What will I do when the Olympics end? I got into them pretty deeply this weekend when I traveled, by glamorous commuter train and Nike sneaker, to the Marriott hotel in Stamford, the financial-services capital of southeastern Connecticut. My task Friday and Saturday was to write the commentary for the medal rounds being streamed live from Beijing at nbcolympics.com. This involved receiving a 3:00 A.M. wake-up call—you know you’re doomed when the woman at the front desk laughs when you tell her the time—stumbling through the shower, sleepwalking past a P.F. Chang’s, a Kona Grill, a Capital Grille, and an H & M to the local offices of NBC, staring into a computer screen while chewing on a stack of Cheese-Its, and typing. It seemed to go well until Sunday afternoon, when I received two messages from colleagues that my comments on the gold medal match between Rafael Nadal and Fernando Gonzalez weren’t showing up on the site.
Does that sound horrible? It wasn’t. We may be hard-wired to stick to our daily routines, but maybe we’re also hard-wired to break them, as long as we don’t begin our adventures with much in the way of expectations. Is there any other explanation for why I could thoroughly enjoy two sunny summer weekend afternoons spent in a hotel room sleeping and watching TV with the blinds drawn, after working all night? Like I said, part of this was that I was offered a good dose of the novelty and wide-eyed energy of the Olympics on the web and on the tube. Who knew that happiness was an HDTV, a king-size bed, and a badminton match between doubles teams from Indonesia and China? The thought of a Yankees game right now seems hopelessly mundane, hopelessly professional.
It’s been a galvanizing and surprisingly unifying Games. They’re known as the athletic event for non-sports fans—i.e., women—but that doesn’t mean us sports fans shun them. I watched Michael Phelps break his last two records in a bar where every last person, man or woman, stopped what they were doing and raised their voices and fists in triumph. The Olympics have been open to professionals for almost two decades—the crucial shift came with the admission of the NBA’s Dream Team in 1992—but they retain an amateur enthusiasm that has come as a breath of fresh air this summer. The spirit has even conquered the NBA’s current generation, who have countered their images as spoiled tycoons by dedicating themselves to team basketball and even making their way to the water-cube to pay tribute to Phelps as regular old fans.
Before this year, I’d been skeptical of tennis’ place in the Games. Along with the Dream Teamers, the sport had helped break the Olympics’ amateur tradition by sending its pros to Seoul in 1988. Over the next 16 years, the best players on the men’s side rarely won or seemed sure of how much they should care; tennis already had its gold medals, known as the Grand Slams. I felt like that might change in Beijing, as a new generation led by Federer, Nadal, and Djokovic were obviously dedicated to the event in a way that, say, Pete Sampras never was. Federer had caught the bug in the Olympic village in Sydney in 2000, well before he became a superstar, and never lost it. Nadal and Djokovic followed his lead and made the Games a priority.
The sparse crowds through the early rounds in Beijing seemed to confirm my old skepticism, but that changed during the Nadal-Djokovic semifinal. Here you could feel how the particular once-every-four-years pressure heightened the intensity of an already intense match-up. From an historical point of view, tennis was returning to its roots. The sport and its amateur code were developed in Victorian England’s public schools; the modern Olympics took their inspiration and ethos from the same place. Tennis was included in the Games of the early 20th century, and the Grand Slams, like the Olympics, were strictly amateur until 1968.
Over the weekend, I felt lucky to be calling the matches and seeing what tennis looks like when it’s removed from the tour’s week-by-week, city-by-city, money-and-ranking-point grind, when the players are called by their countries’ names rather than their own. Watching the Russians sweep the women’s singles and Nadal, Djokovic, and Federer walk away smiling with medals made me think that tennis has stepped back a bit from the aggressive individualism that has characterized the game for the last 35 years. At the very least, this is a more public-spirited ruling class on the men’s side than we’re used to seeing. It’s hardly a coincidence that, for the first time, the top three ATP players are now involved in the tour’s governing structure.
My first match call involved Federer, who played for the doubles gold medal with Stanislas Wawrinka. Two things were notable about Federer in their win over Swedes Thomas Johansson and Simon Aspelin. First, more than in the past, Federer was able to transfer a lot of his unique creativity from the singles to the doubles court. He hit more acute angles than the other guys; he improvised with return of serve lobs; he found the open spaces between and around his opponents; and most of all he served lights-out for two sets. Second, Federer was more animated, emotional, and riled up than I’ve ever seen him. After a winning point, he’d let out a long, drawn-out, almost comical “Yeahhhh!” that wouldn’t have sounded out of place on the Beastie Boys' License to Ill. After a losing point, he’d kick the hard court in total exasperation.
Playing the Olympics meant playing for a team, which for Federer and the other top guys meant getting to play doubles without worrying about how it would affect their singles results—it was part of the deal. This had a liberating effect on Federer, and he enjoyed himself and asserted himself more than he has in months. Here’s hoping he enters the doubles at a Slam someday. He could single-handedly resurrect that version of the sport, and it might inject some badly needed swagger into his singles game. For now, seeing him celebrate with a strange ritual with Wawrinka was a lovely moment in its own right, and some justice for the guy who made Olympic tennis seem cool again in the first place.
Unlike the men, the top women have traditionally had success going for the gold. Past winners include Graf, Davenport, Venus Williams, and Henin. This year the WTA’s power vacuum allowed for a surprise champion: Elena Dementieva of Russia beat her countrywoman Dinara Safina in the gold medal match. Safina won the first set and was on the verge of forcing a tiebreaker in the second when her serve, and then her game, deserted her. She took out her frustration on her racquet in the third—like bro, like sis—and couldn’t match Dementieva’s mix of pace and consistency from the ground. I wondered whether Safina was hurt by the fact that she was playing a veteran from her own country, one who has been to two major finals. Safina must have looked up to her at some point in her career and had trouble going for the kill against her in this setting.
As for Dementieva, she suffered only a few hiccups on her serve at the end, took advantage of a draw that didn’t include Ana Ivanovic or Maria Sharapova, and made sure she won’t be remembered primarily for her disappointing final-round performances at the French and U.S. Opens a few years ago. Her gold, alongside Safina’s silver and Vera Zvonareva’s bronze, was an Olympic blast from the past. In my mind, no other country is as closely associated with the Games as Russia, and the spirit lives on its tennis players. The Russians have won the Davis Cup and Fed Cup in recent years, and both the men and women are more focused when they play in a team setting than when they’re going for individual glory.