U.S. Open From the Couch: I Don't Know Who's Going to Win and I Don't Care

 The thing that cracks me up about Novak Djokovic is the dichotomy. The man nakedly wants to be loved by a crowd, seems to crave it to the point that it throws him off if he feels he's being rooted against. Yet, on the cusp of history last night, in front of a crowd who loved him (for now), he needlessy chimes in on the Stefanos Tsitsipas bathroom controversy -- in support of Tsitsipas! OK, look. What Tsitsipas was doing was gamesmanship. You can do it, and as Djokovic noted last night, the rule is unclear. So why not just slide right through that loophole? You can. You definitely can. And then you have to be OK with what it says about you.

My mouth was sort of hanging open after that sidebar in Djokovic's post-match interview, and then he started talking about how great a person his opponent is! 

A CHOICE.

Alexander Zverev has been accused of physical and emotional abuse by a former girlfriend (writer Ben Rothenberg broke the story not once, but twice) and we have known this for months now. Again, you can align yourself with Zverev as an ally, someone who can vouch for his character. You can do that. But you have to be OK with what that says about you. Listen, there's credible evidence against the guy and he's fortunate because he happens to play in a sport whose governing body is a model for how to look the other way. What can we do, they say. Our rules don't cover it. 

So a young tennis player's dad/coach is routinely crossing the line of abuse, and yeah, we see it and yeah, it makes us feel weird, but what can we do. She's an excellent player. Just off the top of my head I can think of Mary Pierce and Jelena Dokic. You can probably think of a few more.

That's part of the problem with tennis in general (the ATP and the WTA are two different entities) because without a definite charge or investigation, Zverev's case can stay in the gray space and leave tennis commenters unsure of how to talk about him. Even if they know the abuse is happening, even if it's happening to minors, what're you gonna do. 

Djokovic, for all the dichotomy, picked at least the best place for it -- a stadium likely full of fans who follow tennis once a year, and perhaps only on that very day. But the rest of us have long memories, bud, and we're still trying to get over the COVID Open tournament he held. 

So for that reason I say: I don't know who's going to win and I don't care. (I don't have a problem with Medvedev, but I am fascinated by his Gumby-like game. How is he doing that?) The thing is, I feel the same about the women's final, and for completely different reasons. 

I have no idea what's going to happen between Leylah Fernandez and Emma Raducanu, both of whom I clearly expected to make the final. 

The difference is that this is a good story. (Speaking of dads, Leylah's dang near melted my cold heart when he talked about what it meant for his daughter to play for Canada.) Honestly after Raducanu's retirement at Wimbledon, in which she acknowledged dealing with nerves, I wouldn't have expected her to follow up with a run to the final of the next major. And Fernandez? I mean, I felt like she had a nice draw to make it to the third round. Clearly she felt otherwise. 

If I had to choose, I'd have to give Fernandez a bit of an edge. Her draw has been a LOT tougher. Plus Raducanu had to go through qualifying. And I think Fernandez has the ability to vary her game when things aren't working. But I'm excited to see it anyway. It's a pleasant surprise, and a show of the true depth of the women's game. 

All right, I gotta go make popcorn and watch this. 

U.S. Open From the Couch: We Don't Have to Encase Naomi Osaka in Bubble Wrap, OK?

Man, who told me to go onto Tennis Twitter (TT) yesterday during the Naomi Osaka and Leylah Fernandez match? To be fair, I think it surprised a lot of us in at least two ways. First, as talented as Fernandez is, I was not really expecting her to take a set off Osaka, let alone two. Careful observers pointed out that Osaka has had a lot of difficulty with left-handed players, and ... OK, that tracks. Still, Osaka looked like she was playing herself into form, and in her second-round match against Marie Bouzkova, she was making devastating shots and angles. She was looking good! 

The second thing that surprised me is how Osaka reacted to the second set getting competitive. I think I literally gasped when she threw her racquet for the first time. And then I rolled my eyes because I knew what was coming on TT, and yeah. Actually, the commentators beat them to it by pointing out that it was this vaunted court where Osaka won her first major and a reminder that it was, uh, a tense situation. It took 10 seconds for people to start the comparisons to Serena Williams' racquet abuse in the 2018 final. So let's take this on first, because I have a lot of thoughts and am trying to weave them into one piece because I don't feel like separating it into two or three, and also Twitter is not the place for the nuanced situation that this is. So.

Yes, Osaka maybe should have gotten a warning. But she didn't. The only reason she didn't is because there were two different match umpires in 2018 and last night. I wrote about this in 2018 and was accused of gaslighting, of being a racist, a sexist, and I'm sure I'm missing something. I left a Facebook group over that piece. But anyway. Here we are. Two umpires saw the same violation and reacted differently. As I said in 2018, I don't care a lot about racquet abuse. It's a racquet, and what's more, it's your racquet. If you took your opponent's racquet and smashed it into oblivion, well, sure, now you have a point. 

It's also worth noting that the 2018 debacle unraveled a bit more differently. I won't waste digital ink here, but the first thing that happened there was that Carlos Ramos called Serena's coach for match coaching, which is not allowed, and I feel a little more strongly about this one, because it's what sets tennis apart from other sports. I'm going to leave a pin in that one for today. Then things went more and more sideways from there. Her coach was, by the way, signaling. That's a fact. But that doesn't matter as much either because there is one other factor that made those matches different, and that is how Naomi Osaka managed her own anger.

The reason that Fernandez was able to truly enjoy the fact that she had just beaten the third-ranked player in the world on a large stage is because of the way Osaka managed her anger. Fernandez deserved to enjoy her moment because she earned it -- she played well and didn't quit when she was down. The reason we, as fans, could really get to appreciate her performance is because of the way Osaka managed her anger. We're going to get to the anger, but the management make the comparisons moot in my mind. Meaning, I don't want to hear the comparison because it's not there. I don't want to see the footage of Serena talking about how her situation in 2018 might make it easier for women to be angry on court. The comparison is not there. 

Listen, you have to take responsibility for your actions in general. If you're a functioning adult who is accountable to others, you do. Anger does not have to be a train you hop on whose destination is unknown, but you are along for the ride and oh, well, who knows where it will take us. Anger (at least about a tennis match) is manageable and Osaka did unto others as she would have probably liked it done unto her. I don't want to give her cookie over this or anything, because functioning adults do things like this all the time. They blow off steam, realize they messed up and apologize and try to correct. Now, Osaka did look at times like she was not going to throw her racquet but that she was going to throw that match. I mean the first couple games in that third set, I was like, whoa, this is worse, Naomi! But she corrected and she might not have fully recovered, but she held on to play a match I feel she'll be proud of later, even though she didn't win.

The last thing here is how her anger was discussed by the commentators, on TT and on TV.  Something nipped at me about this last night, the way the commentators linked her outburst to her mental health struggles. Today, I know what it is, even though I'm not sure I can give it the best words. Anger, and throwing a racquet (that belongs to you) is not indicative of a mental health problem! What the hell, people? Conflating these things makes it harder to talk about mental health, because now a (fairly) normal reaction to frustration, performed by a person who was brave enough to share her mental health struggles with the world, becomes something truly, like, gross. It's like coddling to do this. It's like treating Osaka like a fragile baby who can't handle life. That's not what the racquet toss was. It was a legitimate show of emotion. It would be one if Rafael Nadal had done it and it's one in this case. Full stop. 

This actually reminds me of how the commentators talked about Osaka's commitment to talk about black people being targeted by the police last year. Some insisted on tying her stellar play then to her social stance, which to me felt like, welp, OK, weird. But this is very similar and this one bothers me more. The thing is that those things are separate and a racquet toss isn't a sign of a mental breakdown and everything she does does not have to be seen through the prism of mental health struggles.

Naomi Osaka is more than her mental health. Maybe respect her enough to treat her as the whole individual she is. How about we try that? I guess that's what I'm saying.

Having said all of that, Osaka did indicate that she is struggling mentally on the court in the post-match conference. To my ear, it sounds like she needs to find/rediscover her love of tennis and for our sake, I hope she does. Her sister has already retired from the game and I could see her doing it, too. If she decides she'd rather climb Mt. Everest, then teach high-school biology for the rest of her life, I mean, I'll personally be crushed, but if that's where the love is, that's where she has to go. I do think she'd be a really good teacher.