Watching the Wimbledon women’s final on Saturday – or, more accurately, watching the trophy ceremony – I was reminded of the similarities between tennis and writing. The player holding the trophy, Iga Świątek, was having, until that afternoon, a disappointing year, with not a single tournament win. Her ranking had dropped from #2 to #8. But in less than an hour, as the commentator Mary Jo Fernandez noted, all those losses disappeared in the light of this great triumph.
It's the same in writing. You send out a manuscript – or a story, or an essay – and one acceptance wipes out all the rejections that preceded it. The difference between the two fields is that in sports, talent is always rewarded – talent plus hard work and dedication – while in writing it’s popularity that reigns supreme. Talent often plays a role, but brilliance – the game-changer (literally) on the playing field – frequently goes unappreciated on the page.
I haven’t been getting out much, which means I’ve spent a lot of time in front of the TV. Of the four major tennis championships, Wimbledon is the most aesthetically pleasing to watch – players in white running atop perfectly manicured grass – as well as being the most prestigious. At least that’s what the players – Novak Djokovic, Taylor Fritz – have said in interviews.
But early yesterday afternoon, I could find it nowhere on my television. Carlos Alcaraz, one of the most brilliant shotmakers in the history of the game, was playing Andrey Rublev – I knew from checking the scores on my phone – and Nicolas Jarry was battling Cam Norrie, the last British man still in the tournament. Two matches that, you would think, were worthy of coverage. There was also a women’s match – possibly two – going on at the same time. But the two networks with rights to the tournament, ABC and ESPN, were showing, respectively, an old Jack Hanna show about animals and a cornhole tournament. On a Sunday afternoon. ABC eventually broadcast the tennis, at 3 pm, but for a brief time – actually, for tennis fans, not so brief – ESPN gave cornhole precedence over Wimbledon.
The world is a mess but today is the first day of Wimbledon, when all the courts are green and every player’s hopes are high. The tournament that is played on the most outdated surface is still the one that commands the greatest respect.
At 7:30 yesterday morning I drove down Las Olas and across the bridge, where police cars blocked access to A1A. I turned right, along with everyone else, and found a parking spot near the International Swimming Hall of Fame. Water and ice.
A good crowd was already gathered outside the Elbo Room, many of them in red Panthers jerseys. One woman wore a cap topped with a seated doll wearing a Panthers jersey and roller skates. One young man, with a flower tattoo in front of his ear, sported a black cap with the words “Vamos Gatos” printed on the side.
A little before nine a police car, siren wailing, came through the blockade, followed by a golf cart filled with large men in beards. Aleksander Barkov sat in the back, in a shirt with green palm trees and pink flamingos, the Stanley Cup between his legs. Immediately the cart was swarmed by people trying to touch the cup. Eventually, Barkov lifted it and carried it through the side entrance of the Elbo Room, where it soon appeared on the balcony, causing the crowd below to erupt. Various players took turns lifting it – to rapturous cheers – and then, after everyone had had a go, a couple of them filled it with beer that they poured onto the crowd. This also got cheers, and was repeated again and again. In the intervals, champagne was squirted out onto the adoring fans, while the famous bar’s logo, a platinum blonde in a red bikini, looked on in tumbling delight.
Chants rose and fell: “Back-to-back!” “MVP!” “Bob-by! Bob-by! Bob-by!” “We want beer!” One man started a “Thank you, Panthers!” cry that for some reason didn’t catch on. A few songs were sung, including the National Anthem and, oddly, “Country Roads.”
“Bobrovsky’s not here,” a young man next to me said. “He’s home with his family. He’s like that basketball player, Jokic. As soon as the game’s over, he’s gone.”
“It’s the young ones who are here,” his friend said. “They’ve probably been up all night partying.”
I walked across A1A and talked to a young father who moved here two years ago from Toronto. He had been rooting for the Maple Leafs, he said, but he admired the Panthers – enough to bring his son to see them at the Elbo Room. I asked how he found South Floridians compared to Canadians, and he said that people have been great, especially in the hockey league that his son plays in. As they headed off, I saw the name “Tkachuk” written across the back of the young boy’s jersey.
I found a shady seat on the seawall, next to a woman from Poland who now lives in Galt Ocean Mile. “I was watching on TV,” she said, “and I thought: Why don’t I drive down there?” We wanted to see them take the cup into the ocean, as they had last year, but by 11 there was no sign of them ever leaving the Elbo Room.
I drove to Archibald’s for a takeaway quiche and on the drive home, listening to an oldies station, heard Connie Francis sing “Where the Boys Are.” It was an almost scripted moment, though I wondered if any of the players would have been aware of the connection.
The French Open women’s and men’s finals both went the distance and featured comebacks: Coco Gauff winning in three sets after losing the first to Aryna Sabalenka and Carlos Alcaraz winning in five sets after losing the first two to Jannik Sinner (and saving three championship points in the fourth set, a monumental feat that then required him to break Sinner’s serve, which he promptly did). The men’s match, at five and a half hours, was the longest final at Roland Garros in the open era, and yet neither man took a “bathroom break,” a ploy commonly used – even by the saintly Federer – to try to right the ship and slow the opponent’s momentum.
Both finals were exciting to watch (and fun for me, since I was rooting for the eventual winners) but they were polar opposites when it came to quality. The women’s match was sloppy, with Sabalenka complaining during the match, and afterwards, about the windy conditions. (As if it was windy on only her side of the court.) While the men’s match was a marvel of precision and power, with brilliant shots followed by equally phenomenal responses, again and again, for FIVE AND A HALF HOURS! Fittingly, the women’s match ended on an unforced error, the men’s match with a winner.
The French Open is in its second week and yesterday it offered up one of the most enjoyable matches I’ve ever watched, partly because the players – Carlos Alcaraz and Ben Shelton – looked to be enjoying it too. Until Alcaraz came along, you rarely saw players smile during matches; yesterday, Shelton smiled as he was hitting one ball. Alcaraz, better known as Carlito, also won a point by throwing his racket at the ball, which is illegal; then he lost the point by informing the chair umpire that his racket had left his hand by the time it made contact with the ball. (The French Open doesn’t use replays, so the Spaniard’s honesty was all the umpire had to go on.) At the end of the match, the two players had a long hug, and laugh, at the net. They had just finished a hard-fought match in the fourth round of a major tournament and they looked as if they had just concluded an amazing and grueling practice session.
This seems to be the trend, at least in the men’s game; the top players all appear to have not just great respect but also affection for each other, despite the fact that, week after week, they find themselves in fierce competition with each other. Perhaps the world's leaders should start watching tennis.
PS After one phenomenal shot by Alcaraz, Shelton's father applauded in the stands.