MELBOURNE—You would think, with the way the Internet lets us know everything that’s going on everywhere all at once, that it would be easy to keep up with what’s happening in your own country, even from 14 time zones away. That hasn't been the case for me this year. It isn’t that I can’t read about important American phenomena such as Newt Gingrich or the NFL if I want to. It’s that I have no idea when to look for them. This morning, drinking my coffee around 8:00, I got an email asking if I was watching the Patriots and Ravens. I wasn't quite ready for some football at that hour.
It wouldn’t take long, I guess, to switch universes. I’ve watched some cricket in my spare time here, and, with commentators, have started to like it. As with baseball, the sport seems to be all about the commentators, and like baseball, you sort of feel better when it’s on in the background. Now I just need to learn the rules, which apparently takes up to a year of monk-like study.
For now, though, there’s tennis. Can you believe we’re already into the second week?
Links: *The Age*; *Herald-Sun*; *The Australian*
See my Racquet Reaction on Kim Clijsters' comeback win, and Li Na's heartbreaking loss, here.
You Remind Me of Me
Andy Murray returns to The Australian with a column about, who else, Bernard Tomic. Murray compares the Aussie’s run here to his own breakthrough at Wimbledon in 2005. He warns the young player to “take a step back” and “don’t overdo it,” otherwise you can burn out quickly.
Murray also says, essentially, that now the hard part begins. “What happens,” he writes, “is that the big guys start watching you more closely. Already this week there was a report that both Rafa and Roger were watching his first-round match against Fernando Verdasco.” Seems the report was accurate where Federer was concerned, anyway.
In other Murray news, he reveals that before his last match he ate 24 pieces of sushi at Nobu and four other dishes. But Murray moves on quickly, saying, “I’d better change the subject. I’m working up an appetite.”
In With the Old
Bernie’s done, so now it’s up to “Little Lleyton” to keep the dream alive. Patrick Smith of*The Australian* thinks that we would all be better off if we were a more like the man who invented the I’m-Punching-You-in-the-Face celebration move.
“Have you ever thought what our lives might have been, or might be, if we were Little Lleyton?” Smith asks. “Not our tennis game, but our lives themselves. There is a fair chance they would have been very different, certainly more fulfilled, a little less compromised.”
Our faces would certainly be a lot redder.
—It isn’t only Smith who has bought into Rusty’s redemption. The top players are feeling it, too. Roger Federer said last night that he “fist-pumped” for Hewitt when he beat Milos Raonic in the third round. And Rafael Nadal claimed, “I really get emotional when he finished. He goes to the floor. He was really showing his emotions.”
Makes you wonder what Fed and Rafa would do if Hewitt beats his next opponent, Novak Djokovic.
—Maybe the most surprising element of the Hewitt story is the Tony Roche angle. A taciturn type in the past, coach Roche has been spotted bringing out his inner Little Lleyton during his charge’s matches. The normally mild-mannered, old school, 70-something Roche grits his teeth and pumps his fist like a super-intense junior during his matches.
“I think he was pretty proud of me and the effort I gave,” Hewitt said. “Rochey and I, he’s not just my coach, he’s one of my best mates.”
Bernie Goes to Bed Early
The Herald-Sun wraps up the Tomic phenomenon with this sobering headline:
TOMIC’S AUSTRALIAN OPEN DREAM CRUSHED BY FEDERER
Later, they put Tomic’s own post-match words, tweaked just slightly, into another banner headline:
IT’S SCARY HOW GOOD I CAN BE
Mole Model
After dispensing with Tomic, the Herald-Sun moves on to other matters of substance, namely Sabine Lisicki’s facial markings. Lisicki recently shot a TV commercial where she “portrays a femme fatale in the best James Bond tradition,” for German online retailer Tennis-Point. The Herald-Sun describes Lisicki’s appeal this way, “She has the big serve and power to match . . . not to mention the model good looks, right down to the signature mole on her face, much like Cindy Crawford.”
Odd and Ends
—Is it too soon for Anna Kournikova to be considered retro? Is the Queen of Downloads even 30 yet? According to the Age, It’s not too soon for Victoria Azarenka. Vika says she’s, “bringing back a little bit of [Kournikova’s] style here of shorts.” Azarenka says she is “good friends” with Anna K, whom she has “met a few times” in Miami. Kournikova attended one of her matches and got so nervous that she went through “two packs of gum.”
—Serena Williams is back in school. Actually, two schools. She’s taking a correspondence course in business, though she says she’s doesn’t know if she “can make the first assignment in time,” considering that she’s currently playing the Australian Open. The overachieving Williams is also taking a class in kinesiology, the science of wacky tape patterns on tennis players’ legs. Again, Williams says she going to try her best to do her assignments, but that she’s a “wee bit busy.”
—Spotted, by the Age: “A couple of men wearing wrist bands and rainbow colors—gay gear in short—cuddling the statue of Maggie Court” at Melbourne Park.
—It’s Rafa question time again in the Age. A fan wants to know: “What do you do to console yourself or lift your mood after a loss?”
“It depends on the loss—I do one thing or another,” a cagey Rafa says. “If it has been a bad loss, I try to analyze what happened and spend some time on my own, thinking.”
In other words, he gets as far away from Uncle Toni as he can.
Borat Goes Kuku
Today the *Sun,* assessing Andy Murray’s next opponent, Mikhail Kukushkin, picks up on the Sacha Baron Cohen meme begun yesterday by the Daily Mail. As it did to the Mail, it seems fairly unbelievable to the Sun that Kukushkin—who says he hasn't seen Borat but thinks it's "bad for Kazahkstan"—is coached by his “WIFE” (capital letters theirs).
Listening to Kukushkin, though, the arrangement does make a certain kind of sense, both from a practical and a coaching standpoint. “Of course, she is my wife,” Kukushkin says, “so she don’t want to take from me money; she is only interested in my results. For me, it’s important to know that I can believe in my coach.”
Kukushkin: Not so Kuku after all?