When did athletes stop saying, “I’m going to give 110 percent today”? As anyone over the age of 30 will likely remember, that was the go-to pre-game cliché of the 1970s and 80s, uttered nearly as often as the eternal “We’re going to take it one game at a time.” Maybe somewhere along the line a jock accidentally wandered into an arithmetic class and discovered that, for decades, he and his buddies had been wasting their time trying to do something that was mathematically impossible.
Sports clichés, which are mouthed with a faintly bored and professionally tolerant thousand-yard stare by everyone from NFL linemen to the teen phenoms of the WTA, are dull and exasperating in equal measures. But they have their uses. They rob opponents of bulletin-board motivational material. They keep the athlete from having think too much about what he or she is doing on the court—always a good thing. And, except in the case of giving 110 percent, they’re incontrovertibly true. No matter how good you are, you really only can take it one game at a time.
From my perspective on the other side of the pressroom, the most important function that an eye-glazing cliché performs is this: It doesn’t make news. Reporters were constantly frustrated by the perceived dullness and lack of depth of Pete Sampras. He wasn’t introspective by nature, but in public he also wasn’t introspective by choice. As most athletes eventually learn, being interesting to the press isn’t worth the trouble. It only becomes a distraction. The problem with a memorable quote is just that—people remember it, which means they’re going to ask you about it. Again. And again. And again. That means you’re going to spend energy explaining what you meant the first time.
At 28 years old, after a decade on tour, you might think Nikolay Davydenko would know all of that by now. But this year’s Australian Open has given the unassuming and dryly self-deprecating Russian access to a whole new universe of attention. With two wins over Roger Federer and the tentative favorite status they’ve earned him, people are suddenly listening to him when he speaks. As Davydenko said in his presser after his second-round win, when he was asked what he would tell his children he did for a living after he retired, “It’s interesting. We’ve not talking about tennis. We’re talking about my life. This is my first experience like this in the press.”
Everyone laughed. To reporters, Davydenko’s unpredictable mix of honesty and ironic bravado is disarming and refreshing after all the safe clichés we've had to endure. But underneath the laughter, we smell blood. That was obvious right from the start yesterday, when the second question Davydenko heard was, “Did your opponent look scared?”
This was in reference to a remark he had made after his first-round win. When he was told that Andy Murray and Rafael Nadal had said they thought he could win the tournament, Davydenko answered, in his usual hyper, Yoda-esque English, “Oh, really? Surprising, you know, these guys start to talking about me, because maybe now. Before, if nobody talking, then nobody scare. Now it’s everyone scare. . . . But it’s interesting feeling. Now I feel like I can beat everyone.”
Two questions after that one, Davydenko was asked, “Do you enjoy scaring people?” It was official: “scared” was the word of the tournament, and Davydenko’s quote was going to get around.
It got to Federer, Davydenko’s prospective quarterfinal opponent, a day or two later. Federer seemed to wince a little when he heard it. Rather than being outraged, he acted as if it was a poor choice of words, that top athletes don’t really get “scared” of each other. He’s right, and at some level Federer knows that Davydenko really meant something like, “now the other top players respect me more and know I’m capable of beating them at a Grand Slam.”
Using those words instead would have been safer and smarter. If you were in press-conference school, you’d almost certainly be coached to phrase it that way. But Davydenko, while he’s way too honest and unpretentious to trash talk in the classic sense, is a witty guy who’d rather have fun than play it safe with his words. Let's face it, after all these years away from the limelight, and after the controversy over his potential match-fixing, he's liking the positive attention. Listen to a few of his other answers in his latest presser:
Q: Would you like to write a book? Because you’re a great character.
Write a book? You mean humor book, Tennis book? Action book? . . . No, no no, I would like to go in business, but I don’t want to lose my money also in business.
Q: Why are you talking about money all the time?
Because we are Russian (smiling). Russian always talking about money. And you know all Russian can get only cash, not like you guys, only credit cards also.
Q: Are you a vodka drinker [oh, how the press loves this guy]?
Yes.
Q: Is that where you get your strength?
I don’t drink so much because you see, I’m skinny. Sometimes mix with Red Bull. Get power in night club or disco.
Q: Would you want to have kids so they can see you play?
Yes. No. Yes and no. [My wife] is scared if I start to, with kids, lose tennis and go down, stray.
Davydenko is indeed a wonderful character, and as a tennis writer part of me would hate to see him rein himself in. So far he seems oblivious to how the word “scared” might be playing around the grounds or the locker room. But he may soon get sick of hearing it and having to spend time thinking about it. And while Federer, after two losses to Davydenko, doesn’t need to put anything on his bulletin board to motivate him for their match-up, showing the world again that Darth Federer is scared of no one might seem like a nice fringe benefit of beating that mouthy little Russian for the 13th time.
I’ve said recently that I didn’t think Davydenko could win a major simply because he doesn’t think of himself as a Grand Slam champion. He doesn’t have the swagger or the all-consuming, I-must-prove-something-to-myself mindset. He doesn’t feel entitled to titles. His image of himself to this point has never depended on winning majors, the way Federer bases his entire year around winning Wimbledon. All of this makes Davydenko a more engaging athlete, but it doesn’t make triumphing at the ultimate level, in Melbourne, any easier.
The day that Davydenko doesn’t use a word like “scared” to describe his opponents, the day he gives us a thousand-yard stare and says that he and his opponents “have a mutual respect for each other,” that he’s just gonna go out and give it 110 percent, you know he’s serious about creating a legacy as a Grand Slam champion rather than just making enough money so he never has to work again. It will be a sad day for the tennis press, but it might be a good day for Davydenko. He’ll have learned his lesson. It should be an easy one for a money-hungry Russian to understand: Being interesting is bad for business.