Can you follow two tennis matches on two different screens at once? No problem, right? You’ve been working and Tweeting and streaming and IM-ing and talking on your cell phone at the same time since you were in ninth grade, right?
Next question: Can you listen to two sets of commentators at once? This may constitute the true test of the tennis fan in 2013, as well as the next level in multi-tasking.
If so, it’s a test I failed on Monday afternoon. After trying to hear Mark Knowles of the Tennis Channel on my television, and Sam Smith of Eurosport on my computer, call simultaneous matches from Miami, I had to admit that my ears haven’t learned to flick from one conversation to another the way my eyes can flick from match to match. All I got was an incomprehensible tangle of verbiage.
That I would even attempt such a thing can be seen as a sign of what the tennis fan’s life has come to during weeks like these. When a big dual-gender event like the Sony Open is on, you can find yourself, depending on how many video-streaming devices you own, trying to look in three directions at once.
Here’s a rundown of what I saw from Key Biscayne, on laptop, television, and Twitter, on Monday. It was an immersive day of tennis, and we were rewarded with our share of major comebacks and violent mood swings.