The Dying of the Light?

[Ed. Note: This past week, Tribe member Rosangel attended the Senior's YEC event, held in her hometown of London, England. We hope you enjoy her report!]

I usually attend classical music concerts in the Royal Albert Hall rather than watch tennis there. The venue, with its four red-clad tiers of seating, embellished with gold decorations, lent an air of glamour to last week's BlackRock Masters. The tournament is the year-end event for the Merrill-Lynch Tour of Champions, otherwise known as the ATP's Senior Tour.

The Tour of Champions proves, if nothing else, that tennis (among other things) is a business -- equally good and bad for spectators when serving the purposes of entertainment.

The sole instance of the sour side of the entertainment business was the loud chatter of corporate guests in the tiers. One time, the umpire asked for quiet (to much applause) but the noise continued unabated until the crowd shushed the offenders into shamed silence. I cringed when former French Open champion Sergi Bruguera, already embarrassed at losing a bagel set to Paul Haarhuis, was forced by the umpire's lack of intervention to shout out to a particularly obnoxious bowtied drunk in the box behind him. At one point, Henri Leconte smashed a ball into a particularly noisy box.

The corrupting presence of corporate entertainment reached its nadir when, during a match, my box was invaded by caterers and people putting gifts on seats, blocking the view. Afterwards, I found the senior manager on site to complain. The result was an upgraded courtside box seat for the following evening's session. With a true 'chaos theory' effect, this box contained Goran Ivanisevic's entourage. To take pictures of Goran, I had to politely request that one of his party move aside. Only for TW!

It was soon evident that not all the players at the event expected to progress to later rounds -- their primary business at the Royal Albert Hall was to entertain the crowd with their antics. During one matchup, eventual runner-up Goran Ivanisevic and Carl-Uwe Steeb did delayed-shriek Maria Sharapova impressions.

It might come as a surprise to some that one of the players who looked hungry was Mats Wilander, busy playing exhibition doubles at the event. If I say that Mats reminded me of a very agile hobbit, I mean it affectionately, as I love hobbits. The description only came to me after I overheard someone say: "What was he smoking before that interview about Federer this year?"

Watching Wilander gracefully haunt the net space, always moving forward and finding extraordinary plastic angles on the court, frequently hitting the baseline and celebrating his best points with joy, was the high point of my week. However, there were also many poignant moments provided not by the youngest, but instead by the eldest man on tour.

John McEnroe has been the heart of the Tour of Champions for ten years. He made, by far, the biggest impression on me during what may be his final appearance in the series. To me the young McEnroe, with all his neuroses on display, truly inhabited every court he walked onto, as though his life was defined by what he did out there within its dimensions, and the game being played out was life itself. McEnroe seemed to hate the game at times; he also seemed driven, looking for meaning, or perhaps validation. I often felt that he no more knew where his next shot would go than I did.

Though it's tempting to wonder whether his many protests at bad calls and arguments with umpires have become a parody, I see that he is still real. During McEnroe's emotionally-charged match against Marcelo Rios, he was overheard berating the chair after a bad call: "Do you want to give him that when he's already got seventeen years?"

Later on, McEnroe admitted that his performance wasn't all that bad. The touch and the belief are still there, but not the speed. At 2-2, 0-40 in the second set when McEnroe pulled back to deuce after two big serves and a forced error from Rios, it even looked momentarily as though he might turn the ageing tide back.

In Rios' on-court interview, it was pointed out that McEnroe could be his father, and he was asked whether he might return to the ATP tour. Rios responded that his body wouldn't hold up.

Mac's response? "Pardon me if I don't feel too bad about that right now."  McEnroe may have lost the match, but he won respect from the crowd and everything else that was important.

The somewhat anonymous eventual tournament winner, Paul Haarhuis, was seeing the ball well all week, and at the age of forty he fittingly took out took out McEnroe's 30 year-old 'conqueror', Rios; I hope Mac enjoyed that one. But I confess, I am not sure what the Champions Tour will feel like without him at its heart, if he chooses to not play again.

--Rosangel