At the turn of the last decade, a Romanian player named Andrew Ilie briefly made inroads on the ATP tour. He was squat and stocky, a fire hydrant on wheels. He was also an excitable sort, so much so that I remember it being said that you could only explain his behavior by pointing to his nationality. In the grand tradition of Ilie Nastase, he had the Romanian “crazy gene.”
Today Roger Federer plays another Romanian, Victor Hanescu, who, if he posesses a crazy gene, buries it deep, way behind the unchanging, impassive face he presents to his opponent. I’m sure there are still excitable Romanians out there, just as there are excitable Croats along the lines of Goran Ivanisevic. But it happens that these days the Croatian tennis tradition is represented by the expressionless mask of Marin Cilic, who may be the only player on tour who could beat Hanescu in a staring contest. Unlike in the recent past, the men’s tour today is controlled mostly by sporting, professional Europeans such as Federer, Nadal, Murray, and Djokovic on a good day.
So where did tennis’ crazy gene go? One small strain of it left the game last year, when Marat Safin retired. But, judging from the evidence presented to us in Indian Wells Friday night, it left when we, the Americans, faded from the top rungs of the sport. After all these years of camaraderie and graciousness among the Euros—and even among a reformed American like Andy Roddick—we had to leave it to two old-school Yanks to show up for a charity exhibition, for an earthquake-devastated island nation, and, after about an hour, start hurling personal insults and 100-mph serves at each other.
Part of me loves this. Since Friday I’ve cracked myself up more than a few times by bellowing, in my mind, two of Agassi’s most unnecessary lines from the exo: “Get your head out of the gutter!” (yelled to the audience), and “It’s better than being a valet when you show up!” (yelled, with embarrassing and unexpected venom, to a startled Sampras). I mean, really, charity doesn’t any better than that.
The Hit for Haiti takes its place in the grand and sometimes shameful American tradition of tennis outrage. “You’re the pits of the world!” “I’ll follow him to the ends of the earth.” “I’m going to shove this this ball down your throat.” All legendary, all uttered by players from the red, white, and blue, all indicators of a competitiveness that can border on the pathological. I used the second quote, from Connors, only because I couldn’t repeat most of his other outbursts. Since I’ve brought up Nastase as an example of tennis craziness, he’ll serve as a good way to illustrate the “unique,” no-holds-barred brand of competitiveness that Connors brought to the game. The two were scheduled to play a high-stakes exhibition in Puerto Rico in 1977. In the days beforehand, Connors acted like he might be too hurt to make it, leaving Nastase to wonder how seriously he should be practicing. Meanwhile, Connors was working out in secret the whole time. On the day he arrived, there was an earthquake in Romania that destroyed much of Nastase’s native Bucharest. The fact was temporarily kept from Nasty, so it wouldn’t affect his play. But when Connors met him in Puerto Rico, he said, “Hey buddy, you better make sure you still have a house.” Connors won.
Not that all American tennis players are created equal. Agassi and Sampras both have immigrant fathers, but Sampras’ was an engineer, while Agassi’s is, well, Mike Agassi. Sampras has a traditionalist, conservative worldview; Agassi has always been open to new ideas and fads. While Agassi exposed himself to the world in his book, Sampras refused, on principle, to get personal in his. Maybe more important, Agassi started his career at the tail end of the McEnroe/Connors era—he continued their rebellion. Sampras’ debut coincided with the demise of that era; he began a new, quieter professionalism that Federer has modeled his own game and behavior on. In this sense, Agassi is the last of the roughnecks, and he brought a rougher sensibility with him to Indian Wells, even during an exo. Similarly, as retirees, McEnroe and Connors, unlike their contemporaries Bjorn Borg and Mats Wilander, have taken their senior careers seriously. They always play to win, and McEnroe is just as ornery as ever. Agassi and Sampras didn’t play to win on Friday, but, unlike Federer and Nadal, they got ornery with each other.
In a recent New Yorker article, Adam Gopnik, a Canadian, wrote that he loved living in America, except for those times when we collectively went nuts. We’ve been going collectively nuts a lot lately—Iraq, subprime mania, the Tea Party. In tennis, Serena held up her end of that bargain at the Open, but it took the return of Andre Agassi to bring a little uncouth craziness back to the men’s side. We play to win here, not for pleasure or beauty or even for sport. We don’t trade our jerseys after games, like soccer players, and our home crowds don’t cheer the efforts of both sides when their teams lose. Our best athletes often feel entitled to win, and they can come a little unhinged when they don’t.
The Hit, in an unfortunate way, was a moment to add to the tennis history books. A moment that won’t be recorded in those books, but which I won’t forget, occurred the next night. Asked about Sampras and Agassi in his press conference, Nadal said he couldn’t understand what they'd been saying. Then he steered back toward the bigger point of the night. “In my opinion, we did important thing, and we hope"— here his face grew more earnest and assertive—“I hope everybody helps Haiti, because we don’t have to forget they still need help and help all the time.”
The press, previously giddy on the theatrics of the event, grew silent for a second at this well-timed and sobering reminder. Then we got shook it off and got back to business with the next question to Rafa: “I know you didn’t understand a lot, but could you feel the tension between . . .”
You crazy Yanks—Jimbo, Johnny Mac, Serena, Andre. What would we talk about without you?