Being the first Grand Slam of the tennis calendar, a tone-setter for the year to follow, Melbourne Park has always had a lot riding on it. This time, though, the stakes were uniquely high. With reports of widespread match fixing dampening the mood ahead of the mega event, tennis was in need of a pick-me-up of sorts. And the Australian Open gave it just that.
The ‘Happy Slam’ – as the great Roger Federer once called it – was decorated with fresh faces and Cinderella stories, new champions and gracious losers, jaw-dropping upsets and fond farewells, great interviews and fantastic sportsmanship. Enough ammunition to shift the focus back to the good elements in the sport.
While the timing of the Buzzfeed-BBC report on fixing, released on the eve of the Australian Open, was intended to create the storm it did, it also provided tennis with an opportunity to immediately alter the narrative. One among several beautiful traits of live sport is its ability to suspend the ongoing chatter, however briefly, and fashion new story-lines which could supersede the past.
Minds do not waver when there are actual sport to distract you. The focus then is solely on the game itself. Here and now. Either side of it, during build-ups and analyses, one could drown in a deluge of plots and subplots, speculations and revelations, negativity and doomsday. But when there is actual sport going on, you can only be concerned with what’s happening in front of your eyes. It is what you see, not read or hear, that you most believe in. Sport, in that sense, is also a self-preservation tool – only more of it can deflect away from the evils that lie within.
The agony and the ecstasy
The Australian Open took us through a full array of emotions and experiences. The ladies led from the front. In 28-year-old German Angelique Kerber, tennis found a wonderful new women’s Grand Slam champion whose rambling victory speech had the innocence of a nervous teenager making her stage debut. Serena Williams, extraordinarily gracious in defeat, put aside her grief to virtually handhold Kerber through emotions entirely new to her – proving yet again why the American is such a great champion.
The women’s finale was only the icing on the cake. Top seeds had toppled early in the women’s draw. Simona Halep, Venus Williams and Caroline Wozniacki had bowed out in the first round. Garbine Muguruza and Roberta Vinci followed suit in round three. By the end of the first week, Kerber was the only top-ten seed remaining in the bottom half of the draw. This was women’s tennis at its best: unpredictable, competitive and resurgent – and it also overshadowed the men’s version.
Where there are upsets, there are fairy tales too. Johanna Konta, victor against Halep and the self-proclaimed “female version of Jason Bourne” (because she holds three passports), became the first British woman to reach a Grand Slam semi-final in 33 years. Zhang Shuai, world number 133 and the conqueror of Venus Williams, had never won a Grand Slam match in 14 previous attempts before her dream run to the quarter-finals. Zhang aptly feels she has already won a Grand Slam: “In my heart I’m feeling I already won the tournament because I win seven matches,” (Zhang added the qualifying rounds to the mix.)
Images of world number 82 Anna-Lena Friedsam sobbing like a toddler on court portrayed the rather cruel but inescapable side of sport. She was 5-2 up in the final set against number four seed Agnieszka Radwanska and on the brink of another upset – she had already beaten Vinci – before her legs cramped up. She didn’t retire though. She stood. She tried. She even tried to fight with a huge handicap but without much success.
Modesty and kind-heartedness
Over in the men’s draw, Novak Djokovic did what he does best: steamroll all and sundry, yet remain pretty modest in the process. What will it take for the crowd to truly love him back? Nobody knows but he is surely giving it a good try. Following an epic five-setter against Giles Simon in the quarters, Djokovic had a memorable exchange with a spectator when the world number one received some unsolicited advice – “no more drop shots” – and humbly acknowledged that the man was correct.
Then there was Federer being Federer in defending a champion’s honour. The Swiss vehemently shot down a reporter’s suggestion that Djokovic does not have as much competition as the Swiss did during his own period of dominance. Rafael Nadal, meanwhile, suffered more misery as he bowed out in round one. But if the Spaniard was searching for inspiration to keep going, he could do worse than looking towards Aussie fan-favourite Lleyton Hewitt, who will be etched forever into tennis folklore as a symbol of defiance. The game’s youngest ever world number one bid farewell in front of his home crowd amid a volcano of emotional tributes.
Kind-hearted Frenchman Jo-Wilfried Tsonga stopped a match to escort an injured ball girl off the court to warm applause. And in the next round, he produced the most stunning round-the-back one-handed backhand winner to save a set point – and transform the match in his favour. For every Tsonga, though, there is a Nick Kyrgios too. The “Wild Thing” lived up to his billing and had a run-in with the chair umpire, calling him “unprofessional” and “terrible” post his third-round defeat. But would we be willing to treasure him in any other way? Probably not.
All this is not to suggest that tennis does not have a huge problem to solve. But with corruption scandals now a running theme across the sporting world and occupying plenty of column inches, it has become rather important to focus time and again on the good bits that keep reminding us why we actually love sport.
Akarsh Sharma is a Delhi-based writer who occasionally tweets here.
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