What is the difference between a grudge and a rivalry? I
happened to be sitting around a table one time and Mr. Lewis
Lehrman, a successful businessman and a thoughtful and civic-minded
New Yorker who in the view of many observers of our national
economic life ought to be Secretary of the Treasury, was trying to
keep the discussion civil. Mr. Lewis Lapham, then editor of
Harper’s, a venerable magazine dating from before the
Civil War and whose best-known modern-era editor before Mr. Lapham
was Willie Morris, was annoyed because he did not understand why
two other guests, Mr. Norman Podhoretz and Professor Robert W.
Tucker, were chiding him for being skeptical of their views on
foreign policy. He was questioning what the big deal was to be
stronger than the Soviets and what this had to do with the security
of “the Gulf” and our energy supplies. It was becoming fashionable
in those days to bandy around “the Gulf” as if everyone knew where
it was and was as familiar to everybody as Flatbush or Bensonhurst.
Mr. Podhoretz insisted being number one mattered. In every field,
he meant — science, art, medicine — although the discussion had
taken a dangerously military turn, as the question was what we
ought to do if the Soviets put a grip on the Straits of Hormuz. (I
did not question the assumption around the table, which was that we
all were as familiar with the Straits of Hormuz as we were with the
local harbor. Although I wanted to ask if anyone had every seen the
Straits of Hormuz, I kept quiet.)
The idea was that if those boys got the Straits of Hormuz
in the old half-nelson, we had to react. We had to do something.
And it would not be patty cake. We had to show who was number one.
This is where I noticed Mr. Lapham was fidgeting.
“What is this about being number one all the time,” he
asked. He was a magazine man, it was his nature to ask
questions.
“We have to be number one,” Mr.
Podhoretz said.
“Why?” Mr. Lapham said.
I glanced at Mr. Lehrman, but he was cool as a cucumber.
However, Professor Tucker intervened a bit forcefully. He had
started it by suggesting there was no reason why we should not use
our power to get what we want in the Gulf. He was thinking of oil,
but later generations of strategists — some of whom possibly did
not have him as a teacher — have substituted democracy for
oil.
Professor Tucker said, “Why? What do you mean, why? Don’t
you want to be number one?” It may be a trick of memory, but I
think he winked at Mr. Podhoretz. Who was number one, Mr. Lapham or
Mr. Podhoretz, magazine-wise? I bit my tongue when I thought I
should say they could argue about number two or three, or three and
four, if they wanted, because Esquire had published “Frank
Sinatra Has a Cold” by Gay Talese.
“Why, no, why should I,” said Mr. Lapham with admirable
modesty. “What would it mean, anyway? In what sense, number
one?”
Boy, those New York intellectuals, they were brawlers. Mr.
Lapham had a point, however. And even in realms where it is easier
to measure number one or number two, such as sports, people keep
arguing about who really is number one. There are people for
example who think Green Bay, not New York, should be playing
against New England. Some people you cannot make happy with real
life.
My choice for president of the U.S. is someone with a
sense of fair play on the tennis courts who does not feel he has to
be number one, so long as he is doing his best to tend to the
nation’s business, although this may mean not tending to the
nation’s business, but you know what I mean. Then I might have a
shot at the White House courts, which I am told are nicely
maintained. But until then I’m good, as we say, with the ones where
I play with my friends Kenzall and Val near the Aquatic Gardens.
They are nice and quiet and underused so you never wait, though we
are still waiting to hear from Mayor Gray about when he is going to
put up some lights and fix the clubhouse. He does not answer his
mail. He is worried about being indicted, so he has an excuse. Val
and I think indictment shmindictment, the hell with criminalizing
politics, we’ll just run Kenzall against him. Or Marion. That will
fix him.
However, speaking of tennis, Roger Federer has a
long-standing rivalry with Rafael Nadal, the Man of the Mancha,
excuse me Majorca. Friends — they hang out — there is nonetheless
something. It would seem to be a rivalry — many years at the top
of the Tour, they often competed with each other, with the Spaniard
getting more wins than the Swiss when they met in tournament
finals. In recent years, with the rise of Andy Murray, a Scot, and
Novak Djokovic, a Serb, they have not always been the last two
standing. In fact, sometimes neither one has been standing,
although usually Nadal was.
This means that to be in the elite of today’s game you
must come from a country whose name starts with s. It also
means that to win in today’s game you must be in superb condition.
Watching (thanks to television, which also gave us Dan Rather)
Djokovic overwhelm David Ferrer (another Spaniard, another
s) in the quarters of the Australian Open, you stopped
counting the breathtaking defensive saves the man makes, followed
by tactical finesse to get back on the attack after one or two
exchanges, and then the attack, putting the ball where the other
guy ain’t, and end of point. He plays a game of movement and
surprise that if it so exhausting to watch, think of what it must
be like to compete against. It is in the 90s in Australia these
days, which is not hot hot, as Whoopi Goldberg might say,
it is quite warm. They wear caps, visors, clothes made of
featherweight materials. The spectators do without coats and
ties.
David Ferrer, who is highly ranked, gave Djokovic a fight
for two sets, just as Tomas Berdych — who is Czech, that is a
country with a c — gave Nadal a run for his money for two
sets, too. But two sets was all. In the third, Djokovic and
Nadal, in their respective matches, went to levels where their
opponents could not follow. Very different in their playing
styles, the Serb playing with tactical finesse that the Majorcan
tends to eschew in favor of relentless baseline defensive play
followed by deep hard winners at the opportune moment. They go
after almost anything. They will reach it. They will hit it back
where no shot is supposed to go.
Ferrer and Berdych just could not keep up with this.
Against each other, they both did keep up — for six hours of
testing each other’s will and
skill. Roger Federer, in his prime
— but, precisely, many observers think the man still is in his
prime, the last two years of sub-prime notwithstanding — moved
with no less energy, but because he moved with so much more grace
(“classic form” is the tennis term), and because he had such an
unsurpassed ability to control the point (forcing your opponent to
respond to your shots and choosing the moment to “put it away”), he
sometimes makes observers forget what a fantastic athlete he is,
too. In the semifinal match with Nadal, the critical question was
whether Federer would maintain control of the point over three
sets. You need three out of five. Federer had not dropped a set
through the tournament. This itself was evidence of his control,
his foresight (saves energy, limits risk of injury, maintains
mental focus), the return to prime. Note that “sub-prime,” in his
case, means not being number one and not winning a Slam (major) in
2011.
Federer and Nadal were head to head rivals in the '00s,
but with the emergence of Djokovic and Murray into the top four,
there has been the faintest hint of a grudge on Nadal’s part. A
rivalry is where you say, I want the same thing you want and I am
going to get it because I am better than you. A grudge is I want
what you have and you are keeping me from getting it and not
necessarily because you are better, although objectively someone is
better (hence Professor Tucker, “Don’t you want to be
Number One, Lewis?” and Mr. Lapham refusing to be baited, holding
no grudges, implying a rivalry with these-all — he is from San
Francisco, star reporter on the Herald before a long and
distinguished career in magazine journalism — is not of any
interest. But Professor egged him on, you either do want it — a
rivalry — or you are grudging Norman his fame, though in what
circles? Did Lewis want fame in the same circles? No one
asked.)
Basically, the grudging note crept in because Nadal did
not possess his Number One status as long as Federer had possessed
his, due to the field suddenly becoming more crowded. You should’a
shared more when we was the two of us, but you hogged it, and now
there be three, four. No one can prove this thought crossed his
mind. It was certainly apparent in his countenance that it was
Djokovic toward whom he felt animosity when the Serb beat him (and
decisively) at Wimbledon last year, but was that the animosity of
rivalry or the beginning of a grudge?
Did Nadal then re-direct his feeling toward Federer
because, somehow, it is sometimes easier to get mad at your pal
than at a dangerous upstart you do not know as well nor how far he
may go? As the Australian Open got under way, Rafa told a Spanish
sportswriter that it was not white of Roger (this is a free
translation) to let other players, like the interviewee, carry the
bags of the players’ grievances vis-à-vis the professional
associations and tournaments, thus appearing to be malcontents,
while he stood back and acted the magnanimous sportsman. This fit
of petulance, out of school complaining, is not attractive. Stiff
upper lip and all that, and no dirty laundry in public. Observe
that there is nothing contemporary about this, even if our
contemporary culture makes a virtue of épater le
bourgeois, though there is a smelly hint that for a long time
now nothing has been more bourgeois than to want to épater le
bourgeois.
If Nadal grudged Federer for having been dominant more
decisively and enduringly than he got a chance to be before being
upstaged by another rising player, it emerged in the suggestion
that Federer was letting others do the grunt work on players’
issues while keeping the princely role to himself. But nothing came
of this. Both men insisted nothing had changed in their mutual
admiration society and they proceeded to sweep everything before
them before facing each other in the semis, which Nadal won
decisively in four sets.
This came as a surprise due to the quality of Federer’s
game until then. He seemed to be more in control of his game — and
his opponents’ — than any one else. To be sure, the other Four
Tops were doing very well. For a moment between rounds there was
talk of the Australian teenage sensation Bernard Tomic challenging
Roger Federer; no doubt he was playing great tennis and showing a
form that suggests he already understands raw power will not be
enough as he scales the heights of the sport. But Federer
dispatched him in three easy sets, then repeated in the quarter
against Juan del Potro, who as a young sensation beat him in the
2009 U.S. Open final. Yet when the time came to face Nadal, he just
could not set the momentum, determine the agenda, control the
point.
The same thing was apparent in Andy Murray’s tournament.
He seemed unstoppable — until Novak Djokovic stopped him in the
semis. The rest is history — Nole and Rafa played the longest
match in the history of the Australian Open, nearly 6 hours of
nail-biting saves of point which — I confess — I watched on a
television screen in the Charlotte, N.C. airport, while waiting for
a transfer to a destination which is of no consequence at the
moment. It evoked all the great finals of yore — Federer-Roddick
at Wimbledon 2009, for example. What bothers me, though, is that
this dramatic match, in which Nadal was leading in the fifth set at
4-2 on serve, did not resolve the issue that transcends rivalries
and allows us to say who really should be number one. The
historical reality is that Djokovic usually beats Murray and Nadal
usually beats Djokovic, and Murray is sort of a wild card in final
four set ups. What if Federer had played Djokovic in the semis? And
Murray-Nadal? Then it would have been different.
But with would have been’s you can build castles in
Spain.
