Saturday, January 7, 2012

Tennis: Gladiators without the Blood, or Actors on a Stage?

Second entry from Doha during 2012 Qatar Open.

Mike Agassi, a former Olympic boxer, is quoted as stating that tennis was the closest of any sport to boxing. Two people stand across from each other, trading blows, seeking to score a point against the other. Some use power, others use stamina, but at the end of the day only one of them stands as victor.

To posit another analogy, center court might just be a stage in a theater, where players perform before an audience enthralled by the drama of an unknown outcome, where suspense rides high with the passing of each point.

Watching a tennis match live, one becomes aware of a space created within the venue that is distinct, but not altogether separate, from the space inhabited by the players. As a spectator, you oooh and aahh and applaud or yell to express support or praise for a player or a play. As a player, you are like an actor, playing the role before the crowd, yet pitted against an opponent who seeks your demise. It is at once bloodsport without the blood and performance without the artifice.

Yet there is a psychic space that is inhabited by both the players and the audience. In rare moments of a highly competitive match, the players and the audience actually engage in a psychic exchange whereby the audience is reacting to the play and the players are drawing energy from the crowd, in the same way that a stage actor draws energy from the attention of the audience.  There is a scene in the film Gladiator when Proximo advises Maximus "Win the crowd, and you will win your freedom." In tennis, you usually win the crowd by winning the match, but there are instances when the player has won the crowd but lost the match. When Agassi and Baghdatis faced off in a five-set thriller in 2006 at the U.S. Open, Agassi emerged the victor, but Baghdatis had earned the respect, if not the affection, of the crowd.

Watching Federer and Nadal play this weekend, not against each other, but in the quarterfinals against lesser opponents, I realized that each of them represents a distinct mode of virtuosity on the court. Federer is the paragon of grace and fluidity, he makes it look all too easy; while Nadal is a firebrand of passion and stamina, hitting each stroke with every ounce of energy he can muster, daring his opponent to hit harder, confident that whatever they throw at him, he will return with equal or greater force.

Federer is of the same ilk of Sampras and Lendl in how they embodied grace and fluidity, each one of them executing shots with technical perfection, gliding to victory even in the face of greater power and stamina from worthy opponents.

Agassi and McEnroe, much like Nadal, won with passion and with stamina, wearing their hearts on their sleeves, living and dying by the sword of power and velocity.  While Fed and company won the minds of the crowd, Nadal and his ilk won their hearts.

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