Tennis tantalizing in twilight
Williams sisters, Federer bring back game’s golden age
Something beautiful is happening while we sleep. The Australian Open is the tennis tournament that vanishes in the night, the first Slam of the year on the other side of the world. Unless you want to upend your life, you wake up to find out what happened. It’s like how newspapers used to work, in a way.
But it is gorgeous. First, the Williams sisters. They have always been miracles, as unlikely as anything in sports, two brilliant separate women who have defined the sport for nearly 20 years. They have come and gone, sometimes but not always by their own choosing: they chased fashion and life, sure, but in 2010 and 2011 there was both Serena’s pulmonary embolism and her sliced-open foot, and Venus’s Sjogren’s Syndrome, an autoimmune disease that made her tired and made her joints ache.
Serena powered through to become an all-time icon; Venus kept playing as a lessened version of herself. She had not reached a singles Slam final since 2009, against her sister. Until now.
“You just have to, like, try to figure it out if you can get it to line up all at the same time,” Venus told reporters. “That’s why you get out and you try. As long as you continue to try, you have an opportunity. “That’s why I’m here.” She sounded beautifully philosophical. When she recalled her loss to Serena in the 2003 Australian final, he spoke of how good Serena was, and said, “it was wonderful.” She spoke of how awesome her sister was, and how much she has loved competing with her.
Serena, meanwhile, said, this final was different. In her press interview she said, “Yeah, (one of us losing) definitely makes it uncomfortable. But after everything that Venus has been through with her illness and stuff, I just can’t help but feel like it’s a win-win situation for me. I was there for the whole time. We lived together. I know what she went through.”
“It’s the one time that I really genuinely feel like no matter what happens, I can’t lose, she can’t lose.”
They are something else, those two. They have survived everything tennis didn’t like about them, and are still here.
And on the men’s side, there is Roger. This is Andy Murray’s and Novak Djokovic’s game now, but they were both toppled early. Federer took six months off in 2016 because he suffered a dad injury: he was running a bath for his twin daughters and he twisted his knee. That eventually led to surgery.
He had blown a 2-0 set lead against Stan Wawrinka in the semi, and as relayed by Christopher Clarey of The New York Times, Federer said, “It’s gone so much better than I thought it would. That’s also what I was telling myself in the fifth set. I was talking to myself, saying like, just relax, man. The comeback is so great already. Let it fly off your racquet and see what happens. I think that’s the mindset I have to have as well in the finals. Sort of a nothing-to-lose mentality. It’s been nice these last six matches to have that mentality.”
He sounded philosophical, too. He waited to play either Gregor Dimitrov, the 25-year-old who patterned himself after Federer, or Rafael Nadal. Federer-Nadal is still the heart of this golden age of tennis. Nadal — left-handed, a master of defence, with that high-revving topspin forehand — was almost built to beat Federer, and he often did.
Federer has clearly thought about it. He mentioned that maybe he lost the epic 2008 Wimbledon final, perhaps the greatest match played, because he had lost so decisively to Nadal on clay at the French, and it crept into his head in those first two sets. He said, “It was more mentally something, at some moments. Now it’s a different time. A lot of time has gone by. I know this court allows me to play a certain game against Rafa that I cannot do on centre court at the French Open.”
He sounded free. Federer is still beautiful to watch but he is not the same, and this sport has broken his heart more than once. But he has continued to strive. Nadal’s body broke down, but he has persevered. Federer hasn’t won a Slam since 2012; Nadal, since 2014; Venus, since 2008.
There was something else Venus said. She said, “What I will say about sport, I think why people love sport so much, is because you see everything in a line. In that moment there is no do-over, there’s no retake, there is no voice-over. It’s triumph and disaster witnessed in real time. This is why people live and die for sport, because you can’t fake it. You can’t. It’s either you do it or you don’t. People relate to the champion. They also relate to the person also who didn’t win, because we all have those moments in our life.”
That’s it, all right. Every athlete degrades over time; every athlete rises, and falls. But I’ve always thought the descent is worth honouring as much as the rise. Sometimes they even rise again.