{"id":4761,"date":"2010-09-14T09:33:49","date_gmt":"2010-09-14T13:33:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=4761"},"modified":"2018-12-06T16:35:18","modified_gmt":"2018-12-06T21:35:18","slug":"an-honor-to-watch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2010\/09\/14\/an-honor-to-watch\/","title":{"rendered":"An Honor to Watch"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Sunday mornings can be such a bummer, time for reflection and for regret. So it was the morning after Roger Federer\u2019s loss to Novak Djokovic in the men\u2019s semifinal.\u00a0New York was chilly and soaking\u2014weather for brooding, not for tennis.\u00a0Who was in the mood for tennis, anyway? There would be no Federer-Nadal final. The match so much desired, so long expected, would not happen.<\/p>\n<p>Djokovic had outplayed Federer.\u00a0And it was thrilling. I couldn\u2019t help it, at times I was <em>thrilled<\/em>.\u00a0Facing<a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=N65j2A9XknY\"> two match points<\/a> in the fifth set, Djokovic saved the first with a gutsy swinging volley.\u00a0He saved the second with a forehand walloped into the corner\u2014an astonishing shot. Reader, I gasped with joy.\u00a0I didn\u2019t mean to cheer for Djokovic, a man who smashes his racket against his head to pump himself up. I didn\u2019t want to cheer against Federer. Federer is the player I enjoy watching more than any other, the most beautiful player of the most beautiful game.\u00a0After the match, I felt empty and a little guilty. On Sunday, I felt even worse. (That the women\u2019s final was so lame didn\u2019t help\u2014hadn\u2019t I, on some level, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2010\/09\/11\/a-win-is-a-just-win-a-loss\/\">asked for<\/a> Vera Zvonareva\u2019s mental collapse?\u00a0Forgive! And congrats to Kim Clijsters!)<\/p>\n<p>On Monday, though, things looked up. The sun was out and Nadal still playing.\u00a0Rafa, always reason for cheer! Against Djokovic, Nadal easily won the first set.\u00a0But during the second, Djokovic came to life, zooming around the court, skinny limbs flying. He went for the lines and hit the corners. Djokovic is not a man who immediately inspires.\u00a0His haircut is bad, his temper idiotic, his style slightly spasmodic.\u00a0But he\u2019s daring and quick, gentle at net and fierce in the backcourt, and his defensive play is unreal. When he broke Nadal\u2019s serve twice in the second set, I felt, again, spontaneous pleasure.\u00a0It would have been impossible to suppress it.\u00a0Not just impossible:\u00a0I think it would have been wrong to try.<\/p>\n<p>But he couldn&#8217;t keep it up, and Nadal &#8230; Nadal is something else.\u00a0Even when he stumbles, as he did a few times last night. He sprinted to every ungettable shot and moved the ball in unbelievable ways, knifing his volleys and spinning those forehands.\u00a0Until the last set, when Djokovic simply faded, the Serb gave Nadal a good match. But I wanted Nadal to beat him.\u00a0I wanted to see him yank Djokovic like a yoyo with his magnificent groundstrokes; I wanted to see him rip up the ball.\u00a0I wanted him to win so badly that I felt slightly sick. And Nadal did. When he won the 2010 U.S. Open, he became the seventh man to win the career grand slam. He\u2019s 24 years old.\u00a0He is as great as can be imagined. Greater, maybe.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s tempting to call tennis an art, and a lot of people do. It\u2019s graceful and intuitive, and one responds to it as one responds to something beautiful, with the desire to describe it and remember it, and to applaud those who made it. But its value is not symbolic, though it lends itself to metaphor.\u00a0It works in other ways.\u00a0A single shot is so fast, the physics so complex, that it\u2019s hard to picture, even when you\u2019re watching it live.\u00a0It can&#8217;t be aestheticized or really captured.\u00a0Instead it captures you, the watcher, in wonder. At least, it captures me.<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s something incredible about all those straight lines and arcs and angles, the speed and the spins, the strength, and the drama of two people, alone, facing each other.\u00a0I don&#8217;t know what it all adds up to, exactly, or why I care so much. It should be silly, a game with a bouncy, fuzzy yellow ball.\u00a0But it isn&#8217;t.\u00a0It&#8217;s awesome, and sometimes it&#8217;s an honor to watch.\u00a0It was an honor to watch Nadal last night.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sunday mornings can be such a bummer, time for reflection and for regret. So it was the morning after Roger Federer\u2019s loss to Novak Djokovic in the men\u2019s semifinal.\u00a0New York was chilly and soaking\u2014weather for brooding, not for tennis.\u00a0Who was in the mood for tennis, anyway? There would be no Federer-Nadal final. The match so [&hellip;]<\/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":[820,802,819,818,816,788,817,417],"class_list":["post-4761","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-on-sports","tag-career-grand-slam","tag-kim-clijsters","tag-mens-finals","tag-novak-djokovic","tag-rafael-nadal","tag-roger-federer","tag-us-open-2010","tag-victory"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v25.4 (Yoast SEO v25.4) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>An Honor to Watch by Louisa Thomas<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"September 14, 2010 \u2013 Sunday mornings can be such a bummer, time for reflection and for regret. 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