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.
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