So far the Rome Masters has lived up to the nickname of its host city—some things about the tournament really are eternal. The blank-eyed Mussolini-era statues are still comically creepy. The sunken second stadium, with its fierce-looking rectangle of red clay, still links the tournament to the ancient idea of athletes as heroes and gladiators. (Call it a usable Colosseum.) The fans, when one of those local heroes is doing battle, still create the most buzzing, living atmosphere of any location in tennis. Though they have done away with at least one tradition: Coins and soda cans no longer fly at the Italian players’ opponents. When did the world get so soft?
From what I can tell back in the States, and hearing reports from the grounds, the tournament has done an effective job of updating and expanding without chucking tradition to the wind. Five years ago, the Foro showed its age. Now, forced to accommodate the men and women at once, it has at least two new arenas, both of which seem to be of a sensible size, and which fit well with the existing architecture. Where Ion Tiriac looks to upend tradition wherever he can with his tournament, moving its location and changing whatever he sees fit in search of buzz and money, Rome has stayed rooted at the Foro and retained its links to its own past. It helps to have such a distinctive location, though I’m guessing even this one would have been abandoned long ago if it had been in America. Now, if we could just start calling it the Italian Open again.
Here are a few thoughts and observations from a week’s worth of Rome viewing. Some of the scenes described couldn’t have happened anywhere else.
“MMMMmmmm-mmmmmmMMMMM”: This is the collective sound that the crowd inside Pietrangeli stadium makes as a backhand from Italy’s Andreas Seppi passes an inch or so over the net. Seppi is in a third-set tiebreaker with Stan Wawrinka; the sound the audience makes is a sound of hope—they’re willing the ball to stay above the tape—mixed with a fear too unbearable not to let out.
“Hooray!” “Sssshhhhh!”: As Seppi hits what appears to be a forehand winner, half the audience begins to erupt. When Wawrinka tracks it down at the last second, the other half scolds them for making too much noise. One problem: The “Ssshhh” is even louder than the “Hooray!”
“Ah!”; “No!”: When things really get tight for the Italian, individual voices from the crowd start to be heard. On a crucial point late, Seppi comes to the net and hits a forehand volley. One man seems to think it’s a great play and begins to cheer, while at the same time another man believes the shot might go out, so he blurts out “No!”
Seppi’s shot goes in, and the point continues. Each ball from there triggers half a dozen different reactions in the crowd.
Is there something in tennis fans these days that wants the men to be nice each other, to be gentlemen, and the women to be nasty divas? I confess to some of that feeling myself. Today I enjoyed seeing Novak Djokovic and Jo-Wilfried Tsonga give each other the now standard nod, smile, and half-hug as they shook hands after their match. A few minutes later, though, I found myself enjoying the sight of Venus Williams shaking her head and shooting death stares at Maria Sharapova as the Russian delayed their match with a between-game jaunt to the sideline. I also enjoyed the no-love-lost ferocity of their match—for once, the shrieks were appropriate.
No match all week demonstrated the difference between being at an event, and watching it on TV, than the three-hour marathon/death march between Andy Murray and Richard Gasquet. Their long rallies and long deuce games, and their deliberate pace of play between points, made time slow down—like music, the pace of a tennis match can change your sense of how quickly time is passing. The afternoon seemed to hold itself up as Murray and Gasquet moved each other around the court. It was a war of attrition, which, at certain points, appeared to have no end. Clay dust swirled, the players’ shoes were caked in red, the Roman fans slouched a little more in the (slowly) falling sun, nothing seemed to be happening.
Sitting on my couch, I wished I were one of those fans. This was a match for live viewing, when you can’t get up in the middle of a game to get something to eat or wash the dishes. When all you can do is sit back and soak in the stadium, the fans, and the scene, the trees, the sky, and the clay, and not worry about what you’re doing with your afternoon—this is what you came to do, after all.
On my TV, which sits right above a clock, it just took too long.
Last year Germany’s Angelique Kerber was a lucky loser, and a first-round loser, in Rome. Now, with her win today over Petra Kvitova, the 24-year-old lefty is in the semifinals. If her meetings with her coach are any indication, though, happiness doesn’t seem to be a good idea for her.
After winning the first set in a tiebreaker, Kerber laughs and smiles as she chats with him. Then she loses the next five games and the set 6-1.
Kerber spends their subsequent meeting with a towel over her face. When she finally pulls it away, she looks ready to weep. Then she goes out and wins the third set 6-1. Moral: Never take a moment to enjoy your success in this game, or you’re done.
At the start of every match, Rafael Nadal drinks his drinks and eats his energy gels and towels his arms and lines up his water bottles just so, before he leaps out for the coin toss. The bottles, as we know, have to be in exactly the right spot in relation to each other before he’ll step on court. But at the start of his match against countryman Marcel Granollers, Nadal jumps a little too zealously and knocks the bottles over. He tries to get them back in the right spots, but they aren’t perfectly placed. Is this the end for Rafa? Not exactly: He wins 6-1, 6-1.
Today Nadal plays Tomas Berdych, who has been on a hot streak. Rather than being daunted, Rafa comes out looking for blood. He breaks Berdych in the first game with a forehand that appears to be shot out of a cannon. But the Czech hangs in—the fact that he’s able to get four games in the first set is impressive in itself. He’s even closer in the second, but as usual in these cases, his unpredictability gets the better of him. At crucial moments for Berdych, service winners alternate with double faults, swing volley shanks alternate with swing volley winners. You never quite know what you’re going to get next from him.
On days like these, when Rafa's on his game, and his doubts are at bay, and he's feeling his self-described "colm," you do know what you’re going to get from him, and you know it’s going to be good. In the end, he’s one shot better than Berdych. Nadal reaches his first match point after a long rally that he ends with a side-spinning backhand drop. Berdych can trade power for power with him, but he can’t keep up with, or track down, that shot.
Judging by the look in Nadal’s eye, and the conviction in his shots, you might start to think that Tiriac did Rafa a huge favor after all. The king of clay doesn’t seem to have taken kindly to someone messing with his dirt.