LONDON—‘Let, second serve,’ announces Fergus Murphy politely, midway through the match between Ernests Gulbis and Simone Bolelli. The players don’t hear him, continuing to trade ferocious groundstrokes, so Murphy repeats himself. ‘Let, second serve.’ No effect. ‘Let-let-let-let-let!’ chants Murphy until they stop. Amid the laughter, Gulbis gestures behind him, in the direction of Centre Court, and lets it be known that he couldn’t tell where the call was coming from. He’s having trouble sorting out the sensations flooding in, and he’s not the only one.
It’s the first day of main-draw play at the AEGON Championships at Queen’s Club in west London, and this is my first live tennis this year. After having spent the season thus far writing Racquet Reactions, I‘m in some sort of shock. I’ve grown used to being comfortably cocooned on my sofa with the luxury of slow-motion replays, being able to pause and rewind as I please. Watching from courtside today, points, games, matches seem to be flying by, the quicker rhythm of grass-court tennis more akin to sporadic exchanges of sniper fire than the sustained barrages of clay-court tennis. On a cold day with the promise of rain prickling constantly in the air, nobody wants to waste any time, and after play was entirely washed out yesterday, tennis suddenly seems to be happening everywhere.
One of my favorite things about Queen’s has always been that the location of the press seats in the north stand on Centre Court allows you to keep an eye on events on Courts 1 and 2 without having to do more than turn your head, but today it’s not helping me focus. It’s hard to keep your mind on what’s happening in front of you when you keep catching flickers of Dmitry Tursunov’s bright orange shirt out of the corner of your eye, or keep hearing the skitter of Nicholas Mahut’s feet behind you as he charges into net again. It feels oddly lonely, too, after getting used to the constant influx of analysis from TV commentators, not to mention thoughts and reactions from Twitter popping up on your computer screen. Just as I am pondering, however, the bitter isolation of sitting in the midst of a crowd, James Ward puts a volley into the net on break point and we are one in our despair.
Last year, Ward was one of the highlights of this tournament, making it all the way to the semifinals as a wild card. Between that splendor in the grass and this, though, lies a year of grinding it out in Challengers and Futures, trying to buttress that ranking against the loss of 90 precious points he's unlikely to recoup. He starts well, stealing the first set away from ninth seed Kevin Anderson, but he can’t keep up the high-quality serving, and the 6'8" South African seems to gradually recall that this is grass-court tennis and starts blanketing the net. One hour and 49 minutes later, it’s all over for the sensation of twelve months ago.
Ward is not the last to be dismissed by a big server today, but in terms of career achievements, the next victim is at the other end of the spectrum. Lleyton Hewitt is having a nightmare on Centre Court, summarily dismissed 6-3, 6-2 by Ivo Karlovic. The four-time champion is missing routine groundstrokes, and that does not stack up well against Karlovic, who hits 22 aces, slices and ghosts into net, and looks more comfortable on this surface than anyone else so far. The match is over in the blink of an eye. Grass-court tennis.
Out on Court 1, Gulbis keeps whacking imaginary clay off the soles of his shoes—that is, when he’s not staring accusingly at the sky, muttering darkly to himself, or demonstrating with a resigned sweep of his hand what he should have done in the last point but, invariably, didn’t. When he can stand and let the ball come to him down the center of the court, his groundstrokes sing through the air and skid off the line, but get him on the move and he misses forehand after forehand. Bolelli’s serving entirely too well, being too clever, too consistent, and Gulbis isn’t helping himself by being so alive to the intrusive context of this match. Already a set down and dissatisfied with Fergus Murphy’s chastising of the Centre Court spectators rubber-necking over the top of the stands, Gulbis chooses to admonish then himself. The match is over soon afterwards.
There’s no player like Gulbis when it comes to reminding one of the fragility of concentration, nor no experience like live tennis. Hours fly by and I’ve watched matches from start to finish and had nothing to show for it but pages of scribbled notes; no wisdom, no conclusions. Hewitt, after his defeat to Karlovic, talks about how well he’s been practicing, how comfortable he feels on the surface, but is similarly unable to distill his match into a simple story with an obvious moral. ’It’s just one of those matches,’ he concludes, ’just one of those days.’
Hannah Wilks is a frequent contributor to TENNIS.com.