ESTORIL, Portugal?The other night, unable to sleep, I watched the modern triumph of the B-movie art that is Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus in which a prehistoric megalodon and a, well, giant octopus are unfrozen from an iceberg and eat an oil rig, a plane, the Golden Gate bridge and various other things before they destroy each other in mortal combat. A couple of delicious caipirinhas the next day led to comparing this cinematic tour de force to the Fedal era, in which two titanic competitors grapple and at times seem to reduce the rest of the field to the status of minnows, leaving wrecked careers and might-have-beens strewn about the place like so much collateral damage.
Of course, that analogy is a product of my affection for the bit players who get lost in the scuffle. But the drive to divide the tennis world into heroes and villains is fundamental to the narrative instinct which drives any tennis fan?s interest in a particular player or even the sport in general. The cliché of the unemotional, mechanical Swede fuels many fans? approach to Robin Soderling, and like most clichés, it?s common currency for a reason. Watching Robin Soderling?s relentless hours of practice over the past few days and observing his demolition of Jeremy Chardy in the first and third sets Wednesday, it?s easy to think he?s a robot like the Terminator or Futurama?s Destructor. There?s something so weighty about his tennis, driving his feet into the clay and pounding down those heavy serves. All the joints are visibly working and at times you can almost hear the clank of metal parts as he adjusts his body for the next shot.
Whatever wiring drives him, it?s misfiring today. Suffering an Achilles injury incurred during Davis Cup as well as illness, he lost in the third round in both Indian Wells and Miami and in the second round in Barcelona. All of which is no doubt responsible for his frantic practicing since arriving in Estoril, but when Soderling?s game goes wrong, it really goes wrong. Unlucky by his own admission not to break at the beginning of the second set, he can?t serve it out when he has the chance and the tiebreak is a feast of unforced errors. His shots aren?t anywhere close to being in, blasting off randomly in all directions like bullets from a rifle with a bent barrel. For a brief, shining moment, an upset seems possible and the crowd embraces it with enthusiasm. Part of that is no doubt rooted in the fact that Jeremy Chardy is swashbuckling for all he is worth. Handsome, hard-hitting, darting about the court, with a slow service motion that has something in common with drawing a bow, he could easily be the dashing hero that slays the lumbering behemoth. Unfortunately, he doesn?t have Soderling?s gravity, losing himself in an argument with the umpire and giving the top seed time to pull himself together. Teeth start to mesh again, internal gears are grinding and those sequences of battering forehands are landing in the court one after another again. In the end, Chardy is lucky to scrape a game in the last set.
During the match, the big screen shows a close-up of Soderling?s tennis shoe where his engagement ring is threaded through his shoelace (as it has been for every match since his engagement to Jenni Mostrom in 2008). He?s said that his fiancée has run every meter with him for the past three years. If you want a reminder that the Swede is more the Iron Giant than the Terminator, they don?t come more touching than that. He?s as soft-spoken and disarming in his press conference as he has been every time I?ve sat in a room with him. When I stumble over my words asking him a question and accidentally tell him he didn?t play very well, he looks slightly hurt and gently, plaintively suggests that the third set was ?pretty decent.? Once again I?m at a loss to decipher the general ire of many tennis fans towards him. I?m reminded of Futurama?s Fry envisioning the inevitable ending for his hero Bigfoot: ?And then they shoot you. But you teach us about stuff.? In defeating Nadal and Federer in subsequent years at Roland Garros, Soderling has done much to open up the tennis landscape and redraw the boundaries of the discussion. He?s also provided a clear example of how a player can revolutionize and reignite their career at a stage when many pundits consider it to be ?too late.? And yet the ?face of evil? narrative remains one of the most prevalent when Soderling is discussed among tennis fans. You teach us about stuff and then they shoot you, indeed.
Speaking of Bigfoot, the ?gentle giant? cliché is invoked almost as often in discussing Juan Martin del Potro as the brute, mechanical force of Soderling is described. Like all truly effective shared delusions, this one participates in the lived experience of watching the player. With his soft, hesitant English, his round-shouldered and slightly awkward slouch between points, it?s easy to get sucked into conceptualizing del Potro as a person whose extraordinary physical dimensions can only be fully realized in the heat of play, who is liberated from the burden of his body in exercising it to its fullest potential. The dazzling force and speed on display in his 6-2, 6-1 defeat of Alejandro Falla is difficult to reconcile with the goofy boy who taps the microphone in the press room to see if it makes a sound, the visceral confidence of his neck-or-nothing play a vivid contrast to the slow care with which he answers questions, making sure to meet your eyes with his own green-eyed gaze. In the quest to understand individuals as who they are through the medium of what they can do, much complexity and uniqueness is lost.
If we need to have heroes and villains, then the forthcoming quarterfinal match between del Potro and Soderling will no doubt be recast by various pundits and spectators as a villain in itself, the triumph of brute force over skill and variety?Bigfoot against the Terminator. When both players give similar answers regarding the prospect of playing the other?he?s a great player, I need to focus on my own game, I hope to do well?it?s hard not to fall back on one?s preconceptions to elicit the vital dimension of significance from a match. But then as tennis players are groomed to be inoffensive, tennis fans are conditioned to see the world in black and white. It?s the root of our fascination with the game, but it neglects to incorporate the fact that tennis players grow and change just as, you know, real people do. That?s one of the paradoxes of tennis?it offers endless possibilities for reinvention while working within the strict parameters of the basic elements you grew to adulthood with. Just like your family won?t ever forget that time you got drunk and flattened the Christmas tree, tennis fans have long memories. Unlike your family, they?re often unforgiving.
Source: http://feeds.tennis.com/~r/tenniscom-features/~3/5h1xclibYKw/
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