So here I sit, watching images of Steffi Graf, puncutated occasionally by some coverage of the Andre Agassi - Andrei Pavel match. This kid Agassi looks like a pretty good prospect, no? I say he's got a future!
Actually, we're in the second set tiebreaker, and somebody in the crowd just hollered out, "There's only one Andre!" That's true, thank God. I'm not sure I could handle another iconic figure tonight. This isn't really that funny, I suppose, given that this is meant to be a NSHI, or Night of Supreme Historical Importance. Yet here I sit, minding the store, drifting in and out of Arthur Ashe Stadium (and don't I know you'd give that Borg-vintage Fila shirt to be in my place, which only makes me feel even more guilty), a part of me deeply resisting everything I've seen and heard tonight.
Maybe I'm having a Roger Federer Cincinnati moment; I just can't muster the enthusiasm and fire for the acrid smell of gunpowder or even the sublime resonances of the moment. Maybe I'm just shutting down, from overload. You know how that goes: I'm implicitly being told, left and right, that this is a NSHI and I'm supposed to be awash in deep thoughts and glorious feelings. Well, this is an apalling confession, but the only deep thought I've had is: Andre has a remarkably flat head. It looks like a helipad. That's kind of weird.
Am I a f-up, or what?
I guess it started with the dedication of what will heretofore be called The USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center. The highlight for me was Chris Evert turning to John McEnroe and Jimmy Connors and asking, "You guys are standing so close together and you haven't started fighting yet?" That was good for a belly laugh, but then, showing her customary killer instinct, Chrissie put the rehabilitated bad boys in a real spot by asking them, point blank, if they've actually come to like one another.
This kind of frankness, when it's supported by an inconvenient truth (thanks, Al!), is enough to throw even the most suave and media savvy character off stride. And that's just what it did. That it caught Connors, always a self-conscious and and somewhat uptight guy, by surprise was no surprise. But the fact that the generally nimble McEnroe also stumbled on it, albeit momentarily, spoke volumes.
I suppose I especially appreciated the moment because I'm bored to tears by being force-fed the party line about Billie Jean's revolutionary impact and "cultural signficance," and whether that happens to be true or not has nothing to do with it. I just hate being force-fed, and I especially hate being force-fed social consciousness. That I had to listen to that towering intellect, Diane Sawyer (our Solzhenitsyn) weigh-in on all this in the pre-game show pre-disposed me to being a grump. I just think these sentimental, horrific middle-brow orgies of mutual backpatting and unmitigated adulation are unseemly, especially when they involve all the usual suspects. Cue background music: I am woman, hear me roar. . .