!51564507 by Pete Bodo
When it comes to TennisWorld's favorite Alpinist, much beloved (and lusted after) Marat Safin, my overriding impression is that the 29-year old Russian star suffers from a condition much feared and remarked upon in 19th century literature - ennui. Boredom is an exquisite enemy, and if you ask me it's one of the main reasons people went to such lengths to invent, in no particular order, newspapers, television, cell phones and Twitter. Of course, that's not the official version - but sometimes the unintended consequences of any kind of development are as interesting if not necessarily as important as the obvious ones.
Ennui. Boredom. The long, hot summer afternoons when a child sits his bike, t-shirt off and tucked into the back of his shorts, quietly watching the deserted streets of his suburban neighborhood, wondering why nobody is around. Or the weekend mornings when it's still drizzling, the Sunday newspaper has been devoured, and it's still too early for lunch. For a veteran tennis pro like Safin, boredom means being unable to think about anything but tennis, when tennis has lost what fascination it once held. It's being trapped rather than entrenched (as is Roger Federer, or even Pete Sampras) in a way of life. There's a great danger implicit in boredom because, as the philosopher Eric Hoffer observed, When people are bored, it is primarily with their own selves that they are bored.
Of course, there are good reasons for people to be bored with themselves, having nothing to do with the quality of a person's character. In fact, it takes a certain measure of self-awareness and self-criticism to acknowledge that you're bored - who on earth wants to see him or herself as a "bored" person? Punk rockers in the 1970s positively reveled in the state of boredom, probably because it's as blanket a condemnation of the shortcomings of life as you can issue. But embracing boredom, or making it an existential complaint, also represents a terrible kind of narcissism - what the stridently bored person is really is saying is that nothing is good enough.
And let's remember that boredom also represents a failure to "get out of your own head"; the state of boredom contains a big dose of self-consciousness, unlike the state of fascination, or absorption in a task or pleasure. Doing something, and especially enjoying it immensely, takes you out of yourself to the point where it's all about the activity, not how you feel about it. And really enjoying something, to the point where you may actively feel joy, but not self-consciousness, is an escape from the same hell in which the bored person suffers - or secretly luxuriates.
While Safin has always appeared to have a healthy streak of narcissism (it's part and parcel of the brooding, Slavic pessimism which Safin embodied), he wasn't foolish enough to complain about his lot in life in a conference call this afternoon. He didn't make his personal grievances or disappointments an issue, but when I asked him what has been the toughest part of being a top tennis player for so many years, he said:
"Throughout the years, probably continuous, not. . . stress. . .but some kind of thing about (how)you have to live with tennis 24/7. There is no way you're gonna leave and like for days relax and not think about it. Sooner or later you're gonna think about tennis. This is the toughest part. Once it gets into your head, you really think you have to travel and practice and defend the points here and there. It's in your mind. So basically the mental game is a little bit the tough one. It brings a little bit slightly stress, because you are all the time depending on tennis."
This helps explain why this Safin farewell - my colleague Tom Perrotta, calls it Safin's Magical Misery Tour - seems less like a victory lap than a limp to a very welcome finish line. Safin is making an effort to appreciate and enjoy the experience, while a part of him is banging the tin cup on the bars of his cell and screaming, Get me the hail out of here!* He's making a pretty good effort, given how "stress" is the word that keeps popping up in his thoughts, and the worst kind of stress is having to perform when you don't feel up to the job, when the job doesn't especially interest you, or when the job appears to be asking too much of something you're not eager to give, or can't provide.
Safin talked a bit about the "friendship" Pete Sampras alluded to in his own media chat session last week (Sampras and Safin will play an exhibition to kick off the LA Tennis Open, presented by Farmers Insurance Group at UCLA). The freewheeling, complicated Safin and highly focused, no-nonsense Sampras may seem like an odd pairing, and I doubt it would have been a profitable relationship if neither man had a very high regard for the talent of the other. Of that friendship, Safin said:
"Yes, well, we are a little bit different. Few years we are different. But you know what, when I first came out on the tour it was maybe a time when you come into the locker room, you know, you just don't know anybody. It always seemed like you could talk with him. For me, it was honor just to talk to him. He was pretty normal and you could chat with him for a few minutes. It's always nice to see the big guys are also people and are very down earth and very relaxed. It was a big, big pleasure of sharing the locker room with him."
This next meeting with Sampras is bound to spark a few memories and touch a few tender places in the hearts of both men. You'll remember that they played that U.S. Open final in 2000, with Safin prevailing 4-3-3 in as persuasive a display of shock-and-awe tennis as we've ever witnessed. "It looks like it was yesterday," Safin said. "But it already pass almost ten years. We're kind of looking backwards, and it's really a warm feeling when he have an achievement like beating Sampras in the final of US Open. It was my first breakthrough actually, and it gave me the chance on becoming No. 1 in the world. Thanks to Pete that he wasn't at his best that day. And I'm really happy to repeat the match on Monday."
Safin isn't giving himself enough credit here; even Sampras - then and now - graciously concedes that the way Safin played on that fine September afternoon made it unlikely that Sampras even at his best could stop him. Safin was that good. Little did anyone suspect that he would use the match to launch a career so filled with turbulence, self-examination, pathos, triumph and frustration (some of it due to injury). On that bright afternoon, with a touch of autumn gently nudging summer aside, it seemed like there were no bounds to what Safin might achieve in tennis.
Today, he mused: "Well, just been some great moments. There have been so many things that I lived through and so many good decisions that I made, and couple of bad decisions. But actually it's good for the experience in life, and I'm pretty happy that everything what happened to me, it actually happened and was a really, really nice trip all those 12 years."
Safin hit on something when he said great moments, for that's what his career was, in a de-constructed, almost narrative-free fashion that somehow seems appropriate, given the kind of man he is. Great moments and difficult ones. Dizzying success, crushing disappointment (more crushing, I always sensed, for his fans than for Safin himself). It was quite a trick, to turn that life of sometimes benumbing routine and grinding repetition into an experience that continued to produce surprises, and unexpected turns in the road. Somehow, those pearl-like moments never were neatly strung. And as much as Safin was trapped in a way of life, he escaped yielding his heart and soul to it.
When someone compared him to the legendary "characters" in the game - the Nastases and McEnroes and Gorans - Safin seemed humbled, saying, "Thank you very much to put me in the same as all these guys. Thank you, thank you, thank you for the honor. For tennis, I hope there is much more to come. Because tennis, actually they need somebody a little bit - not crazy - but just a little bit untender, but it has to come natural. . . Over time it (tennis) only became more like a business and (it's worth) just trying to be less, less, and less like that."
Of course, the true "characters" in tennis are often much more of the game than they may realize or want to acknowledge. As much and as often as their originality came into conflict with the drudgery now built into the profession, and as dearly as it might have cost them, they're the ones who have always carried on the greatest tradition in this tradition-laden sport - the lineage of independent-minded and tamper-proof characters expressing their unique abilities in a highly structured sport that places an enormous premium on conformity and consistency.
It's hard to imagine what Safin will do next in life, and he's not saying.
"Well, there's plenty of things to do. I'm gonna stay active and do something different. Definitely not gonna retire and then sit on my ass, sit on the beach and do nothing and just relaxing for the rest of my life. I'm gonna be active and do my things. I have a few projects. I don't know, I'm gonna be working, so..."
"Can you tell us what those projects are?"
"No, no," he answered. "They're my things and it's okay. I don't want to share it yet."
Looking ahead to his match with Sampras, Safin said: "It's gonna be mostly fun because I don't have to show to anybody anything, and he doesn't have to. Just to play there, remember good times, have fun so that the people have fun. Work some nice points so the match will be nice.
It's all about fun. It's not about to show to each other who is the best one and whatever. I know he was much better player than me. He achieve much more than me, and I don't want to argue with that. I don't need to. I just want to have fun. I would love to remember the feeling when I was in the finals. It will be nice to repeat it."
As jaded as Safin can appear (and isn't boredom the domain of the jaded?), it seems that there's at least one thing about tennis that he still longs to experience, one more time. It isn't winning, for in the end that never did seem of paramount importance to Marat Safin.