Good morning! This Your Call is being written by Asad Raza. Some of you guys might remember me; I used to post a lot more. (I even wrote some bad poetry, before highpockets came along to put things right.) These days, for reasons of time deficit, I am restricted to lurking most of the time. But do I lurk! Some amazing discussions were had in the wake of the AO final, huh? The rivalry of those two finalists is a saga being written before our eyes. It has the epic character that makes you think life really does imitate art. But with the added bonus of complete and true unpredictability. All we really know is that the sun will come up every morning for the next few billion years, and as long as it does, that tennis will be played by the Eternal Man, i.e. Fabrice Santoro. Then the sun will turn into a red giant and swallow Santoro whole. And that's all we know.
For me, however, the most compelling spectacle of the Aussie Open was that of Jelena Dokic fighting her way through the draw (ciao, Todd and In Charge!). I felt like I was watching a warrior unfrozen from a block of ice, hitting flat groundstrokes and pattycake serves from the Selessic Era, fighting and clawing for survival against futuristic tennis drones--not to be too uncomplimentary to the current top players. But they do look drone-ish compared to Dokic, who has the kind of palpably grizzled spirit that only comes from facing true adversity, from having gone through the experience of nearly never coming back. There was true grit in her eyes. I found that much more emotionally compelling than the experience of wondering whether Ana Ivanovic will win a second Slam. You started watching one of Dokic's matches and you just couldn't stop. Know what I mean? Or perhaps this is simply a function of my getting well into my thirties: I suppose can relate better now to second acts than to first ones.
Speaking of raging against the dying of the light, I played tennis last week. Heh. The new indoor tennis facility at the USTABJKNTC in Flushing Meadows is open, and it is, to use the USTA's preferred marketing phrase, fricking awesome. I went out there with my compatriot (we're both American, maaaaan) Andrew Friedman, and the place is just Rolls-Royce-d out. 12 perfect courts, sofas everywhere, big photos of all the former champions, and locker rooms that are indistinguishable from the players locker rooms in Arthur Ashe stadium. The floors are carpeted! The lockers are wood! Patrick McEnroe and Donald Young were wandering around the facility while we were there, just hanging out; that seemed unsurprising somehow. What was more amazing was that us plebes got to play in such an atmosphere! And it's only thirty-eight bucks an hour, which for indoor tennis in New York City is what I'd call, uh, "crazy."
Anyway, we got some good practice in after a winter of my game's falling into rusty disrepair. Sad, isn't it, when you KNOW you can execute a shot, and then it turns out you simply can't? "But, I ALWAYS make that crosscourt forehand pass!" Even worse, I've developed a case of the yips. On three separate occasions, I've had serving performances that Mackey Sasser would have sympathized with (look it up, non-Mets fans!). Frau Dementieva would have looked away in disgust. And this, sadly was one of those days. I gritted my teeth and tried my best to play through it. I was thinking of Uncle Toni's reportedly training his nephew by making him hit with flat balls, on crappy courts, etc.--it seems a good lesson in putting your head down and playing with what you have on the day. And it did improve. I even scraped out an ugly victory. So: dance with what brung ya and such.
Have a great day, friends! Here's hoping you get a chance to make it out to the indoor courts at the U.S. Open site sometime.
--Asad Raza