Shooting Out the Lights

It was 3:38 in the afternoon and the sun was a blazing white smear in the sky when the gunslinger stepped out and began that long, lonely walk across the red dirt, toward the outlaw. The dust devils were swirling and the townsfolk in Lenglen, peering from behind their lace curtains and the spokes of the wagon wheels, gasped in horror. This was not the Federal Marshall Roger, walking resolutely toward the the swarthy hombre at the far end of the street. It was Deputy Kolya - Little Nick, to those who knew him well - looking to clear leather faster than the outlaw, Willy Canas.

The townsfolk feared for Little Nick. Instead of a big iron, he had a Prince racket on his hip. Instead of a fringed vest, he wore a a simple Airness garment. The 10 gallon hat on his head, so useful to protect his bald head from the sun, bobbed around some, a few gallons short of full. It was utterly still; you could almost hear the outlaw Willy chortle as he sized up the little fella advancing toward him. He wanted Marshall Roger, not this pipsqueak deputy. But hail, it was another, easy notch on his gun. He was ready.

And, as in all satisfying westerns, the little deputy did himself proud, and nobody would appreciate that more than Marshall Roger. For when the gunfight was over and the smoke cleared, Little Nick was the one who remained standing in the Roland Garros corral. Nikolay Davydenko, for that was his full name, shot straight and true, leaving Willy Canas face down in the red dirt, by virtue of a 7-5,6-4,6-4 win that put Davydenko in the semifinals of the French Open - opposite Roger Federer.

Man, you gotta love Little Nick. He played a superb match against Canas, cleaning lines left and right for three sets, tagged almost three times as many winners as Canas (62-21), stared Willy down on the very few occasions when it looked as if the pony-tailed Argentinian would make a match of it. In third set, with Davydenko leading 4-2, Canas overcame triple-break point to hold for 3-4, then broke Davydenko for 4-all. But Davydenko's big iron barked and he broke right back, then shot out the lights with a hold.

"He played a beautiful game," Canas said, using a word that doesn't often pop up in a top male player's vocabulary, unless the subject happens to be  Davydenko's wife. "The first set was very tiring. . . we were at 4-All and, you know, that was the opportunity I had during the match.  But, you know, the game was what it was. . .When you try and do things well, you try and go beyond your limits, you try and do your maximum, you don't always succeed. And I played against a beautiful Davydenko today."

You'll notice he was talking about Mr. Davydenko, thank-you very much!

Canas rued that he did not attack more vigorously, and allowed Little Nicky to dictate the pace and tone of the points. The handwriting was on the wall when Canas was broken in a long, eleventh game of the first set and Davydenko served it out, 7-5. For Canas, that was the turning point, and the reason he was in such desperate straits by the end of the third set.

Davydenko's pressers are a joy. He brings new meaning to self-effacing, and he's shrouded in an air of sincerity and diffidence that presents a surreal contrast to most of his peers in the Top 10. I always get the feeling that we aren't talking with a Warrior in search of a Moment but some 13-year old chess prodigy who might wet his pants from nerves at any moment. Then there's that voice,  squeaky as a rusty hinge, escaping from somewhere deep in his diaphragm, rendered that much more odd by his accent. He has the Russian-speaker's tendency to insert a nasal "Y" in words like "game," and he's good at it.

And did I did I mention the actual pattern of his speech, reproduced below in its full, Joycean glory? Talk about a wilderness of gerunds, still-born sentences, and verbal haze! Yeah, I know, I don't speak Russian so well, either, but it's all part of Nicky's charm.

Actually, it's only the male pattern baldness that reminds you that this is a 26-year old Ukrainian who, even without his recent endorsement coup (with the French firm, Airness - any contract for one so off-the-radar being something of a coup), has at least two things that many men with Fabio-grade hair and guns like Jet Boy don't: a gorgeous, elegant wife, and a whole lot of well-earned dough.

Dang it, this guy is good, hampered only by a failure to elevate his game at the critical moments.I asked him if he was working on that. This was the exact exchange:

"The perception of you a little bit is that when it comes to the big occasions and the big players, you maybe have struggled a little bit to elevate your game, that little extra it takes to get to a major final or even a championship. Is that your own perception of yourself?  Is it something you can work on?"

So on Thursday, Little Nicky gets another chance, although I'm not impertinent enough to predict that he'll make good on it. He spoke today about playing tennis for "joy", and when he was asked exactly what the source of that joy was, he said something uncharacteristically bold:

Most enjoying hit ball, make winners (laughing).  Easy to win matches.

No, no.  It's like enjoying in tennis, like, feeling you play forehand, backhand, and you just think about, I want to play like long line across, and I played that (I think he meant playing his shots deep to the line, but with Nicky you never really know)*. And if I want to hitting there, you know, I play. Not like play, make mistake,I don't know why I did mistake. If like, today, I was feeling, like, play like what I want, like, good concentration and hitting balls, and play to the long line, and, like, was, for me, like, with this enjoy.

Because I know I want to play, like, long line, and I play it.  And this is I'm enjoying.  I go in, I make winners and, like, it's proof. Because before like starting from first match, I just to do some mistakes.  I don't feel so great balls.  It's just like every match, something enjoying, and better and better.  But I need to (im)prove more, like, how many double faults I make for very match. You know, sometimes I losing. And against Federer, it's pretty tough.  If I do some double faults, he knows he can break me in my serve.*

For a guy not given to making strong statements (don't even think about asking this dude that question about the sound of trees falling in a forest), this is interesting stuff to unravel. My interpretation of the above soliloquy: I better hit the ball deep and get my serve in, or I'm in deep doo-doo.

We had a more representative Davydenko moment when Kienko, a Kenyan journalist (and long time friend of mine) went toe-to-toe with Nicky in a linguistic face-off.  He asked him a convoluted question about the effect of his equipment on his form ( Nicky having recently switched brand of racket to Prince). Nicky replied:

Oh, no, heaven forbid! Say something nakedly enthusiastic about the brand you endorse? What do you take Little Nicky for, some commercial hoor? He did add:

Prince or no Prince, Little Nicky knows what he's up against in Federer.I pointed out that many people were relishing - and in many cases fearing - a Federer/Canas match, and nobody seemed to figure him into the equation. Did that trouble him, I wondered? He produced his most lucid and ecomomical reply to that one:

I was tempted to say, "But Nicky, you just beat Canas. Let's be positive here."  But I kept my mouth shut. The guy's a gunslinger, not a wordsmith. And he just added to his growing legend.