On to books, a topic that may not cause jitters, but does require serious effort to get right for any trip. If you were here last year, you remember that I was on an Updike kick. You’ll be happy to know I’ve moved on from my obsession after 12 months, to a book about another man’s obsession with Updike: U & I, by the novelist Nicholson Baker. I’ve read it before, of course, 15 years or so ago, just long enough ago that I've forgotten how addictive it is.
His wife sputters with laughter. “Trained to do what?”
*
In the lunchroom, a pretty young woman walks in and sits down. I assume this is a “girlfriend of player” (GOP), as the phrase goes. A minute later a man that I recognize as a member of Fernando Verdasco’s entourage—maybe his trainer—comes in and sits down with her. I don’t know if they’re together or not, but I’m hoping they are. Talk about status: If you're Verdasco, you’re such a chick magnet that, not your brother, not your coach, not your best friend, but your trainer is getting groupies.
*
Alicia Molik and chair umpire Mohamed Lahyani are bickering like an old married couple.
Molik scrambles along the baseline as Jie Zheng slides a backhand up the line. The ball catches the last millimeter of white. It’s correctly called in, but Molik thinks it's out. She half-heartedly lifts a lob up that sails wide.
“Are you watching?” she barks at Lahyani as she stalks across the baseline for the next point.
“There’s a mark!” Lahyani fires back. “Come over and look at it!”
Before he can finish his sentence, Molik has turned her back from him. “Yeah, yeah, I hear you,” she mutters dismissively.
*
Rafael Nadal has been asked a question—about the Hit for Haiti—that puzzles and annoys him. We know this because he has leaned a little farther forward toward the mike, slitted his eyes, scrunched his eyebrows and forehead downward, and stuck his chin out. He keeps his features frozen like this throughout his answer.
Later Nadal is asked if wants to prove to people that he’s back. His answer: “I think I don’t need to show nobody how I can play or if I can win tournaments or if I can win matches, no?”
This is about as arrogant as Nadal gets, and it isn’t arrogant at all. He sounds almost apologetic for having to tell the truth.
*
One final book note, courtesy of my fellow tennis writer Joel Drucker, who has appeared here in the past. Last year we discussed which tennis player Updike most resembled. I think we settled on Lendl—he won absolutely everything, except the really big one. This year the author up for discussion was the recently deceased J.D. Salinger. We thought of him as a player who starts big—world-beating big, Catcher in the Rye big—and then, after a drastic change in his or her life, runs out the string very quietly. Who does this sound like to you?
Our verdict: J.D. Salinger was the Monica Seles of authors. As tennis fans, we mean that with the highest respect possible.