- Work is going well and quite contently, I’ve realised lately that holy frakking shit I’m actually writing and producing for television. If my 14 year old self could see me now I think she’d be pretty proud.
- Tennis is progressing slowly but with pleasant results, I will never be a federer/nadal but I’m working my game towards Andy Murray :p
- no photography lately, it’s been raining incessantly for the past month.
- writing for this blog takes a little too long, I’m thinking about podcasting instead…
- I can’t believe it’s June already, my slow crawl towards impending mortality scares me.
- It’s been 15 years since Toy Story was released…seems like yesterday.
okay, so I completely lied when I said I was going to retrospectively blog about the Australian Open, I’ve just managed to go through ALL 5205 photos I took and turned them into jpegs. I still am planning on listening to the podcasts, however only when I don’t get sick at the sound of my own voice…ahem
So why haven’t I been blogging? Well, there’s nothing really to blog about really, Twitter is taking care of all my tennis needs, work has been brilliant thus far, and I haven’t really had anything to really bitch about.
Of course I say that and by tomorrow something will have gone catastrophically wrong which will make me eat my words.
Life is currently devoid of any long term goals, short term goals are to get fitter, lose some weight so I can lose the joint issues and improve at tennis.
All in all I’m quite content, not resoundingly happy but very comfortable. Currently I’m in my TV rotation, working on a little video game show which is somewhat satiating my creativity and thus I haven’t found the necessary angst to go out and seek some masochistic activity (i.e updating this blog). I adore the people I work with and most of the work I do but knowing that my rotation ends in about 3 weeks will probably kill all this latent joy and send me screaming back to this blog.
But before then, I think I may enjoy what little solace I have left, grab some more sleep and you may not hear from me till mid-year
depending on how my next rotation goes I guess.
Leave you guys with a photo from the Aussie Open:
Practise before 4th Rd AO2010
The crowd at any Federer practise is amazing, amassed 5-7 deep alongside the entire court, with spectators also peering from the top of the stands of nearby courts. People forget about personal space, courtesy or shame just for a glimpse of a living legend. I’ve been at the back of the throng, I’ve also been lucky to be at the front, leaning into the fence, close enough to lean in and almost feel the whoosh of the racquet.
This shot was taken during a warmup hit before his 4th round encounter with Lleyton Hewitt. I was sandwiched within the throng, finding a precarious balance behind a young boy who was too short to see anything and in between two tall guys. Because Federer was practising on the other side of the court he usually was on, photos had to be carefully taken between a smattering of head, hair, shoulders and armpits all smushed up against the fence in front. But even under the fading afternoon light, framed by the seething mass of humanity, Roger Federer seemed to look into the soul of my camera, almost as if to ask;
“I mean really? Do you think you have a big enough lens? Yeesh, can you leave me alone to practise?”
So yes I have been neglecting this blog, so often is happens when I’ve got nothing on in my life, or I’ve got too much on in my life. Thankfully this time it’s the latter.
I’ve come back from 2 weeks at the Australian Open 2010, experiencing many firsts in the process, first time in Melbourne, first time watching live tennis and of course first time watching the GOAT in action.
Just a little over a year ago, I was drowning my sorrows in ethanol as Federer lost another final to Nadal. Little did I believe I would be at a Grand Slam final a year later, watching him actually win it.
I’ll be retrospectively blogging for the next few weeks or so, all my experiences at AO2010. Lam and I podcasted most days so I may actually remember stuff. I’m hoping to also put snippets of the podcasts up (well the non-defamatory parts anyway). It’s the first time I’ve podcasted and I think it beats writing a diary on my laptop, takes less time and less energy and I can multitask during it. So look for more podcasts in the future i guess.
So the major planned goals accomplished this trip were:
watch Roger Federer dance across a tennis court
watch RF practise
obtain RF’s autograph
watch a Grand Slam Final
Watch RF WIN a Grand Slam Final (On my birthday to boot)
Watch heaps of other awesome players playing the glorious sport of tennis LIVE
Of course there were a few unexpected events which also made the 2 weeks unforgettable:
Hit For Haiti Charity Event
Justine Henin’s run to the final
Prince William’s mid-match visit
Gasquet vs Youzhny 5 setter
Feliciano Lopez’s rear end
I will also cover the impact of having the iphone whilst travelling as well as professing my undying love for my Canon 40D + 70-200mm f4/L Combo.
A young Agassi found out that his father decided to name him after two of his co-workers from a Vegas casino. No reason was given, it just turned out that way, neither Andre nor Kirk were particularly close friends of Mike Agassi, but their first names were good enough to embroider the birth certificate of his youngest child.
Thus for his existence, Andre’s search for his answers in life, herein laid out in “Open” his autobiography, results in similar lack of reasons given. Sometimes life just is…it’s a journey which we find ourselves on but forget to find out why we started in the first place.
I was too young to really remember the petulant wild Agassi, and too disinterested to really take note of his late career resurgence but if it were a choice between Sampras and Agassi; I was more drawn to the big A.
After reading “Open” I now have a greater understanding of why.
Agassi is the classic anti-hero in the construct of the myth archetype. “Open” catalogues his odyssey. He cuts the figure of the dedicated child, misunderstood teen, wayward young man, tragic burnout and then the resurgent saviour and ultimately the hero, but always shunning his heroic gifts and in his case the ability to play tennis.
I’m attracted to anti-heroes, I love my protagonists flawed and conflicted but ultimately they need to be good and honest people. And as much as I know about Agassi himself, I get the vibe that in light of the mistakes he has made, he is ultimately an honest and good man.
“Open”, though littered with tennis, isn’t actually about tennis. It’s about humanity, love and compassion over a bed of explanation and analysis of the choices and relationships we make in late. Although there is probably enough of the analysis to fill most biographies it’s really the deep emotional resonance which makes the book interminably readable.
I finished the solid 400 pages in a day. I can’t remember the last time I managed to read a book in a day; I gather it was probably the first Harry Potter book when I was 15 or something.
Upon finishing the first chapter on the train heading to work on the morning I received the book, tears welling in my eyes, I knew for a book to elicit such an emotional response from me in the first 20 pages, it must be pretty damn special.
The book is very well ghost-written by J.R Moehringer (a Pulitzer prize winner no less) and I gather a good amount of the structure comes from his end but I wouldn’t discount some of the origins of the literary poetics from Agassi himself, together they form some rare quality for a sports (auto)biography.
I hold a great literary weakness for (auto)biographies, but usually they’re filled with latent facts for the casual reader with some revelationary stories for the hardcore fan but there is something about “Open” which makes it utterly engaging just on a humanistic level. Just look at the cover (above), it’s not pretty, some would say ugly even, but it’s raw and intriguingly human. Also the book, purely on a narrative level, is just a good yarn, a pure form of “Myth” storytelling.
I’m usually not one to re-read books but I can’t help but feel that I’d be thumbing through my paperback copy of “Open” constantly for years to come.
Even if you hate tennis (or any type of sport), or biographies, or Agassi for that matter, I’d still urge you to give “Open” a go, or at least read the couple of chapters telling of his courtship of Steffi Graf, I think even the most coldest and stoniest of hearts will fall fluttering and submit to the coy sweetness and endearment of that relationship.
All week I’ve been checking the weather reports, hoping, wishin’ short of prayin’ that it wouldn’t rain on Sunday morning, because Sunday mornings I have my tennis lesson and it’s my 90min of respite and physical joy for the week.
This was to be the first lesson of the term, last week in a rain delayed make up lesson something finally clicked in my groundstrokes and I was in deep anticipation to see if my form would replicate.
Eight minutes out of the house and six more till the courts, the ominous grey clouds started weeping. Although I cursed the weather gods, the weather report was right for once as the weeping turned for the worse into a generous sob.
By the time I got to the courts the generous sob decided to take a step back and let the showerheads have a go. The coach decided to call off the lesson, disappointed, a few of us had a short hit when the weather gods decided to take an ad break, but once the waterfall resumed the others had enough and decided to call it a day.
I decided since I was already slightly wet I might as well go all the way and let the clouds finish the job.
I took to the furthest court, it’s a court without the double alley and every time I look at it I feel like I’m playing some crazy indoor masters event from the 1980s with Ivan Lendl or Boris Becker. The only other people who felt the need to indulge in this bit of wet masochism were on the court on the other side of the grounds, so I was alone and undisturbed.
As I started to practice some serves, the rain started bucketing down again. Once I smacked all four balls to the other side of the court, I dragged my lazy arse across the net for some ball retrieval.
Just before the net I stopped and looked up to the sky, the water was still coming down, in harsh and incessantly heavy drops, lightly drenching everything from my cap, to my racquet and my shoes but suddenly I was struck my this eerie quiet, I couldn’t hear anything but the rain, the water hitting the nearby trees and my own solid breathing. I looked at the grounds and across the courts, the green synthetic grass glistening and almost smelling like the real thing instead of some cheap plastic imitation filled with sand which would stick like glue to your shoes and every pore of your body. A peek of light came through the clouds and accentuated the contrast created by the okra coloured borders of the courts.
I reached out my hands, like the adorning Christ the Redeemer. Feeling the individual warm massaging drops, and in that moment I felt bliss. I sensed beauty, epiphany and contemplation in the one hit. And funnily enough my first thought was SHIT!, I need to capture this moment on camera like if only I would click my fingers and Wong Kar Wai would turn up with Chris Doyle and canvas this moment in my life forever on celluloid.
I was soaked but I felt the most free I’ve ever felt, this freedom bore me this incredible sense of elation as if I was finally defying sensibility, playing in the rain like some naughty schoolkid unafraid of been admonished by her parents.
In those ten minutes of solace I was drunk with both happiness and disbelief.
But all such glorious moments must be eclipsed by interruptions and endings and as the rain came down heavier than ever with thunderous vigour, common sense and self-preservation kicked in; the slight possibility of pneumonia and the ruination of a great pair of tennis shoes. I ran for the club-house, rueful that such spiritual bliss couldn’t last just a little while longer…
There’s a lot that could be written about Roger Federer and not a lot that hasn’t been written already. I’ve been wanting to do a longer piece on this piece of tennis genius DNA since the French Open this year but ran into brick walls with inspiration and simply because I didn’t want to Jinx the man going into Wimbledon and the US Open. Now that the US Open is finally done I don’t really have that jinx excuse so therefore here goes:
Federer is a tennis genius, no qualms; you can list the never-ending qualities; pure technical stroke production, all court game, mental fortitude, master tactician etc. There are far more writers out there who can wax lyrical on his achievements with a higher level of eloquence and finesse however I’m not one of them. Really I’m here to bring some entertainment not some divine level of analysis.
He won Roland Garros which I think is probably still one of his best career achievements thus far, even the photos and video footage attest to that, I mean has tennis looked ever so glorious? the red clay, the BBC slow motion footage, the light drops of rain splashing on Coupe des Mousquetaires as Rog kisses it. I mean shit it was like tennis porn. And then he broke Randy’s heart at Wimbledon. More than broke it I guess, rather tore it out, smashed it with his Wilson K-Factor K-six one Tour 90 and stomped on it with his Nike Vapor VIs (oh yeah did I mention I will be doing product placements in my blog posts now? Nike you can just pay me with free merchandise thanks).
I gather that in the months after the devastation that was the Australian Open 2009, in the midst of the racquet abuse, AWOL serve and the escaped forehand, most fed fans would have probably made this pact with the tennis gods:
“Please let Rog win Roland Garros and regain his Wimbledon crown for his 15th and beat Pete’s record and I will never ask anything more, EVER, as long as Rog plays.”
And if you didn’t, you either had given up on fed entirely or had a much stronger belief in him than the rest of us, or otherwise actually had better things to do than pray to the tennis gods.
So it’s with this pact that we fed fans move into the last slam of the season, where our Rog was gunning for a 6th straight US Open title. Supposedly he was handed a cupcake draw, I’m sure neither Hewitt nor Soderling necessarily agreed to that notion but when Rog hit that “tweener”against Djokovic in the 2nd last point of his semi, viewers went wild, he IS the greatest they all chanted.
But what was not mentioned was that “what the tennis gods giveth, the tennis gods taketh away.” Perhaps us fed fans did get a tad greedy after the Channel Slam and the birth of his twin mangoes. It seemed our man couldn’t lose and couldn’t do anything wrong in life. With what was a pure dismantling of both Murray and Djokovic in Cincinnati with only a hiccup loss to Tsonga at Montreal to cast doubt over his form, most through it would take a complete miracle effort to dethrone the king of tennis.
Well considering thehumiliation of Del Potro at the AO 09 by Rog, a few months back Delpo was possibly the last person people would have picked to complete the Regicide at the US Open. But after THAT semi at the French this year, I was always going to frazzle with Del Potro in the Final. The Ent, the Elf, whatever you want to call him, has a cannon for a forehand, a mortar for a backhand and a couple of grenades for serves. The guy is giant, his return of serve is formidable and when on song, you’d wonder if any one in the world could take him. Yes even a player with the 100% mental fortitude of Nadal and the stroke variety of the Fedster.
But Delpo wasn’t entirely on song today. He gutted it out, and his win was well deserved. The less said about Fed’s serving the better but Delpo’s return game probably impacted on the complete and utter failure of fed’s 1st serve to appear in the game. From my observation, Fed looked tired today, and when it got to the nuts and bolts of the match you could sense the frustration and inability to deal with Delpo’s ground game. Maybe the less than 24 hour turn around from yesterday’s hard fought 3 setter did impact him but more or less how do you deal gracefully when someone is firing cannonballs at you off a 1st serve? Rog was probably thinking, “Shit, why am I still playing when I can be at home watching a Patrick Swayze movie marathon with Mirka and my twin mangoes?”.
Anyhoo my pain and frustration have all but dissipated now, 6 hours after the match was done, 1 bowl of pork spare rib ramen and 1 piece of chocolate mud cake later I was clean through the stages of grief, denial, anger, bargaining, depression and well on my way to acceptance. I think this is a new record in dealing with the emotional fallout from fed losing. Obviously I’m not liking it but at least it wasn’t as completely devastating and painful as AO 2009 (when I had to break out the vodka to cope). (Freakyfrites has a hilarious and oh so true post of the stages of grief which grips fedophiles after a loss)
I think I’ve also found an upside to fed losing to certain Spanish speaking beasts of men in sleeveless Nike shirts and bright bandanas:
“Hawkeye”
It’s funny that for a man so instilled with tennis perfection it’s this piece of technology which has become his complete and utter downfall on the court. He hates it, it hates him and it conspires with umpires and linesmen to humiliate him. And Rog, he doesn’t like that one bit, no, instead it instigates some of the funniest and petulant meltdowns from feddy.
“No no no, it’s too late…come on…I wasn’t allowed to challenge after two seconds, the guy takes like ten everytime. How can you allow that stuff to happen? You have any rules in there or what? Stop showing me the hand okay? Don’t tell me to be quiet okay? When I want to talk I talk. I don’t give a shit what he said, I’m just saying he took way too long. Don’t fucking tell me the rules, I was not allowed to challenge like fuck 2 matches ago after one second while he takes 10 seconds and gets 2 of them….Don’t fucking talk to me.
And this beauty from the Wimby final 2007 against Nadal (which Rog actually won but it still brings in the LOLs)
I was sure I was happy at the point where I was like, I’m happy he challenged. Cause I knew he was going to burn me. How in the world was that ball in? I mean….SHIT! Look at the score now! I mean it’s just killing me today. What’s this system for? *sniff*
I’m glad that even the “Perfect (Beautiful) People” have a perchance for silly petulance. And it’s completely endearing, I mean he even makes swearing sound almost gentlemanly. How can people say that fed is a robot? The guy’s hawkeye meltdowns are like, on the Safin level of entertainment.
—
During my tennis lesson on Sunday I came to the cold, harsh and bitter realisation that nothing in my game will ever be as pretty or technically brilliant as anything in Rog’s tennis arsenal, no matter how hard I work at it. And you realise after you play tennis just how much of a special entity Rog is. I’m glad I can witness such a player in my lifetime and he better bring it live at AO 2010, when I’m in the stands screaming for Mirka to unveil the twins on court in the player’s box.
When I was around 7-8, I received my first set of tennis racquets. During that time my family weren’t as well off as we are now, in fact my parents keep harping on about how I currently make more money a week then they did combined when they first came to Australia. However one of the core values my parents held was that lack of funds should never restrict one’s ability to enjoy the perks in life; holidays, music, sport, toys etc. Therefore most of the stuff I had as a kid from electronic keyboard, sneakers, toys and the fore mentioned tennis racquets were 2nd hand, acquired by my parents at weekend garage sales. They didn’t have much money but they made sure that I had everything I needed to be a kid, to be able to learn, discover and explore the world around me. Even though the equipment wasn’t new or flash or perhaps even very good, I am still grateful for their efforts.
I used a wooden racquet (very old school) to practise hitting a tennis ball against the living room wall and drive the old man downstairs absolutely mad. We rented in an old block of flats with fibro walls and wooden floorboards in North Sydney. Before the property and office booms of the mid-late 1990s, it was a quiet suburb populated by churches and nursing homes.
The windows of the flat opened to a grey depressing concrete wall which partitioned the block from the car park of the office building next door. I guess for most Aussie kids, living in apartments in the early 1990s might have been slightly depressing. But I didn’t know any better, I came from greyer and much smaller apartment in Shanghai, I thought it was absolute luxury just to be able to hit tennis balls in the living room, the idea of having a backyard was completely foreign. Although the flats did have a backyard with a couple of hills hoists to swing on. Beyond its wild bushes lay the constant rumble of the train station, the back of which became a frequent hangout for me and my comrades, where we would build our tree houses and reenact scenes from films we saw.
At school on Thursday afternoons I used to watch with great envy as kids, shouldering their Prince Junior racquets, hopped onto the bus headed to River Road Tennis Centre. It was a program run in conjunction with the school. The mini bus would pick you up after school, you’d have a 40min tennis lesson, hop back on the bus and be dropped back at school. I begged my parents to let me join and, I guess boyed by my prodigious talent on show at home, they relented.
Of course I couldn’t take my daggy wooden racquet. Pity as I hadn’t heard of John McEnroe back then. My idol was Michael Chang and I hated Pete Sampras with a passion because he used to be one of the unmovable obstacles between Michael and Grand Slam wins. Luckily the wooden racquet came with an old school Wilson Graphite racquet. I think one of the first series of graphite/ non wood racquets to come out, it was deathly heavy for an 8 year old to weld but at least it was cooler than the wooden racquet.
I wasn’t prolific at lessons, I progressed adequately. As a kid I made constant faux pas with coarse language learnt from some of my Dad’s favourite action films. Seemingly unable to keep my mouth shut, perhaps this was a habit of having to learn a 2nd language at a young age when you’re still figuring out the semantics of language itself. As punishment for doing anything wrong at River Road (e.g. calling your Tennis Coach an “Arsehole”) you were made to run around the entire centre (10-15 courts or so) until you get to a random letterbox on the other side near the golf course, through the bushes and obscene amounts of spiders webs. You touched the letterbox and then had to run back. I was always a shit runner, hence I started to learn to keep my mouth shut.
Lessons continued for about a year. I can’t remember why I stopped, perhaps it was the feeling that I wasn’t getting anywhere. I wanted to play competition tennis, instead of playing Skittles and Tennis Handball every week. But I knew my parents couldn’t make that commitment to Saturday morning competitions, so I gave it up. The Wilson racquet was getting undeniably more tiring to use as everyone went on to lighter and newer racquets. Other than a few odd rallies in later primary, an abysmal inter-school round robin in year 6 and a couple of terms of tennis for High School Sport, I didn’t really think about tennis again, Basketball and soccer took over. The wooden racquet has since long disappeared and I don’t even know what happened to my Wilson racquet (I think my brother broke it in his Tennis Stage, yes he had one too, perhaps all Aussie kids go through their “tennis” faze.)
I quit tennis before I found a topspin forehand and I still can’t serve to save my life and after the Becker/Chang years I never did find another player to really support. Pat Rafter was a serial disappointment, Mark Philippoussis went AWOL so much and don’t even get me started on Lleyton Hewitt…
So I guess this is where I talk about Federer right? The saviour of my interest in tennis? The cause of my very strange and overwrought emotional attachment to his game the last few years.
I’ll keep it short. I hated Federer the first time I saw him play. A spotty 19 year old with a fugly pony tail. I didn’t bat an eyelid at tennis when the world was talking about how awesome and GOAT he was after 2004. I didn’t see him play again until the Australian Open 2006.
I finally understood what the deal was.
I’ve understood ever since.
Wimbledon starts tomorrow night Australian time. I don’t know how I’m going to make it through the next 2 weeks but I’m sure I’ll work it out. My health and vitality may suffer. However come spring, when the awful damp weather ends I’ll be taking up tennis again. I’m finally going to learn how to serve, I’m going to finish what I started 15 years ago and hopefully I’ll play some competitions in the future.
Kinda makes all the pain of the Australian Open 2009 worth it right?
Career Grand Slam, 14 Slams in total and a multitude of other records
G.O.A.T definitely?
YES!!! No qualms now.
Plus that drop shot…Isaid that he needed to change his game this year and boy that drop shot came in handy during his run at Roland Garros this year.
I really need to re-evaluate my tendency to be highly emotionally attached to this man I don’t know, but for the next week or so I’ll be mightily happy…yes perhaps even at work .
I’ve got my basketball grand final tomorrow, so I’ve been thinking about sport a bit lately. This in the last few days has made me a bit sad:
I don’t think Federer has fully recovered from last year’s wimbledon loss to Rafa (There’s doubt that he ever will in fact). And this years Australian Open just opened the floodgates in terms of his mental collapse.
It seems that sooner or later the mighty will fall, we’ve seen it with countless empires, corporations and sportsman alike, nothing lasts for eternity, not life and certainly not championships, scorelines or rankings.
It’s also been said that 26-28 is a tough time for a tennis player, a time when the new guards arrive at 22-23. Those who grew up watching you play and adapting their game against yours whilst you were flourishing against opponents the same age you’re now. But at 27 you’re still not old enough or sore enough to give it all up.
I hope for Federer’s sake, and I guess for my own enjoyment as a fan, that impending fatherhood will make him re-evaluate his goals and the role of tennis in his life and help him come back fighting as strong as ever. And perhaps help Fed lose a bit of his stubborness and change his game to fit that of his competitors today.
It might mean that FedExpress tennis may not be as pretty as before, but us fans will at least be spared the further anguish of watching him disintegrate loss after loss.
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