A tennis tournament in its dwindling, winnowing latter days inspires an instant case of nostalgia. A few days ago we saw dozens, even hundreds of players kicking soccer balls on the pitch and scarfing pasta in the cafeteria. By the final weekend virtually all of them were gone, moved on, presumably, to the next event, where they'll do it all again for a few days. For the vast majority of pros—half of whom are done after round 1—each stop on the tour consists of a brief flash of hope and community before they’re cut loose and left to their own devices again. The sport must be one constant hello and goodbye. The process is starting again as we speak in Key Biscayne.
The same holds true for writers, in a slightly less brutal way. Colleagues you ate and drank with through the early part of the week vanish at different stages. By the end you’re yelling at your TV monitor by yourself as a last-second shot goes up in a college basketball game. By now, of course, we’ve all left Indian Wells, and the squeaky door in its pressroom is shut for another year. The blue sky there has been traded for the pure gray of New York. Before this year’s tournament—which was sleepy and stunning in equal measures—blurs in with a hundred other tournaments, I’ll finish in the traditional manner: By putting down everything I didn’t have the time or the space to put down before.
"You make a good point, no?"
There was a rare occurrence in Rafael Nadal’s final press conference: A player may have learned something from a journalist.
Q: Don’t you think the last thing that is still missing in your game is the ability to kill a match?
Nadal hesitated for a thoughtful few seconds before giving in. “Probably, probably. You know, that’s—yeah.”
“Miss”-tery
In the women’s final, I thought I heard chair umpire Lynn Welch say “Miss Jankovic is challenging the call at the right far baseline . . .” Do all the umpires refer to the (single) WTA women as “miss”? I can’t recall now, but it sounded as cool as it did antiquated.
Feathered Fans
Indian Wells may have the only center court where birds can be heard loudly chirping as play goes on. Robin Soderling, not surprisingly, is a favorite of this crowd: They provided a happy soundtrack to his upset of Andy Murray in the quarterfinals.
Evening Gold
It wasn’t a strong tournament for the women on centre court, from Caroline Wozniacki’s final-round fold to Kim Clijsters’ head-scratching tiebreaker meltdown to the Sharapova-Zheng death march. But that wasn’t necessarily true on the outer courts. That’s where I relaxed for half an hour or so, under the lights, with nothing to write, while Wozniacki and Zheng threw everything they had at each other. The temperature was right and the stands were moderately crowded, with plenty of seats but also plenty of energy. There was nothing overly dramatic or high stakes about the match; it was just a chance for people to be awed by the skill of two pros. On any given rally, you might hear someone say “Oh my God,” after one shot; another person say “Wow” after the next shot; and a third person clap and say “Amazing” when the point ended. In a perfect world, we’d watch every match from this vantage point, on this kind of night.
The Beauty of the Bracket
Nothing represents college basketball like the bracket; there’s something perfectly cutthroat and unforgiving about it—it’s as Darwinian as anything we’ve created. I can remember staring at the NCAA tournament brackets for hours as a kid, eventually taking the newspaper’s copy up to my room so I could concentrate on them. Tennis also has brackets, of course; is there any way to feature them more prominently as a tournament begins, to use them the way the NCAA does?
Favorite Quote
It didn’t come from a player, but from my friend sitting next to me in the pressroom, Matt Cronin. Multitasker extraordinaire, for the first few days he’d been posting and Twittering up a storm about every tennis development available. After sending one text, he sat back a little and said, “I’ll bet they’re going to look back at me and say, ‘Man, that guy could really tweet.’”
Glimpsing Agnieszka
One benefit of a Williams-less Indian Wells is the opportunity to see a favored player like Agnieszka Radwanska appear in a semifinal. Radwanska has shades of Hingis’ touch—she fooled Wozniacki in the semis with a no-look crosscourt drop shot—but she lacks the consistency; just as important, she lacks Hingis’ arrogance and ambition. The unassuming quality that’s so appealing is also part of what keeps her from being seen by more people.
"Put Your Hands in the Air!"
Perhaps the greatest drawback to covering this tournament was having to hear every single center court match introduced. After the obligatory yet inexlicable blaring of “Where the Streets Have No Name,” the event’s emcee, whose name escapes me, would tell the crowd that the two players coming down the tunnel were “in it to win it,” so we should “make some noise.”
On one very particularly hot afternoon, the aforementioned emcee warned us to “stay hydrated.” A nice thought, but it was too tempting for one reporter, who yelled across the press room, "But remember to make some noise while you’re hydrating!”
We Do Need Our Stinkin’ Badges
The one priceless item for a writer at a sporting event is his or her credential badge, which stays around our necks like a wedding ring stays on a ring finger. It’s your ticket to everywhere; if you lose it, you’re done, pack up, quit your job. One morning I woke up, got dressed, and started out of my hotel room door without my badge. I felt half-naked without it, so I hurried back in and put it around my neck. Then I walked down to my hotel’s lobby, picked up a paper plate, and started scooping eggs onto it. I’d taken the whole badge thing one step too far: I’d worn it to breakfast.