Marat Safin probably shouldn't have played this season. In fact, he almost didn't.
"Then I got an offer and I couldn't really refuse it," Safin told me over the weekend. (An offer from his manager, that is; in other words, guaranteed money.) "A lot of people don't believe that I'm going to retire this year, but I can assure you, I've decided, yes, it's enough."
Safin agreed to be interviewed for a feature article that will appear in the November issue of TENNIS magazine, so be on the lookout for more on him there. We won't be seeing him again in Flushing, though. After a quick start this afternoon, Safin went down softly to Jurgen Melzer, 1-6, 6-4, 6-3, 6-4. The Russian didn't smash racquets, didn't shout, didn't even seem to mind losing ("I don't care about losses anymore," he said afterwards). He had only one argument with the chair umpire, and even that was half-hearted. It was a feeble U.S. Open ending for the man who beat Pete Sampras in the 2000 final, and did it with one of the most spectacular displays of tennis the game has ever seen.
But, as I heard so often this past week when I talked to players and coaches about Safin, "That's Marat." A big sendoff wouldn't suit him. Can you imagine a teary-eyed Safin saying a long goodbye, as Andre Agassi did here in 2006? After losing to Melzer, Safin waived his racquet, smiled, and walked out. He'll be on a plane tomorrow. Feeble, yes, but a fitting end for a man who will never be called sentimental.
That's mostly why so many people are attracted to Marat, of course. He's real, he's blunt, he's witty; he's a cynic, a slacker, a man of many passions (food, drink, women, the occasional cigarette), and many flaws. But what, I've had to ask myself these past few days, do we really know about Safin? There are many Marat myths:
*He's an underachiever Most everyone believes Safin wasted his talent. Well, try to square that with Jimmy Connor's remark that tennis is 90 percent mental. A player with a mind like Safin’s—a mind that might explode at any moment—shouldn't win a single major title, never mind two titles that required victories over the game's two most dominant champions, Pete Sampras (at the 2000 U.S. Open) and Roger Federer (at the 2005 Australian Open).
*He's arrogant To the contrary, Safin is a man of many doubts. Here he is speaking following the 2005 Australian Open final, in which he defeated Lleyton Hewitt after a nervous start: "The rumors, once it gets into your head, it's difficult to accept and you really start to believe that maybe it's who I am, you know. I have a talent, I'm a good player, but not good enough to be where I want to be. You can just lose to anybody, you can beat anybody, but that's it. They say that's who you are, and it's the maximum you can get. Just it's little bit disappointing, you know, for [a] person like me to hear that and really to believe in that because I really start to believe that, you know, like that's it, that's just who I am."
*He's lazy Ivan Ljubicic, who has known Safin since he was a teenager, explains that there was, at times, another side to Safin: " Everybody thinks that he's not a hard worker but I tell you, the year he won the Australian Open, the winter before he was practicing in Monte Carlo and I saw really, really hard work from him."
*He's ungrateful "For good or for bad," Safin told me, "I did what I did, and I don't really actually regret it. I probably would have approached the situation slightly different [now], but that's OK. I would never exchange my life for anybody else's life. I'm grateful and I'm lucky and I'm blessed."
"That's Marat," or at least some part of Marat, a man as compelling as this sport has ever known.
Tom Perrotta is a senior editor at TENNIS. Follow him on Twitter.