Some of you may remember Blow-Up, the 1966 Michelangelo Antonioni movie that is still considered a seminal piece of film by many of the usual art-crowd suspects, and not just because of that eerie final scene, featuring two clowns (or is it mimes? No, maybe it's illusionists! Oh, heck, what do I know from art and symbolism?) playing imaginary tennis on a court without a net, while the wind rustles the leaves of some towering nearby trees.
Full disclosure: I remember the scene, I liked the trees bit.
Anyway, Blow-Up is, as they say in the biz, coming soon to a theater near you - that is, if you live anywhere near the site of a tennis tournament featuring Fernando Gonzalez, or "Gonzo", as he's affectionately (and, one day soon, perhaps institutionally) known. Actually, I prefer "The Santiago Psycho", but what do I know about art, beyond the fact that Uncle Buck is the greatest movie ever made?
Anyway, if you're interested at all in things that go Boom! in the night, or in the day, or at sunset in the cozy lap of a typical, early September New York day, The Santiago Psycho is the man for you. This guy has more ways of exploding than your stomach after a visit to Chico's Chili Parlor. He's a human Claymore mine (note: different from mime, but just as capable of ruining your day), and you can just think of that broad white headband he wears as the trip-wire. Things inside his head get hot enough and Ka-Boom, end of story. Nothing, not even that nuclear forehand that is Gonzalez's distinguishing characteristic, can mitigate the sheer, messy, "somebody run and get a mop, for gosh sakes" destruction.
The latest installment of Fernando Go Boom occurred this afternoon on the Grandstand court at the National Tennis Center, which is, arguably, the best court on which you're ever likely to watch a quality match featuring one or more blue-chip tennis stars. Okay, the shadow that creeps across the court in mid-afternoon can be a drag, but there isn't a finer semi-big stage for Grand Slam tennis, at any of the four corners of the tennis world.
This time, The Santiago Psycho was going up against Scotland's Andy Murray, who's game has taken notable strides since he hooked up with the game's premier gadfly-cum-coach, Brad Gilbert. At one point, Gonzalez, lethal forehand firing straight and true, was up two sets to one, the point at which all Gonzalez (or ordnance) fans have earned the right to think: Whoooo-eeee, here comes Armageddon!
Gonzalez certainly delivered; he's more reliable than the U.S. Postal Service in that regard. One minute, he's got the match firmly in hand, the next you've got graphite and nylon and fuzzy yellow tennis balls flying all over the place. The Gonzalez-Murray tussle lasted a mere 2:44, the last hour of which was pure, light-up-the-sky fireworks, as Murray methodically clawed his way back and Gonzalez unsystematically made equipment manufacturers wish that people who actually paid for their own racquets and balls would channel his mojo.
Gonzalez broke two racquets and hit three balls out of the park, up and over the towering wall of Louis Armstrong stadium, where poor Rafael Nadal might have wondered, "What is it, raining Wilson's?" Gonzo got a warning for smashing a racquet, to which he responded, just moments later, by thumping the heavy rubberized windscreen behind the baseline.
Ever hear Gonzo smack a windscreen with the flat face of his racquet? It sounds a little like an elephant, doing a belly-flop off the high board. Minutes later, Gonzo incurred the wrath of the chair umpire in the form of a point penalty. It was a great day, if your taste in matches runs to train wrecks.
But while The Santiago Psycho was busy taking our breath in a big way, Andy Murray was creeping back into the match in his signature manner - on cat's feet. He made nary a sound, moped like a child on a dull Sunday afternoon, and peppered the court with softly struck placements when he wasn't going right at the epicenter of Fernando's Macho World - the forehand. Murray weathered the storm and, having faced the worst of it, seemed to drain Gonzo's power. He pulled away in the fourth, and cruised comfortably in the fifth, winning it, 6-2.
I've written about Murray's guileful game before, paying tribute to his extraordinary ability to get to balls and make positive returns without seeming to run. Today, though, there was more at play, and attacking Gonzo's potent forehand was a fruitful if risky strategy.The display reminded me of the time Aranxta Sanchez-Vicario beat Steffi Graf at the French Open, playing almost every shot to the forehand - Graf's most potent shot.
The theory back then was: Everybody plays Steffi's backhand, out of a very prudent fear of her forehand. But because the forehand is her killing shot, she's likely to grow impatient and go for too much with it when you force her to hit three, four, six in a row.
But the rueful reality on most occasions back then was: Nobody can hit to her forehand and stay in a rally long enough to test the theory, at least not until Sanchez-Vicario came along.
I asked Murray in his presser if he actually went into the match planning to attack the forehand, and observed that he seemed to have no compunctions about doing so. He said:
. . . I served quite a lot to his forehand today because I think a lot of times he expects guys to serve to his backhand. But when you do go to his forehand, you don't want to hit it flat. You need to play with a bit of slice. When it's flat, he takes a huge swing and he hits it so well.
When you put a bit of slice on it and change the speed, he maybe doesn't return as well off his forehand. But, you know, it wasn't my game plan to go into his forehand all the time, but when you have a forehand as good as his, a lot of guys will try to, you know, play into his backhand more, and he's gonna expect that.
You know, if he hits one of his short slices and you can just, you know, hit a roll backhand up the line, he's not going to be expecting as much and you can get him out of position. So, you know, it's not like I went in there trying to play a lot of balls to forehand, but I tried to hit it there when he wasn't expecting.
Hmmm. . . so did you, or didn't you? It seemed to me that Andy didn't want to give away too many state secrets, or maybe he was simply unaware of how often he fended off a big forehand by going right back to the forehand, ultimately eliciting an error. In any event, the Gonzo method seems to be: hit the first one hard, the second one harder, the third one amazingly hard and the fourth one out. But it takes a retriever of Murray's anticipation (or Sanchez-Vicario's sheer quickness) to pull that off.
I also asked Murray about what seems to me his single most outstanding quality as a ball striker: his ability to return a ball with a lot less pace than it arrived with. This is, to my mind, a truly rare and great gift. It's ten times easier to answer a hard shot with a harder shot (see "G" for Gonzalez), which is another way to explain how and why the entire hard, harder, out! approach so often breaks down. Was this instinctive, I wondered, or a capacity Murray identified in himself, and then worked on? He replied:
I've always been pretty good at that. You know, I have always retrieved balls well. Now I'm starting to work more on hitting more winners when I was inside the court. But, you know, I have quite good feel with my hands, so when I'm out of position I can use the slice and sometimes play it a little bit slower and come underneath the ball more. I can slice my forehand, play with a little bit more spin.
It's just I don't think it's something that's taught, I think it kind of comes naturally. You know how to get yourself out of difficult situation.