The Australian Open

The big surprise at the Australian Open this year was that, for the first time in 3 years, the final of a major tournament had neither Roger Federer nor Rafael Nadal in it.  The former fell to Novak Djokovic in the semis and the latter succumbed to a torn thigh muscle and the dogged play of David Ferrer in the quarters.  Astonished observers wondered if this signaled a changing of the guard, a new generation of talent coming to the fore.  Certainly there are questions as to how long the 24-year-old Nadal’s body can hold up to his punishing brand of tennis, questions increased by the fact that he went out with another injury here, but indications are that he’s going to recover quickly.  Federer, on the other hand, who is 29, has been dominated by the 23-year-old Djokovic in the last two majors they’ve played, and this raises a question as to whether, with two rivals consistently beating him, he can still hope to win majors.    

Tennis is a sport of declining popularity in the USA.  This seems odd because it is such an individual sport and the United States is such an individualistic country.  The ideal of self-reliance is deeply ingrained (it fuels the outrage about “socialism”), and tennis is just about the most self-reliant sport there is.  Even a boxer gets to go back to his corner every three minutes, but the tennis player is out there alone for the duration of the match. 

Back in the day the United States had the dominant players, with Sampras and Agassi, not to mention Courier and Chang, and before them, Connors and McEnroe.  On the women’s side we had Billy Jean King, Chris Evert, Tracy Austin, and Martina Navratilova.  I don’t mean to disrespect Roddick and Blake, I admire and root for them, but even though Roddick won the US Open in 2003 and was briefly ranked #1 that year, and Blake got as high as #4 in 2006, their achievements were not at the level of Sampras and Agassi or Connors and McEnroe.  Blake, now 31, is in the twilight of his career, and Roddick, 28, seems not that far behind (he was blown out in the fourth round by the Swiss journeyman player Wawrinka) and there are no new American players waiting in the wings to measure up to them (Isner and Querrey seem, at best, top 20 players).  On the women’s side, the era of the dominance of the Williams sisters is drawing to a close (Serena, 29, didn’t play and Venus, 30, went out in the third round), and there are no American women whatever on the horizon to replace them. 

In short, America is increasingly irrelevant to tennis.  We face a period in which we will have no players good enough to contend for the championship we host.  Tennis is now ruled by the Europeans, with a few exceptions.  On the men’s side, the Argentine Juan Martin Del Potro (who beat Federer to win the 2009 US Open) is a threat.  And on the women’s side, the Chinese players Li Na and Peng Shuai are making inroads and beginning to threaten the Europeans (Li Na made it all the way to the final, a first for an Asian player in any major).  In China, the popularity of tennis is surging.  But Americans seem to be retreating into their parochial national sports with which the rest of the world has little to do. 

One of the interests of the Australian Open as the first major of the year is that you get to see new up-and-coming players.  The new Australian hope is a transplanted European, 18-year-old Bernard Tomic, who in the third round managed to break Rafael Nadal’s serve twice, something few older players have been able to do.  Then there was Milos Raonic, another European transplant, but in this case to Canada, who got to the fourth round where he was taken out by David Ferrer, the subsequent conqueror of Nadal.  And finally there was Alexandr Dolgopolov (try saying that 3 times quickly!) from the Ukraine, whose unconventional game took out the # 4 seed Robin Soderling from Sweden on his way to the quarter-finals where he took a set before falling to # 5 Andy Murray of Great Britain.  But as for Americans, they were nowhere to be seen.  It almost seems as if the United States, which was once at the center of things, has slipped off to the side and is eddying around its own solipsistic internal issues while the rest of the world hurries on by.  America, in its deepening self-involvement and internal fractiousness (born of an exaggerated sense of self-importance), has come to feel that the rest of the world is irrelevant, while in actuality America is becoming increasingly irrelevant to the rest of the world.