There’s dissension in the ranks of Robert Kendrick’s rooting section.
“Come on, Robert, be scrappy!” one of them yells, to the dismay of the woman down the bench from him, who may or may not be his sister.
“Uh . . . scrappy?”
Whatever the merits of the word, it seems to help. Kendrick, the athletic, dangerous, flawed veteran qualifier from California, breaks serve soon after.
“That’s it, Kendo,” another member of his crew yells, “just play the game, just relax and play the game. That’s all you have to do!”
Kendrick flashes a gleaming American smile in his direction. His top teeth blend together into one long white line. He wishes tennis were that easy.
Kendrick and his opponent, Gael Monfils, have made Court 11, one of the larger side courts on the Open grounds, feel like center court for the day. Ashe, as usual for a first-week day session, is blowout central. Outside of the luxury suites, it’s a ghost town. The smart fans have spotted their chance to see a player of Monfils’ considerable entertainment skills up close, and they’ve taken it. Every seat is filled on Court 11 at the start of the match, and as it progresses through three hours and five sets, the people keep coming. By the end, they're sitting in the aisles and standing on benches. It’s a day-spanning match, beginning in broiling heat around noon and lasting all the way until the sun begins its descent and the light begins to go golden on the trees around the court. For those three hours, not a whole lot changes. People mill, players run, sneakers squeak, and planes circle their way around the grounds and toward La Guardia. The sight of them floating just off in the distance still gives me a slight sense of relief. I'll never forget how ugly and jarringly disruptive those jets were when they ripped right over the courts—1700 of them a day in the 1980s. Their scarred undersides looked like the bellies of titanic rusted dolphins.
When I saw that Monfils was going to be on 11, I kind of imagined him being too big for the court. Not physically, but athletically. Somehow I could see him leaping for a backhand out wide and bounding right over the stands. And while that never quite happens today, it doesn’t take long for Monfils, who’s wearing a somehow-appropriate skintight sleeveless shirt and long check shorts, to get his freaky show on the road. On the first point I see, he hurls himself into the air for an overhead, as if he’s doing a long jump. When the crowd lets out a long collective oooh, he hams it up a little more, hitting a cute forehand volley behind Kendrick. It’s an unnecessary shot, but it works anyway. More than that, it shows the possibilities that exist in tennis if you’re willing to let your flair get in the way of your chances of winning. Nobody explores those possibilities more fully—and foolishly—than Monfils.
But he’s not the only performer out here today. In his own way, Kendrick is one as well. A relentless self-berater and frustrated mumbler, he brings to the surface the inner turmoil that most tennis players feel. Kendrick isn’t a natural showman; after one bad miss, he waits too long before finally deciding to flip his racquet to the backstop. The timing of the whole thing is off, it looks tacked on and unnecessary, and he loses the chance for catharsis that a really good racquet throw can provide. But this awkwardness only makes Kendrick seem more genuine. He dramatizes the typcial conflict that goes on inside our heads: How, exactly, should I react to a bad miss?; and, more important, how do I keep control of myself? You can see the fight for control in every aspect of Kendrick’s body language.
They split the first two sets, but when Monfils wins the third it appears that he’s going to leave his lower-ranked opponent behind. Kendrick has always had the physical gifts, but there’s a busyness to his game that makes it inefficient. There’s something extra, something not quite perfectly streamlined, both in his strokes and in the way he gets around the court. Monfils simply looks like he has more time to set up and hit the ball. But while Kendrick doubles faults on a couple of crucial occasions, I feel like the set is decided not by his failure, but by one extraordinary shot from Monfils, one that the American, as well as 99.9 percent of all players, will never hit in his career. On the first point at 2-2 in the third, Kendrick serves, comes in behind it, and snaps a very good volley crosscourt. Monfils, by some miracle, moves forward (his long legs gobble up ground effortlessly), cuts the ball off with his backhand, and flips it back crosscourt. Kendrick, stunned, nets the volley and is eventually broken. That in a nutshell, is the difference between a qualifier and a Top 20 player. The qualifier has a complete game; he does everything you can ask of a player. But what defines the Top 20 guy, and what separates him from the journeyman, is his ability to do what no one can ask, to do the unbelievable.
As we know, Monfils loves the unbelievable way too much. He relies on it. Up 2-0 in the fourth-set tiebreaker, a victory and a shower in his sights, he chooses to hit a jumping backhand. He misses it, Kendrick get his teeth into the tiebreaker, and goes on to play his best tennis of the day to close out the set. The match has reached a crescendo; the fans are on their feet.
The only trouble is, neither player has much left for the fifth. Monfils stops running after balls and is broken for 1-2. After double faulting to end that game, Monfils walks to the sideline in a daze, and Kendrick looks destined to pull the upset when he goes up 40-15 for a 3-1 lead. But getting a glimpse of the finish line can do funny things to a player. Kendrick, with a double-fault and a netted forehand, proceeds to give back his serve. Oddly, even as he loses the lead, he stops berating himself. It doesn’t help; he needs the inner conflict. In the final game, he nervously short-arms his backhand for the first time all day and loses the set and the match 6-4.
As for Monfils, he saves one more miracle for the final set. Time after time, he hits drop shots from behind the baseline—exactly where you aren’t supposed to try it—and then stands still to admire his (admittedly beautiful) shot, rather than running forward. Noticing this, Kendrick drops him back. No matter: Whatever spot Monfils starts running from, he can always catch up to a drop shot. He essentially shrinks a tennis court to the size of a squash court. What can you, or I, or Robert Kendrick do against the unbelievable.
After the final point, Monfils blows out his lips in relief, while Kendrick looks down at the court, his fingers pinched over his nose. He’s lost the marathon after three hours, and he doesn’t know how to react. Afterward, Monfils says he played poorly, and that he fought himself all day. But, French showman that he is, he also says that over the last few games, he looked around at the crowd, and the grounds, and maybe even the planes overhead, and he couldn't help but enjoy the moment, win or lose.
“OK, it’s a game,” he thought, “it’s a great game.”
Joy, flair, confusion, the awkwardly real and the unbelievable, all came to the side courts today. The U.S. Open is on.