“A lot of people believe competition is like life. That’s not how I see it. I love to win, I love the competition, and I’ll try my best until the last moment. But what happens away from the court is not going to affect what happens on the court. We can try our best on the court and when we are off it we can be close friends, because we are talking 10 minutes before the match.”
These words were spoken by Rafael Nadal at Wimbledon this year. He was referring, in the opening line, to those aging hellions John McEnroe and Jimmy Connors and their contention that today’s male pros like each other too much, that the sport lacks edge. Nadal, as you can see, wasn’t buying it. He thinks that the matches themselves, even when they’re contested in a sporting manner, provide plenty of compelling friction on their own.
In the past, I’ve looked at this generational difference from the spectator’s standpoint. I like today’s sportsmanship, but I also love hearing the old Jimbo-Mac-Nasty war stories from the roughneck days of the 70s and 80s. I love seeing the world’s No. 1, Novak Djokovic, set an example by applauding his opponent’s good shots, even when he’s behind in the score. But I also like to laugh at the recollection of the “Cough Classic” between John McEnroe and Boris Becker in the late-1980s. In a highly testy contest at the Paris Indoors, Becker appeared to intentionally cough every time McEnroe started to serve. This got McEnroe so enraged that he started doing it back to Becker. Oh, for the days when men were little boys.
Two weeks ago, I picked up a racquet again for the first time this year. Since then, I’ve been looking at this behavioral divide from the perspective of the players themselves. Mainly I’ve been wondering how the kids today manage to pull it off.
For example: In one match I played recently, my opponent, who is also a friend, began to take just slightly longer between serves than I liked. I found myself waiting in the return position impatiently. This didn’t bother me through the first few games, because I was winning them. But when I started to miss a few balls, it seemed to me that my opponent began to take even more time before serving. Was it my imagination, or had he added an extra pre-serve ball bounce? Was he spending a few more seconds shifting his body around at the baseline before finally going into his motion? I don’t know if it was perception or reality, but by the middle of the set I was muttering under my breath, “Jesus, will you hurry up?” As I said, my opponent and I are friends, and we were friends after this match as well. I forgot all about it in minutes once we got off the court. It's on court when things go a little haywire.
Another example: Again I was playing a friend and regular opponent. Again I got an early lead. Again I started to lose said lead. Again I became annoyed. It wasn’t any perceived gamesmanship that was bugging me. What got on my nerves this time was his infuriating ability to get to shots of mine that I was sure were going to go for winners. After his third scrambling stab backhand came crawling back over the net, I practically shouted, “Oh, you’ve gotta be kidding me,” as I ran up to hit it. When another one crawled over a few points later, I rushed my swing in irritation and buried the ball into the net. “Hate this baby tennis!” I semi-yelled, not quite loud enough to be heard.
It wasn’t like this was anything new, either. I know this opponent is fast and an excellent defender. Once, a few years ago, he was running my shots down in a similarly enraging manner and forcing me into horrendous errors when I finally managed to put a ball past him. He said, with total sincerity, “Hey, great shot.” I turned my back, looked at the court darkly, and muttered . . . well, I can’t tell you what I muttered exactly. Let’s just say it ended with “you,” but it didn’t start with “thank.”
Maybe it’s just me. Maybe I’m a bad example. I remember nearly shedding tears of hatred—if there is such a thing—while playing a nemesis of mine in the 14-and-unders. Maybe that’s not normal. Or maybe it’s my generation. I grew up watching McEnroe and Connors and hearing that the sport was no longer a place for gentlemen, that it was, as Jimbo told us,“a goddamn war out there.”
But I don’t think I’m all that strange. I’m guessing most tennis players have felt at least a tiny bit of blind, uncontrollable disdain for a perfectly nice person on the other side of the net. “The heat of competition” is a phrase for a reason, and it describes a very real, if utterly irrational, phenomenon. All of which makes me wonder how Nadal and his colleagues at the top of the game today avoid it. They play for such high stakes, and they play each other so often: How is it possible for them not to take their matches personally?
From all appearances, they don’t, and the trend is only increasing with each new star. Federer never had any time or use for gamesmanship; I remember being surprised in his press conference in 2004 at Roland Garros, after his loss to Gustavo Kuerten, when an obviously frustrated Federer mentioned how much he liked playing Kuerten because, essentially, there was no nonsense during his matches, no attempts to intimidate or agitate. Nadal, as we can see above, is able to keep competition from getting personal. And if anything, the two Grand Slam winners who have come after them, Novak Djokovic and Juan Martin del Potro, have taken on-court camaraderie to greater heights. Each of them will embrace their opponent in defeat and happily applaud the other guy's good shots. The Djokovic-del Potro third-rounder at Roland Garros this year may have been the most sporting tennis match I’ve ever seen.
I loved watching that match (even if it will never be as funny to think about as the Cough Classic). I’m so used to the fellow feeling exhibited by the current generation of men that anything less would have seemed completely unnatural. But bad feelings between competitors aren't really unnatural, are they? How can two guys going toe-to-toe for hours and not start to take what happens between them at least a little personally? The top players have learned to do it.
And maybe that’s why they’re top players. Maybe, rather than being a stylistic change or a generational shift—from the roughnecks of yore to the gentlemen of today—today’s sportsmanship is the result of an evolutionary process: Federer, Nadal, Djokovic, and del Potro have learned that they play their best when they don’t make it personal. It a little like the Bjorn Borg phenomenon. The Swede, a self-described madman as a junior, went ballistic in a televised match, which he subsequently lost. From that point on, he decided that he would have to bury his emotions if he wanted to play his best tennis. This was not an original thought; what was unique about Borg was that he could actually do it—for the rest of his career. Part of what makes the top guys today unique is their ability to control and channel their emotions in a productive way. That, as much as anything else, may explain why all of the guys I’ve mentioned have Grand Slam wins, while the prickliest and most outwardly negative of them, Andy Murray, doesn’t.
It seems that Jimbo was wrong after all. Tennis isn’t best thought of as a “goddamn war.” It’s best thought of as . . . a tennis match. It’s best to think like Nadal does in his quote at the top of this article. The fact that he knows that he's going to be friendly with his opponent when he walks off the court helps him keep the sport in perspective and, more important, keep any potentially distracting anger in check.
If only I could watch and learn from today’s kids. But it’s probably too late. I’m an evolutionary relic, I guess, a species destined to let the “heat of competition” get to him. I’ll keep trying, though. Next time, when I’m in the throes of a meltdown and my opponent says “nice shot,” I’ll try to put a “thank” in front of the “you.”