‘‘When I see a young man like Tsitsipas coming through, he is a man to give youth hope, to give Greece hope.’’
In case you didn’t see it, in case the summer heat rising from the ground blurred your vision, something significant went on in London last Monday morning. Stefanos Tsitsipas won the ATP Finals at the age of 21. Only John McEnroe, Andre Agassi, Pete Sampras, Boris Becker and Lleyton Hewitt have won the season-ending championship at a younger age. And that quintet has 37 grand slam singles titles among them.
And so Tsitsipas’s victory has started a yearning in the tennis world. Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic have been a joy to watch, but they have been at the top table too long. Some of us would like the kids to come along and kick the chairs from under them. We want splintered wood and outrage. Tennis has all become a little too comfortable.
The mighty troika needs smashing up. There is not a single living male grand-slam winner under the age of 31 and it makes me uneasy. I don’t like the control that the troika exerts on the game. I don’t like the conflicts of interests when they get involved in running tournaments that they are competing in. And I don’t like the perfect, dreary sponsor-speak that has been boring us for the past 10 years.
The tennis and the rivalries have sometimes been sublime, especially since Federer discovered it was legal to come to the net and the others slowly followed – but part of me yearns for the Golden Age of tennis when McEnroe, Connors, Nastase and even Borg came with attitude. They were playing the beautiful game, but they were also kicking against the pricks like kids are supposed to.
In contrast Roger, Rafa and Novak, who once had a bit of devil in him, are the MogaDons of Madison Avenue. The Latvian player Ernesto Gulbis put it rather well when he called them boring, boring, boring and said, ‘‘It is Federer who started this fashion.
‘‘He has a superb image of the perfect Swiss gentleman. I respect Federer but I don’t like it that young players try to imitate him. When I hear them answer like Roger, I am terrified by phrases like, ‘I had a little bit more success at certain moments and that is how I won.’
‘‘If I win, the guy on the other side of the net, I have sent him home. I do not want to hear in an interview a guy who I will not name, but who I know well that he thinks all his opponents are a...holes, putting on an act. I would like interviews to be more like in boxing. When they face each other down at the weigh-in they bring what the fans want: war, blood, emotion.’’
Now a few will react in horror at Gulbis’s words. Why should we decry our young men for being polite? There’s nothing wrong with good manners. And so on. And on and on, yawn. Kids are supposed to tear down authority. Boys are supposed to eventually smash up their fathers on a basketball court. That’s how the world moves on. And right now it needs moving on more than ever.
Our young are being crushed by globalised greed. There is way too much money held by a few, and young workers have less and less to hope for. Take Tsitsipas’s country as an example: Greece was once a great state. Now it is in ruins. Pensions have been wiped out and the youth are emigrating in their thousands.
Why? They are the victims of political and corporate greed. A few years ago the French and German banks went bust. But that couldn’t be admitted. So the French and German leaders, in collusion with the unholy troika of the EU, the IMF and the European Bank, put their wretched heads together.
Greece was bankrupt, floundering at the bottom of the Eurozone. So these hoodlums came up with a scheme where loads of money would be raised by France and Germany and a whole lot more by Europe’s weaker countries. This would then be paid to Greece who would then be obliged to pay it back to shore up banks that had lent irresponsibly and should have been going under. It was a political and financial scam, documented in Adults in the Room, by former Greek economist and finance minister Yanis Varoufakis.
So when I see a young man like Tsitsipas coming through, he is a man to give youth hope, to give Greece hope. A couple of years ago ‘‘the Greek freak’’ thought he was going to drown. He said; ‘‘We were trying to swim back to the beach but it was completely impossible to make it. The more I was trying, the less chance I had to make it. I remember surrendering. I remember the flashback when time froze. Nothing moved. I couldn’t feel anything. There was a sudden flashback of my entire life. I remember drowning. I remember that feeling of dying. For a second I thought I was dead already.’’
It is hard not to see the boy who came back from the dead as this symbol of hope. He has charisma. His tennis is all-court and thrilling to watch. He is strong off either side. He has a big serve and a great spin serve. And according to Federer, whom he beat in London, he is ‘‘tough as nails.’’
He’s also a lot more interesting than the current big three. He has just finished a book about the dangers of toxic people. He has a forthcoming vlog about his youthful fears of rejection. He locked himself in a hotel room for days after losing in the first round of the US Open, his brain in meltdown from doing the ‘‘same thing over and over again.’’ And when someone says that ‘‘they’’ won’t let him fly a drone over the Great Wall of China, he says; ‘‘They won’t just let us, they will let us and they will sing a song.’’
He has a spirit that should bring us joy, but being old I also confess to a little fear. The likes of Tsitsipas and Daniil Medvedev, another young rebel who is coming to play in Auckland in January, still have to knock down the Great Wall of tennis. And the authorities will do everything to stop them.
Djokovic is superb in Australia and has won five of the past eight titles. Nadal is supreme is France and has won 12 of the past 15 French Open titles. Roger the great will not go away and you can bet the creeping authorities will give the Federal Reserve Bank better match times and screw over the kids.
But you start to get the sense the kids won’t take it any more. The Greeks are coming and turning the genteel world of tennis into what Tsitsipas calls ‘‘a football stadium.’’ Medvedev turned New York into a bear pit as he flicked the umpire the bird. And Nick Kyrgios, well, let’s just say he has played doubles with Tsitsipas. They get on.
And one last word to Tsitsipas. You don’t have to thank your German sponsors. These corporates have funded untold evil regimes over the years. We don’t want to hear it. It’s the start of your Fed-eralisation. Be yourself. Rage against the exclusive gentleman’s club that Federer has turned tennis into. Find your inner McEnroe. This is an era that is crying out for a splash of anarchy.
When I see a young man like Tsitsipas coming through, heisa man to give youth hope, to give Greece hope.