A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again (57 page)

³⁸
(Though note that very few of them wear eyeglasses, either.)

³⁹
A whole other kind of vision—the kind attributed to Larry Bird in basketball, sometimes, when he made those incredible
surgical passes to people who nobody else could even see were open—is required when you’re hitting: this involves seeing
the other side of the court, i.e. where your opponent is and which direction he’s moving in and what possible angles are open
to you in consequence of where he’s going. The schizoid thing about tennis is that you have to use both kinds of vision —
ball and court—at the same time.

⁴⁰
Basketball comes close, but it’s a team sport and lacks tennis’s primal mano a mano intensity. Boxing might come close —
at least at the lighter weight-divisions—but the actual physical damage the fighters inflict on each other makes it too
concretely brutal to be really beautiful: a level of abstraction and formality (i.e. “play”) is probably necessary for a sport
to possess true metaphysical beauty (in my opinion).

⁴¹
For those of you into business stats, the calculus of a shot in tennis would be rather like establishing a running compound-interest
expansion in a case where not only is the rate of interest itself variable, and not only are the determinants of that rate
variable, and not only is the interval in which the determinants influence the interest rate variable, but the principal
itself
is variable.

⁴²
Sex- and substance-issues notwithstanding, professional athletes are in many ways our culture’s holy men: they give themselves
over to a pursuit, endure great privation and pain to actualize themselves at it, and enjoy a relationship to perfection that
we admire and reward (the monk’s begging bowl, the RBI-gurus eight-figure contract) and love to watch even though we have
no inclination to walk that road ourselves. In other words they do it “for” us, sacrifice themselves for our (we imagine)
redemption.

⁴³
In the Qualies for Grand Slams like Wimbledon and the U.S. Open, players sometimes have to play two three-out-of-five-set
matches in one day; it is little wonder that the surviving qualifiers often look like concentration-camp survivors by the
time they get to the main draw and you see them getting annihilated by a healthy and rested top seed in the televised first
round.

⁴⁴
Meaning a two-handed forehand, whose pioneer was a South African named Frew McMillan and whose most famous practitioner today
is Monica Seles.

⁴⁵
The idea of what it would be like to perspire heavily with large amounts of gel in your hair is sufficiently horrific to
me that I approached Knowle after the match to ask him about it, only to discover that neither he nor his coach spoke enough
English or even French to be able to determine who I was, and the whole sweat-and-gel issue will, I’m afraid, remain a matter
for your own imagination.

⁴⁶
What Joyce has done is known as “wrong-footing” his opponent, though the intransigent Francophone press here keep calling
the tactic a “contre-pied.”

⁴⁷
Who is clearly such a fundamentally nice guy that he would probably hit around with me for a little while just out of politeness,
since for him it would be at worst somewhat dull. For me, though, it would be obscene.

⁴⁸
The example of Michael Joyce’s own childhood, though, shows that my friends and I were comparative sluggards, dilettantes.
He describes his daily schedule thusly: “I’d be in school till 2:00. Then, after, I’d go [driven by father] to the [West End
Tennis] Club [in Torrance CA] and have a lesson with [legendary, wildly expensive, and unbelievably hard-ass Robert] Lansdorp
[former childhood coach of, among others, Tracy Austin] from 3:00 to 4:00. Then I’d have drills from 4:00 to 6:00, then we’d
drive all the way home—it’s like half an hour—and I’m like, ‘Thank God, I can watch TV or go up and talk with [friends]
on the phone or something,’ but Dad is like, ‘You didn’t practice your serve yet.’ At twelve or thirteen [years old], you’re
not going to want to do it. [No lie, since two hours of serious drills alone were usually enough to put your correspondent
in a fetal position for the rest of the day.] You need somebody to make you do it. [This is one way of looking at it.] But
then, after like a hundred or so serves, I start to get into [standing by himself out on the Joyces’ tennis court in their
backyard with a huge bucket of balls and hitting serve after serve to no one in what must by then have been the gathering
twilight], I like it, I’m glad I’m doing it.”

⁴⁹
An important variable I’m skipping is that children are (not surprisingly) immature and tend to get angry with themselves
when they screw up, and so a key part of my strategy involved putting the opponent in a position where he made a lot of unforced
errors and got madder and madder at himself, which would ruin his game. Feelings of self-disgust at his errors, or (even better
for me) bitter grievance at the universe for making him have “bad luck” or an “offday” would mount until usually by sometime
in the second set he’d sink into a kind of enraged torpor and
expect to
miss, or occasionally he’d even have a kind of grand Learesque tantrum, complete with racquet-hurling and screamed obscenities
and sometimes tears. This happened less and less as I got older and opponents got more mature, and by the time I was in college
only genuine head-cases could be counted on to get so mad that they’d basically make themselves lose to an inferior player
(viz. me). It’s something of a shock, then, to watch Joyce do to his third-round Qualies opponent what I used to do to twelve-year-old
rich kids, which is essentially to retrieve and avoid errors and wait for this opponent to have a temper tantrum. Because
Sunday was a rainout, Joyce’s third round is played Monday at 10:00 A.M., at the same time that some of the main draw’s first
rounds are beginning. Joyce’s opponent is a guy named Mark Knowles, 25, the 1986 U.S. Junior Indoor Champion, a native of
the Bahamas, now known primarily as a doubles player but still a serious opponent, ranked in the world’s top 200, somebody
on Joyce’s plateau.

Knowles is tall and thin, muscular in the corded way tall thin people are muscular, and has an amazing
tan and tight blond curls and from a distance is an impressive-looking guy, though up close he has a kind of squished, buggy
face and the slightly bulging eyes of a player who, I can tell, is spring-loaded on a tantrum. There’s a chance to see Knowles
up close because he and Joyce play their match on one of the minor courts, where spectators stand and lean over a low fence
only a few yards from the court. I and Joyce’s coach and Knowles’s coach and beautiful girlfriend are the only people really
seriously standing and watching, though a lot of spectators on their way to more high-profile matches pass by and stop and
watch a few points before moving on. The constant movement of civilians past the court aggrieves Knowles no end, and sometimes
he shouts caustic things to people who’ve started walking away while a point is still in progress.

“Don’t worry about
it!” is one thing Knowles shouted at someone who moved. “We’re only playing for money! We’re only professionals! Don’t give
it a second thought!” Joyce, preparing to serve, will stare affectlessly straight ahead while he waits for Knowles to finish
yelling, his expression sort of like the one Vegas dealers have when a gambler they’re cleaning out is rude or abusive, a
patient and unjudging look whose expression is informed by the fact that they’re extremely well compensated for being patient
and unjudging.

Sam Aparicio describes Knowles as “brilliant but kind of erratic,” and I think the coach is being kind,
because Knowles seems to me to belong on a Locked Ward for people with serious emotional and personality disorders. He rants
and throws racquets and screams scatological curses I haven’t heard since junior high. If one of his shots hits the top of
the net-cord and bounces back, Knowles will scream “I must be the luckiest guy in the world!” his eyes protruding and mouth
twisted. For me he’s an eerie echo of all the rich and well-instructed Midwest kids I used to play and beat because they’d
be unable to eat the frustration when things didn’t go their way. He seems not to notice that Joyce gets as many bad breaks
and weird bounces as he, or that passing spectators are equally distracting to both players. Knowles seems to be one of these
people who view the world’s inconveniences as specific and personal, and it makes my stomach hurt to watch him. When he hits
a ball against the fence so hard it seems to damage the ball, the umpire gives him a warning, but in the sort of gentle compassionate
voice of a kindergarten teacher to a kid who’s known to have A.D.D. I have a hard time believing that someone this off-the-wall
could rise to a serious pro plateau, though it’s true that when Knowles isn’t letting his attention get scattered he’s a gorgeous
player, with fluid strokes and marvelous control over spin and pace. His read on Joyce is that Joyce is a slugger (which is
true), and his tactic is to try to junk him up—change pace, vary spins, hit drop shots to draw Joyce in, deny Joyce pace
or rhythm—and because he’s Joyce’s equal in firepower the tactic is sound. Joyce wins the first set in a tiebreaker. But
three times in the tiebreaker Knowles yells at migratory spectators “Don’t worry! It’s only a tiebreaker in a professional
match!” and is basically a wreck by the time the first set is over, and the second set is perfunctory, a formality that Joyce
concludes as fast as possible and hurries back to the Players’ Tent to pack carbohydrates and find out whether he has to play
his first round in the main draw later this same day.

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Hlasek lost in the first round of the main draw Tuesday morning to obscure American Jonathan Stark, who then lost to Sampras
in the second round on Wednesday in front of a capacity Stadium crowd.

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This is in the Stadium and Grandstand, where the big names play, this ceremonial hush. Lesser players on the outlying courts
have to live with spectators talking during points, people moving around so that whole rickety sets of bleachers rumble and
clank, food service attendants crashing carts around on the paths just outside the windscreen or giggling and flirting in
the food-prep tents just on the other side of several minor courts’ fences.

⁵²
This is Canada’s version of the U.S.T.A., and its logo—which obtrudes into your visual field as often as is possible here
at the du Maurier Omnium—consists of the good old Canadian maple leaf with a tennis racquet for a stem. It’s stuff like
Tennis Canada’s logo you want to point to when Canadians protest that they don’t understand why Americans make fun of them.

⁵³
(though best of luck getting fudge home in this heat…)

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“Le Média” has its own facilities, though they’re up in the Press Box, about five flights of rickety and crowded stairs up
through the Stadium’s interior and then exterior and then interior, with the last flight being that dense striated iron of
like a fire escape and very steep and frankly dangerous, so that when one has to “aller au pissoir” it’s always a hard decision
between the massed horror of the public rest rooms and the Sisyphean horror of the Press bathroom, and I learn by the second
day to go very easy on the Evian water and coffee as I’m wandering around.

⁵⁵
(a recent and rather ingenious marketing move by the ATP—I buy several just for the names)

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It’s not at all clear what N.V.G.B.’s have to do with the Omnium, and no free samples are available.

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Du Maurier cigarettes are like Australian Sterlings or French Gauloise—full-bodied, pungent, crackly when inhaled, sweet
and yeasty when exhaled, and so strong that you can feel your scalp seem to leave your skull for a moment and ride the cloud
of smoke. Du Maurier-intoxication may be one reason why the Canadian Open crowds seem so generally cheery and expansive and
well-behaved.

⁵⁸
(=“Give me your mouth”—not subtle at all)

⁵⁹
These are usually luxury cars provided by some local distributorship in return for promotional consideration. The Canadian
Open’s courtesy cars are BMWs, all so new they smell like glove compartments and so expensive and high-tech that their dashboards
look like the control panels of nuclear reactors. The people driving the courtesy cars are usually local civilians who take
a week off from work and drive a numbingly dull route back and forth between hotel and courts—their compensation consists
of free tickets to certain Stadium matches and a chance to rub elbows with professional tennis players, or at least with their
luggage.

⁶⁰
He will lose badly to Michael Stich in the round of 16, the same Stich whom Michael Joyce beat at the Lipton Championships
in Key Biscayne four months before; and in fact Joyce will himself beat Courier in straight sets next week at the Infiniti
Open in Los Angeles, in front of Joyce’s family and friends, for one of the biggest wins of his career so far.

⁶¹
Chang’s mother is here—one of the most infamous of the dreaded Tennis Parents of the men’s and women’s Tours, a woman who’s
reliably rumored to have done things like reach down her child’s tennis shorts in public to check his underwear—and her
attendance (she’s seated hierophantically in the player-guest boxes courtside) may have something to do with the staggering
woe of Chang’s mien and play. Thomas Enqvist ends up beating him soundly in the quarterfinals on Wednesday night. (Enqvist,
by the way, looks eerily like a young Richard Chamberlain, the Richard Chamberlain of
The Towering Inferno
, say, with this narrow, sort of rodentially patrician quality. The best thing about Enqvist is his girlfriend, who wears
glasses and when she applauds a good point sort of hops up and down in her seat with refreshing uncoolness.)