going to go off? I guess I should stop worrying and just hope he makes it to Indian Wells, where we can watch him again.
4. Victoria Azarenka
The Bulgarian up-and-comer won the singles and doubles in Memphis this weekend. I wouldn’t put a ton of stock in that, except that she beat another, even more highly touted, up-and-comer, Caroline Wozniacki, 6-1, 6-3 in the final.
5. Stat Abuse
As shown last week in this excellent NY Times Magazine article by Michael Lewis (Moneyball, The Blind Side), the stat geeks have invaded the NBA. I guess there’s no way to transfer this kind of analysis to an individual sport like tennis. Over the long haul, you’re pretty much as good as your ranking. This is one of the beauties of the sport—there’s no hiding—but also one that leaves little room for stat-based speculation and revision by obsessive fans. As it is now, you can pretty much “prove” your favorite tennis legend was the greatest of all time by weighting the stats any way you want.
6. Oscar Watch, Part I
Despite his conspicuous self-regard, I actually don’t have much against Sean Penn. This is the man who is responsible for the creation of Jeff Spicoli, which is more than I will ever give to this planet (see clip below). I mostly liked his speech, even if I couldn’t tell whether he ever thanked his wife, and even if it won’t be remembered next year. (Very few acceptance speeches are remembered for anything other than being embarrassingly over the top. The only one that has stuck with me in a non-laughable way was Russell Crowe’s for Gladiator.)
At least Penn mentioned his “brother,” Mickey Rourke, the guy I was hoping would win. I thought Penn was overrated in his last Oscar performance, in Mystic River, but maybe it was just the movie that was overrated. (I’ll have to see Milk now.) Is wearing your political convictions on your sleeve the way Penn does such an awful thing? As long as they’re not Republican convictions, of course.
7. Oscar Watch, Part II
A night’s worth of adulation at these awards can grate. These people are actors doing their jobs, I always end up thinking; they may also be “stars,” but that fact alone doesn’t seem worthy of a standing ovation.
I rented a movie this weekend called The Taking of Power by Louis XIV, directed by Roberto Rosselini for French TV in 1966. It's story of how the shy Sun King outsmarts his backstabbing subjects, including his mom, and reclaims control of the country. The lead actor had never appeared in a movie before and couldn’t remember his lines. Rosselini had him read them off a chalkboard, and you can see him doing it throughout the movie. His performance is utterly stiff, but it’s perfect for the role of the stiff but willful king. There were no histrionics, which is usually what gets called “good acting." For another example of this, see The Wire, which used local Baltimore kids to play local Baltimore roles. They were convincing just because they looked and sounded the part.
Then again, the other movie I watched this weekend was The Harder They Fall, a boxing flick from the 50s starring Humphrey Bogart and Rod Steiger. It’s worth seeing for Steiger’s performance as a vicious, fast-talking fight-fixer alone—without his acting, the movie is worthless. Steiger won an Oscar for a very different performance 10 years later, as a racist cop in In the Heat of the Night. Like Penn, he could play a wide range of roles. OK, maybe actors are worth clapping for.
8. TV Watch
I’ve asked this before, but do you follow Friday Night Lights? The show started brilliantly, went into the pandering toilet in the second season, but has rebounded in the third. It’s not hip—there are many, many lectures about what it means to be a man, which I guess I should try to take to heart. But it’s also the most novelistic show on the tube today. The sarcasm is actually funny.
9. Album Watch
Best new record I’ve heard this year: Hold Time, by M.Ward.
Record I’ve listened to the most this year, even though it is from 1968: Nefertiti, by Miles Davis. Good for all moods, places, and times.
10. A Philosophical Question
Last and probably least, Tommy Robredo has just won two straight tournaments. I’ve tried all day, but I cannot decide what this means. Can you?
Writers are always talking about great words—"'Satanic,' such a great word!" we might say. There’s little agreement on what this means, or what raises one word above the masses. But each of us has our pet favorites. They either roll off our tongues in just the right way or shock our brains with their pungency—malevolence fits both of these bills for me. Other words just make us happy when we hear them—like, say, knucklehead. A favorite word from tennis is junkballer. It’s dismissive in a respectful kind of way.
Friday sounds bland by comparison, but it occupies a special place in the brains of English speakers. It’s the anticipation in those two syllables that raises it above its fellow days of the week; even “Saturday” doesn’t have the same sense of relief to it. It might be all right for fighting, but I've still got Friday on my mind. It's the day when you can be half at work and half somewhere else in your head. I was a copywriter at an ad agency for a year or so in the 1990s, and my only good memory of that time was sitting in the boss’s office on Friday afternoons with the other guys in our department while he cranked a Lou Reed CD and did a crazy spinning dance in his suit in the middle of the room. Still, there’s a downside to this half-freedom: In winter, when it gets dark before I leave the office, I can start to get a mysterious case of the blues—“loose ends” is the right phrase. My mind isn’t quite ready for the transition.
Anyway, for some reason Friday seems like a good day to revive the You Tube tennis tradition we started last winter—it’s easy, it’s fun, it apolitical. Plus, there are always a few new things up there that you haven’t seen before.
I’ll start with a clip that I’d always wanted to see: 16-year-old Chris Evert making her U.S. Open debut at Forest Hills in 1971. This was when the legend of the Ice Maiden and Chris America was born, and the moment that women’s pro tennis became a viable mainstream product in this country. It was once said of Bruce Springsteen that if he hadn’t existed, rock critics would have had to make him up. You could say the same for Chris Evert: If she hadn’t come along at just about this time, the women’s tour, and in particular Billie Jean King, would have had to make her up. As it was, King had to beat Evert in the semifinals, a match that King said was the most nerve-wracking she had ever played.
This 10-minute clip covers the most famous part of Evert’s run, the six match points she saved en route to beating fellow American Mary-Anne Eisel in the third round. (Warning, a bow-tied and woolly Bud Collins also makes a brief appearance at the 7-minute mark.). After reading about this tournament for many years, here are some thoughts on seeing it.
—The first U.S. Open match I remember watching was the 1976 final between Connors and Borg. At that point, Forest Hills had torn up its grass and put down clay—clearly another case of New York’s mid-70s socialism and anti-Americanism! So it’s nice to see the green grass as it was. Is it lusher than Wimbledon’s? It’s a different shade, certainly.
—Everyone in those days was annoyed by Bud Collins as an announcer, but he seems pretty good here. Yes, he’s overbearing and maybe even too full of information—is it helpful or just pedantic that he tells us the name of the center linesman? But nobody expressed more enthusiasm for tennis. At this point, he hasn’t quite found the right nickname for Evert. He calls her the “Little Ice Woman” during this match. I guess it was better than one of his later ones for her: “Hatchet Woman.”
—Evert’s poise is remarkable, though she does show little moments of frustration, slapping her thigh after one miss. She seems determined, but not too determined. Her desire to win never upsets her calmness. Up 3-0 in the tiebreaker, she looks across the net and puts her finger on her chin, the picture of cool assessment. Or maybe her chin just itched.
—Love her returns. She has great anticipation and quick reaction steps, and she lays her racquet back smoothly on both sides. I doubt she would have time to do that now.
—I’ve never seen Eisel before, but I like her serve and athleticism. She’s a broken woman by the end of the tiebreaker and goes on to lose the third set 6-1.
—Evert said in her autobiography—yes, I’ve read it, what about it?—that she always played the same way until the match was over and tried her best to approach match points against her as if they were any other point. But I sense here that she went for broke on her returns on the first two match points. And she was lucky when Eisel stoned a makeable volley wide on another one. Still, Evert made her play that volley.
—Evert wins the second set and shows . . . nothing. Maybe even less than when she was behind.
—The strokes are so simple and clean. It’s hard to believe they hadn’t been hit quite like that before. Chrissie Evert: The world’s quietest revolutionary.
What is variety good for in today’s women’s game? Contrary to the forecasts of the sport’s doomsayers, it has become the coin of the realm on the men’s side again. Even Rafael Nadal, who is an all-world grinder on one level, is comfortable with every shot and a master at finding different ways to win. I hesitate to say that the WTA has yet to “catch up” to the men in this regard; the two tours share certain general trends like equipment and stroke technique, but just because the men have produced an Andy Murray doesn’t mean his counterpart will soon arrive on the women’s side (though I’d like to see what she would look like). Still, the women’s tour does seem to be crying out for an evolutionary leap that will break the current iron rule of the hard-hitting, two-hand-backhand wielding baseliner. In this week’s WTA rankings, you have to scroll all the way down to No. 17, Patty Schnyder, to find a player who doesn’t fit that mold.
Two spots below Schnyder we find another graceful, and one-handed, anomaly, Amelie Mauresmo. Yes, the 29-year-old former No. 1 is still in the Top 20, despite two years' worth of injury and mediocrity. The Frenchwoman is there because on Sunday she won her first event since 2007, in Paris. She did it in emotional fashion, with a tear-filled celebration in front of the home folks that really did look like it was two years in the making. Even better, Mauresmo did it with surprising and hard-earned wins over a pair of younger two-handed belters, Jelena Jankovic and Elena Dementieva.
Don’t pop the Champagne corks just yet, variety lovers. Mauresmo’s win was not a victory for the artful slice backhand or the gently angled forehand volley, though she still owns both of those shots and they are still a pleasure to see. Rather, what she and her new coach, Hugo Lecoq, seem to have realized is that if you can’t beat the bashers, you might as well join them. In tennis terms, that means that all the variety in the world won’t get you anything these days if you can’t finish a point by reliably pummeling a forehand into the corner and past your speedy opponent. Even if it isn’t the most elegant way to end a rally, there’s no winning without it.
Mauresmo’s forehand appears to have been tweaked with this realization in mind. There was more snap and topspin in it than I’ve seen before. The main problem with the shot in the past was that she didn’t get enough of her hand behind the racquet. This time there was more substance behind her forehands. When she was backed up, she was able to hoist an effective topspin moonball. More important, when she had time to move into a shot, she was flicking it with more flat power and hooking it into the corners with more action.
With this kill shot in place, the rest of Mauresmo’s high-flown repertoire suddenly seemed more useful, and not just fodder for style-loving purists. In the final, she was able to back Dementieva off the baseline with her forehand—something the Frenchwoman has always had trouble doing against two-handed opponents—and follow it up with a creative slice down the middle of the court, which led to a deftly angled volley winner. While Mauresmo is still not as good at forcing the action from the baseline as someone like Dementieva, and while she still seemed to be finding the range on her forehand, the shot held up at crucial stages in the tight first set, stages where Dementieva tended to get panicky and overhit.
If you had known nothing of women’s tennis and had sat down to watch the Paris final, you would have had a hard time recognizing that Mauresmo was the player who has been lauded for style and diversity and that Dementieva is, from a classicist's point of view, the robotic jock who drills every shot exactly the same way. It would have been hard to make these distinctions because what you would have seen first and foremost were shots rocketing from one corner to another off both players’ racquets. Many fans lament that this is how tennis is contested today, that it all happens too quickly and brutally, that there’s no time to savor the path of a player’s swing, and that the diminished importance of net play has robbed the sport of an essential viewing element: that is, the basic concept of cause and effect, in which a player is either rewarded or punished for taking a risk and coming in. To these viewers, today’s baseline battles can look random and formless—one player either hits a winner or makes an error.
But if you watched Mauresmo and Dementieva closely, if you kept an eye on where their shots landed and where they positioned themselves after each one, a cause-and-effect revealed itself. The points were too fast and the shots too deep for either player to consistently try to position herself to charge the net—while tennis may not be getting more varied or more beautiful, there’s no denying that the top pros have become more proficient shot-makers over the years; at the highest levels of the sport the speed, of both the players and their shots, just keeps increasing, without a similar rise in errors. Because of this proficiency from both women, all Dementieva and Mauresmo could do tactically was try to win the battle of the baseline. Whoever could wrest enough control of a rally to be able to move her feet up to the baseline—or, if she was lucky, inside it—while at the same time pushing her opponent a couple of feet behind the other baseline almost invariably won the point. Once this tiny bit of control was established by one player, it took a spectacular effort—usually some kind of running, full swing prayer into the corner—for the other to get back to level terms.
This kind of pace can force a player to do some crazy things. At times, Dementieva took her forehand impossibly early, to the point where it looked like she was rushing just to get the rally over with as quickly as possible. But this also happened to be when she was most successful; if she waited at all to force the action, she was in trouble.
The logic and tactics of today’s tennis take place must more quickly and in a much more condensed space than they did in the serve-and-volley days. But they do take place. Points between Dementieva and Mauresmo were not won by random errors—you just have to watch more closely to make sense of how the points are won. Think of it, if you will, like punk rock versus Chuck Berry. The punks sped up the notes and beats, but the best of their songs retained the verve and swing of old rock and roll, just in a mashed-together and harder to hear form.
In the end, like their hard-hitting styles, there was little to separate Mauresmo and Dementieva. The match was decided not by who handled the pressure better, but by who was the last person to handle it poorly. Mauresmo went up 5-1 in the third. The underdog in the match, she had played with uncharacteristic fist-pumping gusto and overt emotion—contemplating retirement seems to have relaxed her—from the beginning. Now she had something to lose, and she became tentative. Fortunately for her, pressure is a weird two-way street in tennis. Dementieva noticed Mauresmo getting tight, but rather than becoming her more confident when she was returning at 4-5, she only got tighter as well—seeing a nervous player can make you nervous, as counterintuitive as that sounds (it's a tough sport). Dementieva shanked four balls and the match was over in the blink of an eye. Mauresmo didn’t even need to use her amped-up forehand to win the title.
But it was the shot that got her there, and that raised her from a two-year stint in the tennis wilderness. If there’s a message in there somewhere for tennis fans, it’s that any player who wants to use variety and one-handed stylishness in the future is going to need to have the not-so-pretty basics of power-baseline tennis covered first. After watching the Paris final, it seems hard to ask any player to do much more than that—learning to hit a screaming forehand a foot from the baseline 10 times in a row is enough for one player’s lifetime. The last player who had all that and more was Justine Henin. Maybe we shouldn’t be surprised that she couldn’t keep it up.
Maybe I was wrong last week. Maybe the more things change in one part of the world, the more they stay the same somewhere else. A few days after Jo-Wilfried Tsonga became the first black player to win an ATP tournament in South Africa, Israel’s Shahar Peer, as you surely know by now, was denied a visa into the United Arab Emirates so she could play in the WTA’s Dubai event this week.
This seems to be the straw that has finally broken the . . . ok, it’s no time for desert-animal puns. The point is, both tennis tours and their players have known about this problem even as they have relied on Dubai and nearby Doha for more and more revenue—in the form of prize money and, in particular, appearance-fee money—over the last five years. Peer was allowed to play in Doha last year, but fellow Israelis Andy Ram and Jonathan Erlich were mysteriously kept from entering Dubai in 2008, despite expressing a desire to become the first players from that country to compete there. From what Doug Robson of USA Todaywrote at the time, it sounded like the UAE and the tournament didn’t want them there, but also didn't want to have to come out and say that. With Peer, they came out and said it.
WTA chairman Larry Scott has taken a lot of heat for not canceling this week’s tournament outright, so much so that he’s begun to make noises about rethinking his tour’s relationship with the UAE in the future—that’s a first as far as I know. It’s a tough situation for him. He’s received a lot of positive reviews as WTA chief, based mainly on his ability to shore up the tour financially. But one of his financial coups came in moving the season-ending championship to Doha, while the women’s event in Dubai, like the men’s, has become another high-profile advertisement for the UAE’s tourism industry.
It was only a matter of time before the image of a desert utopia was punctured, both culturally and economically. It may not be a coincidence that Peer’s rejection is happening at the same time that Dubai’s economy is in free fall and some foreign residents are now saying it was a "con game" all along. The question now is, what relationship should tennis, and especially its players, have with the country. The actual political issue may be too thorny for a sport or its athletes to express opinions on—I’d never ask any of the top men or women to go down the rabbit hole of Israel-Gaza, or Israel and its relationship with its Muslim neighbors. The relevant issue is that the tours at their most basic level are players' unions, and their first duty is to secure safe places to play for all of their members. It’s clear now that Dubai isn’t one of those places. So far the comments from the other top women players—in essence, “we support her”—have been lame. Of course they support her, but what will they do, or sacrifice, to show that support for a peer? (I’m allowed one pun here, right?)
Next week it will be the ATP’s turn. As of now, it looks like Andy Ram’s visa will not be granted by the UAE. The player with the highest-profile relationship with Dubai is Roger Federer. While the other top men who come to the city to receive their guaranteed paydays next week should not be absolved from speaking out about Ram or Peer, Federer trains in the area, spends the most time there, and has talked about how much he likes the place. This is how he describes Dubai on his website:
Q: You spend a lot of time training in Dubai. What are some of your favourite things to do there?
A: I really like the nice climate in Dubai. It is always sunny, making it the ideal location for holidays as well as practice. I like to go shopping and eating out in the great restaurants and hotels. Dubai is a true melting pot of nationalities, so it’s a very interesting place in terms of the people you meet.
Federer is on the ATP’s player council now, and has spoken out about various issues from drug testing to the schedule (he wants more time to play in the Middle East). Most important, everyone in tennis listens to what he has to say—his early suspicions about former tour chief Etienne de Villiers made it that much tougher for him to earn the trust of other players. Like I said, Federer is not going to solve the problems of the Middle East. But he owes it to all of his fellow players to say something substantive about Dubai and its policies toward those players. If he likes it so much, he should want all of them, whether they’re paid a king’s ransom or not, to have a chance to play there.
The more things change, the more they stay the same, right? Maybe the new phrase should be: The more things change, the less we notice.
Before this week is over and we turn our attention to Rotterdam and Paris, let me take a minute to note that on Sunday, a black tennis player, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, won the South African Open in Johannesburg.
My first reaction to that news was something along the lines of, “Maybe Tsonga can keep up his momentum this year.” But looking at the photos from the post-final trophy ceremony, where he posed with local fans, it struck me that not long ago his win would have been (1) of incredible political significance, and (2) impossible.
This was the first year that an ATP event has been held in South Africa since 1995. Before that, “Jo-burg” had been a staple of the tour for decades, a regular stop—there were two tournaments in the city each year in the 70s—in one of the traditional Anglo hotbeds of the sport. After scouring the ATP archives, I believe Tsonga is the first black player to win the tournament. (Which isn’t too surprising, since none entered it until 1973.) But I didn't see that mentioned in any of the reports on his win.
In '73, Arthur Ashe made a deal with South Africa’s apartheid government to be allowed into the draw. He had first tried to enter it in 1970 and was denied, which led him to call for SA’s ouster from the ITF, and for other nations to boycott Davis Cup ties against the country. That eventually led to South Africa winning the Cup by default over India in 1974, a low point in the competition’s history, but a high point for political commitment in sports.
Four years after his inital attempt, Ashe finally made the trip to Jo-Burg. He was criticized from both sides for playing the tournament. As Cliff Drysdale, an opponent of apartheid and friend of Ashe, said at the time, there were those in SA who thought the whole thing had to end in violence anyway, and that by coming there Ashe was actually making the government look humane and prolonging the inevitable (Drysdale himself didn’t buy this argument). On the other side was Bob Hewitt, a great South African doubles player, who thought Ashe should mind his own business, because the blacks in his country were “happy.” Ashe went anyway, determined to see the system for himself and to show blacks there what one of their own could do if given the chance.
Ashe’s trip was a sensation in the country, to the point where it surprised even him. (For the on-the-ground report, read Frank DeFord’s great Sports Illustrated article about it from that time.) Ashe was nicknamed “Sipho” in the black township of Soweto, meaning “a gift.” His matches were mini-Super Bowls, where he was cheered by black and white alike (he had forced the tournament’s promoter to allow blacks to sit anywhere in the stadium; normally, apartheid was enforced at sporting events like anywhere else). One day Ashe found himself being followed by a young black man. When Ashe asked him what he wanted, he said that he’d never seen a free black person before. Ashe was surprised and moved by the statement. As the week went on, he noticed that his car was being tailed.
Ashe recorded his reactions to the trip in his 1975 book with DeFord, Portrait in Motion. Like his fellow amateur era tennis player-scribe, Gordon Forbes, Ashe proved to be one of the most thoughtful athletes you’ll ever read. In its searching quality and calm perceptiveness, the book has parallels to Barack Obama’s Dreams From My Father, which ends with his own trip to Africa. Ashe’s descriptions are notable for their depth and intelligence, but also for their lack of political ponderousness. He says that he was almost happy to see “Whites Only” signs on public restrooms in South Africa, because not seeing them in that country would have been like not seeing the Eiffel Tower on a trip to Paris. But he also ends with a chilling conversation with a group of whites who continually vote for apartheid candidates. The easy life that the system affords them is so hard to give up, its artifice so hard to confront, that it leads them to justify it by telling themselves that blacks are “children” who need to be taken care of.
The SA Open was an eventful tournament on court for Ashe as well. In an early round, he beat Drysdale and sensed that the whites in the crowd were rooting for him, and against their home-country favorite, because Cliff was a critic of apartheid. In the final Ashe faced—who else?—Jimmy Connors, the all-purpose tennis villain of the era. Connors, the punk kid in his second year on tour, took out Ashe in straight sets. As DeFord says, by the third set the crowd was completely silent as it saw that its hero was going to be outmatched on this day.
Thirty-five years later, Tsonga, a Frenchman whose father is African, went all the way to the title. South Africa is hardly a utopia 15 years after the end of apartheid. And this era of sports has its own troubles as well. As proud as Ashe would have been to see Tsonga win in Jo-Burg—Ashe, who was later arrested in anti-apartheid protests, died the year before South Africa became a democracy—he might not have loved the fact that this year’s SA Open was held at a casino, the same week that tennis was facing another match-fixing controversy elsewhere.
The most famous tennis event of 1973 was the Battle of the Sexes, another example of the sport as a social force for change. Ashe’s trip to South Africa, which was perhaps even more significant, has been overshadowed by it. They’re really flip sides of the same coin. Ashe and Billie Jean King were born in the same year, and each was a product of tennis’ amateur era, a kind of sporting apartheid in some way. They reacted to its exclusivity in opposite ways but ended in similar positions. In populist California, King chaffed at women’s second-class status in the sport and became its resident outspoken feminist rebel. In Old South Richmond, Va., Ashe was schooled by his coach in the amateur sporting code and became tennis’ consummate gentleman rebel.
Isn’t it interesting that the transition from the amateur era to the Open era of tennis produced perhaps the two most politically significant athletes of the last four decades in any sport? There were injustices then, just as there are discouraging aspects to today’s pro era—we produce great champions and people now, but nobody with the stature or conscience of Ashe and King. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. If nothing else, Ashe’s legacy is someone like Tsonga, a charismatic international superstar, potent symbol of success for a continent, and all-around good guy who, rather than being banned from Jo-Burg, was probably paid a whopping fee just to come there. The fact that his title was hardly a blip on anyone’s radar screen shows just how thoroughly things have been transformed, from a sporting perspective, since the 1970s. The next World Cup, in 2010, will be held in South Africa.
It wasn't always that way. The twin universes of sports and culture were up for grabs in the late 60s and early 70s. Tennis should be proud that it had a player like Arthur Ashe, who, in his gentlemanly way, did some of the grabbing. You know you’ve succeeded as a rebel when nobody even notices what you changed.
If you were following my Aussie Open blogs, you know I made a few critiques of the coverage by ESPN. I usually do: The broadcasts themselves are all part of the experience, and I know tennis fans have particularly strong feelings when it comes to their commentators.
I generally thought the network did a good job of showing us as much of the tournament and getting across as much of its atmosphere as possible. You can’t say ESPN doesn’t go all out. As for criticisms, I thought they worked too hard to make the early telecasts U.S.-centric, with questions about the Super Bowl and an interview with Lance Armstrong, and that there was too much chatter in general. Tennis fans want to see matches first and foremost.
ESPN saw my remarks and tried to set me up with an interview with Jamie Reynolds, a vice president at the company who heads their Grand Slam tennis and golf coverage. Due to the time distance, I never reached him in Oz, but we connected yesterday to talk about the network’s two weeks Down Under and current broadcast philosophy.
The first thing Reynolds said was that he and the tennis unit have been trying for three years to improve their ability to hop around the event, the way it’s done at golf Slams, and get people involved in as many different matches—Reynolds, like other sports TV people, calls them “stories”—as possible.
“If you watch the network dramas,” he says, “you’ll see that they move in 90 second beats. Ninety seconds on one story, move to the next, and so on. That’s how we try to think of a Slam in the first week. We want to get people engaged in stories that we can return to.”
The Worldwide Leader has told me before that it was trying to show more sidecourt matches, and then I’ve flicked the channel on to see four hours of nothing but Americans Andy Roddick and Serena Williams. But Oz did seem different. Maybe it’s the current second-tier status of Roddick, but I was pretty happy with who I got to watch. It seemed to me that the idea was to focus on the big names of tennis, regardless of where they came from. Federer, Murray, Jankovic, Nadal, Ivanovic, Safina, even Nalbandian all got lots of airtime.
“We don’t think ratings are tied to Americans necessarily,” Reynolds says. “Federer and Nadal are guys everyone is going to tune in to see.
That doesn’t mean ESPN will start to ignore the Williams sisters any time soon, even if they’re blowing their opponents out. Serena and Venus remain a draw, to the point where the network will request that they be scheduled so they can be shown in prime time in the U.S. The daily schedule in Oz was a compromise between the needs of the tournament itself, the local Channel 7, and ESPN. The same is true at Wimbledon.
As for the overabundance of talking heads, Reynolds defends them on three fronts. One, if you’re going to cover multiple courts, you need multiple people to call the matches. Two, sticking with just three or four voices over the course of two weeks would get stale. And three, he thinks the pundits help bring casual fans closer to the sport.
“For the hardcore fans, we could probably just put a camera on the court and let it go with no commentating at all,” he says. “But we think our experts draw in the next tier of fans, who want a story about a player or something else to hang onto.”
In particular, Reynolds loves the skills that Chris Fowler brings to thisjob. “I don’t think people appreciate all the things he does. He’s a pro at moving the broadcast along and talking to people, but he’s also incredibly passionate about tennis.”
I think I can see Reynolds’ point about the number of voices he has in place. Being a very casual golf fan, I don’t find the non-stop commentary on every shot obtrusive—it’s helpful. And you can see that Reynolds has adopted a total-coverage mentality at the tennis Slams that's reminiscent of golf. But I still think there are times when the number of personalities talking can obscure the action on the court. Everyone has their own opinion on who’ s a good commentator—I’m amazed sometimes at who people like and dislike. For me, I think I could enjoy two full weeks with just Fowler, Enberg, Gilbert, Cahill, PMac, and Shriver. You’d have your own list. Reynolds has his.
ESPN will offer more taped coverage at the French Open, ceding time to the Tennis Channel. The main focus now, of course, is the U.S. Open, which ESPN is taking from USA this year. “We’re working toward that, and trying to find out what works best by the time we get there,” he says. “The plan is to do it like we’ve been doing the other Slams, whenever possible.”
As for tennis fans, Reynolds hears the complaints, but doesn’t sound too bitter. “It can be frustrating,” he says, “when you have someone say, ‘why didn’t you show that match out on Court 15?’ People think there’s a camera and commentary booth on every court, and there just isn’t. We can't be everywhere at once.
“The tennis audience is sophisticated, and they know what they want. When they don’t get it, they’re as tough as any sport’s audience out there. When you miscalculate and show the wrong thing, you know you’re going to hear about it.”
As predicted and lamented here on Friday, it was a dry sports weekend in the States. But I lived. A winter thaw, and a late discovery of Flight of the Conchords, helped. Plus, seeing the Pro Bowl out of the corner of my eye at a restaurant made me miss football a little less. If I ever need to convey to anyone how much of a sports fanatic I was as a kid, I just mention the time when I intentionally stayed awake in bed long enough to hear my dad come up the steps, then poked my head out of my bedroom door to ask him who had won the Pro Bowl. I don’t think he had any idea.
The bigger problem with this past weekend, and it may be an ongoing one, is that the Tennis Channel didn’t broadcast any of the sport’s minor tournaments, including Viña del Mar, which always looks cool on the tube. The network did carry the first round of Fed Cup (I missed it), but in general TC is putting more of its eggs in the Grand Slam basket and less in the tours’ weekly rank-and-file events. This coming weekend we’ll get the WTA tournament in Paris, but not the traditional weeklong coverage of the SAP Open in San Jose. Who would have thought I’d miss hearing TC commentator and SAP director Barry MacKay declare each match at his tournament the most electrifying and hair-raising sporting event he had ever seen?
Nevertheless, the tennis season went forward. And back: The sport returned to a former hotbed where it has been missing for more than a decade.
1. Cilic’s 2nd Conquest
His win in Zagreb makes two titles for the 20-year-old in the first month of 2009, and this one came in his home country and over a guy who must have been a hero growing up, fellow Croat Mario Ancic. Cilic’s loss to del Potro in Australia was disappointing, but every young player needs to learn how to win, and it doesn’t matter where you do it.
2. Roid Rage
It isn’t just baseball that’s having doping issues. Andy Murray on the new WADA rules that require athletes to make their whereabouts known for an hour every day:
“I got a visit at 7 a.m one morning at my home right after I had travelled home from Australia. I woke up not really knowing where I was and suffering badly from jet lag. It seemed ridiculous to me as I’d been tested just four days earlier, straight after the match I had lost in the Australian Open.
“The official who came to my home wanted me to produce identification to prove who I was. He insisted on watching me provide a sample, literally with my trousers round my ankles, and then insisted that I wrote down my own address, even though he was at my private home at 7 a.m."
Rafael Nadal said the new requirements were an “intolerable harassment”:
“To have to send a message or be concerned all day long if there is a last-minute change seems to me be totally excessive.”
Roger Federer disagrees: “It’s a tough system, no doubt. It’s a significant change to what we were used to before, so I think it takes some time getting used to it,” he said at the Australian Open. “But at the same time, I feel like this is how you're going to catch them, right? ”You're not going to catch them ringing them up and saying, ‘Look, I would like to test you maybe in two days’ . . . It’s an hour a day. I know it’s a pain, but I would like it to be a clean sport, and that’s why I’m OK with it.”
The humor in Murray’s comments aside, this is something that could become contentious on the new ATP player council, of which Federer and Nadal are now members. Do you think it’s an intolerable harassment? Do other sports’ athletes deal with the same thing? It does seem like too much of a personal invasion to me, in particular the rule that states that three missed tests can get you suspended for two years—Mike Bryan, of all people, already has two strikes against him. One problem: There’s no functioning and fully representative players union in tennis to negotiate this.
3. The Fix is Back In?
Speaking of controversies that won’t die, there was another possible match-fixing episode in Zagreb last week. Betfair again voided bets, this time on a match between Antonio Veic, No. 255 in the world, and Guillermo Cañas, which Veic won in three. Bad enough, but it seems to have gotten even worse afterward, when tournament director Branko Horvat received a death threat by email: “This was your last tournament. I’m bankrupt because of you.”
4. Best movie snubbed by Oscar this year Let the Right One In. What, you can think of a better way to spend 2 hours and 10 bucks than watching a Swedish vampire movie? I thought so, too, not being a horror fan. But this one got better and better afterward, as I thought about the story.
5. The Flavia Finger
I wish I’d seen some of Italy’s Fed Cup win over France. Of course, the most exciting, if obscene, moment can be found on here, on YouTube. Kids, cover your eyes.
7. Updike Redux
Adam Gopnik eulogizes his colleague John Updike and hits it out of the park. I didn’t just enjoy or agree with this article. It made me feel better.
8. Tennis Returns, Tsonga Triumphs
South Africa was once an important outpost of the sport in its more Anglo days, giving us Cliff Drysdale, the 10-Slam doubles team of Bob Hewitt and Frew McMillan (he with the finest playing hat in the game’s history), and the best player-writer of any sport, Gordon Forbes. Arthur Ashe also made a brave and controversial trip to play a tournament there in 1973. Now the sport is back after 10 years away, and it has a winner from the African continent, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga. Almost as interesting, to me, though, was the player he beat in the final. Jeremy Chardy is getting better. The young Frenchman may even qualify as “someone to watch.” Kind of faint praise, wouldn’t you say? I’d hate to be called “someone not to watch.”
9. Oldies, Goodies
I know it’s one of the fundamental laws of nature that white people like Motown. I’ve tried to fight it, I really have, but while I tuned into the Grammy’s last night to watch a pregnant M.I.A perform (she was due yesterday), it was this one-man Four Tops reunion that left me happy when it was over. With the death of lead singer Levi Stubbs, there’s only one Top, Duke Fakir, still living (he’s at right in the video, looking good), so he was joined by Smokey Robinson, Jamie Foxx, and another younger singer. A great moment, one of the best I can remember from any Grammy ceremony; you can feel the room remember this music, and its optimism, as it's being sung. And I loved hearing Smokey call the other late Tops his “all my beautiful friends.”
10. Winter Thaw
So you step outside on Saturday morning, or maybe even early afternoon, you’re not sure right now. All you know is that you’ve been out late the night before. You’re shocked to life by how crisp this February wind blowing against your coat feels after weeks of nothing but biting cold. The ice and snow has melted in a matter of hours and left a primal mud that’s overflowing onto the sidewalk. You start to walk to the diner, then turn around so you can take the longer, scenic route. You put on your Ipod and listen to some Miles Davis, which matches the atmosphere. Then you switch to some Minneapolis punk that fits your walking rhythm. From the trees to the houses to the bright gray sky to the people you see on the street to the music you hear, it’s all working, because your defenses are down and the day is up. You walk into the overcrowded diner that’s full of color and noise and an almost stifling warmth; the whole neighborhood, after weeks of suffering with cabin fever, has had the same idea—let’s go somewhere. The jumpy Greek host points you to the last two open seats at the counter. He tells the waitress to set up silverware because “two nice people are going to site there.” You sit and wait for your girlfriend. You sip your coffee and take it all in, the voices and clinking plates, the recess-like energy. A flicker of something negative enters at the edge of your mind: You know you won’t feel any better than this for a long time.
We’ve reached that time of year again: The dry season, or as I like to call it, Appearance Fee February (anybody got a catchier name than that?). For those of us in the U.S., the first post-Super Bowl weekend also marks the end of the NFL for nine long months. This is beyond a dry season for sports in the States, it’s a black hole—for the next few months, until baseballs start hitting catchers’ mitts and the NBA gets around to its playoffs, there will be no more anticipation in the air on Sundays. But before that happens, it’s time eulogize another football season. I’ll be back with tennis on Monday.
Have you heard? The world is fragmenting. Millions of adults spend their evenings ogling sparkling new flat screens while their kids get a little fatter in front of whatever gaming machine came out last week. All the time our public life is shriveling to non-existence. The primary culprit in this bowling alone theory of cultural decline is, of course, television. Specifically, the vast, 1000-channel morass known as cable TV.
Ironically, cable, in its most recent and extreme form, has also helped create one raucous exception to the living-room cocoon. On wholesome fall and winter Sunday afternoons around the U.S., people of all races, colors, and creeds gather to celebrate and console one another. No, these are not churchgoers; they worship another three-letter diety: the NFL. The congregation is culled from one of two passionate, and widely hungover, groups of people: (1) football fans loyal to a team from another city; and (2) hopeless, broken gambling addicts.
This relatively recent phenomenon is the product of satellite and cable packages that break the old one-game-at-a-time grip of the national networks and give football junkies something they’ve been fantasizing about for years: access to every game, or nearly every game. Naturally, this isn't cheap, and if you’re not psychotic enough to need to sit through 5, 6, 7, 10 games per weekend, the package is going to be too much for you. This is where your friendly and only slightly psychotic neighborhood sports bar, the one with 17 flat-screen TVs, comes in.
Brooklyn is a hotbed for these bars. Few cities are home to as many transplants from other towns, and being able to see our old teams—the Philadelphia Eagles, in my case—keeps us from having to feign excitement over the eternally bland Jets or lay eyes on the dreaded Giants every Sunday. The blocks around my apartment are a hotbed within a hotbed: on the nearest corner, visible from my living room window, are two fully equipped sports bars within 20 feet of each other, each of which overflows with fans on fall Sundays. The sidewalk outside of them is covered with smoking, celebrating, head-shaking football fans all afternoon.
These men—shockingly, it is mostly men, though there are a surprising number of women who are willing to join them—start early. They take seats at the bar at approximately 12:30 P.M. Later arrivers like myself—in other words, people who get there by kickoff—must stand. Either way, we’re at home here as we gaze up at the TVs, nurse pints of beer, and lick buffalo-wing sauce off our fingers. Shy, glasses-wearing young men feel free to rise out of their seats at any moment and scream, as a player flies down the field with the ball, “Go! Go! Go! Gogogogogogogogogogo! Ahhhhh!!!!” without fear of complaint, or even a stare. Hardened residents of New York City, who might go 10 years without nodding once at their next-door neighbors, immediately strike up animated conversations and say goodbye with multiple high-fives. Rambunctious, scruffy, retro-gear-wearing Steeler hordes—no team has as many fans—share space with sarcastic, beaten-down fans of my Eagles. My favorite line from an Eagles fan this year came as they prepared for a 3rd and short late in the game. "Throw it long, you dumb----es!" someone yelled, which broke up all the other Eagles fans in the place.
One Sunday soon after I’d moved to the city in the early 90s, a couple friends and I were in a favorite local bar on a warm, early season, mid-September afternoon. The sky was clear, the sun was shining everywhere, and we were musing at the bar about whatever game was on the tube with the four or five electricians and plumbers who showed up there every week. It was the pre-satellite era, when only the most committed or pathetic NFL lover would spend four hours indoors on a sunny weekend watching a team he didn’t care about. But anyway, there we were. The bartender was boiling some awful-looking hot dogs next to us. A breeze was blowing leaves into the bar’s open door. Joe Montana was marching the Niners down the field. The beer tasted good. My friends and I agreed: This was perfection. Or at least way better than exercising.
Today’s expatriate fans don’t just share a space, we share a highly complex and evolved language: football is something we understand. A mild-mannered guy begins to soliloquize, to the entire bar at once, “You know what, the Cardinals prove how overrated the Seahawks have always been. They play in that same weak-ass division, and then they just win a couple games and they’re in the Super Bowl.” You think about it for a second, nod, and whisper, “He’s right.”
When another guy at the end of the bar yells at the top of his lungs, “He didn’t have control when his second foot came down!” you nod your head in agreement again. I never thought much about this until I watched a game with a girl friend of mine. “What does he mean, “second” foot? What’s that?”
“You have to get both of your feet down in bounds for the catch to count. It’s only one foot in college football.”
“Why one there and two here?”
“I don’t know.” It was true, I didn’t know, but the difference made total sense to me.
Later in that same game, a running back cruised down the sideline before fumbling in the end zone.
“Is that a touchdown?”
“No, it’s a touch back.”
“What’s a touch back?”
“The ball was recovered by the other team in the end zone, so now they get it at the 20 yard line.” She pretended to understand.
In the second half, one team was pinned at their own goal line, and the quarterback nearly sacked in the end zone. Immediately five guys at the bar put their hands together over their heads, walk like an Egyptian style, and called out, “Safe-teee!”
“What’s a safe-teee?”
“A safety is when the quarterback is sacked in his own end zone. The other team gets two points and the quarterback’s team has to kick it to them.”
“What do you mean ‘his own end zone’ How do you know that one’s his?”
“Uh…”
“And how is a safety different from a touchback?”
By the end of the game, details and terms from the sport that had once seemed so clear and logical now sounded utterly absurd. Why did we know so much about football, anyway, when it means absolutely nothing? If you took all the male brainpower in the U.S. that’s devoted to following it and channeled that into something useful, I’m pretty confident we’d have cured cancer and colonized Mars by now.
Of course, we don’t really know that much about football. Even the most rabid fan is unlikely to be able to explain the Cover 2 defense, or identify the A-gap in the offensive line, or tell you which player is assigned to pick up the corner blitz. To the layman, the sport sounds just slightly less complicated than building a rocket. But it doesn’t matter; knowing the rules is difficult enough for anyone with a day job. The point is, football is one of the few things that inspires collective excitement, even pandemonium. Whatever I do this Sunday—go to a museum; play squash; have brunch; watch a Columbo rerun; watch, god forbid, college basketball; go friggin’ shopping (shopping? please, no)—it won’t be something to get pandemonious about. It won't inspire collective, berserk screaming.
When I think of Sundays without football, I think, unfortunately, of 9/11. NFL games were canceled the following two weekends. This was appropriate, but especially cruel. I remember how happy, if guilty, I felt having it back, having the distraction, being able to switch off CNN. It may not mean anything in the grand scheme, it may even be a sad comment on the quality of our public life, but we had to admit then that sports were essential. We needed something we could understand.
If you were following my Aussie Open blogs, you know I made a few critiques of the coverage by ESPN. I usually do: The broadcasts themselves are all part of the experience, and I know tennis fans have particularly strong feelings when it comes to their commentators.
