Wozniacki Comeback

 

For a long time I’ve meant to write about Caroline Wozniacki, the Danish player (of Polish parents) who surprised me by retiring in 2020, at the age of 29. For as much as any player, she helped inspire Famepunk.

Specifically, I credit watching Wozniacki with a major plot point. In the first volume, US Open 1987, the heroine’s progress through the tournament is causing her to miss freshman orientation activities at the college of her dreams; in the end, she doesn’t go. College or career is a choice that tennis players aren’t alone in facing. For me, college was the only option, ever; most people I knew were the same, partly because we were none of us blessed with astonishing athletic talent. Caroline Wozniacki, who was, caught my notice early in her career when she started winning a US Open women’s warm-up tournament that used to be held every August in New Haven. I watched her play on cable TV, listened to her interviews; I was watching the night she put her ponytail into what became her trademark braid, which I never liked quite as well.

It might have been during a championship match when it occurred to me that Yale, seeing as how she was 18 and in town, ought to make Caroline Wozniacki an immediate offer of admission. It was clear to me that she could more than handle the work entailed to graduate at the top of her class. Maybe (definitely, I thought) tennis doesn’t need another young blonde goddess—not as much as the whole planet, really, needs intelligent, articulate, strong, healthy, charismatic young women who speak multiple languages fluently as teens, to study and train for leadership roles in the society to come.

2017; By Christian Mesiano – Caroline Wozniacki, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia

Yale would have been the starting point for that ascension I was picturing, and later played around with in Famepunk. I was sorry that Wozniacki didn't enroll at the time. Back then (2008 or 2009), the first objection to the idea would have been that compared to the pursuit of an undergraduate degree, even in New Haven, a full-fledged professional tennis career must offer immeasurably more key preparation for a successful life in the rooms of power—rooms already crowded with Ivy Leaguers whom her fame and wealth, self-earned, would start her on a step above. By this argument, naturally unanswerable then, once she played out her time in the WTA and retired a multiple champion, Caroline Wozniacki would pause, maybe marry and have children (as she has done), and then go out and take her place as an important decision-maker somewhere. Danish politics, diplomacy, major philanthropy or big relief projects, head of a green technology company—anything.

Instead, here we are, with the recent announcement that she’ll be competing next month in Canada preparatory to another crack at the US Open title. What happened? In the past year she’s already returned to tennis as a match commentator; she’s got a sleepy, Kim Novak-style voice which I don’t mind but no one would argue that we need more match commentators in the universe. This week she’s playing at Wimbledon in the Legends event, which brings retired players, many great names, back to the courts for the public to enjoy. But with players like Navratilova, Hingis, Sabatini there, no one is really clamoring to see Caroline Wozniacki, too, not when she’s only been gone a few years.

2019

What’s behind the comeback phenomenon? Is it really, as cynics suggest, that top players just can’t stand to give up the perks of a champion’s lifestyle? Or is it being the center of attention that they come to miss too much to stay away? It must feel like free money, after a point, if people keep letting you earn when you’re long past your prime; a nest egg, a comfortable cushion, or a grateful way out of some financial or family dilemma—comebacks must come in handy, for sure.

But the productive lifetimes of which we were cheated, somehow—they don’t come back. They never were. Admirable womanhoods of power, impact, and long duration, exchanged for short primes and six-decade twilights: someone with Caroline Wozniacki’s overall potential and abilities shouldn’t have become irrelevant to the rest of us so young. And she senses this, knows this; it’s why she’s coming back. Is she moving in the right direction, though? Now might be a better time to consider getting an advanced degree.

Surprise Obsolescence

It was billed as a safety measure in 1996 when professional tennis began replacing net cord judges and their fingertips (and their proneness to getting beaned by errant shots) with digital sensors. The electronic line call system used during every match at this year's US Open had a solid trial run as an anti-COVID technology. At first, since a pre-recorded human cry of “Out!” is triggered when a ball goes wide or long, it’s possible to overlook what’s missing: an entire profession. Line judging sparks a decisive turn in the final match climax of FAMEPUNK: US Open 1987 which could never happen now, twenty-five years after those fictional events.

The men and women who crouched and hunkered down and peered and saw, with notable accuracy, where the close balls fell were intriguing characters on the tennis courts in Queens. That they drew pay was a known fact. Not all were local, many flew in. Some had been unsuccessful players. From finding chances to preside at the smallest events they’d climbed a ranking board to reach the pinnacle, working these two weeks of August, outdoors, on their feet. The great hard courts look bare without them: factory floors emptied, mopped and made hygienic for the robot replacements’ sake. Touted as “cleaner”for players, viewers and sponsors, one upshot sees dozens of still-indispensable ball boys and balls girls thrown into higher relief. The line judges—their absence makes clear—had interposed a layer of responsible and adult presence between a sexually omnivorous world viewership and the ball kids’ flashing knees; oversized uniforms and all, child labor stays, adults go redundant, and the pedo class delights.

Chair umpires are still out there as well. As if to compensate for the loss of opportunities to overrule a line judge call, this current showboating generation finds ways to keep the cameras on itself, and in its meager celebrity might be allowed to age in place. Its successors are bound to be artificial: for chair umpires are only line judges who rose to the top and now sit up high, after years and years of being bent at the waist at the back of the court, crouching, peering, barking calls, enduring abusive tantrums. With the US Open off the table, who would persevere? A dry pipeline awaits.

Electronic line-calling also means the end of disputed calls--and with them an entire discourse, no less a part of a pro player’s “tennis vocabulary” than a slice or a grip. When every call is correct, there’s no space for expressing disagreement, disbelief, outrage; there's no one there to bitch at; there's no more buying time with a strategic sure-to-fail challenge. Countless acres of on-court drama and human engagement have been eradicated before they could happen.

Prophetess Motives

 

The women’s game had a bad reputation, in truth, because every few years since the First World War some teenaged girl would come along out of nowhere to beat all the established players back into historical footnotes—as if they hadn’t been playing the game properly, not for a while; as if they’d been subjecting the public to a charade with their cough-cough married lady patty-caking back and forth at one another; when some of these girls were so exceedingly young and they just beat everybody. It was difficult for women such as Cookie Toms who desperately wanted respect with a capital R to gain any traction in its pursuit because women’s tennis just didn’t look good to a great many people.

But Cookie and her band of like-minded players had persevered and prevailed.

 

This is from Middlemarch, Part 2 of Famepunk--a story which is looking very forward-looking, to say the least, today, when an virtually unknown qualifier still in her teens has just won the women's singles final at the US Open. In fact, the women's draw in the other half was wiped out by a hungry teen, too.

Congratulations to Emma Raducanu (above, right), and to her worthy opponent, 19 year-old Leyla Fernandez, who won many hearts with her valiant play this tournament.

In Emma Jasohn, the heroine of Famepunk, I'm proud to have created a champion who paved the way in fiction for a player to go from qualifier to trophy-holder in three weeks at Queens; in real life, it had never been done until now. 

What will come true next? Read the books and find out before it happens. 

But back to Cookie Toms and her band of like-minded players: this follows history pretty closely, and is modeled on "The Nine" who rebelled against women's second-class citizenship in professional tennis by starting their own association and tour, which Virginia Slims cigarettes sponsored. Fifty years later, what's now the WTA swims in money. Billie Jean King, model for Cookie Toms and like her the greatest of all champions, continues to deserve all accolades; and the sponsorships are still looking very suspect. A video tribute to The Nine, shown between Thursday's two women's semifinals, looked like this to those watching in the stadium and at home:

To be fair, in Dubai and (most of) the UAE, though their skirts had better reach the knee and spaghetti straps will not be tolerated, women are not required to cover their heads or faces in public. 

So Fly There Today!

 

The Tennis Fan Today (Part 1)

Professional tennis, and the watching of professional tennis, are two completely different matters. A person can love professional tennis as I do and yet never watch it, and not miss it, and not even mind when it isn’t being played. This empty Wimbledon pandemic fortnight, after the blank where Roland Garros should have been, leaves me shrugging with equal indifference. Of course, if Maria Sharapova hadn’t retired my guess is I’d feel differently, bothered at least if not somewhat heartsick on her behalf. I’d have loved to see her win more titles. But as it is, I don’t care.

Blame the impedimenta. To attending in professional tennis events in person in a normal year, a long list: inconvenience, jacked-up prices, extreme overcrowding, intrusive security, feral bands of child autograph hunters, terrible pop music playing on the changeovers (put this at the top of the list) and all over the grounds, the air thick with beeriness and meat smoke, the fatigue-slackened faces silvered by Jumbotron light pollution: a horrible time and this is with comp tickets, forget about having to pay for them.

But to follow from afar is not much easier nor any more pleasant. What started out, for one thing, as too many commercials has become too much to pay monthly for a premium cable subscription: an annoyance has grown into a major barrier. Beyond which is “the product” itself—always a product, professional tennis have never been more of one—how it looks and what it contains. When I’ve been able to watch on occasion these past several years, I’ve seen the commercials haven’t gone anywhere, they’ve multiplied inside the broadcasts and overrun the tournaments, the courts, the players’ persons. Information-wise, it’s a wasteland of pointless statistics, canned themes, obfuscation and hacky hagiography. The commentators chatter without ceasing. I especially dread the national embarrassment that settles in as the Americans mispronounce every single “foreign” player’s name. It’s deliberate, I’ve even heard them refer to the “Americanized version.” The embarrassment and sorrow at how our media hold us back, we the people who could use better training from childhood onward, these deep feelings get in there and spoil my enjoyment, over time they’ve helped to erode my wish to watch at all.

Slash a way through all these unpalatable trappings and there is professional tennis, the game itself and the act of watching it being played. Without question, we see our human civilization at a peak here—more than one, really. As sports go, like baseball, it’s full of perfections. Unusually, both sexes reach the highest levels of play, of reward, and of fame. The best men are like demigods. And where else have women, rising in white skirts out of immemorial subjections, made such a sustained display of active liberated female bodies, unrestrained and self-directed, excelling in competition? Simply to sit and reflect on the last century in professional women’s tennis is to be in touch with the highest ideals, while memory fills with heroics and proud moments. Tennis in thought is very beautiful.

In finding ways to make the pleasure of watching professional tennis outweigh the depressing nastiness of actually doing so, the modern fan leans hard on personalities. Attachments and infatuations bind us to the sight of certain players so that we’ll put up with the most aggravating coverage in return.  Also, great players, like Maria Sharapova, make it worthwhile to watch them. Though too many beautiful quiet tensions have gone from today’s noisy game (which despite what people say won’t be appreciably quieter in her absence when play resumes this year), a mute control brings goodness back, like a magic wand whose wave leaves us alone in the hush with our love idols.

I’d stopped muting Maria years ago, however, when I began to love the way she vocalized. Her whole game just captured me. Here is a tinyloop from a final she played at Stanford in August 2010. Victoria Azarenka’s voice is first, Sharapova’s second.

2nd Roland Garros title

About Tennis

The real one

US Open 1987 has been out and available for several years now, in its CreateSpace edition. As I began preparing the first Nostalgistudio edition for publication later this summer, I remembered that several people who read the book had told me they'd been a little lost at points because they don't know anything about tennis. For a tennis fan like me to hear this is shocking and sad, of course. I don't like to think of people being deprived of such an enjoyment--watching and being able to follow a good competitive tennis match is one of the higher pleasures in life, I think. As for the novel, the first chapter concerns a single fateful tennis match described in some detail. Those kind readers felt lost right away, this was the problem.

So I wrote some more text, a few pages to insert quite near the opening. If you've read the book and didn't get the tennis part, please accept this new material with my sincere and apologetic thanks. For newcomers, maybe people with some know-how about the game, I offer it for discussion. Did I miss too much again?

(The new excerpt is here.)

What a Wimbledon

Here I am spending hours and hours this fleeting summer in the preparation of new editions for Nostalgistudio of all three FAMEPUNK novels so far, immersed once again in women's tennis as a subject while simultaneously scanning its current state for promotional opportunities, ways to ride some surge in fandom into wider view. And what I see is so very far from promising anything of the sort, it might as well be a cloud of antitheses, when all but the seventh of the top ten ladies' singles seeds goes out in the first week. It's disgraceful and won't win fans--quite the contrary. Overpraised princesses wilting under a single round of pressure: no one wants to applaud that. To my personal horror, women's tennis has become the New York Mets. One loss, then two, then two others; they achieve something lemming-like, these super athletes in mostly identical dresses swatting forehands long.

via Gfycat

LAMENT out now!