The dogs woke me at 5 this morning, wanting to go out, and as long as I was up, I figured I’d check in on the Australian Open. I was expecting a five-set epic, though I was feeling pretty confident that Roddick would win. The match was tied at a set apiece, so I dozed off for another 45 minutes or so, knowing that they’d still be playing when the alarm went off. And they were…but barely. I tuned in just in time to see Hewitt take the third set to a tiebreak, after (I gathered) breaking Roddick to even the match. I was making tea and coffee while Hewitt won the tiebreak, so I comforted myself with the thought that even if Roddick didn’t come back and take the next two sets, at least Federer would devour Hewitt like a little snack cake in the final. And just as I was thinking that, that Chris ?Fowler fellow that ESPN has as their main tennis host nowadays mentioned after a commercial break that Safin had beaten Federer the night before. What?!?! That wasn’t supposed to happen.
Despairing slightly–I loathe Hewitt* and am not completely confident that Safin can beat him–I went to get dressed. Drank down my tea and put the coffee in the travel mug while Hewitt demolished Roddick decisively in the fourth set; I think it ended up at 6-1, with Hewitt making all those graceless, Jimmy-Connors-ish (and I don’t mean that as a compliment) fist-pumping, chest-pounding gestures all the while. Gosh I hate* that guy. I don’t expect all male tennis players to be as polite, well-spoken, respectful, and even courtly as, say, Federer, or James Blake, but there’s a big difference between youthful exuberance and cockiness, like Roddick’s (and Roddick seems to have the nice counterbalancing attribute of not taking himself too seriously, plus he’s kind of a funny guy), and outright boorishness, like Hewitt’s.
I’ll be rooting emphatically for Safin, in any case. I like* him well enough, always have, though his head seems to get in the way of his game a lot. (Then again, I’m often intrigued by players like that–I couldn’t have loved Chris Webber for all these years if that weren’t true.) He’s played up to his old standards in this tournament, and I’m hopeful that he’ll just come out and overpower Hewitt. Hopeful, but not optimistic. And if Hewitt wins, sheesh, he’ll be more insufferable than ever. Kim Clijsters, who seems like the very embodiment of grace and class, loves Hewitt enough to want to marry him, so he must have some redeeming features, but it’s awfully hard to see what they are.
At least the forces of (basically) good triumphed over the forces of ickiness in the women’s final. I can’t think of a top player on the women’s tour that I’ve liked* less than Lindsay Davenport in recent years. I’m not crazy about Jennifer Capriati, who comes off as kind of tactless and not especially bright, but Davenport has made numerous barely-veiled racist and homophobic comments (about the Williams sisters and Amelie Mauresmo, respectively, of course) in the past that reveal that she isn’t the sweet All-American small-town girl that she’s usually portrayed as. I’ve never much liked her game–she’s a choke artist of the first order, and if she weren’t so tall, I don’t think she’d have had the successes she’s had. And the fact that she’s been ranked #1 recently (though I guess she’ll lose that ranking now) is just a joke. She’s #1 only because the Belgians and Capriati have been out of contention for significant parts of the year, and because the Williams sisters’ interest in tennis has waxed and waned more dramatically than usual this year. I don’t adore* Serena as much as I admire her, or in the way that I adore* Venus, though Serena is certainly fun to watch when she’s on her game. I was rooting for Sharapova in her match with Serena, because I think Sharapova really has the goods–I wish my personal favorite leggy blonde Slavic tennis player with great moves and reach on the court, Daniela Hantuchova, wasn’t turning out to be a possible flash in the pan, but in the absence of success on her part, I’ll temporarily switch allegiance to Sharapova. But I loved the way Serena clawed her way back against Maria, and how strong she looked in the third set. Generally speaking, I prefer Venus’s more elegant finesse game to Serena’s sheer power, but objectively, I have to admit that Serena is the better player, maybe the most naturally talented player on the current tour.** Watching her come back from a set down to take the second set and then bagel Davenport in the third was an absolute delight, and I was also very pleased to see one of the Williamses win a major again; it had been too long.
So whether or not I’m awake tonight to watch the beginning of the Hewitt-Safin match (or up early enough tomorrow morning to watch the end), all I have to say is: go Safin!
*I am, of course, aware that I can’t actually like or dislike or loathe or adore any of these people, since I’ve never met them and never will and am only exposed to whatever inklings of them they, their agents, and the broadcasters want the world to see. But almost all sports fans form irrational likes and dislikes based on trivial, not-so-trivial, and/or imagined personal and professional factors, and because tennis is an individual sport, it’s particularly easy to form those preferences. Tennis is, I guess, the sport I’ve followed with the most intensity for the longest time. I liked baseball when I was very young, because my family did and because it was fun to play with my brothers’ baseball cards, though I didn’t fully understand the game when I was four, I don’t think; later, I hated baseball because my family loved it. I liked hockey and basketball a little later in childhood; it would have been hard not to then, because the Rangers were pretty good and the Knicks were in their heyday, and it just wouldn’t have made sense not to love players like Clyde and Bradley and Dave DeBusschere and Willis Reed. They were icons, heroes, even to me. My family also loved football–I think in some ways my parents cared more about the (football) Giants than they did about the Yankees, maybe partly because the Yankees weren’t their team until the (baseball) Giants broke their hearts by leaving New York–but I’ve hated it my whole life, and not just as a form of rebellion against my family. I can’t really explain why I hate football so much–maybe it’s a combination of the long periods of standing around, the excessive role that the refs play, or just the sheer dumb brutality and lack of subtlety that I perceive in the game (I don’t like rugby or Australian Rules football either, fwiw, whereas I love what the rest of the world calls football, i.e. soccer). I don’t know. But I actively hate football, more than any other sport except golf and boxing. Tennis, though…I got started watching tennis mostly because a Swedish (real Swedish, from Sweden–not Swedish-American) friend in junior high got me interested in it–her parents played all the time, and of course they all rooted fanatically for Borg, as I soon did too. But the rest of my family watched tennis too, so for a long time it was the one sport that we could all sit around and watched together. I was about ten or eleven when I started paying serious attention, and though I don’t follow the tour all that closely except for the majors, it’s still almost a religion of sorts for me. When the Grand Slam tournaments are going on, I’ll skip watching my favorite basketball teams without a second thought in favor of the tennis action, and I think I get more passionate about players I love* and players I can’t stand* in tennis than in any other sport that I follow.
**(Natural talent isn’t automatically a plus for me–Ivan Lendl is one of my favorite players of all time, after all, and he was anything but naturally talented; he had to work twice as hard as his peers to get to the top level. And though I wouldn’t say she’s low on natural talent, I think one of the things I love* most about Justine Henin-Hardenne–probably my favorite women’s player nowadays–is the way she scraps and battles and fights to overcome her natural disadvantages, like being of normal height on a tour full of giantesses.)