{"id":4614,"date":"2010-09-09T13:16:03","date_gmt":"2010-09-09T17:16:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=4614"},"modified":"2018-12-06T16:31:57","modified_gmt":"2018-12-06T21:31:57","slug":"the-mere-weather","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2010\/09\/09\/the-mere-weather\/","title":{"rendered":"The Mere Weather"},"content":{"rendered":"

 <\/p>\n

I\u2019m on my way to the Open!\u00a0It will be, I\u2019m embarrassed to say, my first time inside Arthur Ashe Stadium. During previous years, I\u2019ve been out of town or out of money.\u00a0Decent seats during the second week were beyond my reach, and if David Foster Wallace is right that \u201cTV tennis is to live tennis<\/a> pretty much as video porn is to the felt reality of human love,\u201d then I figured that the promenade\u2014the more-affordable upper deck\u2014meant the disappointment of an unrequited crush.<\/p>\n

Excuses, excuses.\u00a0This year, I\u2019ve sprung for Loge level tickets.\u00a0Stanislas Wawrinka, the 25th seed best known as the Swiss player who\u2019s not Roger Federer, is facing the 12th-seeded Mikhail Youzhny.\u00a0An improbable quarterfinal matchup, but I\u2019m looking forward to it.\u00a0Wawrinka and Youzhny have two of the best one-handed backhands in the game. Neither man, though, will probably move the ball as well as the wind will.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve avoided talking about the weather, since you\u2019ll have heard about the weather.\u00a0Every story about the Open has discussed it; every TV commentator has obsessed over \u201cthe conditions.\u201d\u00a0First, it was very, very hot.\u00a0Then there was talk of hurricanes.\u00a0Finally, came the devastating winds<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But the weather cannot be avoided.\u00a0Nor should it.\u00a0\u201cWe are physical beings in a physical world,\u201d the poet Wallace Stevens once wrote to a critic.\u00a0He also said, \u201cThe state of the weather soon becomes a state of mind.\u201d\u00a0The wind has turned the tennis ugly.\u00a0Letting blown tosses fall, servers can\u2019t find a rhythm.\u00a0Topspin shots that should arc inside the lines fly long. Routine groundstrokes become hard to handle. Any ball that floats begins to flutter.\u00a0Last night, Robin Soderling netted an overhead hit from a squat. Against the third-seeded Novak Djokovic, the Frenchman Gael Monfils became so rattled by the swirling air that he tried trick shots when regular strokes would do, swinging through his legs<\/a> instead of hitting a normal forehand. \u201cI was completely lost,\u201d he said afterward. \u201cCan\u2019t serve.\u00a0Can\u2019t really use my forehand.\u00a0You run for what?\u201d<\/p>\n

You run for what?<\/em> And yet, the winners run. They adjust their angles, shorten their toss, and smile when the wind redirects a crosscourt shot down the line. Yesterday, the 7th<\/sup>-seeded Vera Zvonavera and the top-seeded Caroline Wozniacki hit fewer than half as many unforced errors as their opponents.\u00a0While Wozniacki\u2019s opponent, Dominika Cibulkova, smashed and slashed her racket, as if she could cut the wind, Wozniaki calmly braided her errant hair.<\/p>\n

But no one has been immune to the wind like Roger Federer. Last night, he struck his shots so cleanly, his serves so sharply, that I wondered if he inhabited a different atmosphere. \u201cThe conditions\u201d did not apply to him.\u00a0Federer had 16 more aces and 20 more winners than Soderling.\u00a0Even more arresting, though, than his play was his look of calm. \u201cBy now, I see playing in the wind as a challenge\u2014an opportunity to play differently,\u201d Federer said after the match. \u201cIt’s not easy, you know\u2026. I used to dislike it so much that I’ve been able to turn it around, and now I actually enjoy it.”<\/p>\n

Reading Federer\u2019s words, I thought of Stevens\u2019s masterpiece, Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction:<\/em><\/p>\n

The weather and the giant of the weather,<\/p>\n

Say the weather, the mere weather, the mere air:<\/p>\n

An abstraction blooded, as a man by thought.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  I\u2019m on my way to the Open!\u00a0It will be, I\u2019m embarrassed to say, my first time inside Arthur Ashe Stadium. During previous years, I\u2019ve been out of town or out of money.\u00a0Decent seats during the second week were beyond my reach, and if David Foster Wallace is right that \u201cTV tennis is to live […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[931],"tags":[787,789,154,788,85,288,729,792,791,790],"class_list":["post-4614","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-on-sports","tag-arthur-ashe-stadium","tag-caroline-wozniacki","tag-david-foster-wallace","tag-roger-federer","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-u-s-open","tag-wallace-stevens","tag-weather","tag-wind"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe Mere Weather by Louisa Thomas<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"September 9, 2010 \u2013   I\u2019m on my way to the Open!\u00a0It will be, I\u2019m embarrassed to say, my first time inside Arthur Ashe Stadium. 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