I was sorry to see Andrea Petkovic get knocked out of the Australian Open. She looks like a more muscular Amanda Peet, and at the end of each win she does a little dance, which captures the joy of victory so much better than blown kisses to the crowd. You want her to win just so you can see her dance.
She is also very intelligent, studying political science and writing a diary of the tennis life for the newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. (She is of Serbian background, but lives in Germany.) So she's a fellow scribbler, which I fear may be her downfall. Anyone with the intellectual creativity of a writer is not going to master the mind-numbing repetitions of tennis.
At least that's what I tell myself whenever I lose.
Crocodiles have taken over the Australian Open. They sprawl largely across the yellow fronts of the ball boys shirts, and they sit primly on the left side of the line judges' shirts (also yellow). They are emblazoned on the backs of the line judges' chairs, and on the borders at the bottom. The chair umpire wears a crocodile on his sportcoat, and if he's into caps, it's there too. Even a few players sport them; Andy Roddick always features the little critters on his cap and shirt.
This is all advertising for Lacoste, of course, not homage to an indigenous species. But it doesn't bother me the way the Ralph Lauren Polo logo got on my nerves at the U.S. Open. For one thing, it is possible to look at the Lacoste crocodile and see only a crocodile, not a rapacious clothing company. (Which is not true for that ubiquitous man on his horse.) Also, Rene Lacoste was one of the great tennis players in history. His name, and logo, have every right to be seen - even endlessly - at a tennis tournament.
I hardly noticed that last night's championship football game, in a country battling obesity, was not only sponsored by but named for a junk food company.
And it seemed only natural that the head of that company should go on national television before the game and praise the excellence of both schools' programs, adding that, as a man who has dedicated his life to the manufacture and sale of chips (not just corn but potato) he has a deep understanding of excellence. Just as unnoteworthy were the commercials scattered throughout the game, stressing the natural ingredients of his company's products and showing delighted Americans enjoying their goodness.
My astonishment and outrage came at the end of the game, when the skies filled with confetti instead of chips.
Now that hitchhiking is defunct, one of the activities that recaptures some of its serendipity of surprise encounters is tennis.
Yesterday at the Jimmy Evert Tennis Center I was hitting against the wall when a teenage girl came around the other side and asked if she could share the wall. It was clear after her first few strokes that she was not a novice. "I've been playing since I was six," she said as we walked toward one of the hard courts. She was now a sophomore in high school.
She hit with a beautiful rhythm while I struggled to do the same. She was so consistent that she made hitting into the net seem like a mental, if not moral, failing. After about twenty minutes her mother came to pick her up. "I have to go," she said, and then, collecting her balls, she added: "Oh, and Happy Halloween."
Here's my entry in the Miami Herald's LeBron James Poetry Contest:
This Be the Verse (with apologies to Philip Larkin)
They mess you up, your big sports stars.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They strut like gods through hotel bars
And never give a thought to you.
But they were messed up in their turn
By coaches, agents, owners, (bling),
Who go to special camps to learn
How to treat their stars like kings.
Fan hands on misery to fan.
It deepens like a steroid scandal.
Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have heroes you can’t handle.
Hania's delight at the end of the baseball season was rudely cut short last night by her discovery of the post season.