Fifteen years ago, the great English writer and tennis fan Martin Amis wrote a “Shouts & Murmurs” humor column for The New Yorker entitled, “Tennis Personalities.” In it, he responded to pundits’ intermittent call for more “personalities” in the sport thusly: “…if, from now on, I can put ‘personality’ between quotation marks, and use it as an exact synonym of a seven-letter duosyllable starting with ‘a’ and ending with ‘e’ (and also featuring, in order of appearance, an ‘ss,’ an ‘h,’ an ‘o,’ and an ‘l,’ why, then ‘personality’ and I are going to get along just fine.” He then went on to rail against the bad behavior of “complete personalities” Ilie Nastase, Jimmy Connors, John McEnroe and a pre-maturation Andre Agassi.
Point well taken. But let’s tweak the debate and discuss “characters.” Tennis has had some wonderful characters over the years. I’m thinking of the German pro Karsten Braasch, who used to smoke cigarettes during changeovers and once beat the Williams sisters a set each after a morning spent in part drinking shandies. The chest-bumping Jensen brothers, in which the hyperactive, pony-tailed, ambidextrous one who served equally well with each hand (Luke) was the more conventional sibling; speaking relatively and objectively, the odder duck was Murphy, no less hyperactive but also surely the only tennis player to date — and conceive a child with — one of Mike Tyson’s ex-wives, Robin Givens. Then there’s my personal favorite, the phlegmatic, Kafka-esque Miloslav Mecir, who once during a match with Ivan Lendl made fun of his opponent’s anal-retentiveness about on-court towel placement. (Check it out on YouTube.)
No doubt you have your own favorite oddball, goofball, anti-establishment tennis figure. Chances are ever-more-likely that he or she (more likely he) resides in the ever-more-distant past. A glance through the ATP Top 50 shows two, maybe three players you’d be curious to watch on, say, “Late Night with David Letterman”: Novak Djokovic (this is giving him the benefit of the doubt — the imitations of Federer, Nadal, Sharapova, et al were hilarious, but he often seems merely snide); Gael Monfils, whose hair and flair suggest a free spirit; the spectacled, pierced, fashion-forward Jarko Tipsarevic.
You know it’s bad when buttoned-up golf, the sport I’ve covered most closely since Amis’ essay, now has it all over tennis in the “characters” department. There’s the hillbilly hero Boo Weekley. Mullet-sporting California dude Charley Hoffman. Headband-wearing Ryan Moore. Heartthrob Camilo Villegas, who contorts himself into a “Superman” position to read the greens. Bon vivant rookie James Nitties, who listed “clubbing, girls and movies” as his hobbies in the PGA Tour bio. These are just off the top of my head.
All of which begs the question: Why? Maybe it’s just the normal ebb-and-flow of such things. But I fear that as the money in tennis has increased, and both the sport and its schedule have become more demanding, success requires single-mindedness antithetical to the loosey-goosey personality. Modern golf has evolved in a similar fashion to tennis, with more academy-trained, gym-going, diet-conscious players at the highest levels, but the game by its nature — non-aerobic, more taxing mentally and emotionally than physically — permits considerable variance in persona.
It’s wonderful that the Nadal-Federer rivalry has brought tennis back to center stage. Now all I want is a few more off-center characters as part of the show. Where is the next Karsten Braasch?
Evan Rothman is a golf and tennis writer who lives in Dutchess County, New York.