Rafael Nadal d. Tomas Berdych (6-7, 7-6, 6-4, 6-3)
Well, that was an adventure.
First, I struggled to find enough free hours to watch
Rafa-style slam tennis. Nadal does
present a fan with scheduling issues—nonetheless my inner-artsy-type loves that his fiery matches need an extra-long time in the kiln. Rafael Nadal has refined the art of delayed gratification. Second, I made the mistake of watching the
first set-and-a-half of the Roger Federer/Juan Martin del Potro quarterfinal beforehand.
Not that I wasn’t impressed, of course. Roger looks like he’s bringing Mary Poppins’ carpet-bag-of-tricks to all
his matches so far; he’s been practically
perfect in every way.
When I watched Novak Djokovic defeat Lleyton Hewitt on
Monday, I suspected that Novak had sucked all the tennis-aura out of the Australian
atmosphere and into his shiny-black-clad self. But watching Federer handle del
Potro’s furious forehand and serve tennis balls like he was born to the motion, I realized
that there’s still plenty of magic-dust clinging to to Roger’s aura too. If I squinted
hard, I could almost see it, shimmering on Fed’s forelock as he shook off the
memory of an error made, or a point lost. Sometimes when Roger does his
post-point head toss, he looks like he’s in denial, as if he’s attempting to reject
the truth of imminent failure. But other times, yesterday being one of those
times, the head-toss looks supremely confident. Maybe there’s a subtle lift in
the tilt of his chin, or perhaps it’s because his shoulders are squared with self-assurance,
but whatever the difference, when Roger’s winning, the head toss looks like perfect mental technique—as if he’s
playing the high-stakes sport with complete calm and without the burden of “memory and desire.”[1]
I couldn't help but question: Even if Rafa should make his way through Tomas, he would
surely smack his racquet into the hard wall of perfection that is Roger
Federer, right? Thus I arrived to my spectatorship of Rafael Nadal’s quarterfinal entirely without “the
calm,” and overburdened with 2011
memories and desires. What, I thought to myself, was the guarantee that Rafa
would be able to beat Tomas anyway? Why had I felt so certain of his chances? After all, Tomas is serving so well. It's a night match and Rafa’s ball would probably only bounce high enough to land in
Berd’s wheelhouse of punishment. Rafa will be anxious and superstitious about
being injured in a third straight quarterfinal down under. He won’t care whether
or not he wins, because Rafa only wanted to defend his quarterfinal points
before heading back to Mallorca anyway… and so on. Thus did I fabricate painful
truths and forecast tennis-doom with startling aplomb.
My anxiety was not lessened by the programming folks at
ESPN. I’d DVR-ed the match, which actually took place in the middle of the
California night. (Incidentally, one no longer “records” television shows,
right? One does something to them involving “DVR.” But is DVR already a verb,
or must it be “verberized,” like so many other words in American English? We
are a people of action, people!) When I turned on the television mid-day on
Tuesday (Wednesday in Australia) with the intention of watching the match from the beginning—it was already on. Eek. ESPN must have been showing a replay.
Immediately, I squinted my eyes shut, the same way Nadal does when he misses a
forehand he went for and should have nailed. But it wasn’t fast enough.There on the screen was a slo-mo, fist-pumping Rafa. And
there, on the giant ESPN scoreboard (was it always so big?) were many sets worth of numbers. At least
six or seven it seemed. Or possibly eight. So. Not a straight sets victory... but not a straight
sets loss either. I couldn’t help but try to make sense of the numbers I’d avoided seeing clearly just seconds ago. Was it four sets? Or five? Was Rafa down
1-2 in the fifth? Or up 2-1 in the fourth?
As I struggled, like a mole on a sunny day, to find the play
button without sharpening my focus enough to make the score line fully legible,
I hummed. Loudly. But not even an off-key rendition of The Cure’s Friday I’m in Love is capable of drowning out the enthusiasm of Brad Gilbert, the tennis’s most jovial (and
detail-oriented) commentator. (At the start of the Fed/DelPo match
Brad cheerfully told us, without a hint of tongue-in-cheek, that the
temperature would drop 10 degrees in the next 37 minutes. How does he know these things?) As Rafael Nadal’s bicep contracted slowly, very slowly—the slo-mo is off the charts
this year— signaling the champion’s determination to win (or not to lose, I couldn’t be sure!), BG compared Rafael Nadal to the basketball star, Kobe Bryant. I hummed
louder. But I also wondered, why is
he making that comparison? Is it because Kobe has a reputation for being a
cold-blooded assassin? A clutch player? Or is it because he tasted bitter failure just when
everyone expected the most success? But before I found out, I found the play button.
With a sigh that was equal parts relief and anxiety, we were back at the
beginning.
A few hours later I would come to understand that Rafa was
up two sets to one, and two games to one, when Brad Gilbert said that Rafa and Kobe make similar “sneer
faces.” But I had to get through two tie-breaks, a barrelful of disastrous line
calls (one of which could be credited with costing Rafa the first breaker), handfuls of tension—and
then some— before I found out that the Kobe comparison was entirely superficial. But by then it was too late, I'd already developed my “Nada Berd
Kobe Hypothesis.”
All through the first two sets I used the Kobe reference as
an emotional salve. Brad must have
been making a reference to Kobe on account of the basketball star’s reputation
as a closer, a cold-blooded assassin, a ruthless winner… but even as I quieted my
nerves with the Kobe-comparison, I was sure it didn’t fit. Aside from Nadal’s
wonderful third set adjustment to his return position, the mid-match
discovery of his killer-forehand, his well-timed serve & volley
#sneakattacks, and the overall re-emergence of scintillating tennis and “the
calm,” there was something else about Rafa’s game that I was very happy to see. Call it positive energy, passion or bounce. Call it happiness, love or
fistpumping-like-you-mean-it. Nadal called it called it “character.” He said
that his on-court mind-set was “perfect”—and it showed. In the latter parts of 2011, and some of the earlier parts as well, Nadal seemed to be trying to convince himself of his own passion. Not so yesterday. It came naturally, and arrived just when he needed it.
Following up on my highly
sophisticated yet hardly serious, Lope
Nada Theorem, the “Nada Berd Kobe
Hypothesis” postulates that when Rafael Nadal brings his best “character” to
the court, his tennis is more than clutch, it’s heartwarming—for us, and for
him.
Kobe and Tomas both have a chill demeanor that is admirable
in its focused energy, but also gives their sporting attitude a mercurial
coolness. Does Kobe fight for his team, or for his own glory? Tomas has massive talent and clearly wants to win,
but pays little attention to whether he makes friends or enemies of his audience in the
process (Gael
being Berdych’s natural opposite in this tendency). As he closed out his quarterfinal victory, Rafa started to “feel the
ball” wonderfully well, but he also seemed to feel the fullness
of his own “character.” If I’m judging the Roger/Rafa semifinal on the tennis alone,
I’d still give the edge to the practically
perfect Roger Federer. But if I invoke the basic premise of the Nada Berd Kobe Hypothesis, Rafa has a
good chance of countering perfect tennis with “perfect character” —and also some
high, heavy forehands to Roger’s one-handed backhand.
Post Script: Speaking of “character,” as I type (way past my bedtime here, folks) David Ferrer is showing Novak Djokvic the full Chili Pepper Effect. He's down a set, but so far he's made Novak run more than Dean Karnazes on a Sunday morning. Respect. (Fine, Respect to both.) It's great stuff. To quote Darren Cahill, “it's like tennis on skates.”
Photos: Getty; AP; AP
[1]
This quotation is taken from the work of WR Bion (1897-1979), a brilliant and
strange psychoanalyst, who wrote creatively and with remarkable insight into
the workings of “groups.” I’m mentioning him here because there was some
discussion
in the comments about the way tennis fans “hold” different aspects of a player’s
experience in the process of identifying with their favorite.
Bion’s theory is drawn, in part, from his experience
as a Tank Commander in WWI, so he was well-versed in the raw, embattled
and primitive aspects of the psyche. Among his many contributions is a
concept he called “valency,” which changed the way psychoanalysis conceives of
group dynamics. He believed that a person was "valent", or susceptible to a
particular type of experience in groups and that a person is unconsciously drawn
to playing that particular role in a group time and time again—perhaps in an
effort to understand, on an experiential level, a particular past trauma or unmetabolized piece of personal history. (For
example, Tomas Berdych appears to be drawn to attracting the ire of “the
group.” This experience is clearly unpleasant for him, yet he repeats it, why?) Anyway,
Bion is a fascinating, if not an easy-to-understand read for those of you
interested in the psychology of group experience. For those of you who are
interested, but not perhaps into heavy theory, I’ll try to relate Bion to
things-tennis at some point in the future—but I have to admit, writers far more
experienced than I have tried, and failed, to make Wilfred Bion fit for general
consumption.
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