‘I’m sorry’, said David Ferrer as he gave his runner-up speech after the 2013 Miami final.
Well, at least he apologized, we thought. We wondered if Murray would apologize, too. And what about the ATP? Were they going to step up, hold their hands up and admit wrong-doing? Weren’t they guiltier than anyone?
After all, none of us would ever get those two hours and twenty minutes back. We could have been doing all manner of things. Watching one of our favorite matches on replay, playing tennis on our consoles, hell, we could have even been playing tennis in real life. But instead we had watched the Miami final, a Miami bereft of the game’s two biggest stars, Federer and Nadal, a tournament slowly losing its status to the prosperous and Nadal-Federer graced Indian Wells.
Still we watched though. After all, Miami has history. In the days when the finals went to five sets and only Major champions won, it was seen as the greatest of the non-majors. And while it may be on the decline, it’s still a Masters and its still tennis. And there would have to be a pretty good reason for tennis fans not to tune in. Well, on Sunday, we might have got our reason: You see, we didn’t see much tennis.
We saw what is being sold to us as tennis but which when removed from its glitzy packaging is a different sport altogether. While there are still rackets, balls, a court and a net, what there is not so much of is tennis skills being shown on the court. What we get instead is two tree-trunked legged players running back and forth along the baseline and a ball which ends up in the net or beyond the lines more often than it does being dinked over the net or belted up the line for a winner. Close to 100 errors littered the final. And of 208 points played, 35 were at the net, the same number of winners for the entire match. Yes. You read correctly. 35 winners from 208 points and on a hard court. And while Miami has always been a medium slow paced hard court, those numbers are still too low.
David’s game does not not really produce winner after winner anyway so perhaps his apology could be seen as unnecessary. And it is not his fault that the court is too slow to hit winners through. He certainly tried his best at times, setting up his big forehand down the line only to watch as a tired Murray chased it down and sent it back free of pace. Neither could Murray really be blamed either. His tiredness which led to so many errors was not so much due to his lack of fitness but more down to the playing in the midday sun so that the TV network could show basketball later on. It did not help either that his match with Gasquet had gone to three sets. Three sets on these courts is three sets to many.
As we thought over the apology, David’s next words threw us off guard. ‘It was only one point’, he said. The runner-up was not apologizing for the non-tennis match we tennis fanatics had just sat through but was apologizing to the Spaniard-heavy Miami crowd for stopping the rally on his match point at 6-5 to challenge a Murray forehand that had hit the line. Had his challenge been correct then David would have delighted the large Spanish speaking contingent by becoming the first Spaniard to win the title. Instead, it was Murray who got more balls back and kept more in to run away with the final set tie-break, and that was all he had to do really on these courts against this opponent. Murray’s ability to grind it out reaped him the rewards of not only his second Miami title but also his re-elevation to the number two ranking.
And so, if Ferrer was not going to say sorry, perhaps it would be the Champion. But Murray did not apologize in his speech, either. And neither did the ATP come forward and face the disgruntled fans. You see, we were not there to face, being as were at home in front of our screens, frothing away. The fans that were at the match cheered away though. After all, a day at the tennis is a day at the tennis, and as much as this was an error-filled match between two tired, cramping players, it was a grueling spectacle with long rallies, the odd one gasp-inducing. And as long as the stadium is full and as long as the ratings are high, which they are as the ATP gets the word out about the superhuman specimens battling it to the death and pulls in a whole new breed of fans, then the apology will not be forthcoming. It will take empty stadiums, low ratings and the subsequent withdrawing advertisers to get them to say sorry. But asking tennis fans to stay away when tennis is all over the internet is a bit like asking a chocoholic to give up chocolate when the keys to the pantry are left hanging by the bed. Tennis fanatics will always watch the big matches and attend the tournaments for those moments of great tennis that we do get now and then. They will sit side by side the new fans, who gasp in awe of the speed and athleticism and the length of the rallies, and get on their feet and applaud when they see a drop shot or a well-constructed foray to the net ended with a backhand volley that clips the line.
And so while we are all there cheering and parting with money, there will be no apologies about the tennis or the minutes you won’t get back. Instead what there will be is executives diving into pools of golden coins, millionaires raising aloft trophies, players spending hours in ice baths and fans frothing away watching clips of 1990s Essen on youtube. And that, my fellow fanatic, is truly sorry because one would think that as a sport grows it gets better and we would not have to get our tennis kicks from players and surfaces long retired.
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