Winning Shots

It is a timely publication then of Court Confidential: Inside the World of Tennis,by Neil Harman,who brings decades of reporting and being on the tennis tour to this diary of 2012,to look at what it is like to be a tennis player during this extraordinary spell in the men’s game,and what may be the issues better framed by this higher profile of the sport. 2012,in fact,captured its own specialness in a striking way. That year,as Harman notes,the first Grand Slam was won by the No. 1 seed (Australian Open by Djokovic),the second by the No. 2 (Nadal at the French Open),the third by the No. 3 (Federer at Wimbledon) and the fourth by the No. 4 (Murray at the US Open).

Harman,a correspondent with the London Times,does not make too much of this statistic,but he heeds the reporter’s instinct to profile the game during this overlap of these four playing careers. “Golden age is an over-used phrase,” he writes,“but it is difficult to come up with anything better. Djokovic,Nadal,Federer and Murray are the John,Paul,George and Ringo of the men’s game,a set of four individuals who together make such sweet music. Yet like the Fab Four they have their foibles… The four men at the top have lent the sport a mystical,magical sense of well-being such that tennis wishes it could stay like this forever and fears what may happen if one or more of them fades away. Then we might all be in trouble.”

He notes that this magical sense that the men’s game exudes has,for one,put in the shadow women’s tennis,despite the presence of great competitors,from Serena Williams to Victoria Azarenka and Maria Sharapova. The Fab Four’s brilliance has also distorted,by no fault of theirs,our understanding of renumeration in tennis — in fact,to be fair to the big four,they enlisted themselves in the struggle to get the lower-ranked players better compensation for their participation in the Grand Slams. And after revelations of the Lance Armstrong deception,there is need for a collective commitment for a doping protocol to keep the sport clean,and to convincingly show it to be so.

Harman’s constant presence on the tour enables him to be party to confidences of players,and also put in perspective their idiosyncrasies and struggles,to sift out the telling comment from often repetitive press conferences. Murray is obviously a favourite,and he does not hide it. (In fact,given that 2012 was the year of the Summer Olympics in London,the circumstances are particularly well-suited to thread the Murray story.) He also has an ear alert to the peculiar politics that surrounds careers of players like Mahesh Bhupathi or the divisions over moves to assess player rankings over a longer horizon to allow top players opportunities to rest or recuperate from injury.

These issues are folded into the progress of the tennis calendar,and the effect is not just to peg the problems as they unfold,but also to show how the calendar just will not stop for any one person. Neither will tennis. Djokovic tells Harman: “Every surface is demanding and requires a different adjustment from the player,so that’s why it is so difficult to compare tennis from 20 or 30 years ago to now because technology is so different. We don’t know what technology is going to bring tomorrow,maybe we just sit on the bench and let the rackets play themselves.”

He exaggerates,of course. But as we watch the live telecast of the final at Wimbledon’s Centre Court,it is valuable to be reminded that tennis is in the midst of a spectacular phase,the full measure of which is as yet far from clear. Enjoy.