Reflections on the Final That Wasn't

I never realised before today how anticlimactic a Slam final without Federer can feel.

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I know I shouldn't complain about it. I love tennis outside of Federer, even if he really is the reason I got into it in the first place. As Erin frequently tells me, I am spoiled. Before now, Roger had been in the previous ten Slam finals. Which, you know, was nice. And he won eight of them. Which was, you know, nicer.

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Maybe it's good for tennis to have someone different in the final for a change. I'm pretty fixed in my position of not liking Djokovic, but he was always going to break through sometime, and really, when it comes down to it, I am glad it was here and not at Wimbledon. The Australian Open is important but Wimbledon really is the most important tournament of the year, from a sentimental perspective anyway.

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Normally, in a tennis final, I am on the edge of my seat. My heart is in my mouth, and with every ball that flies long or careens into the tape I wince; with every winner I clap. But this match left me cold, really. I like Jo-Wilfried Tsonga and I like the way he plays, but I haven't seen enough of him yet to induct him into my hall of favourites. And we all know where I stand on Djokovic. So, yeah, I watched it, and yeah, I enjoyed it, but my heart wasn't in it. I was cheering for Tsonga, but let's just say I shed no tears over this match... which makes it the first Slam final I have not cried over since the US Open '05, which was before I really became a hardcore Federer fan.

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I make no pretences at being unbiased. If Roger Federer won every match he played in straight sets, that would be fine with me, though I'm sure the greater tennis world would find it boring. It was hard to see Novak Djokovic hoisting up the Norman Brookes Challenge Cup, when it has such deep emotional connections for me - the Australian Open '06, the famous Open of the crying Roger, was when I fell in love with tennis. I am a tennis fan. But I am a fan because of Federer. I mean, sure, there are other players I like and like a lot - Tursunov, Safin, Moya, Gasquet, etc, etc - but when it comes down to it, it's all about Roger, really. I love what he brings to tennis. I love the way he plays tennis. And I love his attitude to tennis. 'You can never be bigger than the game,' he once said, 'and you have to remember that.'

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That's the mistake I make, I think. In many ways, for me, Federer is bigger than the game. Hell, he is the freaking game. Basically, he is my hero, and it is very difficult for me to see my hero not at the top of his game.

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So, for a blog that's supposed to be about tennis in general, I talk an awful lot about Federer, hey?

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This was meant to be a blog purely for the Australian tennis summer, which would make this the last post. However, thirty-odd posts in, I still have a lot to say (probably because I've spent most of my time writing about what a great guy Roger Federer is instead of, you know, actual tennis.) I'm not going to write it daily any more - mainly because I have no way of watching tennis now that the tour has moved onto the South American swing - but I'll write a weekly roundup of the week's tournaments... and see where that takes us!

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Next week is Vina del Mar, a claycourt IS event in Chile. The top seed is Fernando Gonzalez, but this tournament also marks the comeback of Guillermo Coria, former French Open finalist, so it could be very interesting! Also, Peter Luczak (Milkshake) is playing, so it'll be fun to see how he goes on clay!

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And also Roger isn't playing, so I might make some actual observations about tennis, which could be fun...

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Australian Open Results - Day #14

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Men's Draw

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Novak Djokovic def. Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, 4-6 6-4 6-3 7-6 (7-2)

A few words on pretentiousness

I've decided I sound a bit pretentious in my last post. Since I can be a bit pretentious, this is not necessarily a bad thing, but I'll try and keep the affectations to a minimum. As much as I can, anyway.
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You hear people talk about arts wankers much more than you hear them talk about sports wankers - or at least I do. Maybe it's the circles I move in. I'm a bit of an arts wanker myself, I suppose. Do sports wankers exist? People that are so pretentious about their sport that it becomes a defining characteristic? And if so, does it manifest on the field as well as off?
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I'm sure there are pretentious tennis players out there, though I can't name one off the top of my head. Just something to look out for in the coming season. What elements of your personality come through in your tennis game? What elements don't?
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Is who you are on the court different to who you are off the court?
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It happens in theatre. I'm a totally different person onstage than I am offstage. It is, to put it simply, acting. Do tennis players act too? How much of the oncourt mentality is themselves and how much is a construct?

'You like sport? YOU?!'

I've always felt slightly guilty about loving sport. I suppose this is strange, since sport could possibly be considered the Australian religion,but I think it's more to do with my personality than anything else. I'm an arty, humanities type. I like writing. I like reading. I'm into theatre. I enjoy Shakespeare. Plus, I'm a girl. Thus, the stereotype dictates, I should not like sport.

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But I do. And I'm not alone. My friend Erin, who inspired me to write this blog, is exactly the same: an arty type, with a penchant for sport. Actually, let me clarify. Neither of us is particularly good at (or especially enjoys playing) sport. But we love to watch, and we love the personalities - something we discovered at age twelve. We met doing theatre, but we stayed friends because we loved sport (cricket, in this case.) When she moved to the USA, I sent her articles about Michael Bevan, her favourite cricket player.

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Erin and I fell out of touch after a while, but we found each other again about six months ago, after ten years apart, and the parallels have never been more pronounced. We both love to write - we've both got unpublished books we're working on editing - and we both still love sport. In fact, she's made a career out of it, working as a sports journalist. Mine is merely a quiet obsession. It's the sort of thing that when I bring it up in conversation ('actually, I love sport,') makes people look at me and say, 'oh, I never would have picked that one.'

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My particular passion is tennis. This is not, let me state to begin with, because I am any good at it. I am quite possibly the worst tennis player in the whole world. But there is something about the game I find extremely compelling. I'm not exactly sure, but I think what I really like about tennis is the one on one struggle. This is not to denigrate team sport (or, indeed, doubles tennis) in any way. But one of the things I love most about sport is the personality, and tennis, for me, anyway, is a sport where the player's personality is expressed via the game. Tennis is as much in the mind as on the court. A tennis player must have mental strength to really excel.

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(Though I could be completely wrong in saying this. I am, after all, not a tennis player. I am merely a keen observer.)

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Erin, my arty, sport-loving friend, is currently writing her own blog -backtothecouve.blogspot.com - where she is blogging about her trip to Vancouver. However, when we talked about it, she told me she wanted to turn the notion of the travel blog on in its head. Her blog is as much about her own relationship with Vancouver as it is about this particular trip. Now, I've never read a sports blog - though I assume they exist -but it seemed to me that this idea could be applied in the same way. This is a blog about the Australian tennis summer, sure, but not exclusively. This is a blog about my love affair with tennis and tennis players. All I know about tennis I have learned by watching, which clearly does not make me a qualified technical observer, but this is not a blog for detailed match analysis. This is a writer's experimentation, playing round in a new medium, and it is a celebration - because tennis, even though I rarely pick up a racquet, is an important part of my life.

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The Australian tennis summer doesn't start till the weekend with the Hopman Cup in Perth, but it isn't unintentional that I began this blog on Boxing Day. Boxing Day is one of the most important days of the year in the Australian sporting calendar. I'd venture to say that a lot of Australian households have spent the day flicking between the Sydney to Hobart yacht race and the Boxing Day test match. (Mine certainly has.) It's probably the closest day to a sporting public holiday in the calendar year, so it seemed like an auspicious day to begin a record of my love affair with tennis, even though the season hasn't yet begun.

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Till next time...