!Picby Pete Bodo
The other day I was thinking about the movie Chariots of Fire, and how one of the two main characters, Eric Liddell, responded to what he considered an unacceptable situation at the approach of 1924 Berlin Olympic Games, in which he was to compete in the 100-meter dash. As the British team departed, Liddell learned that his heat race was scheduled for Sunday. As a devout Christian, he said he ran for the greater glory of God, but he also accepted that Sunday was the "day of rest," and that running the race would force him to violate an article of his faith.
Liddell's solution was the most simple, direct one: He decided he wouldn't run. Ultimately, things more or less worked out, for reasons that don't matter here.
Now let's segue to the ATP track, and revisit that burning issue that perpetually crops up at about the time Wimbledon ends and remains with us for the rest of the year—the loaded tour calendar. This year, Rafael Nadal was one of the major dissidents, and I suppose his performances after the U.S. Open suggest that he was indeed a tired, discontented player. The same goes for Novak Djokovic, who hobbled toward the finish line of the year in a way that was almost painful to watch. He made it, but barely, and with his amazing year ever so slightly tarnished.
And then you have Andy Murray and Roger Federer.
Murray was also vocal back in September, when the corps of top players grew restless and talked about taking greater control of their own destiny, via a new player union or some other mechanism that would enable them to tackle issues like the commitment demands placed on them by the tour. But on at least one major front—the length of the playing year—the dead boys (Djokovic and Nadal) and the risen Phoenixes (Murray and Federer) were singing from different hymnals. Or at least their accomplishments suggested that they were. For they reacted as if the fall were less obligation than opportunity, and to hail with Novak and Rafa. They made hay while the sun was shining.
Murray and Federer pretty much salvaged their years in the post-U.S. Open period. Murray won two titles through the U.S. Open, one of them a Masters event (Cincinnati). In the two months after Flushing Meadows, Murray won three titles, including his second Masters (Shanghai). He also caught and surpassed Federer in the rankings, moving up to No. 3.
Federer didn't allow Murray to occupy his chair for long, though. With a season-ending charge of his own, the man who had previously managed just one tournament win in 2011 (that one, at Doha, during the very first week of ATP play) won three events at the end of the year—including a Masters (Paris) and the sub-Slam ATP World Tour Finals. By the end of the year, Federer was back at No. 3, even if Murray still had the consolation of a strong finish after a wobbly start to the season.
In the course of his resurgence, Federer illustrated something I've been harping on forever, which is that tennis is an "interval" sport, not a season-based one, as are most major sports. Those other sports evolved as seasonal enterprises for a host of reasons, many having to do with the nature of the sport and its relation to climate and other ambient factors (there isn't much ice hockey to be played in July in Boston, nor is December very friendly to baseball in Cleveland).
Tennis evolved that way, too, except that as one of the most successful of global sports, it has benefited from the fact that the sun is always shining somewhere. Thus, there's been enormous opportunity, and pressure, to create and build out the tour while most of the original tennis empire lay mantled in snow. The extension of the tennis year and imperial gains of both tours have added great "diversity" to the tour, enriched players, and greatly expanded that original empire—as Li Na demonstrated this year when, a Chinese national, she became the first Asian ever to win a Grand Slam singles title.
Just as important, what might be called the traditional "tennis season" (originally, it began on clay in Europe in April and May, and concluded in sunny Australia in December) has been less dependent on the calendar and climate than on the four Grand Slam events, which are the major mileposts of the long and winding tour. There certainly were tournaments played before the French Open and after the U.S. Open back before the Open-era revolution; there was always a market for tennis in friendly environments, even if there was no system or mechanism for making them seem important.
Granted, it would be nice to have a few more weeks between the French Open and Wimbledon. But that's about the only major flaw in the ebb and flow of the year, now that fall events are integrated into the tour and important to year-end rankings and the ultimate accomplishment of the ATP, an official year-end championships. Which is exactly why this "interval sport" idea matters. The establishment has created an excellent infrastructure that allows tennis players go through periods of intense activity, theoretically followed by periods of quality rest and game and fitness maintenance. But some of the ATP's own rules get in the way.
