Adults These Days

Friday at the Australian Open was billed as a clash of generations in Rod Laver Arena: Two top male players in their 30s were going up against two promising players in their 20s. If you’ve followed tennis in any way, shape, or form for the last 10 years—or if you’ve just lived somewhere other than under a large rock—you know how this battle turned out. The old guys won. Neither victory was what you would call easy, but neither was ever seriously in doubt, either.

First, Roger Federer dispatched his mini-me and agency stablemate, Grigor Dimitrov, 6-4, 3-6, 6-1, 6-4. When the draw was made, this third-round encounter popped up on a lot of our radar screens, but it didn’t inspire much talk of an upset. Federer had dropped just one set in their four previous meetings, and while Dimitrov seems to have woken up from his long sleepwalk through 2015, it still remains an uphill matchup for him.

Dimitrov has many of the things that make Federer an appealing player to watch, namely his style and versatility. But he lacks the fundamental and often unsung aspects of Federer’s game that make the fancy stuff possible: Federer’s pace and weight of shot, and his determination to use them to break open a seemingly safe rally at any moment. Dimitrov, as we saw again on Friday, doesn’t have the horsepower or the creativity to soar as high as Federer; he can’t take over a point with the flick of a forehand, or lean on a down-the-line backhand, the way Federer can. Two stats—Federer’s 48 winners and 55 errors to Dimitrov’s 23 winners and 44 errors—tell the story of who controlled this match. Whether he was winning the points or losing them, Federer knew that control was key.

“I struggled a little bit,” Federer said of his play in the second set, “but then found my way back, then was able to take charge of the match. It was important.”

“I created too many opportunities and was able to put the pressure on when I had to.”

The turnaround came in Dimitrov’s opening service game of the third set. The Bulgarian had spent the previous half-hour in command, but Federer wrested it back in the space of two minutes. The shot that stuck out to me was the one that got Federer to 0-30. Dimitrov hit a solid ground stroke down the middle; against virtually anyone else, it likely would have elicited a moderately aggressive rally ball in return. Not against Federer: Itching to get on the attack—to get the point out of neutral—he immediately swung the ball at a sharp crosscourt angle, sent Dimitrov scrambling into the doubles alley for it, and won the point, and the game, from there.

In this match, Federer had 10 years and 17 major titles on his opponent, but he was the one playing more urgent, opportunistic tennis.

Would you say Nick Kyrgios plays with a sense of urgency? He certainly plays quickly; when he gets on a roll, the infamous Aussie won’t bounce the ball at all before winding up to serve. But urgency—the desire to get somewhere—is something different entirely, and not something that the 20-year-old showed a lot of in his 6-3, 6-4, 1-6, 6-4 loss to 30-year-old Tomas Berdych on Friday. Even as he sped from one serve to another, Kyrgios jawed with himself, his camp, the crowd, and especially chair umpire James Keothavong. He played shots between his legs and stood flat-footed on others. He hit a ball at the Spider-cam and slammed his racquet on the court. At match point, he declined to challenge a close out call on his first serve, and drilled his second one long in disgust. As he shook Keothavong’s hand at the end, he said, “You’re a terrible referee.”

In other words, Nick Kyrgios played a tennis match. Watching this one, though, I wondered whether it’s true, as we like to say, that he “loves the big stage.” Both here and at the U.S. Open, Kyrgios was handed a prime night-session slot in the main stadium for a match against a high seed—in New York, it was Andy Murray, in Melbourne it was Berdych. Both times Kyrgios appeared to be more agitated by the scene than inspired by it. In New York, he harped on the fact that some fans were late getting to their seats; in Melbourne, he complained—and complained, and complained some more—that he heard music coming from the audience. Kyrgios, the game’s resident ringmaster, even complained that the match had turned into a “circus.”

But this curcus, believe it or not, was more about Berdych than it was Kyrgios. Coming in, I picked Kyrgios to win because (a) it was more interesting than picking Berdych, and (b) I wasn’t sure how Berdych would react to the situation. Berdych is not a man who thrives on chaos, and each the last two years he has been intimidated by an opponent in Laver—in 2014 it was Stan Wawrinka; in 2015 it was Andy Murray. What would he do against a live wire like Kyrgios?

The answer was that Berdych would put on a display of icy power and professionalism. He hit with more consistent pace and depth; his long, flat drives were much more effective than Kyrgios’s flicky forehands; and he was one step ahead in the rallies, frequently wrong-footing the Aussie. Berdych answered break points with big serves and bigger forehands. Like his fellow 30-something Federer, he quickly turned the momentum back in his favor with a love hold at the start of the fourth set. And he closed with a veteran’s sense of opportunism. With Kyrgios serving at 4-5 in the fourth, the match still seemed very much in the balance. Until Berdych unbalanced it with an intelligently risky backhand that found the corner and made the score 0-40. Out of nowhere, it was over.

“I’ve been through a lot of loud matches,” Berdych said, “so I’m probably, you know, able to block these things, you know, just leave the noise on the side.”

“The only thing," Berdych reminded us, "you need to see is the ball.”

Words of zen wisdom, from Tomas Berdych? Maybe some things really can change in tennis, after all.