It’s well known that the first two days of a major, when 128 opening-round singles matches are played, are preposterously loaded. They're too much for one, or even 10, humans to take in. A tennis tsunami of names, numbers, scores, courts, balls and “I’m the man” chest punches washes over you. Most reporters don’t have too much trouble coping with this. They’re here to cover players from their own country, so they can let the vast morass of matches that scroll across their monitors pass by unharmed. Such is not the case with the Tennis.com writer tasked with taking in the whole enchilada (or is it the whole koala?).
On the plus side, I’m not limited to covering one Venus Williams or Andy Roddick press conference after another. On the minus side, if I’m out on Court Siberia trying to analyze Bojana Jovanovski’s Western forehand, and Roger Federer punches a chair umpire in Rod Laver Arena without my knowing it, I’m in trouble. While I wouldn’t want every day of the two weeks to be so chaotic, I also wouldn’t want it any other way for these first two days. The flip side to being overwhelmed is that there’s never a lack of something to see, or something to occupy your mind. As you make your way across the grounds, interesting players and matches keep popping up where and when you least expect them.
Melbourne Park is not the largest, area-wise, of the majors, but it feels like it stretches the farthest from end to end, from the modern, tech-y, impersonal Hisense Arena on one side, through the back lot side courts, past Rod Laver Arena, Margaret Court Arena, the larger Show Courts 2 and 3, and finally through the triangle of small side courts at the other end. The carnival that takes place on these grounds keeps revving itself back up through the day. Just when you're ready to stagger back to the press room to pack it in and write your story, you hear the chair umpire in the show court next to you say, “Game and fourth set, Baghdatis,” and a roar rise from the Cypriot crowd inside. You know you can’t miss that.
Before things get a little saner, here are a few snapshots from inside the wave.
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“Oh, Marin is so wonderful!”
These are the surprisingly sentimental words chanted by half dozen young men draped in the Croatian flag at the end of Show Court 2. They reach over and bang their hands on the wall in front of them, creating an immense ruckus for such a small number of people. But if they want to scare their man Marin Cilic’s American opponent, Donald Young, with a taste of Euro-style hooliganism, they probably should have chosen some more intimidating words to go with their clanging.
There's also no need to scare him. Two days ago, Young was a house of fire on court. He played circles around his last two opponents in the qualifying. Now he's faced with an old rival who has gone on to surpass him. In 2005, Young beat out Cilic for the No. 1 spot in the world junior rankings. While Cilic has since cracked the ATP Top 10, Young has never risen higher than No. 73. He's never fully transitioned to the pros.
From the first game, you can see the fire has been snuffed out in Young. He snatches at an easy forehand and shanks it long. Cilic hits a winner. Young double faults. When he’s broken, Young takes a ball and flips it disgustedly into the corner as he walks to the other side of the court. The tone is set. It feels like Young has already confirmed something about himself, something that isn’t good.
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“Out! Out!”
This is the call from a fan of Dudi Sela, who is playing Juan Martin del Potro on Show Court 2. The ball, hit by del Potro, was clearly in, but Sela has put up a minor protest. His fan, who has an Israeli flag sticking up from his headband, has decided that he strongly agrees.
Del Potro is thinner and appears a little slower, which is to be expected. Or maybe it’s just the day. It’s a sluggish 4:30 in the afternoon, overcast, and chilly. Even the return of the towering Argentine isn’t enough to stifle a dozen or so yawns in the crowd.
The little man, Sela, is wearing the same yellow Nikes that Rafael Nadal wore at the U.S. Open. Designed for New York at night, they look like hand me downs here, out of place in the Melbourne daylight. The two players have already walked a tightrope of a tiebreaker in the first set. With each set point came a shot into the tape, until del Potro finally avoided the net and ended it 15-13. Now Sela stays alive with clever touch shots that get the giant turned around. It's not enough. Del Potro can still power a ground stroke. He wins in straights.
Every great player occupies a distinct space on the tennis landscape. It feels right to have del Potro here again. The landscape is complete, and the small circle of players who can contend for titles is closed. In the press room afterward, del Potro says he feels the same way, like he’s back home.
“I’m really enjoying this week,” he says in his familiar slow, thick manner. “I met with all the players, especially the Top 10 players. They support me when I was very bad. So now I face to face with them and I sat thank you.”
When he's asked to describe the past year, the right side of del Potro’s lip goes up in an involuntary show of emotion. “I had a very bad year,” he says.
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If Grigor Dimitrov is the aristocrat of the new generation, Lithuania’s Ricardas Berankis, 20, is its blue collar hero, the Davydenko to Dimitrov’s Federer. Five-foot-nine, with a no-nonsense short haircut and a gold chain around his neck, he goes about his business like a man dedicated to a job well done—nothing more and nothing less.
The crowd on Court 8 is filled with the Aussie green-and-gold of his opponent Marinko Matosevic. They do their best to cause chaos, but Berankis shuts them down with his stellar play. Withdrawn, within his own head, he ignores everything except the task at hand—putting the ball where his opponent can’t get it. When he makes a mistake, he doesn’t act as if the world is against him. Nor does he act, like Donald Young, as if the miss confirms something awful that he always knew about himself. Berankis shakes his head after an error like a professional who hasn’t done his job the right away.
When you lose a deuce point on your opponent’s serve, it can be easy to pack the next point in. When this happens to Berankis, there’s no change in his demeanor or approach. He goes after each point the same way. It pays off: Berankis breaks Matosevic after a multiple-deuce game in the second set, and he breaks his opponent's will for good in the process.
Still, while Berankis takes a worker’s approach mentally, he’s hardly workmanlike as a player. Whatever machine he’s operating, he does it smoothly.
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His opponent’s serve has just hit the line judge behind him in the face, so Marcos Baghdatis runs back to make sure she’s all right. The woman, over 60, recovers herself. The crowd claps. On the next point, a crucial one early in the fifth set, Baghdatis’s opponent serves down the middle again. It’s close, but the woman calls it in. Baghdatis loses the point and starts to go ballistic about the service call. Then he looks back and sees who called it. He frowns, but he stops his rant and goes on to the next point. How can he yell at the poor woman just after he's been cheered for helping her?
Baghdatis wins anyway, and is swept away in a tide of fellow Cypriot joy. I’m swept back to the press room on the same tide. The first-round wave has crashed at last.