MELBOURNE—A couple of weeks before the Australian Open, a fellow journalist who was also heading to the tournament told me that he “couldn’t wait to see live tennis again.” It was true, it had been a while, and I kept those words in mind through the tedious and enervating moments—which were pretty much all of them—of my 14-hour flight from Los Angeles to Australia. Yesterday I got my first glimpse of the live game and knew right away that it had been worth it. By the time I reached Melbourne Park, the fierce final round of the qualifying was winding down, so I took a trip around the grounds to see who would survive this crucible, and who wouldn't. There was no net, and no main draw, to catch if a player if she slipped.
I started with British teen Laura Robson, who, even though she’s been on the pro scene for at least three years, is still somehow only 17—is she getting younger by the year? She and Olga Savchuk were playing in a half-filled Show Court 3, one of the many medium-sized stadiums that dot this facility. The lazy-Saturday atmosphere was low-key, laid-back, almost torpid in the humidity. Spectators sat back, legs over the seats in front of them, arms crossed, hats pulled low.
Robson hit a backhand. There it was, the sound of a ball hitting a string, the sound of live tennis again. What made it different and more exciting than hearing a hacker trying to get the ball over the net at my club? It wasn’t the quality of the shot itself—Robson hit it long—but what surrounded it.
There was the linesman, who called it out. There was the chair umpire who immediately announced the score with that whispered decisiveness they must teach in umpire school. There were the ball kids in their neck-protecting foreign legion hats who immediately began scrambling and rolling balls in that complex group dance they do. This, really, was what I had missed: The presentation of the pro game—it made everything seem so important.
The tennis itself? It was pretty awful. I had watched Robson choke in this exact situation, with a shot at the main draw on the line, at the U.S. Open a few years ago, and it looked like we were in for a repeat. She was up a set on Savchuk, but began to unravel while serving at 3-4 in the second. Robson hit a first serve 5 feet long, then a second serve even longer and was broken. Robson slumped her shoulders; she was wilting before our eyes.
But this time she straightened up and straightened things out; maybe she really is getting older. It required some help from Savchuk, who couldn’t seem to get a clean strike on any of her shots. When she wasn’t burying a backhand into the net, she was bricking it wide of the doubles sideline. The set went to a tiebreaker. Robson, steadying herself, went up 5-1. On the next point, she hit a forehand that caught the tape and dribbled over. She held her hand up, but you know she was anything but sorry. A minute later Robson had qualified. Her shoulders slumped again, this time with the weird, happy weight of relief.
From there it was on to a men’s match between 24-year-old American Tim Smyczek and Estonia’s Jürgen Zopp (add that to the long list of superb tennis names). Smyczek is currently ranked No. 274, but for a few minutes you could have mistaken him for Mikhail Youzhny. Same buzzed skull, same lean build, same rocking walk. For a few games, you also might have wondered what separated a Top 300 guy like Smyczek from Top 20 guy like Youzhny. Smyczek drilled his grounds strokes, hit a kick serve that bounced high enough to make one fan go “oooh,” and came up with a terrific short-hop pick-up at the net that made another fan exclaim, “That’s the shot.”
As the match went on, though, cracks appeared in the Smyczek game that would never appear in a star’s. He didn’t get up to a forehand quickly enough, hit it with his chest facing forward, and missed it awkwardly long. He put backhands into the net for no reason. He left an easy approach just a few inches too short and was passed. Watching the guys just below the top rung reminds you that the best players aren’t the best because they do certain things brilliantly. It’s that they never do the routine things poorly. Smyczek faded at the end and was broken to lose the match. On the final point, he mishit a forehand so badly that it soared over the back fence. He hadn’t made the show.
After that it was back into Show Court 3, where the fans were still sprawled and mellow, and another American, Alison Riske, a blonde, 21-year-old fellow Pennsylvania native, was methodically closing out her opponent. Tall—5-foot-9—and long-limbed, Riske played with a focused aggression as she ran away with the second set. She tends to take the ball high, but also to move forward when she can. Most notable to me was her grunt, which became more pronounced the closer she got to the end. It sounded, in its most desperate moments, as if she were screaming “WHY???” with every shot.
Riske may have been asking why her opponent, Alexandra Panova, had stopped missing in the final game of the match. On it went, over and over—Riske reaching match point, Panova raising her game to get it back to deuce. The harder Riske tried to finish, the farther she sent the ball over the baseline. “Why???”
I finally realized that Panova was never going to miss when she was down match point. She was a completely different and more relaxed player with her back to the wall. Riske seemed to realize it at the same time. On her umpteenth match point, she took a little off of her approach, moved forward, and, with one last “WHY???” grunt, sent a high backhand volley crosscourt and out of Panova’s reach for a winner.
Riske, like Robson an hour or so earlier, bent down with relief. She had made the show. Had she been asking, with her grunt, why she had to struggle so hard, why tennis was so difficult, why she had chosen to do this with her life? If so, she had her answer.