No Place Like Rome

Yes, in between games, the DJ at the Internazionali BNL d’Italia—the Italian Open to us old-timers—revs up the crowd with 2 Unlimited’s 1990s synth-dance classic “Get Ready for This.” A favorite for decades in minor-league baseball parks across the USA, it was once judged to be the No. 1 “Jock Jam” of all time in a (completely scientific) poll by Vice.com.

“You can taste the undercooked hot dogs and overpriced beer in every beat,” the editors wrote.

Apparently, they go well with gelato, too.

Does a Jock Jam seem a little, well, populist for an event that was long referred to as tennis’s fifth Grand Slam, and is held among marble statues and amphitheaters in one of the game’s most venerable venues, the Foro Italico? Not if you consider what the DJ played on the previous changeover: “Ride Like the Wind” by Christopher Cross. When it comes to American pop, the Eternal City can’t seem to get itself out of the 20th century.

In truth, Rome feels like a breath of fresh egalitarian air compared to the tournament that comes before it, in Madrid. There, at the cold, modernist Magic Box, the courts are enclosed in steel and concrete; at the Foro Italico, they’re sunken in the earth and open to the sky and the stone-pine trees above. In Madrid, nothing feels connected to anything else; in Rome, fans wander across the grass from one amphitheater to the next. Then, oblivious to the warnings of ushers and chair umpires, and the exasperated glares of the players, they get up and wander through the bleachers whenever they please.

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In the main stadium in Madrid, the fans in the box seats dress with a dignified elegance. By comparison, the Romans are an insouciant, sometimes slouchy horde. Dressed in T-shirts and baseball caps on sunny days, they pack themselves together on the marble benches and lean toward the action. There’s an old-fashioned, pre-corporate-box intimacy and energy on the Foro’s outer courts; they even have a baseball-style food vendor walking in the aisles. In few other places do spectators contribute so much to the mood of a match. Of course, for a player, that intimacy can be as alarming as it is inspiring.

“That’s how this crowd is—it makes you second-guess yourself,” U.S. player Vic Amaya once told my fellow tennis writer, Peter Bodo, about playing at the Foro. “You think about the crowd instead of the game.”

This year’s Italian Open officially got underway over the weekend, but it wasn’t until Wednesday, when all of the top players were in action and the grounds were full to bursting, that the tournament began in earnest. Here’s a look at a few of the many things that happened around those grounds. Even through a TV set back in New York, there’s no place in tennis quite like Rome.

It didn’t pay to be a late arrival at the Foro on Wednesday. Roger Federer, for one of the few times in his career, opened the proceedings at high noon on center court. This is one of the rare tournaments that Federer has never won, and judging from the quote above, he’s not expecting to break that streak in 2016. He’s coming off both knee surgery and a lower-back flare-up, and is still, as he says, “taking it practice by practice.”

But Federer knows what the locals like in Rome—drop shots, the fancier the better—and he was happy to do what he could for them against Alexander Zverev. This was the first meeting between the 34-year-old Swiss and the 19-year-old German, and the legend took the opportunity to give the upstart a lesson in casual aggression. Federer, despite his doubts, was sharp and proactive, and he ran Zverev ragged with his full arsenal. By the end of the first set, after Federer sent him scrambling across the court in futile pursuit of a sharply angled volley, Zverev told a nearby line judge that he needed a hug. He got one.

Commentator Ravi Ubha said what most of us watching Victoria Azarenka were thinking: As her opening-round match against Irina-Camelia Begu progressed, her swings had gradually slowed and her shots had lost pace and depth. Instead, it was the 26th-ranked Begu who was ending points with winners. Azarenka pulled out of Madrid last week with a back injury, and it was still inhibiting her today; her 6-3, 6-2 loss ended her 17-match winning streak. Worse, this new injury ends the run of good health and growing confidence that propelled Vika to titles in Indian Wells and Miami last month. The question marks over her immediate future have returned on European clay as quickly as they vanished on U.S. hard courts.

The bleachers were full to overflowing as Eugenie Bouchard and Angelique Kerber wound their way to the conclusion of their three-setter in Stadio Pietrangeli. Bouchard, pouncing on every ball she could, as early as she could, had emerged as the crowd favorite in this topsy-turvy affair. She went up 6-1, 3-0; Kerber came back to win the second set and go up 2-0 in the third; finally, Bouchard, fighting two years’ worth of disappointments, closed it out, 6-1, 5-7, 7-5.

For Bouchard, it’s step one in what she hopes is a return trip to the Top 10. But she knows by now that there’s no such thing as a quick solution or a straightforward path back.

“I did feel like I was playing better tennis today,” Bouchard said cautiously. “That gives me confidence, knowing I can play that way against one of the best players in the world.”

Is Kerber suffering, as some have said, under the pressure of being a first-time Grand Slam champion? Or is she just doing what she does? Last year Kerber won the title in Stuttgart before losing in the second round in Madrid and the first round in Rome. This year she won the title in Stuttgart before losing in the first round in both Madrid and Rome.

If you’re wondering, she went out in the third round at the French Open in 2015.

There was no way the British commentator could sugarcoat it: Italy’s Andreas Seppi couldn’t do anything against Richard Gasquet—he couldn’t move, couldn’t win a game and could hardly keep a ball in the court. The crowd that had gathered early in Pietrangeli, and had brought a festive sense of anticipation, was left with nothing to do but stare blankly at the disaster unfolding in front of it. Seppi, after going down 0-5, would eventually wake up from his funk and lose by the more respectable score of 6-3, 6-4.

In Rome, the atmosphere hangs heaviest over Italy’s own. No Italian man has won the tournament since Adriano Pannatta in 1976; no woman since Rafaella Reggi in 1985. While Seppi was losing 0-5 to Gasquet, his compatriot, Roberta Vinci, was en route to dropping her first set 6-0 to Johanna Konta on center court.

In her three-set upset win over Simona Halep, Daria Gavrilova hopped to the sidelines for changeovers. She talked to her coach, to the chair umpire, to herself, to the air. She ran and slid and sent her ponytail flying. She hit whatever shot came into her head: swing volleys from the baseline, drop-shot winners on returns, short slice crosscourt approaches, mid-court lobs. Gavrilova never seems to try the same shot twice.

She also never seems to run out of energy or emotion. There wasn’t much of a crowd on the grandstand, but the ever-vocal Aussie generated her own sense of excitement. It was certainly more than Halep could muster. The Romanian was the only seed on the WTA side to reach the quarters last week in Madrid, but she looked worn out from her title run there, and this was a tough draw. Still, put her loss together with Azarenka’s, Kerber’s and, a little later, Petra Kvitova’s, and yet another crop of women's seeds has been decimated by midweek.

Y'all ready for that? By now, tennis fans can only say yes.