1 The Lions Go Kicking and Screaming Two questions. Why does this game seemingly drive everyone mad? What does it take to survive and thrive? That''s what''s rattling around my brain in the summer of 2024 and the months that follow as the old ones, the lions of this game, go kicking and screaming, battling past the end, with and against bodies that have given them the biggest trophies, wealth, and fame but have failed them long ago. That''s what any of our bodies ultimately do. And yet the lions still resist, struggling with the impossibility of it all. By the end, time blurs the dark memories, all the battles against the fear of never being enough. The lions can remember only the joy, the good stuff. Maybe that is for the best as their bones and joints begin to wither. For so long they have beaten back every challenge.
They have won so many fights on the long climb to the sport''s summit . so many points, matches, and tournaments that felt like life and death played with the world watching. They have camped out on the summit for longer than anyone imagined they possibly could. So how could a knee, or a hip, or a stiffening spine, or the smallest drop-off in previously unmatched speed and flexibility and touch not be just another opponent to solve or a match to win on the way to yet another immortal triumph? Surely there has to be one more secret code they can unlock to solve this, to get one last adrenaline rush of glory that they believe will complete their journey rather than leave them craving more. The young ones are next up. They know it. They are a staggeringly gifted bunch, but they just can''t figure out how to get to where everyone says they are going to go, to emulate and overtake the lions--or how to get there without losing their minds. The young ones wonder if their minds possess the steel, and their bodies the grace and balance, to survive this dance on the knife''s edge of sanity.
So many of the young ones, even the ones who display early greatness, descend into tears every time they lose a big match. They beg their coaches, one after another, to find them a way out of the fire, fearing, or in some cases knowing, that it has already consumed them. Full-body cramps paralyze them. Or they vomit uncontrollably in the middle of the court in the biggest tennis stadium in the world. Sometimes they forget how to serve a tennis ball or hit a forehand, the most basic shot in the game, the first shot they hit when they stepped onto the court as toddlers. How could this be? A couple, or maybe a few, seem to be getting closer to enlightenment, but not more than that. They''ll figure it out eventually, they''re sure of it. At least that''s what they tell themselves and everyone else.
But do they believe it? When will their time start? This is where professional tennis finds itself in the mid-2020s. So many moments, during the long spring and summer of 2024, when the game, the life, appears to drive so many of the best of the best to a uniquely tortured state. Their brains become incapable of sound thought and decision-making. In May, Rafael Nadal storms off a court in Rome. He''s lost a second-round match on his beloved red clay, managing just four games over two sets. There''s an on-court ceremony planned for the end. Flowers. A plaque, perhaps.
Speeches, so many speeches. He''s been coming to the Foro Italico for twenty years. He''s won the Italian Open ten times. He won''t win another match here now. And he can''t get off the court soon enough following his 6-1, 6-3 beating from the lanky Polish problem, Hubert Hurkacz. Later, he will describe it like this: "I did a disaster." Of course he did. It''s been eleven months since he had what should have been career-ending surgery on his hip flexor and labrum.
His body doesn''t work on a professional tennis court anymore. Not the way it used to. He can''t generate the torque that drives his power and the violent topspin. It''s over. Everyone can see that. Except him. He insists he''d rather live with his memories of glory, that he doesn''t need another round of rapturous ovations at Roland Garros in Paris, on the red clay that made him Rafael Nadal. But of course he does.
Because he has a few good days of practice without feeling the knife in his midsection or those constant twinges in his back. And just when Nadal thinks he''s likely done and out, he''s back and in with that most dangerous of thoughts: Maybe the magic is still there. And then Alexander Zverev, a mercurial six-foot-six German tidal wave, sends him on his way. Rafa will need one more Paris humiliation at the Olympics before accepting that he really is done, and even then he will play, and lose badly, once more. In late June, Andy Murray, the Scot with the metal hip, the broken body, and an unmatched love for everything about the game, is trying to play a singles match at Wimbledon--a little more than a week after surgeons removed a cyst from his spine. This is how desperate he is for one last adrenaline charge with the grass under his feet. He pulls out in the final hours. But there he is a few days later grinding out a last doubles match with his brother, though only barely.
His body is about as limber as Ichabod Crane''s, the steps of his pigeon-toed walk as slow and short and careful as an old man''s. Of course they lose. On the first day of August, at the Paris Olympics, a thirty-seven-year-old Novak Djokovic, the keeper of more of the secret codes than anyone for the time being, somehow rips the gold medal from the neck of Carlos Alcaraz, the wunderkind from Spain mounting his takeover of the game. When it''s over, Novak is face down on the clay, tears streaming from his eyes, his right hand shaking uncontrollably on the crushed red brick. The Olympics is the crowning achievement in his career, the last important bauble he had yet to collect after twenty-four Grand Slam titles. Novak has emptied his tank. There''s an obvious, epic play here--never pick up a racket again. Could anything possibly be better than finishing a career with that elusive Olympic gold? No.
And yet he can''t walk away. It''s the riddle of tennis greatness. When you win, you believe you will never lose. So why stop when winning feels so good and there is more winning to be done? And when you are losing, you crave nothing more than one more rush. The mind rarely lands on logic and fact--that no one wins forever, that at some point everyone can no longer win. The lions all know this intellectually. Or maybe they don''t. So Novak plays on, and on and on, even as the injuries and the losses to the new breed pile up on the biggest stages, stages he owned just months before.
Even Alcaraz isn''t immune. Let''s call him Carlitos, because everyone does, and that''s what he prefers. The name suits a man who still wants to live and play with the joy of a boy who is the envy of all his rivals. It''s his superpower, and maybe also his kryptonite. It''s like that with nearly all of them these days. He arrives at the Olympics fresh off wins in the French Open and Wimbledon that he sandwiched around a halcyon few days of being a twenty-one-year-old in Ibiza. A happy kid, with so much to be happy about, who has had some good times in the Olympic Village, thriving as only young superstars can and should. But after losing that gold medal to Novak with too many wild swings of a magical forehand that sometimes just goes away, he can''t speak, his own tears, so different from Novak''s, won''t stop.
Carlitos cries again before the summer is out, in a dark hallway under Arthur Ashe Stadium at the US Open with midnight approaching, following a second-round loss to a largely unknown Dutchman. Carlitos had wandered the court like a zombie all evening. Now his head leans against the white cinder block wall. His agent''s hand rests on his shoulder. He''s the chosen one. So why does this keep happening? Where did the magic of that first French Open title in Paris in June and his second crown at Wimbledon go? He''d thought he''d figured it all out, wrested the secrets Novak had been keeping in that ever-curious, always-seeking Serbian brain. Then just when Carlitos believes he has it figured out, it goes away. Are greatness and supremacy in tennis really that fleeting? Carlitos flies home to Spain and stuffs his rackets in a closet for two weeks.
Iga swiatek, the world-beater from Poland, a country that has never had one, often lands at the same question Carlitos has: If I am so gifted, so destined to rule this kingdom, why do I often end up feeling like the world is ending? How do I get my hands on the secrets? Just when she thinks she knows them, suddenly she feels like she knows nothing at all. During tournaments, she has two states: winning and misery. It''s the same script that follows many of her losses. At those Olympics, she walks past a line of cameras and a scrum of journalists red-faced, her eyes spilling tears following a loss in the semis. It''s the same thing a month later at the US Open when she goes out in the quarters. She lies on a massage table after bowing out. She thought she was starting to acquire those secrets of success that are supposed to usher in eternal happiness. Now they feel more elusive than ever, and she doesn''t even know how swirly it''s about to get.
Everywhere you look, the game tortures, pushing and tugging at its protagonists. Coco Gauff, the American phenom who has been hearing the words "the next Serena".