There’s only one problem with going to a tennis tournament: You don’t get to watch it on TV. This isn’t anything to mourn when the players are in Stockholm or Basel or some other sunless cavern. But since the advent of HD and its accompanying widescreen TV, tennis’s signature outdoor events, the majors and the Masters, bring their own light and atmosphere into your living room with them. Gazing at the black-rimmed rectangle, especially when the cameras pull away and show off the grounds or trees or desert or sea that surrounds the courts, you can feel like you’re in two places at once. I missed that sensation in Melbourne and Indian Wells this year, but I got enjoy it this weekend while watching Key Biscayne. It was bright and cold in New York; so bright that every color, from brownstone to yellow cab, gleamed and popped. But watching matches on the second stadium at Crandon Park, I felt like I was there again, sweating under the palm trees in that tropical humidity. Except I didn’t actually have to sweat.
You might think that this kind of distance would make it harder to write about a tournament— obviously you can’t convey color from the grounds or impressions from the interview room. But not being able to do that can also free you up to, as an old boss used to say, do some “global thinking” (not that he ever took the time to do that himself). Without having to note every detail of your surroundings, you can consider the bigger picture. Here are a few of the considerations that came to my mind over the tournament’s first weekend.
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Do you find that your opinion, the one you formulate on your own, before you talk to anyone about a player or a match, differs in a consistent way from the opinions of the people around you? And then do you typically adjust it to fit the consensus? You probably wouldn't be human if you didn’t.
I do it all the time, but I only realize it after I’ve come back from a tournament. There I’m hit by other people’s opinions all day; at home I’m left to my own thoughts as I watch. On Sunday I saw Richard Gasquet timidly lose to Mardy Fish. Gasquet, as we know, is a world-class underachiever and frustration to tennis fans everywhere. He showed some life with a win over Andy Roddick at Indian Wells, but had no answers this week. If I had been with a group of tennis people—reporters, spectators, bloggers, fellow players, etc.—I can imagine shaking my head in collective resignation and disgust at another lame effort by the tragic Richard G. But that’s not what I did on my own. Instead, I thought about how hard it can be to win even one match at a Masters event; that, except for the top players, anyone can lose two sets to someone else; that confidence is extremely hard to generate each time out, even when you’re winning; that, no matter what anyone tells you, it’s tough to change your game. Gasquet plays deep in the court, and his strokes are what they are.
This is typical. Perhaps because I relate the pros’ experiences to my own on a court, I take a more lenient stance toward them in my own head than I do after I’ve heard other people's opinions. Am I more humane, or am I just soft? Both, I guess. Are my personal reactions more right, or more wrong, than the consensus? In one case, at least, my natural reaction was probably the wrong one. Watching Donald Young beat Andy Murray, I thought it had been as much Young’s win as it was Murray’s loss. Nobody else in the press room agreed; the match was universally deemed to be one of the worst of Murray’s career. Judging by Young’s subsequent poor effort against Tommy Robredo, and Murray’s subsequent poor effort at Key Biscayne, the consensus appears to have been closer to the truth than I was. I still like to listen to myself, though.
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This brings up another vexing question that you often hear after a match has ended: Did such and such a player lose it or did his opponent win it? Is it possible to answer this? Tennis is a zero-sum game—the winner has taken exactly what the loser has given him, and vice-versa. At the same time, though, when you play a match, you do know the answer, you do know how well you played compared to what you're capable of. You know that you can easily play well and still lose. You can even feel like you played well when the stats, like winners vs. unforced errors, don’t bear it out.
For example, if you just saw the score of Svetlana Kuznetsova’s straight-set defeat at the hands of Peng Shuai this weekend, you would conclude that Kuzzie is falling fast, that she’s not even competitive in early round matches right now, that the early promise of her win over Justine Henin in Melbourne has evaporated. And you wouldn’t be wrong in saying any of those things. But if you watched the match, you would also know that Peng played exceptionally well. From my perspective, there wasn’t a whole lot Kuznetsova could have done. Maybe I’m too lenient. Maybe that’s why I’m not a pro. Or maybe, sometimes, the other player is just too good.
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Wouldn’t it be a dream to have a TV that allowed you to see three, four, five, 10 matches on various channels, one where an entire tournament is at your fingertips? Yes it would. But I would also caution you to be careful what you dream about.
At many important tournaments, every reporter has just this type of television monitor above their desk. At the Grand Slams, you can click to each court on the grounds; for a Masters event like Indian Wells, the three show courts are available. This is very helpful for someone trying to cover an entire tournament, especially in its early, jam-packed stages. It also makes it easy to gather with your fellow writers, who are often sitting in the same row as you, and watch a crucial stage of any match that you happen upon. Some of my favorite moments at tournaments over the years have been spent leaning back in the chair at my desk watching the decisive moments of a match with a couple of colleagues, even as the match itself is going on just a few hundred yards away.
But as with anything that seems a little too good to be true, there is a downside to suddenly having every point of a tournament available to you, for no cost. You realize very quickly that availability can breed indifference. As well as rapid oversaturation; typically, by the end of the second day in the press room, I’m woozy from watching too many tennis balls flying across nets. Compare that to this weekend at home. There I sat and happily watched bonus coverage from Key Biscayne’s second stadium of Cilic vs. Tipsarevic, Tsonga vs. Gabashvili, Isner vs. Bogomolov. If I’d been at my press desk, I likely wouldn’t have seen a point of any of these, unless it came in a tiebreaker. I would have read an article online, kept writing, walked off for a donut, or maybe, don't tell anyone, have clicked to see what was going on in an NCAA basketball game. At home, where my options were limited to whatever the Tennis Channel chose to show me, I enjoyed watching every point I could get of those matches.
As I said at the top, there are trade-offs when you go and when you stay home. When I'm there, I get as much tennis as I can take; when I’m on the couch, I’m happy to take what I can get.
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Speaking of being there, we've got Pete Bodo in Key Biscayne starting today. I'll be posting here and Racquet Reacting through the week.