“Fabio!”
The Australian Open is approximately 20 minutes old and it’s already gone south for Italy’s temperamental Fabio Fognini. He has one fan in the audience on Court 8, a loutish young character with a paste of brown scruff across the bottom of his face, a comically tall Heineken hat towering over his head, and a beer in his hand—it is getting close to noon, after all. The young Fognini acolyte leans back and shouts his support again. “Fabio!” On the next point, Fognini loses his serve to go down 4-1. He takes a ball and slams it into the back fence. It misses a ball kid by two feet.
The rest of the crowd, or at least 95 percent of them, are for Fognini’s opponent, Kei Nishikori. The Aussie Open gave itself a catchy subtitle a few years ago, the “Grand Slam of Asia/Pacific,” with the goal of marketing itself to, well, you know. There is a big Asian contingent on the grounds, and they’ve filled both viewing areas, a moderate-size set of bleachers on one side and a grassy, tree-shaded area on the other side. A Japanese flag flies in the corner. Nishikori’s support is large but quiet. Fognini’s sole supporter drowns them out all by himself.
Nishikori is a pure product of the Bollettieri school, where he trains. Everything is smooth and by the Bradenton textbook. He needs that kind of timing to make up for his lack of size; he’s an unprepossessing 5-foot-10. But while he doesn’t have anything unique, Nishikori isn’t a machine. Late in the first set he sets up for a forehand, only to come under it at the last second and hit an ungettable drop shot. His fans come to life at this bit of chicanery: “Oooh,” swirls through the stands. There’s a lot here for Nishikori’s new part-time coach, Brad Gilbert, to work with.
(Still, I can’t help remembering a very different-looking Nishikori on a practice court at Bollettieri’s three years ago. He was hitting serves next to a 10-year-old girl, and neither was taking it very seriously. Finally, the coach on the court, Red Ayme, got fed up. He spotted a pretty girl walking past who was also an academy student. Ayme called out to her, “Hey, I’m betting that Kei can’t serve any better than a 10-year-old girl.” She stopped, laughing. Nishikori and the little girl got five serves each. Everyone on the courts stood to see the duel. The girl hit four of five serves in. Nishikori made three of his first four, but, with Ayme yelling in his ear, he missed the fifth. He’d lost. “Nice try, Kei,” the pretty girl said as she walked away.)
Early in the second set, Fognini is called for a foot fault. He drops his racquet, throws his hands in the air, and yells. He’s rattled. After the next point, he motions to the ball boy to get him a water bottle. When the kid brings it back to him, he waves him away without taking a drink. The crowd begins to laugh. Fognini is going to blow at some point, and they can’t wait to see it. At 4-5, he hits four awful shots in a row, capped by a shanked forehand that flies close to the back fence. When it lands out, Fognini takes his racquet and slams it into his chair on the sideline. The guy next to me yells, “Yes!” and he and his friend high five. The crowd cheers more loudly than they have for anything else. The chair umpire says, “Warning, Mr. Fognini.” Fognini claps with the rest of the crowd.
*
“De Bakker, meet Chewbacca. Chewbacca, meet de Bakker.”
This is the conversation that the two men behind me in Hisense Arena are having. They go on like this for a while. Down below, far away, at the bottom of this large, impersonal, hulking steel stadium that doubles as a velodrome, Thiemo de Bakker is running Gael Monfils off the court. The Dutchman has the answer for everything the Frenchman throws at him. He has the stab volleys, the half volleys, the touch pickups. Monfils has reached the stage where every time he misses a shot, he turns and stares at his coach, the way juniors did at 12. He’s a mass of negative tics. He sighs heavily, he bugs his eyes out (as only he can do), he hits himself on the chest with his racquet, and he misses easy shot after easy shot. The powerful but flair-less de Bakker is simply too brutal for him. If he needs a point, he serves, comes forward, and bashes a volley away. There’s no other word for it. He doesn’t punch it or swing at it, he bashes it.
De Bakker serves for the match. He hits an easy ball wide at the net. Two points later he hits an even easier ball wide. On the next point, down 15-40, he double faults. Two games later, he’s virtually tanking. An hour or so after that, Monfils has won. I was all set to pen my “Monfils is doomed forever and the biggest disappointment in the history of tennis, bar none” post. I was at the keyboard, with my fingers over the keys. Now, will dodging that first-round bullet make him feel a little bulletproof going forward? It worked for Novak Djokovic at Flushing Meadows.
*
“That was way in!”
What a difference a Slam makes. At the U.S. Open last August, Ryan Harrison played in front of a packed and wildly supportive Grandstand that included former Louisiana Senator John Breaux. Today he is playing on Melbourne Park’s no-frills Court 5, which has a total of three rows of bleachers. They’re half-filled with people who have no idea who Harrison is. They just seem to need a place to sit. Harrison has gotten what he thinks is a bad call on his serve. He shows the chair umpire how far in the ball was in. The umpire is silent. The crowd is silent. All you can hear is a flag whipping in the air. There’s nothing for Harrison to do but put his head down and walk back to the baseline and hit a second serve.
Across the net from Harrison is Adrian Mannarino. He’s French, he’s thin, he has a scruffy beard and mussed hair. He looks like a poet rather than a tennis player. But he’s not easy to play. He strokes the ball with polite pace down the middle of the court and asks you either to win or lose the point. Harrison is losing them. The shots that looked so good in New York look suspect in Melbourne. Is his forehand too busy? Is he explosive enough to develop a transition game? Watching him isolated—always a revealing way to view a player—he does a lot of scrambling and not a lot of punishing. This is the kind of guy he should punish.
The two players get into a cat and mouse game at the net. Harrsion makes a few of the acrobatic plays he made in New York. He leaps for a high volley and tears after a ball that gets behind him. But Mannarino seems to know just where he’s going to go. It’s a point Harrison expects to win, but this time he loses it. He takes a deep breath and looks down at the court. Mannarino wins in three sets.
Later, in the press room, Harrison is as reasonable and level-headed as ever. "I've got a long way to go," he says.
*
“At least this guy gives some entertainment.”
It's the fourth set now, and Fabio Fognini has put his racquet on the court and is clapping in the direction of the umpire. He thinks the ump has made another terrible call. The crowd claps with Fognini and at him at the same time—they’re against him, but they want more craziness from him. Fognini gives it to them. He takes three balls from the ball boy and bounces them out of the court. Then he looks at the ball boy, who puts his hands out as if to say, “I don’t have any left, you just took them all, remember?” Fognini shakes his head in disgust.
Nishikori serves for the match. At 40-30, Fognini has a chance, but he shanks a forehand 10 feet long. His racquet follows and lands in the net. The players shake hands. Fognini approaches the umpire, but instead of extending his hand, he flashes two fingers up at him. The message is clear: It might as well have been one. The crowd loves it. Fabio Fognini is good value.