Courts, players, tournaments, arenas: They shift in your mind even as they appear, seemingly unchanged, on your TV screen through the years. It’s not an evolution; that would imply improvement and some kind of an endpoint. My relationship as a spectator, with, say, Mikhail Youzhny, has traveled in a sort of zig-zagging sideways line over the course of his career. First there was early curiosity, then approval of his odd backhand, then annoyance with his temper, then admiration for his skill after his wins over Rafael Nadal, then shock—blood trickling down a player’s forehead will do that—then boredom with his middling results, then no opinion at all. But that won’t be the end of it: Today, when the veteran Russian appeared ready to grit his way to a three-set win over David Nalbandian, I briefly, very briefly, saw him as a grizzled warrior, a guy who goes out and gives everything emotionally each week. A couple minutes later, when he was broken after botching an ill-chosen drop shot and smothering an easy backhand into the net, I saw him as a sympathetic figure, proof that the pros can choke like the rest of us. Then, after Youzhny had lost and was walking away from his handshake with Nalbandian, I was back to having no particular opinion of him at all. He’s just a very good tennis player with the same very short haircut he’s always had. Until the next time I see him play, when my reactions and opinions will start all over again.
These kinds of minute-to-minute, point-to-point changes in my perspective on players are pretty common for me, and I’m guessing one of the reasons that most tennis fans can keep watching the same pros face off against the same opponents on the same courts year after year. It isn’t just the points and the matches that are different, but our feelings on any given day about the performers themselves. I’m not a full-time fan of many of the pros, or a non-stop hater of too many, either—few people are all good or all evil, right?
I got onto this line of thought on Wednesday morning seeing Rafael Nadal open his clay season in Monte Carlo with his latest new look from Nike, a blue shirt to go with the now standard knee-length Bermuda-style shorts. Last week I’d watched a very different-looking Rafa beating Roger Federer at the same tournament a few years ago. This was the Rafa of the bicep, the pirata, the long, grungy hair, the dark stubble, and the louder grunt. Compared to the bright, sleeved version we saw today, the old Nadal had a menacing countenance. I’d liked the old Rafa back then, had never thought of him as an intimidating character, but now I could undertand how some might have seen him that way. Like Federer, he’s been styled for celebrity. All of their early grunge has been buzzed away. The old Rafa from that clip was obviously the same person we see now. The strokes and the mannerisms haven't been transformed. But at the same time it was a completely different Nadal, one frozen in that moment forever, a moment before he reached No. 1, when he was still the challenger to Federer’s champion, when he was still fighting upward and not yet defending his place on the totem pole or in the world. That Rafa no longer exists. The evolution of our athletes shows us, as much as anything shows us, that time, even in the course of just a few years, keeps discarding us and making us new.
What has time done to my perception of the other guys I’ve seen at Monte Carlo this week so far?
Novak Djokovic: I tuned in this morning just as he was going through his inevitable second-set doubt session against Florent Serra. The jaw was out and the mouth was a little open. I was ready for him to stick the tongue into the cheek, but it never quite got there. I realized then that where I once saw the cockiness in Djokovic, now all I saw was the vulnerability that shadows him every step that he takes. I’m less in awe of his game, but more entertained by his personality. Because of that, I look forward to his matches, even if I don’t always love to watch him hit tennis balls. Will this be the final stage of my relationship with Djokovic? How could it? I look forward to a long and hopefully unpredictable future with this comically engaging athlete. Right now, he’s as transparently human as they get.
Tomas Berdych: This may be the most pleasant surprise of my 2010 tennis-watching season—a chance to dig Tomas Berdych’s game. Is it the cool green checked shirt? Is it the ground strokes that are finding the court? Or is it the little bit of positive energy, the new assured spring in his step that I’m enjoying? Where Djokovic has been more entertaining as his results have become more up and down, Berdych is showing signs of being a more engaging person as his results improve. In the past, he had the stony, recessive quality of someone who didn’t want to give it all emotionally, because he knew he'd blow it in the end anyway. That only made the focused aggressiveness with which he went after Richard Gasquet on Tuesday more energizing. We love winners in part because they love themselves so much more; like rich people, we admire them deep down for doing and feeling what we secretly believe we should be doing and feeling all the time, for showing us excellence and freedom and triumph. Until they win too much and love themselves too much. But that day is a long way off for Berdych.
Juan Carlos Ferrero: I remember watching JC lose to Tommy Robredo many years ago in the Grandstand at the U.S. Open in a fifth-set tiebreaker. In those days, Robredo was a crowd-pleaser, even a ham—he pretended to shoot a line judge with a machine gun at one point, a move guaranteed to make a New York crowd fall in love with you (what this says about New York crowds, I don’t know). All of which made me root for Ferrero. He was the classy Spaniard, the proud one, the guy who did it the right way and didn’t play to the crowd. That approach, along with Ferrero’s game and ranking, went out of style for a while. But now, seeing him as an elder statesman who has plugged away solidly for the last nine months, his personality—still solid, low-key, proud, a little melancholy that he didn’t end up being the man, but living with it—suits him well. I don’t expect a fireworks display from JC, so I'm happy with what I do get.
David Nalbandian: The first Wimbledon final I attended was in 2002. Nalbandian, a relative nobody, ruined it by (a) being in it, and (b) not showing up at all. From there, though, over the next three or four years, I became a big fan. The smooth whip on the backhand, the balance on his forehand set-up, the unhurried movement—how could any tennis player not love to watch the guy? I didn’t really watch him as a true fan, I guess, because I wasn’t all that troubled by his losses. I was invested in the game, not the person. Today, watching him win that match with Youzhny, I felt the same way. My spectator’s relationship with Nalby remains one of distanced and ironical awe. “There’s Dav-eed. So good. Such a screw-up.”
That unchanging sense felt right for the moment. The sun was going down as Nalbandian and Youzhny wound up their match. It was the same late-afternoon sun I’ve loved to see on TV from Monte Carlo for years. I’ve never been to the tournament, but I feel like I know it well. The view over the Mediterranean is obviously one of the best in tennis, but I prefer the one from the player's chair that you see on the changeovers. It’s eternal tennis: A racquet sits in the foreground, the umpire’s chair looms above, the low bleachers farther out, and beyond that is nothing but bright sky. For an American who knows the hard courts and parking lots and giant new concrete arenas in Indian Wells and Key Biscayne and Flushing Meadows, the clay season’s old-world atmosphere is one to be savored—it brings a deeper flavor back to the game each spring, just as the clay adds a level of stylish sliding and spin-heavy shot-making. Seeing Nalbandian get ready to serve the ball there on Wednesday, sweating and struggling and striking the ball brilliantly as always, it made me think of all the hundreds of long-haired, short-shorted legends from the past—Kuerten, Borg, Nastase, Panatta, Orantes, Pietrangeli, and farther back—who have done the same thing on those same courts. It made me think that in Monte Carlo at least, the players may change, but the game stays—in its color and personality and combat—the same.