If there is one thing I took away from my experience at the Medibank International, it is that Australian crowds cheering for an Australian are very, very cruel.
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I would have hated to be Dmitry Tursunov coming out on court last night. Any other opponent, and I wouldn't have been surprised if the crowd's support was with him - he's a funny, likeable guy. But no, Guccione was Australian, and so poor Dmitry got just about nothing. When they started warming up, one guy yelled out, 'He looks worried, Chris!' Later on - I think it might have been in the first set breaker - someone else yelled out, 'Don't choke, Dmitry!'
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No one was exactly rude, I suppose - no one booed or anything like that - but it must have been hard. Every time Dmitry won a point, there was a few smatterings of applause. When Gooch won a point, just about everyone in the stadium cheered their heads off. It was quite a strange match - there were no break points. Probably the closest there came to being a break point was on Tursunov's serve at 30-30 about halfway through the second set. The poor guy's standing there, trying to serve, and the crowd is still cheering maniacally for Guccione.
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I can't imagine anything harder - to be standing in front of eight thousand people, when nearly all of them are willing you to fail.
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But I wasn't!
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It was very intimidating being in the crowd, actually. I was quite vocal about my support of Dmitry - if you watched it on TV and heard the occasional, 'Go Dmitry!' or 'Go Dima!' that was probably me! - and I think some of the people around me might have wanted to kill me. I certainly heard mutterings of, 'but she's Australian...!' I think the only other Dima supporters in the whole arena were three little girls with a Russian flag sitting over the other side of the stadium - occasionally they started up a 'DiMA, DiMA, DiMA!' chant, only to be drowned out instantly by seven thousand other people bellowing, 'GooCHIE, GooCHIE, GooCHIE!'
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I guess Australia doesn't agree with me on the point that tennis is about personality, not nationality. But I wonder how many of those Guccione fans there knew anything about tennis...?
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Like I can talk, I suppose. But I would like to think that my personality-over-nationality mentality makes me a little bit discerning. You can't exactly help your nationality. You can help your personality.
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Guccione played good tennis last night, it can't be denied. But when it comes down to it... he's a bit boring, really. His game relies so heavily on his serve that he rarely gets into proper points. He did pull off some lovely serve-and-volley manoeuvres, but on the whole, it was all about his serve. Nine times out of ten, when they did get into a rally, Tursunov won. His forehand really is beautiful - one of the best I've seen. He spread Guccione all over the court with it.
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But Dmitry's forehand - great as it is - isn't the reason I follow him. It's the fact that he doesn't take himself too seriously. He's a tennis player, but it looks to me like he still finds tennis fun.
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So well done, Dima. I was gunning for you.
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Today's Results
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Medibank International (Sydney)
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Dmitry Tursunov def. Chris Guccione, 7-6 (7-3) 7-6 (7-4)
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AAMI Classic (Kooyong)
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Andy Roddick def. Marcos Baghdatis, 7-5 6-3
Marat Safin def. Fernando Gonzalez, 6-3 6-3
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Heineken Open (Auckland)
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Philipp Kohlschreiber def. Juan Carlos Ferrero, 7-6 (7-4) 7-5
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2 comments:
So agree with you about the 'nationality' thing. For years have had to put up with comments about being unpatriotic because I didn't love Henman. In fact, I think I first started liking Dima when he kept knocking Henmean out of tournaments. All the so-called tennis fans who shouted 'Come on Tim' thought Wimby was the only two tennis weeks of the year and had no clue about anyone or anywhere else.
Oh, God, tell me about it! I was at the Australian Open for a few days, and if there's one thing I took away, it's that the masses, in general, don't know very much about tennis at all!
It's all about the personality!
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