Saturday, September 06, 2003
The dust settles on another week, and Saturday finds my man Andy Roddick down 2 sets to 1 at the US Open to...to whom? To David Nalbandian? One of the weird things about men's tennis is the fact that, for every hyped American like A-Rod--who is indeed realizing his unbelievable potential this summer--there are guys named David Nalbandian or Juan-Carlos Ferrero who are pretty much just as good. Casual tennis fans might not even recognize the name of Roger Federer, who was this year's Wimbledon champion and is probably the best player in the world at the moment (he lost in the quarterfinals at the Open).
I've iterated before, in other forums, that I really enjoy tennis as a spectator sport, and I guess it's time for this year's installment. A lot of what I enjoy about tennis is, believe it or not, mathematical, as in: tennis is a game of math. There's the obvious geometry of the game, but there's also a lot in the way of probability that I find more subtlely enjoyable. As David Foster Wallace has written, tennis is a game of expanding possibilities, in which every shot gives rise to N outcomes, and every return presents N-squared more. I find no other game that I watch regularly harder to predict--watching baseball or football, savvy viewers can usually have a sense of what's going to happen before or as it happens. I've watched quite a bit of tennis, and I still can't regularly tell you where the players are going to hit the ball, or even what shot is a good shot until it's thudding into the backdrop at 90+MPH. This makes for occasionally frustrating viewing, but it also means that, at least for me, tennis is very exciting to watch indeed.
I also have this thing where I enjoy the effect the different surfaces have on who is favored to win. Unlike in team sports, there is no home field advantage in tennis, but each surface has a tremendous impact on the play of a match, and certain players have the ability to use certain surfaces to their advantage. I could write a lot more here, and maybe one day I will, but during the 5th set of a U.S. Open semifinal (on DecoTurf II, naturally the most democratic of surfaces), I have better things to do. A-Rod's now in at 4-3 and double break with a look at a second serve. He's a young man with a bright future ahead of him.
I've iterated before, in other forums, that I really enjoy tennis as a spectator sport, and I guess it's time for this year's installment. A lot of what I enjoy about tennis is, believe it or not, mathematical, as in: tennis is a game of math. There's the obvious geometry of the game, but there's also a lot in the way of probability that I find more subtlely enjoyable. As David Foster Wallace has written, tennis is a game of expanding possibilities, in which every shot gives rise to N outcomes, and every return presents N-squared more. I find no other game that I watch regularly harder to predict--watching baseball or football, savvy viewers can usually have a sense of what's going to happen before or as it happens. I've watched quite a bit of tennis, and I still can't regularly tell you where the players are going to hit the ball, or even what shot is a good shot until it's thudding into the backdrop at 90+MPH. This makes for occasionally frustrating viewing, but it also means that, at least for me, tennis is very exciting to watch indeed.
I also have this thing where I enjoy the effect the different surfaces have on who is favored to win. Unlike in team sports, there is no home field advantage in tennis, but each surface has a tremendous impact on the play of a match, and certain players have the ability to use certain surfaces to their advantage. I could write a lot more here, and maybe one day I will, but during the 5th set of a U.S. Open semifinal (on DecoTurf II, naturally the most democratic of surfaces), I have better things to do. A-Rod's now in at 4-3 and double break with a look at a second serve. He's a young man with a bright future ahead of him.
