A Rally in praise of Rome, clay, seasonal renewal, and insouciant shotmaking, between newly liberated (from law school) Kamakshi Tandon and I, before we both head for Paris next week.
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Hi Kamakshi,
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it once more: “It’s spring again.”
These are the famous opening words—famous to you, me and our friend Matt Cronin, anyway—of Peter Bodo’s Inside Tennis, his book on the 1978 tennis tours. As you know, it begins where the tours are now, at the Foro Italico in Rome. We did a book club on it once, and it has only risen in my estimation since. It currently sits at No. 2 on my all-time tennis books list, behind, of course, A Handful of Summers by Gordon Forbes (which apparently has been re-issued yet again, by Penguin South Africa, and which may or may not have a quote from the book club that you and I did on it a few years ago on the back cover). I’ve tried at various times to copy the style Bodo used in Inside Tennis when I’m describing a scene at a tournament—present tense, no first person, simple declarative sentence structures. It always makes for a striking impression, but it’s surprisingly hard work, and I can never do it more than a couple times over the course of two weeks..
Anyway, it’s spring again, and there’s tennis in Rome again. As I said last week about Madrid, having been to this tournament gives me a weird extra sense about it as I watch it on TV, one that I wouldn’t have otherwise. It’s like, if you’ve been somewhere, you know what the air feels like there. You’ve been to Madrid, so maybe you can tell me your impressions of that tournament. When I think of the Foro Italico, I think of cracked pavement; stone pine trees, with the pines way up high; small amphitheatre-style rows of seats curving around courts; teenage girl ushers dancing to the between-game music and letting anyone in at any time; an audience just as vocal but more playful than the audiences in Paris, and one that managed, after a few false starts, the difficult chant, “Dav-a-DENK-o”; waiting in line for food and realizing, after about 10 people pushed their way in front of me, that there was no line; and an impossibly irritating helicopter circling above the court where Marat Safin was having one of his meltdowns. At one point, Safin stopped, looked up at the thing for about 30 seconds, smiled and just shook his head slowly, the picture of fuming, futile rage. It was the perfect accompaniment to his mood and his career at that point. I also remember a lot of “Ciao”s. Oh, and Nadal sticking the interview-room microphone in his left nostril for a second during one of his press conferences.
Tell me what you thought of Madrid, and also, while we’re at it, what you think of the game at the moment. I’m starting to think that the pressure on Djokovic to win the French is going to pretty immense, whether or not he wins the title in Rome. All of these Masters wins won’t be much consolation if he has to watch someone else walk away with winner’s trophy in Paris.
Steve
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Hi Steve,
It is spring again. I always think of that line at this time, and Richard Evans' about how life would seem strange if "Paris did not follow Rome with the promise of Wimbledon ahead." That's especially true this year, because Rome this week is the first chance I've had to be fully immersed in the tennis, after scattered samplings last week from Madrid.
Having just watching the shotmaking masterpiece produced by Richard Gasquet and Roger Federer, it's not hard to remember just why this part of the season is so special. It's a return to tennis' roots, to traditional places and traditional surfaces. The winter sojourns Down Under and to the New World are over, it is spring again and it is Rome. The history of the game seems closer at these locales because it happened on these very same spots and very same courts, and you can feel the thread between the stories in A Handful of Summers and what's unfolding before your eyes.
In tennis' tales of Rome, the linesmen miss calls because they're buying ice cream or falling asleep, the crowds throw coins and chant for their locals, dropshots and lobs leave the non-Continentals in despair. Earlier this week, I laughed when the umpire repeatedly said 'quickly please' to the spectators wandering around the stands and then, finally, simply, 'stop.' It didn't work. 'I've told them a hundred times,' he later muttered to Berdych when the Czech gestured at the stands again. There was the fabulously phonetic Fabio Fognini hitting a dropshot and lofting a lob for a winner like it was just another way to win a point. There was Rafa, the Rey of Clay, dishevelled and streaked with red against an unheralded local who seemed to think he was Adriano Panatta.
Masters TV commentator Rob Koenig has apparently been reading that reissued version of A Handful of Summers, and at one point referred to Federer's "oil painting of a forehand" during Federer's match against Gasquet today. That, of course, is straight from Gordon Forbes' description of Florence, or someplace, as a painting of a city. I have no idea if it was conscious or unconscious, but these references could be a great drinking game. (And if you've read the book, you know the drink has to be old whiskey.) Here's to the timelessness of tennis in springtime, anyway.
I know what you mean about watching a tournament differently once you've been there, though I haven't been to Rome. I'm told that it's a grand old site in disrepair, and Pietrangeli, the old stadium with its Mussolini-built statutes still intact, is the place to watch matches. Like you, I have been to Madrid. It doesn't quite fit into this tradition-laden part of the season, and doesn't want to. If Monte Carlo, Rome and Paris are the old high streets of European tennis, Madrid is the shiny new mall down the highway— steel structures, walled stadiums, and if Ion Tiriac has his misguided way, eventually blue clay courts. If you listen carefully, the ball sounds a little different coming off the players' racquets, and when you sit in the stadiums you realize its because of the echo off the walls. And here's a little secret—if you walk out of the Caja Magica and to the outer courts, you see sunshine, flowers, dusty clay courts, even bees running amuck once in a while. Everyone should make sure they get out there too.
But it's not just all about ambience. Spring is also about clay, the crushed brick surface whose colour so many adjectives have been spent trying to describe. My fanciful description is that it’s the colour of blood mixed with sweat when it's left in the sun to dry. My first time seeing a real live clay court was in Paris, and while TV conveys a sense of the surface, you realize there are elements to it that only reveal themselves when seen in person. The first surprise is that it's not quite as granular as it seems, more like a thick layer of powder. The second thing you realize is why the colour is so difficult to describe—because it changes. Light and orangey in the sunshine, it becomes dark red in cloud and rain.
The importance of clay in a modern context is that, like grass but unlike hard courts, it magnifies the effect of spin and touch. And contrary to conventional wisdom, it seems to be becoming a bit of a shotmaker's surface, giving players extra time to set up and take their swing, move in to take a volley. And the sliding, naturally balletic. On the soft surfaces, clay and grass, you play with the court, not just on it.
It's probably just more coincidence, but all I've seemed to see this week are flying one-handed backhands—Federer, Gasquet, Feliciano Lopez, Philipp Kohlschreiber, Stanislas Wawrinka. The battle of dropshots between Gasquet and Federer, the insouciance of Federer's mid-point between-the-legs flick, the streaking brilliance of the winners. It's for this sort of thing that these events began in the first place, and continue today.
But of course, that's not the serious business of tennis. The serious business is whether Nadal or Djokovic is right now the best player in the world, whether Djokovic can beat Nadal at the French Open, and whether there is anyone else, even Federer, left in the conversation. I think Djokovic is in a peculiar 'Wozniacki' position going into the French—he has won so much and the hype has built up so much, he's under pressure to kind of legitimize it by taking the next step and winning the French. But at the same time, he knows that Nadal would still be a favorite if they played best of five there, and winning the French without beating Nadal would be seen as a bit of a diluted victory. So he can't win, really, and maybe a loss at Rome would help to rebalance things and also take the weight of the streak off his shoulders. But there's no questioning that he's playing some fantastic tennis.
Meanwhile, Nadal is in the most interesting position he's been in for a while. It's been a bit of a strange year—he actually got tired in Miami, which is unusual, and he's played a heavy schedule, adding Barcelona and reaching the final of every event since Indian Wells. He's also still searching for his best form, and probably won't find it this week now that he's dealing with a fever. It's still hard to see anyone actually beating him at the French, but he's definitely a little more vulnerable than last year. That's because compared to the full frontal attack he showed in the second week of the tournament last year, Nadal has been in a more defensive mode lately and would have to up his level if he runs into the proverbial big hitter having a great day.
I guess the third biggest threat would theoretically be David Ferrer, but though he's easy to see as a semifinalist or finalist, it's difficult to picture him as the winner. Federer would need to play great and get a few breaks, which could happen, but it's not exactly the kind of dependable forecast he's presented in previous years. And like with Ferrer, the issue with everyone else is that they've never won anything at this level before. They would have to show something extra to do it, and no one has in the warmups so far.
The women's game? Pass me a dartboard.
Kamakshi