The Hindu : Sport : Quest for the perfect time

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Thursday, Jul 05, 2007
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Sport

Quest for the perfect time

Learning to win is both pleasure and pain, a life of lessons and losses, writes ROHIT BRIJNATH

Learning to win is both pleasure and pain, a life of lessons and
losses, writes
Rohit Brijnath

To put on the television and see rows of flapping white shrouds covering the courts is to kill interest. Watching tennis in 15-game bursts is frustrating, much like an incomplete lunch. How does one say this politely: this wet Wimbledon has been painful.

Still, always, there are small pleasures to be found. Like watching baseliners bravely attempt a volley even while destroying every fundamental the stroke asks for, or tuning into an Andy Roddick press conference where amusement briefly replaces cliche.

Take this sample answer when asked if he played golf like other tennis players. Replied Roddick: “Every time I play golf, I have got to buy a new set of clubs. It’s not relaxing for me. I go mental. The ball’s not even moving and I can’t hit it right. I haven’t reached the point in my life where I have the patience level it takes to play golf. And I don’t have the pants.”

Youthful contenders

Most pleasure, though, has come from observing the continued blossoming of youthful contenders Nicole Vaidisova and Ana Ivanovic. Watching a player struggle to take that last, final step from aspirant to champion, being so desperately close yet not quite there, unsure sometimes what precisely it is that is holding them back from greatness, is compelling.

For the expectant young athlete the search for this perfect time cannot be rushed, yet it cannot come soon enough. Constantly Vaidisova and Ivanovic will disguise their desperation to win the entire tournament with that handy cliche, “I’m taking it one match at a time”.

In a media generation of glibness and exaggeration, every tenth teenager is the “next this’ and the ‘new that’. To be anointed as the future is rewarding (sponsors buy into the adventure) and exhilarating, but also demanding, for eventually proof of talent is required. And proof in tennis is the Grand Slam title.

Learning to win is both pleasure and pain, a life of lessons and losses. So much we go on about the pampered, wealthy athlete, but there is also an admirable strength to the steadfast teenager who chases a hard dream in front of the world, her every humbling moment watched and recorded. Every Grand Slam event she must explain why she failed. Sometimes she must wonder herself.

Kournikova’s case

Still, they go on. For some this perfect time arrives without warning, for some it never comes at all. When Anna Kournikova reached the semifinals of her first Wimbledon in 1997 at 16, headlines shouted out her talent, but who knew then, that would be it, her perfect time was never to be.

Sometimes players, like Iva Majoli who won the French in 1997 at 19, never completely fulfil their promise, and are put, disparagingly, in that basket called ‘one-slam wonders’. Yet she will always be reassured by the knowledge that she tasted that perfect time. That on that one day in Paris she arrived at her destination.

This perfect time demands committed strokes and a tuned body, but mostly an unflinching belief. When Maria Sharapova won her first slam at Wimbledon 2004 she had a brilliant day: but her game was in fact unready to win consistently. What was ready was her mind.

Vaidisova, 22, and six foot, and Ivanovic, 19, and six foot one, are striking women with sound repertoires, but mentally, perhaps, they have not matured as quick as their strokes. In the French final, Ivanovic’s nervous stutter suggested her brain had not completely accepted the possibility of winning a Slam.

Beyond toughness

These girls are tough, of course, but there is a point beyond toughness perhaps they haven’t journeyed to yet. A madness that sees Serena swallow her pain and win on one-and-a-half legs against Daniela Hantuchova because giving up was simply unpalatable; a pitiless nature on court that allows Justine Henin to dismember rivals without blinking. This quality of absent mercy is what Vaidisova and Ivanovic will need to find. Today (Thursday), weather permitting, these young women play each other. Adrenalin will surge and ambitions collide and unladylike grunts echo.

One will go home wounded. One will win and go forward, more certain, till defeat tells her differently, that her perfect time is imminent.

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