Viktoria Azarenka, who retained her Australian Open title in the
ladies’ singles division by beating an injured Na Li in three sets,
was accused of cheating by observers and bloggers, including USTA
big Patrick McEnroe, who rushed to judgment after a controversial
extended medical time-out during her semifinal against the teen age
phenom Sloane Stephens. However, you should always check the
evidence before saying mean things about people, who are born in
sin, I admit, but who nevertheless do not necessarily live in sin,
if they were raised correctly and studied Latin in school.
The governing bodies of the women’s and men’s tours specify that
a player can request a medical time-out times during a match,
normally for three minutes per injury and only during changeovers
Observers and sportswriters have suggested that competitors
occasionally avail themselves of the time-out not because they are
genuinely hurt physically but because the intensity of it all is
getting to them psychologically. In a word, they are cracking under
pressure and need some moments to go into the lotus position or
take some other calming therapy which they learned in tennis
camp.
Miss Azarenka somehow got 10 minutes during a bad patch in the
second set. She had won the first, found herself up 5-3 against her
opponent’s serve, and managed to blow five break opportunities in a
row. She seemed to be talking to herself and going ga-ga in the
head, while her young opponent stayed cool and, with the score now
5-4, looked all set to do her damnedest to break Vika and even up
the score. Then – ah, dreams.
It is true tennis is a mental game, but so is boxing. In one of
the finest boxing movies ever made, Somebody Up There Likes
Me, directed by the great Robert Wise (who is better known as
the co-director with Jerome Robbins of another fight movie,
West Side Story), a boxer fakes an injury to avoid getting
involved with gangsters who want him to help them put the fix in.
This really happened, according to sweet science experts, to Rocky
Graziano, on whose career the film is based; indeed, the experts
say the film is quite faithful to the biographical record, which
shows you can sometimes believe what you see on the screen, which
is better than can be said about the papers.
Notwithstanding, Rocky Graziano was suspended in New York for
refusing to finger the fixers. Whether the suspension was fair
remains one of sport’s great controversies to this day, and is one
of the reasons his epic three-fight contest with Tony Zale took
place far from the Brooklynite’s native ground, or pavement.
Boxing, like football, is a brutal sport, and it appears that
the socialists who govern us for our own good will get around to
banning both, after they remove our guns from our cold, dead
fingers. Charlton Heston, who said something along these lines,
plays a part in a movie where there is another brutal sport,
chariot-racing – but I digress. The point here is that the moral
corner in which Rocky Graziano found himself was quite different
from the one into which Miss Azarenka may or may not have stumbled,
depending on what you make of the medical time-out rule.
The boxer’s case bore some affinity with Elia Kazan’s, or
Lillian Hellman’s. Kazan famously “named names” when asked to do so
by a Congressional committee investigating Communist Party
influence in the film industry, but Miss Hellman (of whom Mary
McCarthy once said every word she ever wrote was a lie, including
the prepositions) boldly refused to change her wardrobe to fit the
year’s fashion, whatever that was supposed to mean. She did not go
to jail, though others did for taking the same position. Kazan was
vilified, but had a great career that included a classic that
addresses the issue of bearing witness, On the
Waterfront.
However, in a nod to one of the passionate issues of the 1950s,
Graziano (played by Paul Newman) at one point shouts at the comish,
“I ain’t naming no names.” Keeping faith with the code of the old
neighborhood, or fear of gangsters? It is a tough call and I would
cast no stones. But in the case of the tennis rule, playing by the
rules – cooperating with the authorities – presents you with no
such stark abyss. The rule says if you feel lousy, you says so, and
if they believe you, you takes your break. It is not anyone’s
business what is making you feel lousy, unless they decide it looks
fishy, and if you want to call a mental wall a sore big toe, that
is between you and your conscience, it does not affect the security
of the Republic by way of insidious communistic influence in
popular culture, nor does it affect the integrity of the sport,
unless you think the number one lady acting like a tramp is
naughty.
Well, she did not dope herself; several players, it might be
noted, had harsh words for the cycling personality Lance Armstrong,
whose troubles took a strange twist when he appeared on TV during
the Open and he said, by way of self-justification, that whereas he
did indeed sue a young woman who played by the rules and reported
him to the authorities, and harassed and bullied her and nigh
ruined her financially, he did not call her fat. A real gentleman,
that guy, just a thug when convenient. Several top tennis stars
tut-tutted and said he damaged the sport of cycling, which they
follow avidly.
Some observers at Melbourne noted that Miss Azarenka was on
course to win, anyway, so who cares. That is a reckless position.
That is like Mrs. Hillary Clinton snapping at a Senate Committee,
“What difference does it make?” with regard to the reasons for her
department’s failures in the Benghazi affair. The difference could
be crucial indeed; there may have been dereliction of duty, not
human error, and the dereliction may have been politically
motivated, meaning malevolent. Military officers are
court-martialed for much less; can secretaries of state endanger
the Republic and bring murder into the ranks of their own
department with impunity?
Moreover, the whole reason there was a controversy is that, in
fact, the momentum in the match has shifted and Miss Sloan
Stephens, who is 19 and one of the main hopes for the future of
American women’s tennis, was fighting back against an obviously
rattled Miss Azarenka, who is the present, as well as the
near-term, of Belarusian tennis. Why a nation that was created as a
strategic fiction by the German General Staff during World War I
needs tennis in its future is a mystery, but Miss Azarenka is very
much for real and she was defending her title, having won at
Melbourne Park last year. Even on the television screen, in front
of which I watched the match, due to Mr. Tyrrell having sent me to
Africa instead of Australia, it was apparent that she was getting
the willies, hitting baseline shots she normally whacks almost like
Serena Williams into the net repeatedly as Miss Stephens climbed
back from a hole and seemed on course to overtake her in the second
set. Vika could have lost.
Which means Sloan, who upset an injured Miss Williams in the
quarters, could have won. Note that Miss Williams did not complain
about having the willies. She fought on, and she had taken a really
bad fall in one of the early rounds. Na Li took a really bad one
during the final, and she fought on. Serena persevered unto what
must have been a disappointing loss for her, given her strong
streak last year, which as a matter of fact ended with a brilliant
victory at the U.S. Open against the same blonde Belarusian
bombshell, much heftier than Miss Sharapova, whose own amazing Oz
streak was shattered by the Chinese dynamo, Na Li, in the other
semi. Misses Sharapova and Azarenka are shriekers. Even as they hit
the ball they emit a bone-chilling “yeaharharwrrah,” which in the
Siberian vernacular – Miss Sharapova, whose fair skin belies her
Florida address and hints at her real-life origins – means, “Your
shoelace is untied, girl!”
It was, actually, a fine tournament, with no big upsets other
than the Argentine champ Juan-Martin del Potro bombing out in the
first round. You could argue the Stephens-Williams match was an
upset, but you could just as well argue that when the no. 17 in the
WTA ranking beats the no. 1, it is a surprise but not an upset. An
upset is where the University of Chicago beats Alabama (while
football is still played under rules allowing for physical contact
– are you with me, Quin?) If, in a marvelous five-setter,
Stan Wawrinka had pulled off a victory against Novak Djokovic, it
would not have been any more of an upset than Andy Murray’s
five-setter against Roger Federer, a great match in which both
played sensationally all-court, acrobatic tennis until the last set
when the Swiss champ seemed to run out of gas.
It took something out of Murray, however, who ran out of gas
even sooner in the final against Djokovic, and after a strong start
he let the game slip away in the fourth set and the defending
champion took his third Australian Open title in a row and launched
another run at a calendar year Grand Slam, a feat nary accomplished
since Rod Laver, at the height of Australia’s tennis glory days,
pulled it off.
Murray did not call for any extended time-outs, though he did
request some re-taping of blistered feet, which was done at
ringside, excuse me court side. The fact is that, to reach some
sort of ethical resolution of this weighty issue, the international
tennis authorities might consider simply abolishing the medical
time-out rule. Play through the pain or quit, and no
ambiguities.
But whatchagonnado? Authorities exist to exert authority, and
the hell with what it does to sportsmanship, productivity, the
freedom our forefathers fought for. It does not occur to these
folks that making dumb rules invites disrespect for rules in
general and causes teenagers to steal motorcycles and kill
themselves while drunk. The authorities do not see it this way.
They live for rules. Rules give their lives meaning.
Sloan Stephens, at any rate, came out a lady, refusing to
complain even if the other person made her wait in the hot sun for
ten minutes and complimenting her after her victory and even saying
they’re good pals, and for sure “we’ll talk.”
