The crowd was behind Ram. Spindly and long-limbed, he looked almost frail in his baggy shorts and loose T-shirt, and was fun to watch, with a fluent power game, quite accurate strokes off the ground and athletic net play. He was also crafty and resilient. Despite dropping the first set (4-6), he seemed unfazed in the second as he patiently extended points, visibly frustrating Ball.
This last was important. Ram’s advantage was psychological—a crucial difference-maker in tennis, since you’re out there alone, with no teammates to urge you on or help shoulder the load. Your only companion is your own thoughts, which– as the hours drag on and the pressure mounts– can incline toward the ferverish. This is why matches between equals often reduce to wars of nerves and sometimes deteriorate, even at the pro level, into the bathos of double faults and weirdly muffed chances.
But Ram, on Friday, was a study in calm. Even as the second set pushed toward a tiebreaker, his demeanor never changed. Ball, on the other hand, was dissolving into a state and by the end seemed personally insulted whenever he lost a point, no matter how well played it was—for instance a long, tense, rally that concluded when Ram passed Ball at net, costing him a service hold. Enraged, Ball flung his racket to the ground. It happened again when he dropped a point in the tiebreaker, only this time he slammed a ball on the court.
Meanwhile, the crowd was large, and some in it were vocally pulling for Ram, at least partly in response to Ball’s antics. They were not only unpleasant, but out of bounds. It’s no secret that what passes for “passion” and “competitive fire” in team sports don’t sit well in tennis. But it’s fair to ask why. The answer, I think, involves two quite different principles.
The first is obvious: poor sportsmanship. In a one-on-one sport, a tantrum after a lost point disrespects the efforts of the other player, who as surely won the point as the offended opponent lost it.
The second principle is more complicated. Those who don’t follow tennis, or do so only from afar, may think of it as the most genteel of sports. This is a mistake. The players themselves think of the sport as being intensely physical, even violent. To begin with, the physical toll is great. The reason young players dominate the sport (as they so rarely do in baseball or football) is that very few 30-year-olds, no matter their fitness or guile, can withstand the rigors of a grand-slam event, two intense weeks of play, a total of seven matches, some lasting four hours or more. The matches themselves are brutally direct, one-on-one tests of strength, endurance, stamina and willpower. Which of the two players is stronger, faster, fitter? Who hits the ball harder and with more pace? Who will assert his will, dictating the flow of the game and of the “big points”? Which of the two will “break” the other down?
In his fine autobiography, “Open,” Andre Agassi, the son of an Olympic boxer, repeatedly uses the language and imagery of prizefighting when he recounts important matches. He also describes the praise he got from his coach, Brad Gilbert, whenever Agassi succeeded in “cramping up” an opponent, causing him to crumple on the court in agony.
But none of it is personal. Like boxers, tennis players seriously observe the rituals of their sport and like them also come together at the end of the fight. One such ritual is that tennis’s violence and anger be limited to striking the ball in the course of play. Outbursts of the kind Ball displayed violate this strict code. They also betray weakness. Thus, Ram not only ignored Ball’s tantrums but appeared to draw confidence from them. The more frustrated Ball became, the calmer Ram grew. He was, if you’ll pardon the expression, positively irenic. It was no surprise when he easily clinched the third set 6-1.
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