Soccer for me is like the ocean: I don’t have to see it but I like knowing it’s there if I want to.
As painful as it was for Serena Williams’s fans to watch her straight-set loss to Naomi Osaka at the Australian Open, watching her post-match press conference may have been even more so. She said not a single word about her opponent – who played brilliantly, handling even her fearsome serves – and at one point had the audacity to say that she could have been up 5-0 in the first set (she lost it 6-3). It is hard to imagine past champions, in the twilight of their careers, sulking through a post-match press conference and then tearfully getting up and leaving in the middle of it. Ashe? Evert? Sampras? Graff? Impossible.
Williams, now 39 years old, has had a phenomenal career. Of course it was disappointing for her to once again fail to win her 24th Grand Slam singles title, tying Margaret Court. But that press conference would have been the perfect occasion at which to graciously acknowledge that the torch has been passed to the next generation (Osaka is 23). Admittedly, this is not an easy thing for athletes to do, but in Williams’s case it should be a bit easier owing to the fact that, as everyone knows, it’s her torch that is being passed. Osaka clearly, admittedly, learned her power game by watching Williams, and is now the finest player on the WTA tour. In a refreshing turn for tennis, she combines her power on the court with poise and grace off it.
With no tennis to show, the Tennis Channel has been replaying classic matches, and the other day I caught some of the 1975 Wimbledon gentlemen’s final between Arthur Ashe and Jimmy Connors. The racquets were wood, the balls white, the shorts short. The lines judges were older men wearing glasses and – even more oddly – sitting in chairs. But perhaps the most striking thing was the way the chair umpire, at one point, pleaded with the crowd for silence. It was in a schoolmasterly voice that carried notes of dismay and disappointment that he even had to make the request.
Yesterday morning I played an hour of tennis with our neighbor Petra, the former #1 female player in Slovakia, and then went with friends to Voo La Voo for crepes and a bottle of Vin de Provence. My afternoon nap was one of my finest ever.
The obituary for Colette Evert in today’s Miami Herald features comments from Chris about her mother’s innate kindness, which included cheering for Chris’s opponents when they were playing well against her.
The Dolphins got a new quarterback (and it worked out fine). Now maybe the country can do the same.