Seeing the Foro Italico this week, whether on a 40-inch flat screen or a tiny box in the corner of my Mac at work, I’ve felt the urge to climb into the picture. The brush-stroke-red backcourts encircled by grassy amphitheatre seats. The pine trees waving above them. The slouching fans, never seated in time. The wooded hills on the other side of the club’s walls. The peculiar pink tone of the sky at dusk. If you’ve been there once, you know as a tennis fan you shouldn’t be anywhere else at the beginning of May. Two years ago, Bud Collins, nearing 80 and cane in hand, made the journey despite having just had a hip replaced. Now I know why. While I’ve come to enjoy hearing the Tennis Channel’s Robbie Koenig intone the words “Stadio Pietrangeli” in his nasal South African accent, it’s still not quite a substitute for being there.
My viewing has been scattered this time around, but I’ve seen enough to know that Rafael Nadal has betrayed no signs of weakness as of yet. His 1 and 0 demolition of Robin Soderling Thursday reminded me of his form during the second week of the French Open last year. With Nadal, you don’t worry about him peaking too soon in spring; he starts at a peak and climbs from there. Over at ESPN.com I speculate about who has the best chance of doing the seemingly impossible and beating him on clay. I can’t claim that the numbers really add up. I’m not a stats guy; I always feel like they’re telling me what I already know.
As for the rest of the field, Djokovic looks like he has the old hunger and pragmatism back. These two attributes are always delicately balanced within him, but for now he using both to play his best tennis of the season. His semi against Roger Federer tomorrow should be something to see. Federer has been making everything look routine, so I can’t tell how he will hold up against the inevitable challenge of playing an in-form Djokovic. The Serb gets to him—it’s no accident that Federer’s racquet-shattering performance last month came in a match against him. While I would favor Djokovic from a playing perspective, I think Federer will be determined to get a win here and make something positive happen before the French Open. Still, I picked Djokovic to reach the final, so I’ll stick with him.
Aside from that, I was unable to produce any grand pronouncements about men’s tennis, clay, or the state of the world this week. Sometimes, as hard as you might try to analyze it, a tennis match remains a tennis match and nothing much more. So I went to the YouTube well and found a new and relatively rich vein of old world tennis, Italian-style.
I’d searched for months for clips of 70s hero Adriano Panatta and hadn't found anything until yesterday. I was particularly curious because I didn't think I’d ever seen him play—all I knew were the photos of him in mid-air in pursuit of a volley, the story of Jimmy Connors beating him at Flushing Meadows with a backhand around the net post, and the descriptions of his battles with Bjorn Borg in Rome and Paris. I did know that Panatta was a favorite of the tennis writers of the day for his elegant stroke making and sad-faced artistry.
I’ll start with the clip of him playing Borg above, from the 1976 French Open; the second, below, is from the Rome final two years later. There are other videos of Panatta available, including long ones of him at the French Open in ’73 and ’80, and a shorter clip of him winning it all at the French in ’76.
—The highlights above detail that rarest of events, a loss by Bjorn Borg at Roland Garros. Panatta was the only man to beat him there, in 1973 and again in ’76. From the brief evidence here, he seems to have done it by avoiding the long baseline rally at any cost. He serves and volleys, which is to be expected, but he also brought Borg to the net, where he wasn’t comfortable, and passed him. I suppose it’s the only way to beat a more accomplished tennis player: Take him out of his comfort zone. It’s like a basketball team refusing to be beaten by the other’s team’s best shooter.
—I didn’t realize the pros still spun their racquets before a match as late as 1976. I can’t remember ever seeing that before.
—Watching the Panatta backhand, you see what the fuss was about. His slice has an elegance that’s reminiscent of Federer’s. He keeps his head down on the ball all the way through his swing, à la Fed, and exaggerates the follow-through. The topspin verison of this shot is just as beautiful and natural, a supple, perfectly timed flick that he looks like he was born to hit. Panatta seems to come alive when he gets a backhand. His forehand, which he hits with an open stance and a half-swing, looks almost perfunctory and half-hearted by comparison, as if he wished the ball had come to his backhand.
—Someone in the comments below this clip describes Panatta as “Nastase without the antics.” The comparison seems right. Their one-handed backhands in particular were worth the price of admission. I’m not against the two-hander, and I think it can be just as beautiful to watch when it’s hit well. But it can never be as versatile. Players like Nastase and Panatta gave you two elegant shots for the price of one.
Otherwise, the biggest difference between the tennis on display here and the tennis played now is physicality—Panatta seems almost to be walking around the court compared to the way Nadal covers it today. That may be why we think of the game as being more artistic in the past. We tend to think of anything “physical” as not being artful. It’s a false dichotomy, but it persists. It’s easy to see why when you see Panatta’s backhand.
—It’s hard to think of a more glamorous moment in tennis than the sight of Panatta walking off a winner against Borg. The dark shirt, the lank shoulder-length hair, the towel around the neck, the walk through gauntlet of cheering fans, the cocky smile, the cockier drink from the green bottle, the last look up into crowd: Panatta saw himself as a tennis hero as much as a player, and no one has ever looked the part the way he did that day.
Here is the hero in front of his own people, in Rome, trying to slay the ice king again two years later. The first thing that strikes me about this clip is how ancient it looks in black and white. It feels like you’re watching a strange ritual from another civilization. That feeling is only enhanced by the pre-match ceremony where Borg and Panatta stand at attention, one in the deuce court, the other in the ad court. History happens quickly, especially in tennis.
Paradoxically, by showing us the sport’s past as it actually happened, YouTube makes it seem less and less useful to argue that tennis needs to go back to the way it used to be played. You can see now that those days are long over, and no adjustment in, say, court speed today will bring back the Adriano Panattas of the world. We've got the Nadals and Federers instead, and I'm happy to take them.
—The previous day, Roman fans had hurled coins at Jose Higueras until he’d given them the equivalent of the finger and walked off in the second set. They look ready to roast Borg, too. They would do some hurling this day as well, but Borg's icily controlled reactions eventually cowed them.
—Panatta slides longer distances on clay than just about anyone I’ve seen.
—We talk about the open stance as a new development, but Panatta hit his forehand while facing the net. Why do Italian players so often look like they’re caressing the ball as much as hitting it? Was there one tennis teacher somewhere in the country who taught this technique, and it filtered out from there over the years, sort of like the king of Spain who inspired a nationwide lisp?
—Again, it appears that Panatta didn’t rush headlong to the net when he played Borg. He was able to chip and charge on clay, something pretty much unheard of for the last 25 years, but he seems to have mixed offense and defense with the ultimate purpose of keeping Borg off-balance. He obviously had the talent to make it work, just not the consistency or the mentality to do it every day.
—In the end, Borg fought off Panatta and the crazies—“cretini” is what the chair umpire called them during the 1978 tournament, as in “Silenzio, cretini!”—and he won in his customary style: Lose the first set 6-1, come back to triumph in five. He was a marathoner in disguise. I wonder if Borg would have been hurt by the move to 2-out-3 setters? In '78, I believe every round was 3-of-5.
—My favorite Panatta story comes from Toronto tennis writer Tom Tebbutt, who loved the Italian’s game. He remembers Borg lifting a winning lob over Panatta's head. As the ball came down well inside the baseline, Panatta turned around, saw where it was heading, and made a face like a baby about to burst into tears.
The hero, the baby, the sad-faced artist. I’m glad I finally got to see the man in action.
Enjoy the weekend. I'm going to do my best to appreciate the sport and it’s personalities while they’re still performing their art for us.