The days are flying by here, in a steady torrent of words tapped out my small keyboard. Every night the press room empties little by little until all that’s left are the American and Canadian reporters. Their deadlines are much later in the U.S. because of the time difference. You might think this is a blessing, but I’d say most of the writers would call it a curse as they’re mulling over their copy for the 100th time at 11:00 P.M. I know the feeling. I have no deadlines at all, so of course there I was last night at 10:45, staring into my laptop and cogitating on the finer points of the Nadal-Gulbis match that had ended eight hours earlier.
Before all the days fly by—Pete Bodo will be taking my desk on Monday—allow me to go on another spin through the old dog-eared notebook and see what tidbits have gathered there recently.
—Most groan-inducing line in the Brit tabloids this morning, from Oliver Holt of the Daily Mirror: “Credit Andy Murray with an absence of Malisse at Wimbledon.” I probably should have known something like that was coming. The headline of the story was, “Ruthless Murray fires warning to big guns.” Beating Malisse in straight sets hardly seems to qualify as a “warning.”
Wait, I just found a bigger groaner than Holt’s, in the same paper: “After beating a clown called Malisse, Andy Murray must do some Haas-kicking.” This only seems awful if you know the song being alluding to, the Jam’s old hit “Town Called Malice.” Actually, maybe this line isn’t that bad after all. It took a lot of work.
—Tim Henman, BBC commentator, agrees with our James Martin that less is more in the booth: “There’s no point in saying something for the hell of it.” Well said, Tiger Tim. The Daily Mirror gives Tim a thumb’s up, saying that “housewives are swooning” over him.
—At the end of his match yesterday, Murray entertained the crowd by bouncing a ball around soccer-style on his feet and legs. In the U.S., we might call this playing “hacky” as in hacky-sack. One writer in the Daily Mail today referred to it, in inimitable Brit style, as “keepy-uppy.”
—What do you think of Janko Tipsarevic? He scares the tabloids here a little—the Daily Mail’s Alan Fraser referred to him today as a “bizarre-looking intellectual” who was a “strange sight in his dark-rimmed glasses, black beard, and nose strip.” But it was all redeemed by the headline writer: “Tipsarevic turns Roddick exit into an odd spectacle.” I had to read that three times before I got the pun.
Really, though, Tipsarevic is a great interview and a smart guy, maybe the most personable of the highly personable Serbian contingent. He answers everything in a straightforward, thoughtful way. You know the question that’s always asked after an athlete wins something big: “How do you feel?” It’s virtually an impossible question to answer with any depth on the spot, so the athlete usually falls back on a cliché. Here’s how Tipsarevic answered the same question yesterday:
“It’s stupid to say I didn’t believe that I won. But I was really, really happy. But the biggest happiness that I feel in myself is when I come to the locker room and I talk about the match.
"The best emotion and the pride you feel, that you played the last four sets at a top level against the ex-No. 1, is in the locker room when you come back and your emotions are down and your brain starts to work.”
Nice, huh? The guy must be a closet writer.
—Roddick was also good in his presser yesterday. No attitude, no bluff, no anger. He was just spent and painfully realistic in his assessment that he had blown the big points. He compared his experiences at Slams these days to his experience of winning the Open in 2003: It’s like being in the front row at a Stones concert one time, and then the next time you’re in the eighth row with a tall guy standing in front of you.
In other words, Roddick's early victory makes his current defeats all the more bitter. He knows what he’s missing.
—In London’s more respectableTimes today, one of their tennis writers, admiring the way Nadal hasn’t given in to the fashion gimmicks at Wimbledon, came up with a tab-worthy description of his clothes: “He's been busting this short-order chef look for a number of years, but hand him some credit for persisting with it in the face of broad indifference.”
—The Times also features the distinguished tennis writer Simon Barnes. He’s always a good read, though I think many of his assessments of why players won or lost are wrong-headed and light on match-play substance (it’s the good-read part that counts, though, right?). He generally sits at the center of the press section, conspicuous in a tan suit, tan hat, gray ponytail, and scraggly gray stubble. So I was a little surprised when he opened his column today with this: “I wonder what it is like to wake up and find that you have turned into a sex god. I’d love to find out.”
—It’s a bracing experience to sit in the player-friend section on a small side court. Almost all the pros, man or woman, look over after most points and make intense eye contact. Their coaches and girlfriends lean forward, pump their fists, nod their heads vigorously, and bark sounds of encouragement—these are very weird in Czech—after nearly every point. On Tuesday, as Mario Ancic walked back to return serve before the first game of his first round, his coach caught his eye. He shouted “Come on!” in a harsh, gravelly voice and made the hardest fist he could make. This was at the start of a three-out-of-five-set match.
While the rest of the crowd at Wimbledon sits on their hands and watches in a slightly torpid silence, there’s a war going on in front of them between the two players and their camps.
—Veteran tennis journalist Gianni Clerici is in my row in the press room. He’s the Bud Collins of Italy, but I didn’t know how famous he was until I saw a family, all sporting Italia soccer gear, walk past the press windows and spot him. The father pointed, the family smiled with excitement, and they snapped photos. Clerici never noticed. Every journalist’s secret fantasy.
—In the Wimbledon village this morning, Mark Knowles was eating breakfast with his young son at a table on the sidewalk. I thought he would go unnoticed, but two fans stopped to shake his hand. Is this every doubles specialist’s secret fantasy?
—Fashion watch:
Players: Warm-ups, bright sneakers
Young female fans: Tights, dancers shoes
Young male fans: Backpacks, hair ascending
Journalists: Checked button-down shirts
Agents: Green blazers, jeans or slacks, loafers, hair product
Players' companions: Big sunglasses
Agents' companions: Bigger sunglasses
—I have to hand it to Florida journalist Charlie Bricker. At the end of the second set of Nadal-Gulbis yesterday, he said to a Spanish reporter next to me that Rafa had moved back to return second serves, the way he does on clay, and that had been the difference. Really, I thought? I’d watched the match like a hawk and hadn’t noticed this basic move?
Gulbis, in his presser, also said that Nadal had made an adjustment on his serve, but he couldn’t figure out what it was. Bricker let him on the secret. Gulbis thanked him. Later, Nadal himself said that he had moved back on Gulbis’ second serve and that had been a big factor in turning things around. Lesson learned: If you want to understand a tennis match, watch it closely, but watch closely for the simple things. Call it the Occam’s Razor theory of sportswriting—the simplest explanation is usually the right one.
—Marat Safin has been dubbed, inevitably, “Mental Marat” by the Brit tabs. I forgot to mention the best quote from his post-win press conference on Wednesday. He was asked whether he was willing to recant his negative comments about the tournament.
Q: What do you remember of the things you’ve said about Wimbledon last year and in the recent past, and how do you feel about Wimbledon now?
MS: What did I say? The strawberries are too expensive. It’s true. They don’t have enough for dessert. It’s true.
—Seen at James Blake’s match: John Mayer, with tattoos, looking a lot like Gavin Rossdale. He was part of a mini J-Block that was here with Blake. They irritated his opponent, Rainer Schuettler, a few times yesterday. But that’s like shooting fish in a barrel.
—Rafael Nadal’s presser yesterday ended this way:
Q: What are your expectations for the [soccer] game tonight that Spain will be in?
RN: Win.
Q: Any other details that you’re looking for?
RN: Only win.
Does Al Davis need a new quarterback? Or middle linebacker?
—Yesterday I lost my sweater somewhere. This morning I asked if anyone had turned it in at the local Starbucks. The woman at the counter went into a back room. She came out and asked, “Was it a Cardigan, with buttons down the front?”
“No,” I said, definitively. I walked out shaking my head: Did she think I was the type of guy who would walk around in public in a Cardigan?
Insert wink emoticon here.